Chapter Forty-One #2
No secrets.
Lucy crosses the room. She’s wearing one of the soft summer dresses she favors, pale blue cotton skimming her knees, her hair loose over her shoulders.
“You have your own bedroom,” she says.
“I’ve been told.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in it.”
“You haven’t missed much.”
She stops in front of me. Close enough that the clean scent of her soap reaches me.
“I want to stay here tonight.”
My breathing changes.
She hears it.
“We don’t have to do anything,” she says.
“No,” I agree.
“But I want to.”
My attention drops to her hand.
“You don’t owe me anything because you accepted that.”
“I didn’t think I did.”
“I didn’t buy it so you would come to bed with me.”
“I figured.”
She reaches for my shirt and begins undoing the buttons.
“Lucy.”
Her hands stop.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
The answer comes too quickly.
She continues.
My shirt falls open, and her palms settle against my chest. I cover one of her hands with mine.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“You may need to remind me.”
“Of what?”
“That I’m allowed to believe you.”
Her expression softens.
“I can do that.”
She rises onto her toes and kisses me.
I’ve kissed her dozens of times.
In the living room. In the pool. In her bed with Marco beside us.
This feels different.
There is no brother to read when I lose my nerve. No one else to take over when fear becomes louder than reason.
Only Lucy.
Only me.
She pushes the shirt from my shoulders. Her fingers follow the ink down my arm and across my ribs, tracing the pieces of me I chose to put on the outside.
“Still afraid?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I look at her. “That isn’t the answer I expected.”
“It means you finally stopped pretending.”
She bends and kisses the script in my mother’s handwriting.
My eyes close.
Then she takes my hand and leads me toward the bed.
This time, I follow.
I undress her slowly.
Not because I need to.
Because I want time to understand that she is here. That every button I release and every inch of skin she lets me uncover is something freely given.
Both rings remain on her finger.
The sight of them against my skin nearly breaks me.
I kiss her until her body softens beneath mine. Then I use my hands. My mouth. Everything I have learned about her.
I know where she is sensitive now. I know the sounds she tries to hide and the way her fingers tighten when she is close.
Tonight, she doesn’t hide.
When pleasure takes her, she says my name.
Not Marco’s.
Mine.
I hold her until the trembling stops. Her breathing warms the side of my neck, and one of her knees remains hooked loosely over my hip.
Then I begin to move away.
Lucy catches my wrist.
“Stay.”
“I’m here.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
I look at her.
Desire remains in her face.
So does trust.
“I want you,” she whispers.
“You have me.”
“You know what I mean.”
I close my eyes.
This is the moment I’ve feared since the pool. The moment when I either move forward or disappoint her again.
“I’m not ready.”
The words cost more than they should.
Her hand settles against my face.
“All right.”
I open my eyes. “That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“You aren’t angry?”
“No.”
“Disappointed?”
A smile touches her mouth. “I’m naked in your bed, wearing your ring, and you’ve made me come twice. I’m managing.”
A laugh escapes me, carrying some of the pressure from my chest with it.
Lucy kisses me softly.
“When you’re ready,” she says. “Not before.”
I search her face for pity.
There is none.
Only patience.
I kiss her again.
Then she reaches for me.
I catch her hand.
“You don’t have to.”
“I didn’t think I did.”
The words mirror mine.
Her touch is tentative at first. She pushes my boxers over my hips and frees my cock.
My heart begins to pound.
I catch her mouth and kiss her before she can look down. When her hand moves, I capture her wrist.
“Let me make you feel good,” she says.
I rest my forehead against hers.
“I’m afraid.”
She meets my eyes. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I release her wrist and guide her hand gently back to me.
“I’m big.”
“You don’t say.”
Her hand closes around my length—or most of it.
“Too big.”
“You let me be the judge of that.”
She pushes me onto my back and settles between my thighs.
Then she kisses her way down my chest.
My breathing turns uneven.
“Lucy—”
“Shh,” she says.
The wet heat of her mouth replaces her hand, and I grip the sheets beside me.
“Christ, Lucy.”
She begins to move, using her mouth, her hands, her tongue. The sounds she draws from me seem to encourage her.
I look down and find her watching me, my cock between her lips.
It nearly undoes me.
She studies my face the way I like to watch hers when she comes. Every time my breathing changes, she pays attention. Every time I tense, she slows.
No one has ever touched me with such care.
There is no laughter.
No fear.
No sense that I am an experience she plans to describe to someone else later.
Only Lucy.
When I feel my release coming, I warn her.
“Lucy, I’m going to—”
She doesn’t pull away.
She keeps going, urging me on, quickening the movement of her hand.
I gasp her name and shudder as my release tears through me.
She holds me through it.
Afterward, she doesn’t move away. She presses kisses to each of my hips, then rests one lightly against my stomach.
“Thank you,” I say.
She laughs. “Have I ever said that when you’ve made me come?”
I consider it.
“I recall a few exceptional occasions when I might have been thanked.”
She pins me with a glare. “That is completely fabricated.”
“Says you.”
She wipes her mouth and curls against me, her hand coming to rest on my chest.
The rings catch the light from the bedside lamp.
I touch the newer one with one finger.
“You’re staring at it again,” she murmurs.
“My eyes are closed.”
“I can feel you staring.”
“That seems medically unlikely.”
She smiles against my skin.
I wait for the doubt to return. For her to grow quiet. For some sign that I failed to give her what she expected.
Instead, she traces the ink along my ribs.
“You’re still here,” I say.
“So are you.”
“I live here.”
“So do I.”
The words settle inside me.
Home.
Not guest.
Not temporary.
Not waiting for the gate to open.
She chose the ring.
She chose this bed.
And when I told her I wasn’t ready, she stayed.
I wake before sunrise.
For one terrible second, I don’t feel her beside me.
The old fear arrives whole, closing around my chest before I’m properly awake.
Then Lucy moves.
She is sprawled facedown across my pillow, her hair tangled over one cheek and one arm extended into the space between us.
Still here.
The rings remain on her finger.
I lie back and watch her breathe as the room slowly turns gray around us.
A few minutes later, the bedroom door opens.
Marco stands in the hall, already dressed except for his jacket. He looks at me.
Then at Lucy.
His attention settles briefly on the tangled sheets before returning to my face.
Neither of us speaks.
We don’t need to.
He sees the fear that is no longer there.
A faint smile touches his mouth.
Then he reaches for the door.
“Leave it open,” Lucy murmurs.
Her eyes remain closed.
Marco pauses. “Are you awake?”
“No.”
I laugh.
He leaves the door open and walks away, his footsteps receding down the hall.
Lucy rolls toward me.
I lift her left hand between us. The two rings catch the first pale light of morning.
To the rest of the world, they belong to her husband.
We know one of them belongs to me.
Lucy opens her eyes.
“I’m still here,” she says.
For the first time, I believe she intends to stay.