Chapter 21 #2
I work him until he's trembling, until his thighs are shaking and his grip in my hair is tight enough to sting and the sounds through the pillow have stopped being words. Then I pull off.
"Don't stop, don't — why did you stop—"
"Because I want to be inside you and I won't last if I keep going."
He takes the pillow off his face. His eyes are blown, dark, unfocused. His hair is wrecked. His chest is heaving. He looks like a man who has been systematically dismantled and is entirely in favor of continued dismantling.
"Then get inside me," he says. "Now."
"Do you have—"
"Suitcase. Side pocket. I packed optimistically."
I almost laugh. Of course he did. Of course Nico packed lube in the side pocket of his suitcase for a business trip because he's thorough and prepared for every contingency including the one where he ends up in a room above a bar being taken apart by a lion shifter.
I find it. Slick my fingers. When I push the first one inside him, he bites the pillow — not over his face, actually biting it, teeth sunk into the fabric, and the image of that does something to me that I'm going to be thinking about for the rest of my life.
"More," he says, muffled by the pillow between his teeth.
I give him more. Two fingers, slow, curling, finding the spot that makes his back arch and his teeth clench harder on the pillow. He's tight. It's been a while, I can feel that, and I take my time despite every instinct screaming at me to hurry.
"I'm ready," he says. "Ezra, I'm ready, I've been ready since you walked through the door—"
"You weren't ready twelve seconds ago."
"I'm a fast learner."
Three fingers. He takes them with a full-body shudder and a sound that the pillow barely contains. His hand finds my wrist again — the same grip from the first kiss, fingers circling the bone, holding on like an anchor.
I pull my fingers out. Roll on a condom. Slick up. Position myself.
"Look at me," I say.
He takes the pillow out of his mouth. Looks at me. His eyes are dark, steady despite everything, and he's holding my gaze the way he's held it since day one — directly, completely, the full weight of his attention.
I push in.
Slow. Inch by inch, watching his face, watching the way his eyes widen and his lips part and his breath catches at the stretch.
He takes me, all of me, steady, his body opening around mine with a trust that has nothing to do with efficiency and everything to do with the man he is underneath the spreadsheets.
When I'm fully inside, we both stop. Breathing. His hands are on my shoulders, gripping. His legs are around my waist. The moonlight catches his face and he looks — wrecked. Beautiful. Mine.
My lion says mine and I say it back. Not out loud. Not yet. But inside, where it counts, where the man and the animal live in the same body and finally, for the first time, agree.
I move. Slow at first, deep strokes that make him grip my shoulders and press his mouth against my neck to muffle the sounds. Then harder, finding the angle, adjusting until I hit the spot that makes his whole body clench.
"There — fuck, right there—"
"Quiet."
"I'm trying—"
I put my hand over his mouth. Not rough — careful, cupping his jaw, my palm against his lips.
His eyes go wide. For one second I think I've gone too far — he's a man who controls everything and I've just taken control of the one thing he uses to regulate himself.
His voice. His composure. The steady stream of words that keeps the world at a manageable distance.
Then his eyes flutter closed and he moans against my palm and his whole body melts.
Oh.
I keep my hand there. Thrust into him with a steady, building rhythm.
Feel the sounds he's making vibrate against my palm — desperate, wordless, the raw unfiltered version of Nico that exists underneath the suits and the spreadsheets and the professional composure.
Every sound goes into my hand instead of the room and it's the most intimate thing I've ever experienced.
His hands find my back. His nails drag down my spine — not gently, not carefully, the sharp scrape of a man who has abandoned strategy and is just holding on. I'll have marks tomorrow. I want marks tomorrow.
"Close," he breathes against my palm. "Ezra, I'm close—"
I angle my hips. Hit the spot and stay there, steady, relentless.
His body tightens around me — legs, arms, every muscle clenching at once.
He comes with a sound that my hand barely catches, his whole body arching off the garage-sale mattress, and the clench of him around me pulls me over the edge seconds later.
I come with my face buried in his neck, my hand still on his mouth, his heartbeat slamming against my chest. My lion roars — silent, internal, a sound that no one hears but me and maybe, maybe, the man underneath me whose heart is keeping time with mine.
We breathe. The radiator clanks and hisses, the nighttime sounds of a building that's held people for sixty years and doesn't judge what they do behind closed doors. The moonlight hasn't moved. The world outside is quiet.
I take my hand off his mouth. He takes a ragged breath.
"Well," he says. His voice is destroyed. "That was."
"Yeah."
"Your hand."
"Too much?"
"Do it again next time."
Next time. I file that away in the category of things Nico says that rearrange my entire internal architecture.
I pull out carefully. Deal with the condom.
Find the t-shirt that ended up on the floor and use it to clean us up, his, not mine, which he'll complain about tomorrow.
He watches me do it with the heavy-lidded attention of a man who's been thoroughly fucked and is cataloging the aftercare for future reference.
"Come here," he says. Pulls me down next to him. The bed is a double, which means we're pressed together from shoulder to ankle, and Nico hooks his leg over mine and puts his head on my chest like this is something we've done a hundred times instead of twice.
His heartbeat is slowing. Settling. The measured rhythm returning, except it's not the controlled version. It's the genuine resting pulse of a man who's exactly where he wants to be.
"Ezra."
"Mm."
"I stopped counting."
I open my eyes. "What?"
"The exits. The room sweeps. The twelve-minute inventory.
" His voice is quiet, half into my chest. Sleepy, unguarded, the way he says things when he's stopped running them through the filter first. "I stopped counting when I sat down at dinner.
Not because I decided to. Because I forgot. My body forgot to be afraid."
I let that settle. Two weeks ago, he walked into the bar and counted exits every twelve minutes. Silas tracked it. I watched it stop on day three and start again when I built the wall. At Ash's dinner, his heart rate was one-twelve and he mapped the bathroom window.
And now he's lying in a room above the bar, in a bed with a lion shifter, and his body forgot to count.
"That's not nothing," I say.
"That's not nothing," he agrees. His fingers trace patterns on my chest — not words, not shapes, just movement.
The habit of a hand that needs to be doing something.
"I don't know who I am without the counting.
Without the assessments and the exits and the calculations.
That's been my operating system since I was a kid. "
"You're the guy who packed lube in his suitcase side pocket on a business trip."
He laughs. Quiet, muffled against my chest, but real. "Optimistic preparation is not the same as personality."
"Nico."
"Mm."
"You don't have to know who you are tonight. You just got here."
He's quiet. His breathing slows. His hand on my chest stops moving, then starts again, then stops.
"When Toby told me about his first days here," he says. "He said he let the pride take care of him. That accepting care isn't weakness. I've been thinking about that for days."
"And?"
"And I'm lying in your bed in your building with your lion purring against my back and I'm not counting exits." A pause. "I think this is what accepting care feels like. I think this is the part I didn't know how to do."
I tighten my arm around him. Pull him closer. The bed is too small and the mattress is terrible and there's a spring poking my left kidney and I have never been more comfortable in my life.
"Stay," he says. The same word from the hotel room, except now the context is reversed. He's not asking me to stay in his space. He's asking me to stay in mine. To keep him in the place I live. To let this be where he sleeps.
"I'm not going anywhere," I say. "This is my room."
"Not this room. The other room. Your room. Tomorrow."
"Nico. You've been here one night."
"I've been here fourteen days. I just slept somewhere else for the first thirteen."
Something fundamental shifts in my chest. Not the lion — the man. The part of me that's been alone in this building for years, doing books and feeding cats and watching everyone else find someone and telling myself the spreadsheets were enough.
"Tomorrow," I say. "We'll figure it out tomorrow."
"That's still your answer for everything."
"Because it keeps being true. And because right now I'm exactly where I want to be and I'd like to stop talking about logistics."
"I don't stop talking about logistics. That's the other thing about me."
"I know. It's—"
"If you say endearing I'm going to smother you with this pillow."
"I was going to say annoying."
"That's worse."
"No, it's not." I kiss his hair. "Go to sleep, Nico."
"Knox definitely heard all of that."
"Knox heard everything. So did Silas."
"How do you feel about that?"
I think about it. Knox in his room with Toby, hearing his pride member with someone for the first time. Silas in his room, turning a page, absorbing the information without comment. The thin walls of a building that was never designed for privacy and has never pretended to offer it.
"They're going to know," I say. "And they're not going to say anything. And at breakfast Knox is going to drink his coffee and look at me once and that's going to be the whole conversation."
"One look."
"He's very efficient with his looks."
"I've noticed." He's quiet for a moment. Then: "Ezra."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you for knocking."
"Thank you for waiting."
"I would have waited longer."
"You wouldn't have had to."
He presses closer. I feel him smile against my chest.
The radiator clanks. The building settles. Somewhere downstairs, Mango is asleep on a windowsill or a barstool or wherever she's decided to claim tonight.
Nico falls asleep in minutes. I listen to his breathing even out, feel his heartbeat slow against my ribs. My lion is quiet. Just present. Content. The deep, permanent satisfaction of an animal that found what it was looking for and has no intention of letting go.
I close my eyes.
The spring pokes my kidney. I don't move.