Chapter 4 #2
He's quiet. His thumb keeps its slow circle on my knee.
"I'm not going anywhere," I say.
He doesn't respond with words. He turns his head and looks up at me from the chair.
His eyes in the starlight are dark and serious and stripped of the armor he wears during the day.
"Come here," he murmurs, his hand tightening on my knee.
I slide off the arm of the chair and into his lap, my knees on either side of his hips.
The lawn chair creaks under our combined weight but holds.
His hands settle on my waist, warm through the thin fabric of my shirt, and I can feel the rough texture of his calluses against the strip of skin where my shirt has ridden up.
I put my hands on his face.
His beard is coarse under my palms.
He's got a healing bruise along his jaw from the rescue—fading yellow, almost gone—and I brush my thumb over it.
"Does it hurt?" I ask.
"No," he says, leaning slightly into my palm.
"Liar." I press my lips to the bruise. Light. Barely there.
I feel his hands tighten on my waist.
I kiss his jaw, the corner of his mouth, the ridge of his cheekbone where the scrape from the rescue has scabbed over.
Each kiss is soft, deliberate, and with each one I feel the tension in his body shift—not building like last time, not that desperate, crackling urgency that threw us into his bed.
This is different. Slower. Like we're learning each other instead of crashing into each other.
When I finally kiss his mouth, it's unhurried.
His lips part against mine and his tongue slides against my bottom lip and I open for him with a sigh that comes from somewhere deep.
He tastes like the coffee Ruby brewed after dinner.
His hand slides up my back, under my shirt, his palm flat against my spine, pulling me closer.
"We need to go inside," I murmur against his mouth.
He stands with me still wrapped around him, my legs locking at his back, and carries me to the ladder.
I climb down first and he follows, and then we're in the hallway and his hand is on my lower back, guiding me toward his room.
The door closes behind us.
This time there's no frenzy.
No grabbing, no crashing.
He turns me around slowly and lifts my shirt over my head, his fingers trailing up my sides as the fabric goes.
He stands behind me, his chest against my back, and I can feel his heart beating between my shoulder blades.
His mouth finds the spot where my neck meets my shoulder and he presses his lips there, and the warmth of his breath on my skin makes me shiver.
"Eres hermosa," he whispers against my neck. You're beautiful.
The Spanish undoes me.
He's never spoken to me in Spanish before.
English is the language of the clubhouse, the compound, the world where he's Doom—guarded, controlled, untouchable.
But Spanish is his mother's language.
The one he grew up hearing in the kitchen, in lullabies. I know that much from what I’ve heard about him through the grapevine.
And he's giving it to me in the dark with his mouth against my skin.
I turn in his arms and push him toward the bed.
He sits on the edge and I stand between his knees, looking down at him.
His hands are on my hips, his thumbs tracing the hollow above my hipbones.
His eyes are on my face.
I unbutton my jeans and push them down.
His gaze drops and his fingers flex on my hips.
"Your turn," I tell him, hooking my finger in the collar of his shirt.
He pulls it over his head. The tattoos emerge in the low light—the wings across his chest, the script down his ribs, the elaborate sleeve work that covers both arms.
I reach down and trace a line of ink that runs from his collarbone to his shoulder. "What does this one mean?"
"I’ll explain it later," he says, and pulls me onto the bed.
He lays me down and stretches out beside me, propped on one elbow, and just looks at me.
His free hand traces my collarbone, then drops lower, following the curve of my waist to my hip.
Slow. Deliberate.
"Emiliano." I say his name and his hand stills on my hip. "Don't rush this."
"I'm not rushing anything," he says, his thumb pressing into the dip of my hip.
"Good." I pull him down to me. "Take your time."
He does.
His mouth follows the path his fingers traced.
My collarbone.
The soft skin below my navel, where his beard scrapes and I gasp, my hips lifting toward him.
He unclasps my bra and pulls it free and his mouth closes over my nipple, his tongue circling slow, and my hand fists in the short curls at the back of his head.
"God—right there," I breathe, and his response is a low hum against my skin that I feel all the way down.
He hooks his fingers in the waistband of my underwear and pulls them down my legs.
His mouth trails lower—a kiss pressed to my hip bone, then the inside of my thigh.
Then he's between my legs and his tongue drags flat against my clit, and my spine leaves the mattress.
"Sí—así, no pares—" The Spanish comes out on its own, tangled with English, tangled with sounds that aren't words at all.
His tongue circles me, then sucks gently, and my hand tightens in his hair.
He doesn't rush. He stays there, his hands gripping my thighs to hold me open, his mouth patient and devastating, until I'm trembling and gasping and pulling at his shoulders because I need him closer, I need him inside me.
"Come up here," I manage. "Ven aquí. Te necesito."
He climbs up my body and settles between my legs.
I reach down between us, wrap my fingers around his cock—thick, hard, already leaking at the tip—and guide him to my entrance.
"Look at me," I tell him.
His eyes lock on mine.
Dark brown, nearly black in the low light.
Open in a way that makes my chest ache.
He pushes inside me slowly.
Inch by inch, his eyes never leaving mine, his jaw working with the effort of holding back.
I feel every bit of him—the stretch, the fullness, the way my body opens for him and then grips tight—and he groans, low and rough.
"Nova."
My name.
He's never said it during sex before—the first time we were together he barely spoke at all, and the sounds he made were wordless, raw.
But now he says my name like it's been sitting in his mouth all day waiting to get out, and the way it sounds in his wrecked, gravelly voice does something to my chest that I don't have language for.
"Again," I whisper. "Say it again."
"Nova." He pulls back and pushes in deep and I cry out, my legs wrapping around him. "Dios mío, Nova."
The pace is slow. Every thrust measured, like he's determined to feel everything instead of chasing the finish.
His forehead drops to mine and we breathe the same air, our eyes open, watching each other in the half-dark.
"Emiliano." I lift my hips to meet him and he groans against my mouth. "You feel so good. Don't stop."
His hand slides down between us and his thumb finds my clit, pressing in slow circles that match the rhythm of his hips, and the heat builds and builds until I'm shaking underneath him, my nails raking down his back.
"Déjate ir," he murmurs against my lips. Let go.
"Contigo," I breathe back. With you.
I come apart with his name in my mouth, my body clenching around him, my nails biting into his shoulders.
He follows a moment later, his hips stuttering, his face buried in my neck, my name spilling from his lips over and over. "Nova. Nova."
After, we lie facing each other in the narrow bed.
His hand is on my hip.
My fingers are tracing the tattoo on his ribs—script, I can see now in the thin light from the window. Letters I can't quite make out.
"What does it say?" I ask. My voice is soft. The room is quiet, the compound settled for the night beyond his door.
He's quiet for a while. Long enough that I think he's not going to answer.
"It's a date," he says finally, his thumb moving slowly against my hip. "The day I got my sister out."
My hand stills on his ribs.
He's never mentioned a sister. Not once, in all the weeks I've known him, in all the conversations at my apartment, at Sunday dinners, on this rooftop. A sister.
I don't push. I wait.
"She lives in Canada now," he says. "Under a different name. She doesn't talk to me anymore."
I trace the date on his ribs one more time, then press my lips to the ink. He inhales sharply through his nose.
"Thank you," I say against his skin. "For telling me that."
He doesn't say anything else. But his arm tightens around me, pulling me closer until my head is tucked under his chin and my body is pressed against his.
I lie there in the dark and listen to his heartbeat and think about a woman in Canada, wondering what happened.
There's more to this story. I can feel it sitting just behind his silence.
But tonight he gave me a piece, and I'll hold it carefully until he's ready to give me the rest.