Chapter 8 #2
He laid her back against the pillows and took his time proving he'd meant every word about being thorough — a slow, unhurried path down her body that left her arching and breathless, his hands mapping every place that made her gasp and returning to them again, deliberate, patient, like he intended to memorize the exact shape of her before the night was through.
Dawn light slid pale gold across the sheets, across his shoulders, across the place where her fingers dug into his hair, and Simone lost track, somewhere in the middle of it, of every careful wall she'd ever built, of every reason she'd once had for keeping people at arm's length.
"Elliot." His name broke on her lips, half plea.
"Right here," he murmured, unhurried even now, even with her trembling underneath him. "Not going anywhere."
"Then stop being so patient and—"
"Bossy," he said again, laughing low against her skin, but he didn't make her wait much longer, settling over her at last, skin against skin, gathering her close with a kind of reverence that made the whole moment feel less like desire and more like a vow neither of them had said out loud yet.
He learned the sound she made when he took his time, the exact spot at her hip that made her breath catch, the way she gripped his shoulders like she was afraid this might still turn out to be a trick her life was playing on her.
He made sure, with every unhurried, deliberate thing he did, that she stopped being afraid of that somewhere along the way, that every touch reminded her this was real, chosen, hers to keep.
When they finally moved together it was slow and certain, unhurried in the exact way he did everything, his forehead dropping to hers, her name rough and constant in his mouth, the two of them tangled in sheets gone warm with morning, neither one willing to let the moment go faster than it needed to.
She held onto him through all of it — his back, his shoulders, the steady rhythm they found together — until neither of them had breath left for words at all, only her name and his, traded back and forth in the grey dawn light until the whole slow, patient spring finally, completely resolved itself in his arms.
The dawn light crept slowly across the room as the night gave way to morning, gold and soft the way it always seemed to be around them, spring insisting on itself in every corner of Clover Ridge, and Simone found herself thinking, somewhere in the unhurried, thorough aftermath of it all, tangled and spent and utterly undone in his arms, that she'd never once in her life felt this safe being this unguarded with another person.
"Elliot," she said, some time later, wrecked and laughing and glowing in the grey dawn light, "you play chess exactly like you do everything else."
"Patiently?"
"Insufferably well."
He grinned against her collarbone, entirely delighted with himself, and pulled her closer as the sun came up outside, the two of them tangled together in sheets gone warm, spring light slowly filling the room in soft gold that reminded him, inevitably, of the grove, of every evening they'd spent there not touching, of how far they'd both come since a stranger had refused to pull up a tree on her first restless night in Clover Ridge.
"Regrets?" he asked, quiet, running a hand along her spine.
"About which part? The case, the club, or the fact that I'm currently in bed with a man who quotes chess strategy during pillow talk?"
"Any of it. All of it."
Simone considered the question seriously, tilting her head to look at him. "None. Not one single regret. Ask me again in ten years."
"I intend to."
Afterward, tangled in his sheets with her head on his chest, Simone said, quiet, "I spent my whole career thinking honesty meant being alone."
"And now?"
"Now I've got a whole club of honest outlaws and one patient chess player who waited me out." She tilted her head up to look at him. "Turns out integrity's a lot warmer with company."
"That," Elliot said, "is the longest game I ever played, and the best win I ever got."
"Checkmate."
"You keep saying that." He kissed her forehead. "I really don't think you understand how chess works."
"I understand it well enough. I won, didn't I?"
"That's not remotely how the rules work, Detective."
"I make my own rules. Occupational hazard."
She hit him with a pillow. He deserved it, entirely, and he had never in his life been happier to take a hit, laughing until the pillow fight devolved into something considerably softer, both of them tangled together in the growing light.
Later, once the morning had properly arrived and neither of them showed any particular urgency to leave the bed, Simone propped herself up on one elbow, studying him with the kind of focused attention she usually reserved for evidence.
"Can I tell you something I didn't mention last night?"
"Always."
"The acting captain offered me Voss's old office. Same corner, same window, all of it."
Elliot went still, watching her carefully. "Are you taking it?"
"I don't know yet. Feels strange, sitting in the office of a man I helped destroy.
" She traced a slow pattern on his chest, thinking.
"Feels stranger, though, turning down a promotion I earned honestly.
I spent twelve years watching dishonest people get exactly that kind of office.
Maybe it's time an honest one sat in it instead. "
"For what it's worth, I think you'd be good at it. Better than good."
"You're biased."
"Extremely. Doesn't make me wrong."
She laughed, soft, and settled back against him, and Elliot found himself, not for the first time that spring, marveling at how quickly a woman who'd arrived in town certain she was walking into corruption had ended up walking out the other side with an entire club, and one particular chess-obsessed biker, firmly in her corner.
"Whatever you decide," he said, "I'll be at the grove most evenings. You know where to find me if you want to talk it through."
"I always know where to find you. That's kind of the whole problem, Rourke."
"I prefer to think of it as the whole solution."
They lay there a while longer, the room filling with proper morning light now, spring warm and certain outside the window, over Clover Ridge, over a grove three miles away that would always, for the rest of both their lives, mean exactly this — the long game, finally, deservedly won.
Simone's phone buzzed on the nightstand, and she groaned, reaching for it without much enthusiasm, until she actually read the screen.
"It's Dana," she said. "My sister. She wants a full report."
"Tell her the detective says you're a menace."
"I'm not telling my sister that. She'll frame it."
"Tell her the truth, then. Isn't that your whole thing?"
Simone considered it, then typed back a quick message and set the phone face down, grinning.
"What'd you say?"
"I said I finally pulled up the tree."
Elliot laughed, pulling her back down against him, unhurried and warm in the growing light, and for a long while neither of them reached for a phone or a case file or anything at all except each other, content in the particular, hard-earned stillness of two people who'd spent a whole long spring waiting for exactly this, and found it, finally, worth every single patient day.