Chapter 7 #3
Press my lips to the pulse point, feel her heartbeat hammering under my mouth.
She tips her head back and I trace a line down the column of her neck with my tongue—slow, deliberate, tasting the salt of her skin and the faint trace of perfume she put on before she came here.
She didn't come here by accident.
She came here on purpose.
That knowledge burns through me like a lit fuse.
I move lower.
My mouth finds her collarbone, the hollow at the base of her throat, the swell of her breast.
I take my time because I have waited ten years for this and I am not going to rush it.
My tongue circles her nipple and she gasps—sharp, surprised, like she forgot what this feels like—and her hand flies to the back of my head and grips my hair.
"Coin—"
I take her nipple in my mouth and suck, and the sound she makes is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.
Her back arches off the bed and her hips push up against mine. I can feel her warmth through two layers of denim, and it's making me so hard I can barely think.
I give her other breast the same attention—slow, thorough, worshipping—while my hand slides down her stomach, over the curve of her hip, to the button of her jeans.
I pop it one-handed.
She lifts her hips without being asked and I pull them down—jeans and underwear together, because I'm done with barriers.
She's bare underneath me. All of her.
Curves and soft skin and the faint tremble of a woman who hasn't been touched in a long time by someone who means it.
I kneel between her thighs and look at her.
She's watching me with those dark eyes, her chest heaving, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. She's nervous.
I can see it—the slight tension in her thighs, the way her hands grip the sheets.
"I've got you," I say again. And I mean it the same way I meant it in the hallway—completely, absolutely, with everything I have.
I lower my mouth to her.
The first touch of my tongue pulls a sound out of her that I want to record and play on repeat for the rest of my life.
Her thighs tense around my head and her hand finds my hair again and I learn her—slowly, methodically, the way I learn everything.
What makes her gasp. What makes her grip harder. What makes her hips roll against my mouth like she's lost control of her own body.
I'm a patient man. I haven't been touched like this in years. I can be patient here too—building her up with long, slow strokes, circling the spot that makes her breathing go ragged, pulling back just enough to make her whimper before I give it back.
"Coin, please—oh God, please—"
I slide two fingers inside her while my mouth works and she comes apart.
Not quietly.
She cries out—my name, or something close to it, broken into syllables that don't make sense—and her whole body bows off the bed.
Her thighs clamp around my head and I feel her pulse around my fingers and I don't stop.
I keep going, drawing it out, my tongue still moving, my fingers curling, until she's shaking and gasping and pushing at my shoulders because it's too much.
I pull back, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and look up at her.
She's wrecked. Hair everywhere, chest heaving, eyes glazed.
She looks at me like I just dismantled her piece by piece, and I haven't even started.
"Get up here," she says. Her voice is ruined.
I strip off my jeans.
She watches me and her eyes go dark, and the way she looks at me makes every rational thought I have left evaporate.
I grab a condom from the nightstand drawer—still there from before, and I'm not going to examine the expiration date right now because some things are better left unquestioned—and she takes it from my hand.
"Let me."
She rolls it on slowly. Deliberately. Watching my face the whole time, and the control it takes not to lose it right there is borderline superhuman.
I lower myself over her.
Forearms on either side of her head, my body aligned with hers, skin to skin for the first time.
She wraps her legs around me, pulls me closer, and I press my forehead against hers.
"Leah."
"I'm here."
"I haven't— it's been—"
"I know." She cups my face with both hands. "I know. Me too."
I push into her slowly. Inch by inch. Watching her face, reading every micro-expression the way I read every room I walk into—looking for pain, for hesitation, for anything that says stop.
I don't find any of it.
What I find is her eyes going wide, half-closing, then falling shut completely as she exhales and tilts her hips to take me deeper.
"Oh—" she breathes. "Oh, that's—"
"Yeah," I manage. "It is."
She's tight, warm, and perfect. Every nerve in my body is firing at once. I can’t believe this is real. I can’t believe this woman is in my bed, under me, around me, making these sounds, looking at me like this.
I start to move. Slow at first—long, deep strokes that let me feel every inch of her.
She meets me thrust for thrust, her hips rising to match my rhythm, her hands running down my back and gripping when I hit the right angle.
I find it. That angle, the one that makes her nails dig into my shoulders and her mouth fall open, and I stay there.
Consistent. Deliberate. Because that's who I am, and if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right.
"Harder," she whispers. "Coin—please—"
I give her what she's asking for.
Harder. Deeper.
The headboard taps the wall and I don't care.
Her legs tighten around me and I feel her start to climb again.
The tension building in her body, the way her breath shortens, the way she grips my arms like she's afraid she'll fly apart if she lets go.
"Let go," I tell her. My mouth against her ear, my hand sliding between us to find the spot that sent her over before. "I've got you. Let go."
She does.
She comes with her face buried in my neck and my name on her lips and her whole body shaking around me, and the feel of it—the way she tightens, the sound she makes, the trust of it—pulls me right over the edge with her.
I come hard enough that my vision blurs and my arms shake.
I bury my face in her hair, hold her and I let everything I've been carrying go quiet.
Every wall, every locked box, every white-knuckled minute of holding it together.
I feel alive.
After, we lie in the dark.
Her head is on my chest. My arm is around her.
Her fingers trace slow, absent circles on my sternum.
Neither of us speaks for a long time, and the silence isn't the wrong kind.
It's the kind I've been looking for. The kind that's warm and full and breathing.
"Stay," I say. I didn't plan to say it. It just comes out the way things come out around this woman—bypassing every filter I've built.
She lifts her head and looks at me. "The girls—"
"At Ellie's. Won't be back until tomorrow afternoon."
She searches my face. Looking for doubt, maybe. For regret. She won't find either.
"Okay," she says. "I'll stay."
She puts her head back on my chest.
I pull the blanket over both of us and hold her, and I listen to her breathing slow down.
My phone is on the nightstand. The cameras are running. The locks are changed.
The club rides on Friday.
The loan sharks are circling.
The pipeline is pumping poison into my town.
Haley Briggs is in the ICU.
My ex-wife's debt is sitting on my life like a boulder I can't move.
All of that is still there. All of it. None of it has changed.
But Leah Mercer is asleep in my bed with her hand over my heart and her scar pressed against my shoulder, and the house doesn't sound like a bunker tonight.
It sounds like a home.
I close my eyes. And for the first time in longer than I can remember, I actually sleep.