Chapter Twenty-Two #3
He's right there. Close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his irises. Close enough that when he starts to move, I can watch his jaw clench and his eyes go half-lidded and his lips part on every thrust.
He fucks me slow at first, every stroke pins me to the wall and makes my toes curl inside my sandals. His hands grip my thighs hard enough that I'll have bruises tomorrow and I want them. I want proof that this happened. That he said what he said and meant it.
"Faster," I whisper.
He obeys.
His hips snap harder and the rhythm shifts into something urgent, something neither of us is steering anymore.
My nails dig into his shoulders through his shirt.
The stone scrapes my back with every thrust and the friction is just on the right side of painful.
His mouth finds my neck—teeth, tongue, the hot press of his breath against my skin—and I clench around him so hard he groans my name.
"I'm close," I gasp, and I don't even recognize my own voice.
His hand pushes between us. His thumb finds my clit and presses in tight circles while he keeps driving into me, and the combination of his hand and his body and the words he said—I want that man to be me—sends me over the edge so fast I can't breathe.
The orgasm tears through me. My whole body locks, my back arching off the wall, my legs clamping around him so tight he couldn't pull away if he wanted to.
I cry out and it echoes off the stone walls and I don't care.
I don't care about anything except the waves rolling through me and the feeling of him still moving inside me, chasing his own release.
He comes three strokes later. His hips slam into me and hold. I feel him pulse inside me, hot and deep, his face buried against my neck, his hands gripping my thighs so hard they're shaking. The sound he makes is quiet but it cracks something open in my chest because it sounds like surrender.
We stay there.
Pressed against the wall. Tangled together. His weight pinning me to the stone and my arms wrapped around his neck and neither of us willing to be the first one to let go.
His breathing slows against my shoulder.
I run my fingers through the back of his hair and feel him shiver.
Slowly, he lifts his head. Looks at me. His eyes are soft in a way I've never seen on this man before—not the controlled softness he sometimes allows, but the real thing. Unguarded. Almost bewildered, like he didn't know he was capable of what just happened.
He lowers me gently. My legs are trembling when my feet touch the cobblestones and he keeps one arm around my waist until I'm steady.
His thumb traces under my eye, wiping away what's left of the tears.
"I meant it," he says. "What I said."
"I know."
"I don't say things I don't mean."
"I know that too."
He leans his forehead against mine. We stand like that for a long moment—his hands on my waist, mine on his chest, the evening light fading gold around us.
Then he takes my hand.
And we walk out of the alley and back through the village, fingers laced, my sundress wrinkled and my hair a disaster and his shirt untucked with a powdered sugar stain still on the collar. We look like exactly what we are—two people who just wrecked each other in the best possible way.
Neither of us speaks.
We don't need to.
The drive back is different than the drive here.
On the way to Villefranche, I sat in my seat and watched France pass by and tried to keep my feelings in a box. Now I'm curled sideways with my hand on his thigh and my head tipped against the headrest, watching his profile while he drives.
He glances at me. "Stop staring."
"No."
The corner of his mouth twitches. He takes one hand off the wheel and laces his fingers through mine on his thigh.
The coastline blurs past in the early dark. His thumb traces circles on the back of my hand and I close my eyes and let myself feel what I've been fighting since we said "I do".
Happy. I'm just... happy, and hopeful.
It’s not the conditional kind of happy where I'm already bracing for what comes next. Or the kind that comes with a contract and an expiration date. But the real kind. The kind that fills your whole chest and makes your eyes sting and makes you want to laugh for no reason.
The villa is quiet when we get home.
He leads me down the hall without turning on any lights. Past the bedroom and straight into the bathroom where he turns on the shower and lets the steam fill the room before he touches me.
Then he undresses me. My sundress is already wrinkled and half-ruined from the alley but he unzips it like it's still something worth being careful with. It falls to the tile. He pulls his own shirt over his head, steps out of his trousers, and takes my hand.
We step into the shower together.
The hot water hits my shoulders and I exhale, letting the whole day go with it, but keeping all the best parts because today has been the best day I’ve had in the last three years.
Everett reaches for the soap. He washes me himself—his hands moving over my shoulders, down my arms, across my stomach. His thumbs work the knots out of my shoulders. His palm slides down my spine. He tips my head back to rinse my hair and I close my eyes and let him.
I return the favor. Running my soapy hands across his chest, his shoulders, the hard planes of his stomach.
"Turn around," he says.
I do.
His chest presses against my back. One arm wraps across my stomach. His mouth finds the curve of my neck and then his other hand slides down slowly between my thighs.
"Again, so soon?" I tease.
"I’ve been waiting a long time to get to touch you whenever I want. I have no intentions of stopping anytime soon."
"How long have you been waiting?" I ask.
"Since the day I walked into the Hawkeyes stadium and you were sitting at your desk."
I inhale sharply when his fingers find my center.
"I've got you," he murmurs against my ear, and his fingers find exactly where I need them.
He works me slowly. Circles and pressure and the occasional curl of his fingers inside me while the hot water runs over both of us and the steam makes everything soft and hazy. I lean back against his chest, my hand gripping his forearm, my hips rocking into his hand.
"That's it," he says quietly, and the low rumble of his voice against my back is almost enough to push me over by itself.
When I come, it's different than the alley.
Not the desperate, crashing kind. The slow-building kind—the kind that starts in my toes and rolls up through me until my legs buckle and I'm gripping his arm and gasping and he holds me up with one arm around my waist like he's done this a thousand times. Like he'd do it a thousand more.
He kisses my shoulder. Turns off the water and then wraps me in a towel first, then pulls a towel around his hips and secures it.
In the bedroom, he pulls one of his clean T-shirts over my head. It falls to my mid-thigh and smells like his cologne and I want to live in this shirt for the rest of my natural life.
He pulls on a pair of boxers and then pulls me into bed. We settle in facing each other, his arm heavy across my waist, my legs tangled with his.
The quiet is comfortable. The kind of quiet that doesn't need filling.
Then he says, "I was thinking."
"When did you find the time? Between the times your hands were between my thighs?"
A ghost of a smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth and it’s so sexy that I could go again right now if he wanted me.
"When we get back home. We could move to the estate. If you wanted."
I pull back a little further to get a better look at his face to see if he’s grimacing at his own offer. Everett? At the Estate full time?
"Seriously?"
"The space is better. You'd have room for a studio. A real one, not a corner of the penthouse. You seemed more at ease there than you do in the penthouse. And though it baffles me, you seem to like my family and they’re all spending more and more time there."
"What about the penthouse?"
"I have an office at the estate. I don't have to go into Seattle every day, especially with Jeremy there.
He can handle the things that need to be done in person for me.
And I can go into the office during the week if I need to.
Most of my dealings are with video conferencing anyway.
" He says it like he's presenting a business case, but his eyes are saying something else. "If you'd be happier there."
"You'd do that?"
"I’m not the easiest man to be with. I know that, so if this would make you happy, I can make it happen.
" He shifts, and for a second I see it—the discomfort of a man who has never had to try at this before.
Who has operated his entire life on logic and control and is now standing in foreign territory with no spreadsheet to guide him.
"I want to try, Aria. This doesn't come naturally to me.
I don't know what the hell I'm doing when it comes to you.
But I know that seeing you at the rehearsal dinner and our wedding night.
.. you seemed more at ease. And I'd rather figure the rest out from there. "
My chest fills with something warm and aching. He’s doing yet another thing just for me, because he sees the things even I do see in myself. I hadn’t realized I was more at ease there but he’s right. The estate is where I am happier.
This is how Everett says what he can't say yet. Not with words but with plans. With moving his entire life to a different zip code because he noticed where I'm happiest.
"Will you stop sleeping in the office and come to bed every night?"
He pulls me closer to him, his eyes softening on me. "If you’re in our bed, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be."
Our bed. He said it like it’s already our life.
I nod. "I'd like that," I say. "The estate."
"Yeah?" He asks, a lift in his eyebrows as if hopeful.
"Yeah."
He exhales. His arm tightens around me and he pulls me even closer, tucking my head under his chin like I fit there. Like I was always supposed to fit there.
I press my face into his chest.
His heartbeat is steady under my ear.
We don't talk about the contract. We don't talk about twelve months or what happens after. For the first time since I signed my name on that dotted line, the future doesn't feel like a countdown.
It feels like a door left open.
Fall in love in France, my mother always said.
She was right.