Section 29
Terms and Conditions
Gia
By evening, the city has settled into its lies again.
Traffic moves. Phones stop ringing long enough to feel ominous. My inbox fills with acknowledgments instead of questions. Which means people are choosing not to test me.
For now.
Everything is temporary. Everything is duct tape and leverage and threats wrapped in polite language.
Across the room, Lucky is scrolling through something on his phone he’s pretending is interesting. He hasn’t interrupted once in twenty minutes. That alone is impressive.
“You’re done,” he says, not looking up.
“I’m pausing,” I correct.
“Same thing.”
I close the laptop anyway. My shoulders ache. My jaw hurts from holding tension instead of cigarettes. Diablo snores softly from his spot near the door, one ear twitching like he’s monitoring the astral plane.
I stand and stretch, rolling my neck once.
Lucky looks up then. His eyes track the movement without apology.
“You can take the bed,” he says casually. “I’ll grab the couch.”
I stop.
“The bed,” I repeat.
“Yeah.”
I turn to face him fully. “It’s your bed.”
He shrugs. “I’m a generous host.”
“Is that what we’re calling this?” I ask.
His mouth curves. “You don’t like the term guest?”
“I don’t like pretending,” I say.
He sets the phone down slowly, like sudden movements might change the outcome. “Neither do I.”
I step closer. “You think I’d let you exile yourself to the couch?”
“I think you’re exhausted,” he replies carefully. “And I don’t want to assume—”
I shove him.
Not hard. Just enough.
He stumbles back, surprised, and hits the edge of the bed with a laugh that dies when I keep coming. He reaches for me on instinct, catches my waist—and then we’re both moving, momentum and decision colliding.
He falls back fully. I go with him.
For one suspended second, he’s flat on the mattress and I’m above him, palms braced on either side of his shoulders. His hands hover at my hips, waiting.
“If you think,” he says, breathless but steady, “that I’d let the queen of Chicago sleep on a couch—”
I cut him off by kissing him.
He makes a sound that vibrates straight through me, surprise melting into something warm and real. His hands come to my back, like he’s anchoring instead of taking.
When I pull back, his eyes are darker. Focused.
“Are you sure about this?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “And I want this to be a choice. Not a release valve.”
His thumb traces a slow line along my side, grounding. “Same.”
I sit back on my heels, still straddling him, and exhale.
“This doesn’t make anything simpler,” I say.
“No,” he agrees.
I study his face—the openness he doesn’t give freely, the way he’s holding himself still like I’m something he doesn’t want to break.
We shift, slower now. No rush. No pretending this is just bodies passing time.
I wrap my arms around his neck, feeling the tension in his muscles—held back, barely leashed, careful. There’s something sacred about restraint, the way he doesn’t immediately flip us, pin me, take. He waits. He lets me set terms.
So I do.
I run my hand under his shirt, palm flat to the heat and raised ridges of his skin. Old scars, new ones blooming blue and yellow at the edges. He shivers.
I want to see him.
All of him.
I pull the shirt up. He lets me, moving slow. We’re both half-dressed and barely holding it together. He pushes up on one elbow and kisses my jaw carefully, and then holds still as I strip the shirt away.
The space between us is gone.
I trace the shapes along his shoulder, the thick cable of a scar biting across his ribs.
He sighs into my hand, head falling back like letting someone else’s body map his own is foreign territory.
Maybe it is. Maybe it’s something that only happens when you’ve spent a lifetime clamping down instead of letting up.
He pulls me forward, gentle as gravity. I let him.
Nothing about this is a power game. There’s no armor, no visor, there’s just two people pressed together and not knowing what to do with the feeling.
I find myself laughing, light and low, at the sheer unreality of it—that he’s beautiful in a way that makes me want to hit him for it, that this is a man who’ll belly-crawl through dirt and blood for me but can’t meet my eyes for more than a heartbeat at a time.
I kiss him again. Longer this time. He opens under it, lets me taste him, responds in a measured way that tells me he’s as spun out as I am.
His hands settle on my hips, cautious at first, then surer, fingers spreading wide like he’s learning the terrain.
I lean in and speak directly to the skin behind his ear.
“You’re allowed,” I say. “I don’t shatter easy.”
He huffs out a breath, the line of his mouth curving, and then finally—finally—he turns us, slow enough that I could stop him at any moment. I don’t. He settles above me, all patient strength, and looks down at me with an expression that’s pure disbelief.
“I’ve been waiting,” he says, “for you to change your mind.”
“Not going to happen.”
He tilts his head, considering. “You sure?”
“Lucky,” I say, “the only thing I’ve ever been more sure of is—” I pause, teeth catching his lower lip. “No. There’s nothing. This is it.”
He groans, deep in his chest, and the sound is almost a growl. It’s honest, and I’m grateful for it. I want everything about this ugly, real, grounded in the sharpness of who we are when we aren’t performing.
When he takes off the rest of my clothes, he does it like it matters, and that’s much more dangerous than just wanting to fuck. He’s cataloguing something, memorizing every reaction, every place I tense or relax.
I do the same. I dig my nails into his shoulder blades, just to see if he’ll wince. He doesn’t. I bite his jaw, trace the collar of his neck with my tongue, taste salt and the faint copper. I want to recalibrate him, make it so he’s only ever touched like this. I want him ruined for anyone else.
“Condom,” I pant, and he reaches for the bedside table. Considering what I have in my drawer there’s absolutely no need for the twinge of something in my chest. It can’t be jealousy, surely? That’d be absurd.
He wraps up and presses between my legs and god, the shudder I give is embarrassing—but neither of us say a word about it.
He just nudges his way in, gentle at first, then firmer, and the sensation is almost too much.
I gasp—immediately, involuntarily—and he freezes, reading my face for retreat. All I give him is want.
He moves again. Slow circles, then shallow, careful thrusts, like he’s learning the shape of me molecule by molecule.
I lose myself in the rhythm, in the way Lucky fills and empties me with the devotion of a man who’s used to hunger.
Neither of us talks, but the bedframe announces us with every shift and push.
He cups my hip and—without warning—pushes in deep.
I bite back a sound; he catches it and uses the next one as proof, repeating the movement.
My nails dig into his back hard enough to draw a grunt, a real one, and his mouth covers mine so no one in the city, not even the ghosts in the walls, can hear the things we’re reduced to.
It lasts as long as it has to, though both of us try to drag out the end. My body gives first, and that unlocks something unhinged in him; he ramps up the pace, then slams once, twice, all the while refusing to break my gaze.
When it calms, he doesn’t leave. He lowers himself onto my chest and lets me hold him, breathing hard, both of us sticky and shaking and impossibly alive. I realize only now how little air I’ve had for weeks. I take in so much it almost hurts.
He nuzzles my shoulder, then mutters, “Was that in the terms and conditions?”
I snort. “Fine print.”
He huffs. “Missed that. I’ll read closer next time.”
Then: “You okay?”
I could say yes. That would be the efficient answer.
But something else claws up, raw and real. I want to laugh and cry and break things, and instead I just say, “I’ve been trying to decide whether I want to keep you or eat you alive.”
He levers himself up, blue eyes bright and honest.
“Do both,” he says.
And—fuck. That might actually be the right answer.
For the first time in a very long time, I sleep deep and undreaming. When I wake, Lucky’s arm is slung heavy around my waist, the hoodie is balled up between Diablo’s paws like a security blanket, and the world hasn’t ended.
Yet.