8. Marie
MARIE
I sink beneath the warm water of the bath he’s run for me, the steam curling its ghostly fingers into the air. Behind me, he wraps his arms around me, pulling me against him, and I close my eyes and lean my head back onto his chest.
“This tub wasn’t exactly built for two,” he murmurs, as he strokes the hair away from my shoulder, dropping a kiss on my bare skin.
“I don’t care,” I reply, slipping my hands over his beneath the water. The tub is overfull, some of it tumbling out onto the tile below, but it’s hard to give a damn when it feels this good to be close to him.
It has been a day and a night since Ryan came to the house, but I have been struggling to sleep.
When Gavin woke up in bed to see me tossing and turning, he told me that a bath always helped him rest, and suggested he run one for me.
I agreed, on the condition we would share it, and now, with the strength of his naked body beside me, I'm already starting to feel better.
“How are you doing?” he asks me softly, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles. I sigh.
“Better,” I admit. It has been a hell of a ride, the emotions of the last forty-eight hours.
Confronting Ryan like that, watching Gavin dispose of him, waiting with baited breath to see if he would return and realizing that he was not going to.
The slow realization that this is really it.
That I'm, finally, really free of him. It’s hard to even imagine what my life will look like beyond him, but it already feels expansive, open in ways I couldn’t have pictured before.
“The snow’s nearly melted,” he remarks. “So you can get to your sister soon, if you want.”
“Mhm.”
He slips his hand to my face, drawing it towards him.
“You don’t sound sure.”
I shrug.
“I’m just not in any rush, that’s all,” I admit. “I like it here. With… with you.”
He smiles, but I can still see that hint of uncertainty in his face, a part of him unconvinced by what I'm saying. I turn to him, more water slopping out over the sides of the tub, and rest my hands on his chest, cocking my head to the side.
“If you want me gone, Gavin, you can just say. You’ve already been kinder to me than I could ever have asked for.”
“No, no, it’s not that,” he assures me, running his hands along my legs pensively.
“Then what is it?”
He’s silent for another moment, but I cup his chin, drawing his gaze up to mine.
“Please, Gavin, tell me.”
He eyes me for a moment, and then, at last, he replies.
“You’ve been through so much,” he confesses, arms wrapping around me, almost protectively, though there is no threat here any longer.
“And if you stay here with me, it’s not like you’ll have an easy life.
I haven’t lived with anyone in a long time, I don’t even know what I’d be like as a… boyfriend, partner, whatever.”
“Boyfriend?” I reply, a playful edge to my voice. “You’re thinking about being my boyfriend?”
The corner of his mouth tugged upward.
“Maybe,” he admits. “But you deserve to live life on your own terms, Marie. Not weighed down by anyone else. Or held back by my criminal record, or my past, or all the stigma that comes with it?—”
“Hey.”
I tighten my grip on his face slightly.
“I already know about all that,” I point out. “And I still want you, Gavin. You don’t think that counts for something?”
He doesn’t reply, and I take it as the prompt to keep talking.
“And trust me, I’ve tried doing the normal relationship thing,” I explain.
“And look how it turned out for me. I don’t want to go back to that.
I want something new. I want to forget about everything that happened before and just…
just look to the future instead, you know?
A future where I don’t have to live under someone else’s rules.
And you… you don’t live by anyone’s rules.
Out here, by yourself, it’s amazing, this life you’ve made for yourself.
And I’m not saying that I need you to carve out half of it for me. But maybe.”
I lean forward, brushing my lips against his lightly.
“You could trust me when I tell you that this is what I want. That you’re what I want.”
And that, at last, seems to pull down his walls. His face softens, eyes flicking back and forth between mine.
“Fuck, Marie,” he murmurs, and he cups his hand at the nape of my neck, pulling me towards him. “I want you, too. So fucking much.”
And, as he kisses me again, our bodies flow into each other beneath the water, my legs tucked on either side of him as he holds me close. Just like that, I can almost see my new life here opening out before me.
Spending time with him in the cabin, driving down to Louisville to see my sister, maybe signing back up for college to pick up where I left off. Having a job, a career, a life, that was all mine, not one dictated by the whims of some man who had decided he was owed so much better than me.
I feel his cock stir against me as he kisses me hard, and I know he can see it, too, that future that we both seem to want with each other.
He slides his hands down to my ass to pull me on to him properly, and the water seems to blur the gaps between our bodies, making it so there is almost no space between us at all.
And I don’t want there to be.
I need him near to me, in every way I can have him, every way he will let me be. I push my hands into his damp hair, and he smiles into the kiss, bringing me closer so that my chest is pressed against his.
He moves to my neck, working his way down with a hunger that he has clearly been doing his best to hide until this moment.
He’s already grinding against me, cock slipping between my folds and against my clit, as he lowers his mouth to my breast and draws a nipple between his teeth, tugging on it lightly and making me whimper with anticipation.
My lower belly clenches with need for him, and I pull his head to mine once more so I can kiss him again, my teeth catching on his lip in my frantic need to close the distance between us even further.
He reaches beneath my thighs, lifting me up like I weigh nothing at all, and guides me over his cock. His breath mingles with the steam between us as he looks up at me, like I'm something heaven-sent, something he still cannot believe exists.
I have never had a man, or anyone, for that matter, look at me that way. It’s intoxicating, more than the whiskey in his cupboard ever could me, and I realize, in the moment before he moves into me again, that I have him now.
That this doesn’t have to be over when the storm ends, when the snow melts. That this is the start of something I have craved for longer than I’d care to admit, and now I have it, I intend to enjoy every damn second.
He pulls me down on top of him, slowly filling me with his cock there beneath the water, and I press my forehead to his and breathe him in like he is a cigarette I’ve been craving all day.
His hands tighten on my waist, knees leaning against the outside of the tub, the angle allowing him to drive himself deep inside of me.
He stirs his hips slightly against me, like he wants to feel me from every angle.
The water lets me move with ease on top of him, and I rock back and forth there astride him. There’s a sense of power, taking control like this, but more than that, it’s the knowledge that he does not need to claim this power from me in order to make himself feel better, like more of a man.
No, as he gazes up at me, his eyes are written with need, lust, passion, and I want nothing more than to sate it as best I can.
“Fuck, you look gorgeous on top of me,” he murmurs, and he moves his hand to my lower belly, splaying his fingers against my mound so that I'm sliding against them with every movement. I gasp, eyes fluttering shut as I feel his fingers on my clit.
My orgasm is already starting to build inside of me, more than just pleasure, but a release of all the tension of the last couple of days, like everything has been building to this moment, and now, I finally get to let go of it, here, with him.
My hips circle on top of him almost of their own accord, and I'm utterly lost to the rolling heat within me.
My thighs are pressed to his, starting to tense and twitch as my orgasm rises and rises beyond the point of no return.
His fingers press against my clit, and he raises his other hand to my lips.
I part them at once, and he dips them into my mouth, gazing at me with fire in his eyes as I take him inside me in every way I can. I'm starved for him, sating myself, greedy and needy and wanting, and, as our eyes lock once more, I finally feel it give out.
Whatever I have been holding on to unwinds as soon as I come on top of him, crying out so loudly I'm sure the entire cabin is full of the sound of it. And he moves into me, thrusting deep into my clenching pussy, as if he wants to make the most of my pleasure as it blends into his.
He pulls his fingers from my mouth and kisses me, his tongue finding mine in the moment that his cock twitches inside of me with his release.
And he holds me there, breathing against my mouth, the low sound of the water settling the only thing filling the room around us.
But, when he pulls back, he doesn’t need to say anything. I can tell from the way he is looking at me that he can feel it as clearly as I can, the change between us, now that there is a future here. Whatever it looks like, I'm willing to find out.
He doesn’t pull back from me, a small smile turning up his lips as he gazes into my eyes.
“You should get to bed,” he tells me softly, but he makes no move to get out of the bath.
“Hmm,” I murmur, lacing my arms around his shoulders and cocking an eyebrow. “You know, you’re making that kind of difficult for me.”
And he chuckles as we kiss again. Outside, I can hear the sound of water dripping; it takes me a moment to realize where it is coming from, but then, it hits me.
The snow is melting.
But it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve finally chosen where I want to be, and it’s here, with him. With my Gavin.
The End
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