Chapter 25
The party was still going when Bustout took her hand and walked her down the hallway.
He could hear it through the walls—Ratchet's voice rising above the music, someone laughing too loud, the bass from the speaker thumping through the concrete like a second heartbeat.
His brothers celebrating. His club alive and loud and whole.
He let the sound of it follow them down the hall and through their door and into the room that was theirs.
He closed the door. The lock turned. The party noise dropped to a distant rumble, felt more than heard, and the room settled around them—the blue lot light, the narrow bed, the chair with their clothes on it, the small space they'd made into something that held.
Carla turned to face him. The red blouse. The gold cross. Her dark eyes bright from champagne and tears and the particular glow of a woman who'd just been claimed in front of everyone she loved and was still feeling it in her body.
"Hi, old lady," he said.
She grinned. The full grin, the one that took over her whole face. "Don't push it."
He crossed the room in two steps and took her face in his hands and kissed her.
Not the way he'd kissed her in front of the brotherhood—that had been for the room.
This was for him. Deep and slow and thorough, his mouth on hers, tasting the champagne and the cake frosting and underneath it the taste that was just Carla, warm and certain and his.
She softened against him. Her hands came to his chest, not pulling, not pushing—just resting, feeling his heart beat.
She let him kiss her. She let him lead. And that was new, because Carla Espinoza did not let anyone lead anything, and the fact that she was giving this to him—the pace, the control, the whole shape of the night—was a gift he intended to earn.
He pulled back and looked at her. His thumbs on her cheekbones, her face in his hands, and he took a moment to just see her.
Every line and freckle and the small scar above her left eyebrow that she'd never explained and the way her lower lip was slightly fuller than the upper and the way her eyes went dark when she wanted him.
They were dark now.
He found the top button of the red blouse and undid it. One button. Slow. He watched the fabric part over her collarbone, and he bent his head and kissed the skin it revealed—the hollow of her throat, the warm curve where her neck met her shoulder, the place where the gold cross lay on its chain.
Second button. More skin. The swell of her chest, the line between her breasts. He kissed there too, his beard scraping against the soft skin, and she drew a breath that lifted her chest into his mouth.
Third button. Fourth. He worked his way down, kissing every inch the blouse gave up, his hands steady and his mouth patient. Her stomach. The curve above her hip. The small dark mole below her navel that he'd found on their second night and had kissed every time since.
The blouse fell open and he pushed it off her shoulders and let it drop.
The bra was simple—plain cotton, the kind she bought in packs, the kind a woman who worked on her feet for twelve hours didn't bother making fancy.
He loved it. He loved every practical, no-nonsense thing about her body and the way she dressed it.
He unhooked the bra and slid it off and put his mouth on her.
She arched into him with a sound—that sound, the low one, the one he'd heard on the first night at the Silverline when she'd stretched against the counter, the one that had gone through him like a current and had been going through him ever since.
He dropped to his knees.
The second time he'd done this—gone to his knees for her. He unzipped her jeans and worked them down her legs, taking her shoes off one at a time the way he'd done before, setting each one aside with the care of a man unwrapping something he'd earned the right to hold.
He pressed his mouth to her hip. Her thigh. The inside of her knee. She swayed on her feet and her hands found his head, her fingers on his scalp, and he could feel her pulse in her fingertips.
He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her underwear and slid them down.
She stepped out of them and stood before him naked except for the gold cross, and he looked up at her from his knees—six-four and two-sixty, kneeling on the floor of their room, looking up at five-three of dark hair and brown skin and fire—and he felt the full weight of what he'd done in the great room land on him for the first time.
She was his. Not in the way he'd said it before—the territorial, possessive, she's-mine assertion that had defined them since the first week.
She was his the way a home is yours, the way a life is yours, the way the ground you stand on is yours because you chose it and built on it and fought for it and stayed.
He stood and lifted her. Both hands under her thighs, her weight nothing, and he carried her to the bed and laid her down and stood over her for a moment, looking.
"You're staring," she said.
"I'm savoring."
"Savor faster."
"No."
He stripped. Shirt, jeans, everything, dropping it all to the floor, and then he came down beside her on the bed and started.
He started at her mouth. Kissed her slow, tongue sliding against hers, one hand cradling her jaw. Then her throat, following the chain of the cross to the hollow at the base. Then her collarbone, tracing it from one shoulder to the other with his lips.
He worked down her body the way a man works through something he's been waiting for—no rush, no shortcuts, every inch given its due.
Her breasts, one and then the other, his mouth drawing circles around her nipples until she was arching off the mattress.
The curve of her ribs, the soft swell of her belly, the dip of her waist. He mapped her with his mouth the way she'd mapped corridors with her hands—by feel, by instinct, by knowing the territory so well that every touch landed exactly where it needed to.
She was making sounds. Not words—the low, continuous sound he'd been chasing since the first night, the one that meant she was past thinking and into feeling, the one that got louder when he found the right spot and quieter when he moved away.
He used it like a compass, navigating toward the places that made her breath catch.
He settled between her thighs. Kissed the inside of one, then the other, his beard rough against the soft skin, and she opened for him the way she opened for everything—completely, without hesitation, a woman who didn't do things halfway.
He put his mouth on her.
She cried out. Not the low sound—a sharp, bright sound, surprised, like she'd forgotten what this felt like even though he'd done it three nights ago. He smiled against her and went to work.
Slow. Devastatingly slow. He tasted her with the same unhurried patience he brought to everything, his tongue finding the rhythm that made her hips roll, his hands on her thighs keeping her open.
She tried to rush him—her hands on his head, her hips lifting—and he held her down gently and kept his own pace.
He slid two fingers inside her. Curled them. Found the spot he'd learned on their third night—the one that made her voice crack—and he worked it with his fingers while his mouth stayed where it was, and the combination reduced her to fragments.
"Max—" His real name, broken in half by a gasp. "Max, please, I can't—"
He didn't stop. He drew it out the way the book on his nightstand described poker—reading the tells, knowing when to hold and when to push, playing the hand all the way to the end.
He held her at the edge until she was shaking, until her hands were fisted in the sheets, until the please turned into something that wasn't a word anymore.
Then he gave it to her.
A slight change in pressure. A curl of his fingers. His mouth sealing over her.
She came apart.
It was the hardest he'd felt her come—her whole body bowing off the mattress, her thighs clamping around his head, a sound torn out of her that he felt in his bones.
He stayed with her through every pulse and tremor, his mouth gentle now, easing her down, his fingers still inside her, feeling the aftershocks.
When she went limp he climbed up her body and kissed her, and she tasted herself on his mouth and pulled him closer with both arms.
"Inside me," she said. "Now. Right now."
He reached for the nightstand. The foil. The familiar motion that was part of their rhythm now, as natural as pouring coffee. Then he was between her thighs, braced on his forearms, looking down at her.
She was flushed and trembling and beautiful and his.
He pressed into her. One long, slow stroke, all the way, and the sound she made was the sound of a woman who'd just come and was being filled again, oversensitive and overwhelmed and wanting more.
He gave her more.
Deep. Slow. Thorough. Each stroke deliberate, each one pressed home, his mouth on her throat where the cross lay warm between them. He took his time the way he'd taken his time with everything tonight—savoring, earning, making sure she felt every inch of what it meant to be his.
She wrapped herself around him. Arms around his shoulders, legs around his waist, her face pressed into his neck. She gave him her weight and her trust and the sounds she made that she never swallowed, and he took all of it and gave it back with his body.
The pleasure built slow and enormous. He could feel it in her—the tightening around him, the way her breathing changed, the nails digging into his shoulders. He could feel it in himself—the pressure gathering at the base of his spine, the control fraying one thread at a time.
He held on. Kept the pace. Kept the depth. Kept his mouth on her skin and his hands in her hair and his body moving in hers with the certainty of a man who had found the thing he was built for and was doing it right.
She broke again. Softer this time—a long, rolling wave that pulled his name out of her in a whisper. "Max." Just that. Just the name, said like a prayer, said like a fact, said like the only word that mattered.
He let go.
The release hit him like a tide—enormous, unstoppable, pulling through his whole body in long, shuddering waves.
He drove deep one last time and held, buried in her, his face in her neck, her name in his mouth even though he didn't say it out loud because he didn't need to.
She was everywhere. She was the whole room.
He stayed inside her.
Didn't pull out. Didn't roll away. Just stayed, his weight on her, his face in her neck, his body in hers, and she held him there with her arms and her legs and the absolute stillness of a woman who was exactly where she wanted to be.
The party rumbled on below them, distant and warm, someone's laughter carrying through the floor. The lot light made its blue patterns on the ceiling. The desert wind pressed at the window the way it always pressed, testing the glass, and the glass held.
"Yours," she said against his ear. Quiet. Certain. The word she'd given him before, except now it had the weight of the great room behind it, the weight of a claiming done in front of every person who mattered.
"Mine," he said. And the word was not possession—or not only possession. It was the word of a man who had spent his whole life not reaching for things and had finally reached, and found that the thing he'd reached for was reaching back.
He held her. She held him. And the room held them both—small and warm and theirs, in a building that was theirs, in a life they'd built together out of coffee and blood and the stubborn refusal to look the other way.
He stayed inside her for a long time. In no hurry at all.