24. Mel #2
Two years of touch-debt, I think hazily, and he’s paying it back one nerve ending at a time.
His fingers slide inside me, two at once, and the stretch makes me gasp. His thumb finds my clit, and he sets a rhythm that’s gentle and relentless, building a pressure low in my belly that feels like sunrise, pink and impossible, just like he said.
“Hi,” he breathes against my mouth, wondering, like he’s just found me all over again. “God, I’d have known this face in the dark.”
The praise hits like lightning. I dig my nails into his shoulders and chase the sensation, riding his hand, shameless and desperate.
“I used to be so careless with this.” His mouth drags along my jaw. “I’ll never be careless with you again. Not one second of it.”
“Then put me back together.”
He withdraws his fingers, I whimper at the loss, and then he’s there, the head of him notched at my entrance, and he looks down at me with what looks like reverence.
“I love you,” he says. “I never stopped.”
He pushes into me slow.
So slow. Inch by devastating inch, and I feel every one of them, the thick stretch of him splitting me open by degrees while he watches my face like it’s the only thing keeping him alive.
It’s been two years since he’s been inside me and my body has changed, is still changing, and he reads all of it, where to ease, where to press, when to let me breathe around the fullness of him.
“Okay?” he whispers.
“More.”
He sinks deeper. Bottoms out. Holds there for a moment that stretches into eternity while we both remember how to breathe.
Then he moves.
It’s unhurried, this rhythm, deep and slow and thorough, every thrust designed to touch the very center of me. His forehead drops to mine. Our breath mingles. His hips roll in a wave that builds and builds without cresting, keeping me on the edge of an enormous drop.
“I used to dream about this,” he confesses against my mouth. “Finding you. Getting you back. And the dreams were nothing - nothing - compared to this.”
“I dreamed too.” I’m barely coherent. “I’d wake up reaching for you.”
His rhythm stutters. He makes a sound like he’s been shot.
“Don’t tell me that.” His thrusts deepen. “I can’t - if you tell me things like that I can’t-”
“Can’t what?”
“Can’t last.”
I pull him down for a kiss, messy and deep, and roll my hips to meet his next thrust. The angle changes. He hits the spot that makes stars explode behind my eyes.
“There,” I gasp. “Right there, don’t stop-”
He doesn’t stop.
His hand slides between us, thumb finding my clit slick and swollen, working me in tight circles in time with every deep drive of his cock. The dual sensation is too much, too good, and I feel the orgasm gathering height like a wave about to break.
“Give me this one,” he says against my throat, ragged, his control fraying with every stroke. “I want to watch. Look at me when it takes you.”
So I do. I hold his eyes while the pressure winds unbearable and low, and when it finally breaks it comes as a fault line, everything in me going loose and molten at once.
I sob his name into his mouth, Santi, Santi, please, and the sound of it finishes the job on his restraint.
His hips lose their rhythm. A raw, broken sound tears out of him, and he pins me flush and follows me over, buried to the root, shaking through it with his forehead pressed hard to mine.
We collapse together.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks. We just breathe. His weight is warm and heavy on top of me, and I trace lazy patterns on his sweat-damp back while the afternoon light goes gold to amber around us.
“Mel.” His voice is muffled against my neck.
“Mm.”
“I have to tell you something.”
I tense. After everything, there’s still more?
He feels it immediately. Pulls back to look at me, and his expression is soft, unguarded, almost nervous.
“The mortgage,” he says. “On Hattie’s farm.”
My pulse trips and stumbles.
“I bought it back.” He says it quickly, like ripping off a bandage. “Days ago. The moment I found out what she’d done. The farm is Hattie’s again, free and clear - there’s nothing left for anyone to hold over you, over this place, over the kids. It’s done.”
I stare at him.
“You bought back the mortgage.”
“Yes.”
“Days ago.” I can’t get my voice above a whisper.
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I wanted-” He takes a breath. “I wanted you to decide to stay without knowing. Without feeling like you owed me anything. I wanted it to be your choice.”
My throat is tight. My eyes are burning.
“You absolute idiot,” I whisper.
And then I’m kissing him, and crying, and laughing all at once, because this man, this infuriating, impossible, wonderful man, protected me without asking for credit. Made the grand gesture and hid it behind a casual confession in bed like it was nothing.
When we finally break apart, I press my face into his chest and breathe him in, sweat and soap and the note that’s just Santi, always has been, even when I wanted to forget.
“I missed you,” I say. “I missed you so much.”
His arms close around me like a vault.
And that’s everything.