31. Alexander #2
“And I can’t keep pretending I don’t have feelings because I’m afraid of becoming the man who hurt you.”
“So what do we do?”
“I don’t know. But maybe we start by being honest. Both of us. Even when it’s uncomfortable.”
“Okay.” Her voice was steadier now. “Can I see you? Today? I want to apologize properly, in person, and I want to actually show up this time.”
“I’d like that.”
“Where are you?”
“My hotel. Same one as before.”
“I’ll be there in an hour.” She hesitated, and through the line I could feel her working up to whatever came next. “And Alex?”
“Yeah?” I heard the hope in my own voice and, for once, didn’t try to hide it.
“I love you. Even when I’m terrible at showing it.”
“I love you too. Even when I’m terrible at asking for what I need.”
She arrived in forty-five minutes.
I opened the door to find her standing in the hallway, no makeup, hair pulled back, wearing clothes that suggested she’d come straight from her workshop without stopping to change. She looked exhausted and worried and absolutely beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” she said, before I could speak. “I’m sorry I forgot. I’m sorry I minimized your feelings. I’m sorry I’ve been treating your guilt like it means you’re not allowed to be hurt by anything I do.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to be that person. The one who keeps punishing you for the past while claiming we’ve moved forward.
” She stepped into the room, close enough that I could smell the metal and polish of her workshop on her clothes.
“If we’re really doing this, if we’re really trying to build a new life, I can’t keep holding your mistakes over your head every time I feel vulnerable. ”
“And I can’t keep swallowing my feelings because I’m afraid of becoming the man you divorced.”
“Then let’s stop.” She took my hands. “Both of us. Right now. Let’s stop protecting ourselves from each other and actually try being honest.”
“Even when it’s hard?”
“Especially when it’s hard.” She squeezed my fingers. “I hurt you last night. Not because I wanted to, and not to teach you a lesson. I got absorbed in my work and forgot that you matter. That’s not who I want to be.”
“I know.”
“And when you told me it hurt, I made it about your past instead of listening to what you were actually saying. That’s not fair to either of us.”
“No. It’s not.”
She moved closer, her hands sliding up my arms to rest on my shoulders. “I want to make it up to you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” She met my eyes. “I want to show you that I see you. That your feelings matter. That I’m not going to spend the rest of our relationship treating you like you’re on probation for crimes you’ve already served time for.”
“How?”
She answered by kissing me.
It was different from the desperate kisses we’d shared before. Slower. More deliberate. Like she was trying to communicate through touch what she had no words for.
I let her lead. Let her set the pace as she guided me toward the bed, her hands working the buttons of my shirt with careful attention. When she pushed me down onto the mattress and climbed over me, I looked up at her and saw a certainty in her face I hadn’t seen before.
Intention. Purpose. The determination to prove through action what she’d promised with words.
“Tell me what you need,” she said.
“You. Just you.”
“That’s not specific enough.” She leaned down, her lips brushing my ear. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
“I want you to stay. I want you to be here, completely here, with me. I want to feel like I matter to you.”
“You do matter.” She kissed my neck, slow and lingering. “You matter more than I’ve been showing you.”
She undressed me with the same careful attention she’d shown before, taking her time, letting her hands learn my body like she was rediscovering territory she’d thought she knew.
When she pulled off her own clothes and pressed her bare skin against mine, I had to close my eyes against the intensity of it.
“Look at me,” she said.
I opened my eyes.
“I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to forget about you or minimize what you feel or treat you like you have to earn the right to want things from me.”
“Sophia…”
“Let me show you.”
She kissed down my chest, taking her time with each inch of skin, working lower, and I forced myself to stay present instead of drowning in it.
To watch her face as she settled between my thighs.
To see the wicked little focus in her eyes when she wrapped her hand around my cock, the way she was paying attention to every response, learning what I needed and giving it without being asked.
When she licked up the length of me and took me into her mouth, hollowing her cheeks around my cock, my hands fisted in the sheets hard enough to ache.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” she said.
“Don’t stop.”
She didn’t. She worked me with her mouth and her fist, tongue flat against the underside, taking me deep until I felt the back of her throat and then pulling off with an obscene, wet sound to lick the head, bringing me to the brink and backing off, again and again, until I was shaking with the effort of not fucking up into her mouth.
“Sophia - please-” My voice cracked. “I’m going to come if you keep-”
“Not yet you’re not.” She pulled off me with a smug little smile and climbed up my body, straddling my hips, notching me against her soaked cunt. “Not until you’re inside me.”
She sank down onto my cock in one slow, filthy grind and we both went still. She was drenched, gripping me like a fist, the heat and the tightness of being buried in her again almost too much. She braced her hands on my chest and started to move, slow and deliberate, her eyes never leaving mine.
“God, you fill me up,” she panted, grinding down. “You always have. I forgot to tell you that enough.”
“Tell me now.”
“You feel like coming home. Like the place I’ve been trying to get back to for three years.
” She rolled her hips, drawing a groan from both of us.
“I love the way you look at me. I love the sounds you make when I touch you. I love that you’re letting me do this, letting me take care of you for once. ”
I reached up and cupped her face, pulling her down to kiss me. She changed the angle, deeper now, and I felt her gasp against my mouth.
“There,” she breathed. “Right there.”
I gripped her hips and helped her ride me, thumb finding her clit and rubbing tight circles while she worked herself on my cock. She was filthy and gorgeous like this, undone and unguarded, riding me like she needed it to breathe.
“I’m close,” she panted. “God, you’re so deep, I’m going to-”
“Then let go. I’ve got you.”
She came with a broken cry, her cunt clenching around my cock in tight, rippling pulses, grinding down on me like she was trying to wring the orgasm out of both of us at once.
The sight of her falling apart on top of me, and the vice-grip of her around me, dragged me over with her.
I slammed up into her one last time and came so hard my vision whited out, holding her hips down against mine while I emptied into her, both of us shaking through the aftershocks.
She collapsed against my chest, breathing hard.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into my skin.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”
“I believe you. That’s the new part.”
“And I want you to tell me when I do. Even if it’s small. Even if it doesn’t compare to the things we’ve survived. I want to know when something I do makes you feel less than loved.”
I wrapped my arms around her, holding her against me. “I will. I promise.”
We lay tangled together as the light changed, as afternoon wore into evening and neither of us moved to separate. For the first time since we’d started this again, I didn’t feel like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I let myself believe we might actually make it.
“Alex?” she said eventually.
“Hmm?”
“Can we stay like this for a while? I’m not ready to go back to reality yet.”
“We can stay as long as you want.”
“Good.” She pressed her lips to my shoulder. “Because I think I finally understand what I was doing wrong. And I don’t want to forget how this feels.”
“How does it feel?”
She lifted her head to look at me, her eyes soft.
“Like we might be okay,” she said. “For the first time since we started over, I actually believe we might be okay.”
I pulled her closer and let myself believe it too.