Cera
TWENTY-THREE
The Stroke of Midnight: At the stroke of midnight, police on horseback sweep down Bourbon Street to announce Carnival is over and Ash Wednesday has begun, and the masks come off. One word in the dark, and the disguise she had worn for months fell away all at once.
The elevator opens directly into Wells's apartment.
Not into a hallway. Not into a lobby. Into his actual space.
I step out and the doors close behind me, and I stand there holding a bottle of wine I picked up on the way over, suddenly aware of how much silence twenty grand a month buys you.
The apartment with a massive ceiling stretches in front of me, all clean lines and pale wood and furniture that cost more than my car. The kitchen is open, with black stone counters and appliances that look like they belong in a magazine.
The living room has two low sofas facing the river, a coffee table that looks carved from a single piece of something, and nothing else. There's no clutter, no mess, not even a magazine.
This is not what I expected to be Wells Stone's home. He wears custom suits, drives a nice car when he isn't being driven by someone in a luxury blacked-out SUV, has a jet at his disposal, but there's a roughness to him that makes me forget what he's worth.
The entire side of the space is glass with an impressive view of the city beyond the river.
The Mississippi runs black and gold far below, the city laid out small beyond the glass. I can see it fits him in that he bought himself distance from the whole damn world.
I set the wine on the counter because I don't know where else to put it.
"You good?"
I turn. Wells leans against the doorframe to what must be his bedroom, hands in the pockets of his joggers, watching me with that calm, unreadable expression he wears when he's waiting to see what I'll do.
"Yeah. Just taking it in."
"Not much to take in."
I laugh, short and dry, because that is bullshit. There is everything to take in, the space and the view and the silence, and a front door that's an elevator when mine opens onto a hallway that smells like burnt popcorn and someone's weed.
"I've had three-bedroom houses that are smaller than your studio. You know most people have walls in bedrooms."
His mouth twitches. "It's technically a one-bedroom, not a studio. And there's a wall between it and the living space."
"Okay, you have one wall."
Wells pushes off the doorframe and crosses to me. He stops close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes, and the amusement is still there, faint but real.
"You feel out of place."
It is not a question.
"A little."
"Don't."
"Easy for you to say. You live here."
Wells reaches out and brushes his thumb beneath my chin, a touch so light it almost tickles, and it lands everywhere at once.
"You're the only person I've ever brought here."
That stops me cold. I search his face for the joke, the exaggeration, anything that would make the statement less enormous than it is. I find nothing.
"Really?"
"Really. I don't entertain much."
He takes my hand and leads me into the bedroom, and I follow because I don't know what else to do with everything he just said.
One glass wall, floor to ceiling, faces the same vantage as the living room, overlooking the water.
The bed is huge, low to the ground, with white sheets and dark wood.
The rest of the room is empty except for a single chair and a closet with sliding doors that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.
I walk to the window and press my palm against the glass. It's cool under my hand, and the city sits impossibly far below.
"You sleep with this view every night?"
"I don't sleep much."
I turn. Wells stands near the bed, watching me with an intensity that makes my chest tighten.
"I forgot you're a vampire."
"Too much to do. I'll sleep when I die."
He doesn't smile when he says it, and the room goes quiet enough to pull me off the window and across the floor to him. The banter drains out of me a step at a time, and by the time I reach him there's nothing light left in my chest, only how much I've wanted to be exactly here since I woke up.
"I've been thinking about this all day," I tell him.
"Then come here."
He kisses me, cradling my face between his hands. I wrap my hands around his back and pull him into me. I moan into him without meaning to.
He pulls me down to the bed, never breaking the kiss until we are both lying. Wells breaks the kiss and stretches out beside me, propped on one elbow, and for a moment he just looks at me. His hand comes up, slow, and he traces the line of my collarbone with his thumb.
"Will you let me taste you?"
The words land low in my stomach, a heat that spreads before I can think of what to say back. I don't usually let men go there with me. I've never been able to relax enough to enjoy it.
I nod.
He lifts my shirt over my head and kisses the rise of my chest above my breasts. His breath is warm, and his mouth is soft, and the goosebumps rise everywhere he kisses, slower than he's ever taken me before.
When he comes back up to my face, his tongue slides against mine, and the hum of it drops low between my legs.
His cock presses hard against my thigh, but he doesn't move to close the distance. He stays here, in the kiss, until I'm the one shifting closer.
His mouth moves to the hinge below my ear, then my throat, and I tilt my head back to give him room. He lingers there, the scrape of his teeth followed by the heat of his tongue, and my breathing goes shallow.
His hand slides down, spreading across my ribs. The air hits my skin, and then his mouth is on my sternum, the space between my breasts, and my hands close hard in the sheet.
He doesn't rush. Each kiss, each drag of his lips across my skin, is masterful. My stomach tightens as his mouth moves lower, and when he presses his lips just below my belly button, my hips lift.
His hands slide to my waist, fingers hooking under the band of my leggings, and he pulls them down so slowly I think I might scream.
Then he settles between my thighs, and I forget the river, the city, the apartment, everything except the heat of his breath against me. I don't even think about the discomfort that usually keeps me locked up here, the part of me that never lets anyone get this close.
His scruff rubs the inside of my thighs, a sensation that has never been there, in that sacred spot, and it intensifies everything.
His tongue moves slowly, and the first stroke pulls a sound from my throat I've never heard from myself. He doesn't react except to stay there, tasting me with a thoroughness that strips me bare.
I reach for his hair, fingers threading through it, and he hums against me in approval. I press him into me. I want more, harder. I'm greedy for all of it.
He doesn't speed up or chase the finish, working me with the same patience he brought to the kiss, building me up in layers I can't control. My thighs shake against his shoulders, and when I try to press closer, he holds me steady, keeping the rhythm exactly where he wants it.
Coming apart under his mouth, I gasp, my hips snapping up off the bed as it tears loose in me. But he doesn't stop. He stays with me through it, tongue gentling but not retreating, and the second one hits before I've come down from the first.
I cry out, the sound raw, and my whole body trembles under him. My whole body trembles under his perfect mouth.
Only then does he pull back, pressing one last kiss to my inner thigh before he moves up my body.
I'm shaking, wrung out, and I can't seem to catch my breath.
Wells pulls me against him, his hand stroking through my hair, and I close my eyes against the sudden sting of tears.
This wasn't performance. This wasn't me giving something to get something back.
Reaching for him, I can't hold still under everything that just came loose in me. My hand finds his belt, fingers working the buckle without thinking, and my body shifts closer because this I know. Because giving is the part I know, the part I understand, the part where I keep him.
Wells catches my wrist.
"Not tonight."
I freeze.
"I want to give you what you gave me. I want you to feel me like I just did you."
"I do feel you. This is about you and you only."
He says it without elaboration, without apology, and the simplicity of it hits harder than anything else he could have said.
No one has ever only wanted to give to me.
Wells pulls me closer, tucking me against his chest, and I let him because my body won't hold itself upright anymore. He keeps me there, and I press my face into his shoulder and breathe.
The room quiets. Our breathing slows. The Mississippi keeps moving far below the glass, dark and constant, and everything I can't say settles in between my ribs.
Wells's fingers trace absent patterns across my shoulder blade, and I close my eyes. Held like this, safer than I have words for, the thing I've been clamping down all day finally finds room to come up.
"Oh, my God," I say, sitting up. "I almost forgot to tell you that my friend, Locke, was in a wreck this afternoon."
Wells goes still. I lie back down, planting my face on his chest, my fingers tracing delicate circles on his skin.
"He's okay," I add quickly, because I need to say that part out loud too. "He’s banged up but lucky. His car's totaled, but he walked away."
"What happened?"
"Semi crossed lanes on the interstate. Chain reaction. Locke's car was one of the last in the pileup that got hit. The first car…"
I don't finish.
Wells's hand tightens on my shoulder.
"The driver of the first car?"
"She didn't make it."
My voice cracks, just enough, and I hate it.
"Locke called me from the ambulance. He sounded fine, made jokes like he does."
Wells shifts, pulling me tighter against him, and his breath stirs my hair.
"He's really okay?"
"Yeah. Bruised ribs and airbag burns. They discharged him after a few hours. He was out by the time dinner was over."