Chapter 13 The Old Hiding Place #3
"Cazzo, Ysabel… tight…" His hands flex on my hips, bringing me back to the present.
He holds still for me, whole body trembling with the effort of not thrusting, pleasure and restraint shaking through him in equal measure. "Ride me. Take what you came in here for. I've got you. Fuck… I've always got you. Even when I failed you. Even now."
"Just shut up and let me."
I ride him hard and quiet, up and down. Wet sounds swallowed by stone and cloth. The bench cold under my knees, his heat the only warmth that matters.
Every downstroke drags him deep; every lift makes him whine against my mouth.
My nails dig into his shoulders through his shirt. He thrusts up to meet me in short controlled snaps, praising in a filthy whisper like prayer and filth are the same language in this alcove.
"That's it, my stubborn girl. Missed this cunt. Missed the way you take me. God… yes, grind on me just like that… perfect, so fucking perfect…"
"Merda, Leon…!" I hate how I whine his name. Hate how good he feels. Hate that anger and need can live in the same breath. "Harder. If we're doing this, do it. Don't be careful with me now."
His control frays with a sound that is almost a growl.
He stands with me still wrapped around him, still buried in me, and the loss of the bench makes me clutch him harder. He turns and puts my back to the cool stone wall beside the recess.
One hand braces on the stone so we don't tip into the corridor light. The other hooks under my thigh, holding me open. He drives into me standing, deep, claiming strokes that rock me against the wall and knock a gasp out of me I smother against his mouth.
"Like this?" Dominant now, voice low and rough, forehead against mine. "You want it harder, you get it harder. Quietly. Staff could walk that hall. You want them to hear how wet you are for the husband you walked out on?"
"Maledetto, Leon… S-shut up…" It breaks into a moan as he hits deeper, the angle ruthless and exact. "Just… fuck, don't stop… Leon, Leon…"
"Not stopping." He kisses me filthy to keep me quiet, fucking me into the stone, rosemary and dust in every breath, the tapestry whispering when my shoulder brushes it.
"You're beautiful like this. Angry, wanting me anyway.
Taking every inch. Say you're here because you want me again, baby. Let me hear you."
"I want you." The confession is ripped out of me, furious and true, my heel digging into his back. "Please! Please, Leon…"
"Come on me," he orders softly against my mouth, thumb finding my clit between us, circling in wet filthy strokes timed to his thrusts. "Give it to me, I've got you. Come. Now, Ysabel."
I break with my face buried in his shoulder, clenching around him so hard he follows with a bitten-off curse, spilling deep while he holds me pinned to the wall like letting go would drop us both into the corridor.
Pleasure tears through me in bright, shaking waves. His does too. For a few seconds there is nothing in the world but heat and breath and the old lie that this place is safe.
We stay locked together until our breathing slows. His forehead rests on mine. The tapestry stirs once in a draft and there are no footsteps. Only the quiet we used to call ours.
Then I ease off him first.
The emptiness is immediate.
My legs are unsteady on the stone floor.
I fix my underwear with hands that do not feel like mine, tug my skirt down, smooth my hair, wipe the corner of my mouth.
He tucks himself away without reaching for me again, reading the shift the way he always could in this recess: want first, distance after.
When I sit back on the bench, there is space between us.
Not quite touching. The heat of what we shared is still in my body, slick and undeniable.
Something colder is already creeping in behind it, because the alcove is still an alcove, and we are still hidden, and nothing about the way he felt inside me has answered the only question that matters.
We sit on the stone bench in the quiet, not quite touching but close enough that I can feel the heat of him beside me.
The warmth of what we shared is still in my body, but something else is creeping in now. A coldness that has nothing to do with the temperature of the stone.
"Leon."
"Hmm?"
"Where are we right now?"
He turns to look at me, confused. "What do you mean?"
"I mean literally. Physically. Where are we sitting?"
"The alcove. Our alcove."
"A hidden alcove in a back corridor where no one ever comes. Where we used to meet when we were sneaking around and didn't want anyone to know about us."
I see understanding dawn in his eyes, and with it, something like dread.
"Ysabel..."
"We just made love in a hidden corner of your house. In secret. Where no one could see." I stand up, needing distance, needing space to think. "Do you understand what that means?"
"It means we still love each other. It means there's still something worth fighting for."
"It means I could pretend we've fixed everything when we haven't.
" My voice is sharper than I intended, but I can't soften it.
"Two years of marriage, these days at the farm, yesterday at the market, and I still know how easily I could mistake being close to you for being safe with you.
In hiding. In the same pattern we've always been in. "
"I didn't expect this to happen. I wasn't trying to bring you back here for that."
"I know you didn't. That's not the point.
" I turn to face him, and I see my own anguish reflected in his eyes.
"The point is that this is where we always end up.
This is what we do. We love each other in private, in hidden places, away from everyone else.
And then we go back to our lives and nothing changes. "
"I don't want to go back to how it was either."
"I've seen you learning to work my parents' farm. I've seen you getting blisters and outsmarted by goats. I've seen you try. Yesterday mattered to me. I'm not taking that away from you. But I need to know you'll stand beside me when someone disapproves, not only when it's easy."
Leon stands up too, reaches for me. I step back.
"I'm not saying what we just did was a mistake," I tell him. "I wanted it. I chose it. But I also know what it means, and it scares me. Because I could so easily fall back into this. Into loving you in secret and pretending that's enough."
"I won't pretend you weren't here. I won't let anyone say you don't belong."
"Then I need to see that happen. I can't keep trusting that next time you'll speak before I have to ask you."
"Then tell me what to do. Tell me what you need and I'll do it."
I look at him, this man I've loved since I was twenty years old, this man who's trying so hard and still keeps missing the point.
"I need you to understand something," I say. "Really understand it, not just hear the words and nod along."
"I'm listening."
"A stolen moment in a hidden corner is exactly the problem. I'm done being the wife you only choose where no one can see."