4. Ghost #2
"Everything."
She pulled her legs up on the bed and turned to face me. We talked. Not fragments and silences this time. Real conversation, the kind that happens when two people have run out of reasons to hold anything back.
She told me about her father. The love that was also ownership.
She told me about her mother leaving when she was nine, about looking at her father's face and deciding she would never give him another reason to lose someone.
She told me about growing up in the Jackals' world, loving it completely because it was the only world she knew, and understanding clearly, with the precision of a woman who paid attention, exactly what it cost and exactly who paid.
I told her about the military. Not the whole of it, but enough.
The discharge. The line I'd held that destroyed my career.
The men I'd refused to betray and the brass that punished me for the refusal.
How Angel had found me in a bar in Missoula when I was heading nowhere good and offered me a purpose before he offered me a patch.
"Why are you so quiet?" she asked.
"Habit. You learn to be invisible when being visible gets people hurt."
"That's not what I asked. Habit is how. I asked why."
I looked at her. She was sitting close, her knee touching mine, her shoulders down, the wariness gone. She was asking the question nobody asked because nobody got close enough to think of it.
"Because I'm afraid of what happens if I'm not."
She held my gaze. Then she leaned in and kissed me. Slowly. Her hand on my jaw, the way she'd held me in the corridor, firm, deliberate, an act of claiming. No force. Pure choice.
I kissed her back. Careful. Measured. This was nothing like the corridor. The urgency was gone. In its place was something slower, deeper, a want that wasn't racing because it was planning to last.
I laid her back on my bed. Took her jacket off first, then her shirt, lifting it over her head while she raised her arms for me.
Her bra was dark against her skin. I unhooked it slowly, watching the straps slide down her shoulders, watching the fabric fall away.
She was beautiful. I'd known that in the corridor but I hadn't had the time to look properly, hadn't had the luxury of seeing her without urgency clouding everything.
Now I looked. The full curve of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the soft swell of her stomach where our child was growing.
Fourteen years between us. Her skin smooth where mine was scarred.
Her body soft where mine was hard. The weight of her trust, and the care it demanded.
I traced my thumb along her collarbone. Down between her breasts. Across her ribs, feeling them expand with each breath. She shivered, not from cold.
"You're staring," she said.
"Yeah."
"It's intense."
"I know." I bent my head and pressed my mouth to her throat. "Tell me to stop and I'll stop."
"Don't you dare."
I kissed down her body. Slowly, deliberately, taking my time with every inch.
Her throat, her collarbone, the space between her breasts.
I cupped one, my thumb circling her nipple, feeling it harden under my touch while I kissed the other, my tongue tracing the curve, drawing a sound from her that was low, involuntary.
I spent time there. Learning what pressure made her gasp, what rhythm made her hips shift against the sheets.
She arched into my mouth, her fingers threading through my hair, holding me against her.
Below her navel I pressed my mouth to her skin, my hands framing her hips, and I stayed there. Breathing. Feeling the heat of her against my lips, the slight firmness beneath the skin that was almost imperceptible. What we'd made in a dim corridor seven weeks ago.
I unfastened her jeans. Drew them down her legs along with her underwear, kissing the inside of her thigh as I went, the soft skin behind her knee. She lay bare on my bed, her hair spread across my pillow, breathing hard.
Then I kissed lower. She gasped when my mouth found her, her fingers threading into my hair, her thighs falling open.
I took my time. Slow circles with my tongue, then firmer, then slow again, building her up and easing off until her thighs were shaking and her hand was fisted in the pillow and she was saying please against the ceiling.
I worked her with my lips, my tongue, my fingers inside her, curling, searching, finding the spot that made her back arch off the bed.
This wasn’t technique. It was devotion. A man on his knees in front of the only person who'd made him feel human in twenty years.
She came with a long, shuddering cry that filled the small room, her hand fisting the sheets, her back arching, her body pulsing against my mouth. I stayed with her through it, gentling, easing her down.
I kissed back up her body. She reached for my belt with urgent hands, pushed my jeans down, wrapped her hand around me.
Firm, certain, her grip steady, her thumb sliding over the tip.
I closed my eyes. Let the sensation of her hand on me crack through the last of my defenses.
When I opened my eyes she was watching my face and the look on hers was fierce, possessive, a woman learning what she could do to a man who'd been invisible to everyone but her.
"I want you," she said. Simple. Direct.
I settled between her thighs. Pushed into her slowly.
The feeling of her around me was the same and entirely different from before.
In the corridor I'd been losing a fight.
Here I was choosing. Every inch, every second, deliberate.
She was warm, ready, tight around me, and I sank into her until there was nothing between us, and I held myself there.
Looked at her face. Let her see mine. No mask.
Just the man underneath, exposed, terrified, refusing to look away.
I pulled back slowly. Pushed in again. She gasped, her fingers tightening on my shoulders, her hips lifting to meet me.
I set the pace. Slow, deep strokes that made her breath stutter.
Face to face, chest to chest, her hands on my back, my arms braced on either side of her.
The softness of her breasts pressed against my chest. The grip of her thighs against my hips.
The wet heat of her around me, tightening with every stroke.
She wrapped her legs around me, pulling me deeper, and the sound she made was open, nothing held in reserve.
Her back arched off the bed. I bent my head, took her nipple into my mouth, sucked gently while I moved inside her, and the combination made her cry out, her fingers raking through my hair, holding me against her breast.
"I've got you," I said against her skin. "I'm here."
I lifted up on my arms. Looked down at her. Her hair fanned across my pillow, her lips parted, her body moving with mine in a rhythm we'd done a thousand times and were only just discovering. I shifted the angle, deeper, and her mouth fell open.
"Ethan..."
My name, stripped bare of everything else. In her mouth, while I was inside her, and the sound of it broke the last thing I’d been holding together.
I moved faster. She met me. Her nails on my shoulders, her heels pressing into my lower back, pulling me in with every thrust. I kissed her throat, her jaw, back to her mouth.
She was tightening around me, her whole body winding toward release, the tremor in her thighs, the hitch in her breathing coming faster and shorter.
I reached between us. Found her with my thumb, circled, pressed.
She shattered. Her body clenching around me in waves, a cry that filled the room, her back lifting off the bed, her hand gripping the back of my neck so hard I felt her nails break skin.
I watched the pleasure take her. Watched her let go of everything she'd been carrying for seven weeks. The trust of it undid me.
I buried myself deep and came hard, her name on my lips, my forehead against the curve of her shoulder, my body shaking with the force of it.
We lay there. Her head on my chest, my arm around her, the room quiet.
"We're going to figure this out," I said. "Your father. The clubs. All of it."
She nodded against my chest. She was already drifting, the weight of seven weeks lifting, her body going heavy with sleep.
I held her in the dark and listened to her breathe.
One night of peace. One breath before the storm.
I lay with her sleeping on my chest, and for the first time in forty-one years, the room felt right.