15. Chapter 15 Six Books #2
He kept going until I was gripping the sheets and my thighs were shaking and the sounds I was making had nothing composed about them, then he stopped, I made a sound of protest, he looked at me with dark eyes and said nothing and reached for his belt.
I watched him push his trousers down.
I had touched him before, had wrapped my hand around him in dim light and felt him against my hip, but seeing him now, fully hard, thick, the blunt head of his cock already slick at the tip, made something low in my body clench with want that was almost unbearable.
He positioned himself at my entrance and pushed inside slowly.
Slowly enough that I felt every inch of it. The stretch of him, fuller than I remembered, or maybe just more deliberate this time, this angle, this pace ,my body opening around him with a slick, liquid heat that made us both go still when he bottomed out.
I exhaled hard.
He pressed his forehead to my temple and didn't move. Just breathed.
Just let me feel the full weight and length of him seated inside me while my body adjusted and my hands found his back and I understood, in that moment, that this was what he had been learning to do, wait, actually wait, without strategy or management, just presence.
Then he moved.
Long, slow strokes at first,pulling almost all the way out and pushing back in until I could feel every ridge of him, until I was so wet I could hear it, until the slide of him inside me was the only thing that existed.
He found an angle that made me gasp and stayed there, working it methodically, his eyes on my face the whole time, reading every response.
"There," I said without meaning to.
He gave me more of exactly that.
Deeper. Harder. His hips finding a rhythm that built pressure so insistent I couldn't hold still anymore, my hips rising to meet him, my nails finding his shoulders, my whole body tightening around him with every stroke until I was clenching and shaking and completely undone.
I came with his cock buried deep inside me, my body gripping him in long, rhythmic pulses, the pleasure radiating outward from where we were joined until I was trembling from my thighs to my throat.
I felt myself flood around him, slick and hot and completely his, the sound I made was nothing I had planned.
He followed, two strokes later, his whole body going rigid above me, spending himself inside me with his face pressed to my neck and his weight finally, fully settling.
We lay like that for a long moment.
His heartbeat against my chest. My hand flat on his back, feeling it slow.
I stared at the ceiling of his empty penthouse.
I was in this. I had known that before tonight. But knowing it here,in this space that had been empty for years, with the warmth of him still inside me and his arm pulling me closer, was different from knowing it anywhere else.
Later, when the room had gone grey-blue, I looked at the bare shelves.
He noticed. "What?"
"Nothing," I said. "You just — it's a big room."
He looked at the shelves. Then at me. "It's been a big room for a while."
He said it without self-pity, just factually, and it landed differently than anything he'd said to me in a long time.
After a quiet second, he said, almost reluctantly, "Would it be strange if I sent flowers tomorrow?"
I looked at him. "What?"
"Not to you," he said. "To Debbie."
That surprised an actual laugh out of me.
"Who's Debbie?"
"Maverick's best friend," he said. "They've known each other forever."
He nodded once.
"She stayed with Cole tonight," he said. "I don't leave him overnight with many people."
Something softened in his expression when he said it.
"Cole trusts her," he added quietly. "So do I."
I looked at him in the dim light.
The Trevor Turner the rest of the city knew probably sent flowers because it was efficient. Strategic. Expected.
But this Trevor was thinking about thanking the woman who made his son feel safe enough to sleep while he was gone.
"I think Debbie would like flowers," I said.
His mouth shifted slightly at that, almost a smile.
I didn't say anything after that. I lay in the dark with everything outside continuing on without us for a while and thought about what it meant that he'd said any of it at all.
I took the train back to Astoria in the morning.
Trevor walked me all the way to the platform.
Not talking much. Just staying beside me while the station filled slowly with people carrying coffee and weekend grocery bags.
When the train arrived, he looked at me like he wanted to say something bigger than goodbye and didn't entirely trust himself to get it right.
So instead he touched my wrist once and said quietly, "Text me when you get home."
And somehow that landed harder than anything else he could have said.
I kicked my shoes off near the couch. Hung my coat carefully instead of dropping it over a chair like I wanted to. Opened the refrigerator without being hungry and stood there staring at leftovers I wasn't going to eat.
The quiet felt different after Trevor's penthouse.
Smaller somehow. More familiar. More mine.
I changed into one of my oversized university sweatshirts and tied my hair up and walked slowly through the apartment touching things absentmindedly, the stack of library books near the couch, the ceramic bowl by the sink, the cardigan I'd left folded over the armchair Friday morning before the event.
My apartment looked exactly as I'd left it, and yet standing there again, I could feel the texture of two lives that hadn't merged yet and weren't sure of the terms.
At noon Cole's voice came through Trevor's phone.
"Are you coming for dinner?"
"Not tonight," I said.
"Tomorrow?"
I looked at the six books in the tote bag on my kitchen table.
"Yeah," I said. "Tomorrow."
"Okay." A pause. "Dad was weird this morning."
I leaned back against the counter slightly. "Weird how?"
"Quiet," Cole said. "But not bad quiet."
Something in my chest softened.
In the background I heard Trevor say, faintly, "Cole."
"What?" he called back immediately.
"Stop interrogating Elise."
"I'm not interrogating her," Cole informed him. Then, quieter into the phone: "He likes you a lot."
Heat climbed unexpectedly into my face.
"Cole," Trevor said again, closer this time.
"Okay, okay," Cole muttered.
I could hear movement in the background. Cabinet doors. The low hum of Trevor's voice saying something I couldn't make out.
Then Trevor came onto the line.
"Sorry," he said.
The apology sounded genuine enough that I laughed softly before I could stop myself.
Silence settled for a second after that.
Not awkward.
Just aware.
"Did you get home okay?" he asked quietly.
There it was again.
Asking.
"Yeah," I said.
Another small silence.
Then, carefully: "Are we okay?"
The question landed somewhere much deeper than I expected.
I looked around my apartment. The books. The cardigan. The life that had felt complete until someone else had started fitting himself carefully into it.
"We're getting there," I said honestly.
I heard him exhale softly on the other end.
"Okay," he said.
And something about the relief in his voice made me realize how much this had cost him too.
"Tomorrow," Cole shouted from somewhere farther away.
I smiled before I could stop myself.
"Tomorrow," I agreed.
I set the phone down.
Stood in the quiet.
Felt the full reality of what I had chosen and chose it again.
I was still standing at the kitchen table when my phone lit up.
Unknown number. Not a call. Three words and a photograph.
Thought you should see this.
The photograph was of me and Trevor in the car the previous night, shot through the window, his hand visible at my jaw, the city behind us blurred amber. My face turned toward his.
Someone had been outside.
Someone had been watching, carefully, long enough to get a clear shot through a car window at night.
The number wasn't saved. It wasn't local either ,a string of digits that didn't match any area code I recognized, which meant whoever sent it hadn't just been close enough to take the picture.
They had planned where to send it from.
I stood at my kitchen table and looked at the photograph for a long time.
I didn't delete the message.
I stared at the photograph long enough that the screen dimmed once in my hand.
My first instinct was to call Trevor.
That realization landed harder than the message itself.
Not panic.
Not fear.
Trevor.
I could already picture exactly how the conversation would go. The stillness that would settle into his voice. The way he would go frighteningly calm before he started making decisions.
And for one dangerous second, I wanted that.
Wanted him to take this out of my hands and make it disappear.
But the memory of his office came back immediately after it.
I am not a crisis to be managed.
I looked down at the photograph again.
Someone had been close enough to watch us through glass.
Close enough to wait.
And suddenly the apartment didn't feel quite as quiet anymore.
I picked up my phone.
Then stopped.
Because I wasn't sure yet whether calling Trevor would make me safer or pull me deeper into something I still didn't fully understand.