Chapter Rafferty
Rafferty
Her hands are on my face, fingers pressed against my jaw, and I can feel the tremor in them, softer than last night but still there.
She tastes like orange juice and toothpaste and something underneath that's just her, warm and real and alive.
I know I should stop this. I've been awake for over twenty-four hours and my knuckles are screaming and this woman has been through hell and the last thing she needs is…
She pulls back just enough to look at me. Her eyes are wet, her lips are swollen. Her chest rises and falls against mine in quick, uneven breaths.
"Upstairs," she says.
It's one word and it rewires my entire brain.
"Nadia."
"I know what I'm doing." Her voice is steady. The steadiest I've heard it since I met her. "I know what I want. Please don't make me beg for it."
I search her face for hesitation or doubt. For the faintest sign that this is adrenaline or gratitude or anything other than exactly what she says it is. I've spent my life reading people, and the woman standing in front of me is the clearest thing I've ever seen.
She takes my hand and pulls me toward the stairs.
I follow her. Past the hallway with the family photographs I don't look at and doors I don't open. Up a staircase that creaks on the third step and the seventh. Her hand is tight in mine and she doesn't let go. She pushes open a door at the end of the hallway and pulls me through it.
Her bedroom is small and clean. A bed with white sheets, a dresser, a window with sunlight pouring through it.
There's a bookshelf crammed with paperbacks and a glass of water on the nightstand.
It smells like her. Like shampoo and clean laundry and the faintest trace of something floral underneath.
She turns to face me and the sunlight catches her cheekbones, her throat, the hollow at the base of her neck where her pulse is hammering.
I cup her face in my hands. My split knuckles look brutal against her skin. Swollen, bloodied, and wrecked. She doesn't flinch. She turns her head and presses her lips to my palms, and I feel it all the way through my chest.
"Tell me if you want to stop," I say. "At any point. For any reason."
She nods. Then she reaches for the hem of her sweater and pulls it over her head. She's wearing a plain white bra underneath. Simple. Cotton. Nothing designed to be seen or flaunted. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever looked at.
She reaches behind her back for the clasp.
"Wait." I close the distance between us and turn her gently. I undo the clasp myself, slowly, and push the straps off her shoulders. I press my mouth to the back of her neck and feel the shiver race down her spine.
I turn her back around. She lets me look.
Her arms stay at her sides. She doesn't cover herself.
She doesn't apologize for the weight she has lost or the way her body looks and I love it. She stands in the sunlight in her jeans with nothing else and lets a man see her body for the first time since she was made to feel ashamed of it. She is reclaiming herself and I’m the lucky bastard who gets to witness it.
"Beautiful," I say again. Because she is. Because she needs to hear it from someone who means it and expects nothing in return.
Her breath catches. She reaches for my jacket and pushes it off my shoulders. Her fingers find the buttons of my shirt and she works them open with trembling hands. I let her set the pace. Each button takes longer than the last because her fingers are shaking harder the further down she gets.
She pushes the shirt off and spreads her hands flat against my chest. Her palms are cool against my skin. She traces the lines of muscle across my stomach, the edge of a scar along my ribs from a knife in Dublin I never told anyone about.
"How long have you been awake?" she asks quietly.
"Doesn't matter," I say, almost surprised at how hoarse my voice sounds.
"It matters to me." She traces a line over the tattoo that starts on my left pec and travels down my ribs.
"Since yesterday morning."
Her fingers move up to my jaw, touching the bruise there lightly. "Did he do this?"
"I let him get one hit in."
Something like wonder flickers across her face. Like she can't quite process that someone took a punch for her and came back to tell her she's beautiful.
She undoes the button of her jeans and pushes them down her hips, then steps out of them. She's in plain cotton underwear and nothing else and she's looking at me with an expression that's half vulnerable and half fierce, like she's daring me to find her anything less than perfect.
I undo my belt. She watches my hands. Watches me strip down to nothing with the same focused attention she's given everything since she opened that front door. When I step toward her, she takes a breath and holds it.
"Breathe," I tell her.
She exhales. A shaky, fractured sound that turns into something close to a laugh. "I haven't done this before."
I stop. "Ever?"
"Ever." She meets my eyes. "I told you. He was my only boyfriend. And I never... we never..." She swallows. "I was going to. That night. My birthday. But I walked in and he was..."
I understand. The night she planned to give someone everything, he'd already thrown her away. And she shut down after that. Four years of nothing. No one. Just fear and shame and survival.
"We don't have to," I say. I mean it. Every cell in my body is screaming at me to ravish her in the best way for both of us, but I mean it.
"I want to." She takes my hand and puts it on her waist. Her skin is warm beneath my fingers. "I feel like I can breathe again. And now the threat is gone, all I want is this. Something new and real and alive with the man I am going to marry."
I guide her back toward the bed. She sits on the edge and I kneel in front of her, my hands on her thighs, looking up at her. From here, with the sun pouring through the window, she looks like something sacred.
"You're in charge," I say. "Every second of this. You say stop, we stop. You say slow down, we slow down."
"And if I say more?"
The corner of my mouth pulls up. "Then you get more."
I hook my fingers into the waistband of her underwear and pull them down slowly, she lifts her hips to help. I press my lips to the inside of her knee, then higher, following the line of her inner thigh while her breathing fractures above me.
She tastes like warmth and salt and something sweet underneath that makes my head spin.
Her thigh tenses under my hand when my mouth finds her, and the sound she makes is quiet and startled, like she didn't know her body could feel something other than weight and tension and threat.
I take my time. She's earned someone taking their time with her.
Her fingers find my hair and grip hard. I let her hold on while I learn every sound she makes and what makes her make each one.
When she comes, it's with a gasp that she tries to smother with her hand. I reach up and pull her hand away.
"Don't hide yourself," I say against her skin. "Not any part of you. Not from me."
She pulls me up toward her. I follow, climbing over her as she scoots back on the bed, her dark hair fanning across the white pillow. She's flushed and breathing hard. Her eyes are bright and glassy, and she's looking at me like I've just handed her back a part of herself she thought was gone.
"I don't have anything with me," I say. "Protection."
"I'm on the pill." She pulls my face down to hers. "Please, Rafferty."
I sink into her slowly. Carefully. Stopping when she tenses, holding myself still above her, giving her time. Her hands grip my shoulders. Her nails dig in. She breathes through it, her body adjusting, and I watch her face for any sign of pain.
"Okay?" I ask.
"Yes. More."
I move. Slowly at first. She's tight and warm and every instinct I have is telling me to lose control, but I don't. I won't. This is her first time and it will be on her terms even if it kills me.
I watch her face as her body opens up to mine, as the tension gives way to something liquid and urgent, as her hips start to move with me.
"More," she says again, and this time it's a demand.
I give her more. Deeper. Harder. She wraps her legs around me and pulls me closer and makes sounds against my neck that undo me one syllable at a time. Her fingers drag down my back and squeeze my ass, and I want more. I want all of it. Every sound, every mark, every trembling breath.
Her body tightens around me and I feel her come apart. She shakes with it, her whole body contracting, and I follow her over the edge with my face pressed into her hair and her name caught between my teeth.
"Thank you," she says quietly, once we’ve both caught our breath.
"Don't thank me for sex."
"I'm not thanking you for the sex." She lifts her head and looks at me. Her eyes are clear. Clearer than I've seen them. "I'm thanking you for making me feel like I'm not broken."
I push a strand of hair behind her ear. She turns into my hand the way a flower turns toward sunlight.
"You were never broken," I say. "You were just carrying something too heavy on your own."
She presses her face into my palm. I feel the wet heat of a tear against my skin. This one is different from the ones last night. This one doesn't burn.
Sunlight moves across the sheets. My arm is around her and my hand rests on the curve of her hip, her heartbeat slowing against my ribs.
“Thank you for telling me the truth. I can’t imagine what that must have cost you.”
She smiles. “I think it was worth it.”