17. Emilia #3
I sit up. Reach for him. Pull the henley over his head and spread my hands across him, feeling the hard landscape of muscle and scar tissue and the thick dark hair that narrows to a trail below his navel.
He's so warm. Impossibly warm, like there's a furnace banked behind his ribs.
My hands look absurdly small against his skin.
Pale fingers spanning barely a fraction of that broad, scarred expanse.
He catches my wrists. Lifts them. Presses his mouth to each one, right over the bruises that are finally, finally fading from purple to a sickly yellow-green.
He lingers there. Breathing against the thin skin where my pulse flutters.
Replacing every terrible thing those marks represent with the pressure of his lips.
Reclaiming the territory. His jaw flexes against my inner wrist and I feel the tension in him, the barely-leashed fury at the men who left those marks, and then he lets it go.
Exhales. Lets it drain out of him into the cold mountain air and replaces it with something tender and absolute.
He presses me back down. Covers me completely.
He settles over me like a living blanket, every hard part fitted against every soft curve, and for the first time in my life the sensation of being pinned beneath someone stronger than me doesn't trigger panic.
It triggers peace. A deep, bone-level stillness that spreads through me like warm water.
His forehead drops to mine. His hips settle between my thighs. I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer and he groans against my temple, a sound that vibrates through both of us.
He enters me slowly. So slowly it's almost unbearable. Inch by inch, his eyes locked on mine, waiting for any flicker of fear or pain or hesitation. There is none. I'm wide open. Every wall I've ever built demolished by the simple, devastating fact of this man's devotion.
I cup his face in both hands. He turns his head and presses his lips to my palm without breaking his rhythm.
Slow. Deep. A rolling, deliberate cadence that matches the creak of the bed frame and the distant howl of wind along the ridge.
He finds my hand and laces our fingers together, pressing them into the pillow beside my head, and I can feel every callus and scar against my knuckles.
His free hand slides beneath my lower back, angling me, and the shift sends lightning up my spine. I arch into him. He groans again, low and broken, and his pace doesn't change. He refuses to rush this. Refuses to let urgency or need override the deliberate worship of every single second.
"Look at me."
I do. His face is open. Stripped. Every defense dismantled. The gruff, cynical, dangerous man who grunts instead of talks and glares instead of smiles is gone, and what's left is something so raw and reverent it steals every atom of oxygen from my lungs.
His thumb traces my cheekbone. His hips press deeper. My vision blurs and my legs tighten around him and I whisper his name into the dark.
He answers with his whole body. A single, shuddering surge that breaks his careful rhythm and pushes us both over the edge in the same breath.
I feel him let go, feel the tremor rip through all that muscle and sinew, feel him bury his face in my neck and breathe my name into my skin like a prayer he's been holding in his heart for thirty-two years.
We stay tangled together for a long time afterward. He's on me. His face in my hair. My hand tracing lazy circles on the back of his neck. The stove crackles in the other room. The wind sings against the windows. Somewhere in the dark pines outside, an owl calls once and goes silent.
I fall asleep with his heartbeat against my back and his arm locked around me with the absolute, unshakeable knowledge that I will never run again.
Morning comes in gold and silence.
I wake alone in the bed, wrapped in a quilt that smells like him. Sunlight slices through the loft window and cuts a bright diagonal across the pine floor. The stove is already stoked. There's coffee, still steaming. A note beside it in blocky, mechanical handwriting.
In the garage.
I pour a cup. Pull on his flannel. Pad barefoot through the cabin and out the side door into the crisp, biting air.
The garage door is open. Morning light floods the concrete floor, illuminating the workbench, the hanging tools, the familiar chaos of engine parts and oil cans and shop rags.
Justice stands with his arms crossed over him, his dark hair pushed back from his face, staring at something with the focused intensity he usually reserves for security monitors and engine diagnostics.
My old sedan. The beat-up beater I bought with cash at a lot outside Reno a lifetime ago. The one with the blown radiator and the bald tires and the cracked windshield that carried me to the top of this mountain and died doing it.
He doesn't look up when I step into the garage. His eyes stay fixed on the car, his jaw working, his brow furrowed in that particular way that means the gears in his head are turning at full speed.
"Justice?"
He grunts. Still staring.
"What are you doing?"
His hand comes up. Rubs the back of his neck. He walks a slow circle around the sedan, examining it from every angle, his blue eyes assessing damage the way a surgeon catalogs wounds.
He stops in front of the hood. Pops it. Leans in. Goes silent for a very long time.