13. She Had a Whole Speech Prepared, With Three Austen References #3
A sound of pure frustration. "Please, can I come?"
"Please, who?"
She made a sound that was not a word and contained volumes.
"Please, Petra. Please."
I put my mouth back on her and gave her what she'd asked for, and she came so hard her legs locked around my head and she said my name like it was the only word she knew.
When I stood, she was leaning back on her bound wrists, staring at the ceiling, chest heaving.
"Two," she managed.
"Two," I agreed, and untied the dish towel. Pressed a kiss to each wrist. Watched her watch me do it, unguarded and overwhelmed, trying not to show it and not quite succeeding.
"Shower," I said.
"Give me thirty seconds."
"You've got twenty."
She got off the counter faster than the circumstances strictly warranted.
I had the water running before she'd made it down the hall. She stepped in behind me, and the steam rose around us immediately, the hot water cutting through the last of the day—the moving boxes, the crew, the pizza, all of it dissolving.
"My turn," she said, and her voice had that quality it sometimes got, the voice of a woman who had been taken apart twice and had something to say about it.
"Is it?" I said.
"It is." She pressed me back against the tile with both hands on my shoulders, and I let myself be moved, looking down at her. She was flushed from steam and from everything that had come before, her hair dark and wet, water running over the curves of her body.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I want to be on my knees," she said, "and I want you to tell me what to do."
My stomach tightened. "Vera."
"Tell me." She held my gaze. "Say please. I want to hear it."
I looked at her for one moment. "On your knees. Please."
The smile she gave me was radiant and wicked, and entirely earned.
She sank down, the water cascading over her shoulders, and looked up at me with those darkened eyes and wet lashes, and then she put her mouth on me, and I stopped thinking in sentences entirely.
I kept one hand in her wet hair and she used that anchor the way she always did, tilting into it, and she worked me with everything she'd learned, five months of paying close attention.
"Faster," I said, when I was close.
She slowed.
I stared down at her.
She looked up, poised, waiting.
"Please," I said.
The smile against my skin ruined the last of my coherence. She gave me what I asked for, and I came with my hand fisted in her hair and her name on my lips and the hot water still running over us both.
She stood, swollen-lipped and deeply pleased with herself.
"How was that?" she asked.
"You know exactly how that was."
"I like hearing you say it."
I cupped her face and kissed her, and she made a sound against my mouth like something thoroughly satisfied.
"Bedroom," she said.
"Bedroom," I agreed.
We left a trail of water across the hardwood.
Our bedroom was the only room that still looked like itself. Vera had arranged it first, before the boxes, because she believed in making sure I'd be sleeping well and at home from day one. The bed was made with fresh sunset-pink sheets.
She lay back against the pillows and looked up at me, and this was different from the other rooms. The rooms had been heat and play and the satisfaction of constraint. This room was something else.
"Come here," she said.
I lay down beside her. Just that, for a moment. Side by side, the evening going quiet around us, the sounds of the apartment settling into itself.
"We live here," she said.
"We live here," I agreed.
She turned on her side to face me, and the expression she wore was one I had no name for.
"I want to feel you," she said. "Just you. No game, no rules. Just—this."
"Yeah," I said. "Okay."
I moved over her, and she pulled me down, and it was slow and close and nothing held back from either direction. I watched her face the whole time—the way love moved through it, the way she stopped trying to contain any of it—and she watched mine, and neither of us looked away.
My fingers curved inwards, found her g-spot, and worked roughly against it until she was panting. When she came, it was quiet, her hands in my hair and her forehead pressed to mine, her breath unraveling against my lips.
I followed her down.
We lay tangled afterward in the cooling evening, her head on my chest, her fingers tracing their habitual path across the tattoos until they settled, as they always did, on Lucas and Santi's initials.
Acknowledging them. Including them. Keeping them a part of our lives.
"Four," she said, muffled against my chest.
"Four," I confirmed.
"I'm never moving again."
"We live here together now. You don't have to."
A pause. "You live here," she said softly, like she was testing the weight of it in her mouth. "We live here together."
"Ours," I said.
She smiled against my collarbone.
Outside, the desert went dark, and the apartment settled around us, our books on the shelves, her dresses beside my masculine clothes in the closet, my boots at the door beside her heels, and I lay there with her warm and heavy against my side and thought: every road led here.
Every single one.