Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
STEVIE
I’m pathologically bad at waiting.
Patience isn’t a virtue, it’s a delay tactic for cowards. I leap. I crash. I kiss people in stairwells and bake cookies for men who terrify me.
I follow men home like a stray cat with boundary issues. Make decisions with my hormones and let my brain file an appeal later.
But here, with Saul beside me, warm and solid and real, I don’t want to rush. I want to trap this moment in amber. Keep it like a weird emotional snow globe.
“You’re thinking loud,” he says quietly.
“I’m aware. It’s a design flaw. My brain’s the noisy upstairs neighbor of my life.”
“It’s not a flaw.” His hand finds mine under the covers. Threads our fingers together. “What are you thinking about?”
“You, mostly. Also tomorrow. Also the part where you leave and I’m here trying not to bake walnut cookies with my feelings.
” I turn my head to look at him. In the dim light from the window, I can just make out the planes of his face.
The scruff on his jaw. Those blue eyes that have been seeing me since the beginning.
“I’m thinking about how I don’t want tonight to end. ”
“It doesn’t have to end yet.”
“It’s already past midnight.”
“Then we still have hours.”
He says it like we can bribe the sunrise with cinnamon rolls and good intentions.
I shift closer to him. Our bodies are already touching, we’ve been sleeping tangled together for two nights now, but I want more. Want to close every gap, eliminate every space between us.
“Saul.”
“Yeah?”
“I want,” I stop. Start again. “I want you. Tonight. Before you go.”
He’s quiet for a moment. His thumb traces circles on the back of my hand. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve been sure for longer than I should say out loud.”
“Since when?”
“Since you stood in a grocery store buying four kinds of chocolate chips because you didn’t want me to be disappointed.
” I laugh softly. “Since you drove by my apartment at 2 AM to check if my light was on. Since you looked at me after my hair was gone and said, ‘I know’ like you actually understood.”
“I did understand.”
“I know. That’s why I’m sure.”
He releases my hand. Shifts onto his side, facing me fully. His palm comes up to cup my face, gentle.
“Stevie.” My name in his mouth. My real name, the one I keep losing to paperwork and protocols. “I need you to know something.”
“What?”
“This isn’t casual for me. This isn’t a last night thing, or a goodbye thing, or a.” He pauses, searching for words. “I don’t do this. I’ve never done this. With a witness, with anyone since my divorce. I’ve spent years keeping everything professional because it was easier than feeling something.”
“And now?”
“Now I feel everything.” His thumb traces my cheekbone. “And it terrifies me. But I’d rather be terrified with you than safe without you.”
My throat tightens.
“That might be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“I’m not good at romantic. I’m better at practical. Logistics.” Strategic coffee. Chocolate chip diplomacy.”
“You’re secretly a sap,” I whisper. “And it’s kind of hot.”
Then I kiss him. Because if I don’t, I’ll combust and that’s harder to explain on a government form.
It starts slower than I expected, slower than I’m used to. Saul’s mouth is patient like we have all the time in the world, like there’s no countdown ticking in the back of both our minds. Every press of his lips is a promise. Every breath he steals is returned sweeter.
His hands slide into my hair. Tilt my head. Deepen the kiss by degrees.
I make a sound that is definitely not cute and absolutely not FDA-approved.
He smiles against my mouth, enjoying me coming undone. “Patience,” he says.
“Absolutely not,” I whisper back. “I was born three months early and haven’t slowed down since.”
He laughs, that quiet, rumbly thing I keep trying to steal from him, and kisses me harder. “I know. I’ve read your file.”
“There’s a file?”
“Oh yeah. Behavioral flags, documented chaos, suspicious baking habits.” He kisses my jaw, my neck, the spot behind my ear that short-circuits my nervous system.
“If you’ve read my file, you should know this is exactly how mistakes happen.”
“I’m counting on it.”
I’m laughing and gasping at the same time, which shouldn’t be possible but apparently is when Saul Bennett is kissing his way down your throat.
“You’re making jokes,” I gasp, already halfway to full meltdown. “During this.”
“You started it.” He drags his mouth along my collarbone and I lose track of my entire ancestry.
“I always start it. It’s a defense mechanism.”
He lifts his head. Looks at me. Those blue eyes, soft and serious in the darkness. “You don’t have to defend yourself with me,” he says quietly. “You can just be here. Just be you.”
And fuck. There goes my chest. Cracked wide open like an egg in a frying pan I did not preheat emotionally.
“I don’t know if I know how to do that.”
“Then we figure it out together. Trial by hot marshal.”
I kiss him back before I can ruin it with another joke. For once, I shut up. And when I stop talking, I start feeling.
We undress each other slowly.
I push his shirt up and over his head, and fuck, I have to pause.
He’s not a gym thirst trap or a romance cover model. He’s better. He’s real. Built like protection. Like someone who could take a hit and bake muffins after.
I want to press my entire body to his and see if it calibrates my nervous system.
A thin scar slices across his ribs and I reach for it before I think, tracing it with the backs of my fingers.
“Bar fight,” he says before I can ask. “Twenty years ago. I was young and stupid.”
“Jesus. You’re a walking origin story.”
“I was twenty, cocky, and allergic to shutting up.”
“Well good news, I find that hot.”
“I was a lot of things before I was a marshal.” He tugs at the hem of my shirt. “Your turn.”
I raise my arms. The shirt comes off. Cool air hits my skin, chased immediately by the warmth of his palms and the searing realization that this is happening.
He takes his time. His hands find my waist first, then drift like he’s memorizing borders he doesn’t want to violate, but will absolutely conquer if I let him.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
“I’m currently ninety percent nerves and yesterday’s dry shampoo.”
He dips his head. “You’re beautiful,” he repeats.
His palms curve over my hips, thumbs brushing the soft dip just above my thighs. “This is mine tonight.”
My whole body blue-screens. Brain error. Horny.exe has stopped responding.
He says it so calm. So sure. Like he’s not rewiring my entire sense of self with a thumb press.
No one’s ever looked at me the way Saul looks at me. Like I’m worth studying. Worth taking time with. Worth the patience he seems to have in infinite supply.
“Come here,” I whisper.
He does. He lowers me onto the bed like I’m breakable.
I’m not. But suddenly I want to be. Just a little. In his hands, in this moment, I want to be something worth gentleness.
Which is fucking terrifying. And wildly hot.
His body covers mine. Warm. Heavy. Grounding.
“Okay?” he asks.
“Very okay.”
“Tell me if anything’s not okay.”
“Saul. Shut up and kiss me.”
“I will. After I make sure you’re okay.”
“God, it’s like foreplay and a therapy session.”
“Welcome to the full-service package.”
I drag him down and kiss him, trying to scramble his good judgment.
“It’s annoyingly endearing. Now please. I’ve been waiting for this for months.”
“Months?”
“Don’t make me say how many.”
He laughs. The sound rumbles through his chest into mine.
And then he stops talking. Not because there’s nothing left to say. Because words can’t touch this. Because his body’s already doing what language never could, showing me.
When he pushes in, it’s like I’ve been split open by want. Every inch he gives is too much and not enough, my body stretching tight around the thickness of him like it’s never done this before, even though I have, just never like this.
I choke on a sound that’s somewhere between a gasp and a moan and a don’t-you-dare-stop.
He stops. Still buried just barely inside. Watching me like he’s afraid he’ll spook me.
“You okay?” he grits, voice thick, muscles locked like he’s holding himself back from destroying me.
“I’m better than okay,” I pant. “Fuck me, Saul. I want all of you. Now.”
He sinks deeper, inch by devastating inch, until I’m gasping.
It’s heat and pressure and a stretch that makes me whimper into his neck, nails dragging across his back.
I wrap around him, thighs pulling him deeper, spine arching to meet every inch he gives.
My body clenches hard enough to make him curse into my skin.
“Fuck, Stevie.”
I whimper. Fuck being quiet. Fuck holding it in. I’m not built for moderation and he’s proving it with every thrust.
“There,” I choke. “Right there, Saul, don’t stop.”
“I’ve got you,” he says again, this time rougher. His hands find my hips, grip tight enough to hold me open. “I’ve got you, baby, I’m not letting go.”
He moves slow and deep and focused, every roll of his hips is part of some private ritual, one only he knows the steps to. Carving his name into me one thrust at a time. Leaving something I’ll still feel days from now when I close my legs and think of this exact moment with a goddamn pulse.
His thumb finds my clit. Circles it with the same maddening patience he’s using everywhere else.
I jerk against him.
“There you go,” he says. “That’s it.”
Every thrust pushes me higher. Every circle of his thumb winds me tighter.
He dips his mouth to my neck. Breathes me in like I’m home.
“Stevie,” he whispers, and it’s not a name anymore. It’s a confession.
I dig my heels into the mattress. Grind up against him shamelessly. He meets every movement with deeper precision, dragging friction from every place I didn’t know I could ache.
“I’m close,” I pant.
“I know.” He shifts his angle, hips slanting just enough, and fuck.
I cry out, shameless and shaking. My fingers clutch at his shoulders.