Chapter 14 — Gold and Ash #2
He reached for the nightstand drawer without leaving the bed, produced protection, sheathed himself with shaking hands, and lay back. “Guide me,” he said. “Two seconds. Your hands, your angle, your depth. I do not move until you seat yourself.”
I straddled him, positioned him at my entrance slick and swollen from his mouth, and sank down inch by inch while we both groaned, my nails scoring light lines down his chest that I felt him memorize.
The stretch burned sweet, fullness blooming deep, and I paused halfway with my hands braced on his shoulders, breathing through the exquisite pressure while his hands hovered beside my hips, touching nothing, waiting on my word.
“Red?” he asked immediately, hands hovering beside my hips without touching. “Talk to me.”
“Green,” I said, surprising us both into a laugh. “More. Two seconds and I take the rest.”
I sank fully, took him to the root, and the feeling crested through me like surfacing from deep water, my breath tearing loose in a sob I did not bother to hide.
Then I moved, rolling my hips at my own rhythm, slow grinding circles that dragged him against every nerve, and he met me from below with shallow lifts, his hands finally settling announced on my hips, guiding without restraining, thumbs stroking while his eyes stayed locked on mine.
The bedside lamp threw our shadows huge on the wall, tangled and rocking.
The candle hissed and the furnace ticked under the floor and his breath counted mine, in and out, faster and faster.
Sweat sheened both of us, vanilla smoke clinging to skin over cedar and oil, and where our bodies joined the wet heat slicked and pulled with every stroke until I could feel nothing beyond him and the rhythm and the red word waiting unused like a guard at the door.
“Like that,” I breathed. “Just like that. Do not close your eyes.”
“I am not going anywhere,” he said. “Come for me. I have you.”
The second crest built higher, drawn from deeper, his thickness stroking exactly where I needed with every roll of my hips, and I felt the white edge rushing toward me like headlights through fog.
I felt it gather, felt my inner muscles begin to clutch and flutter around him, and then it broke in long pulsing waves that rolled through my whole body, my head thrown back, his name torn from my throat, my nails digging into his shoulders while he held my hips steady and rode it with me.
He followed three strokes later with a groan that shook the mattress, his back arching off the sheets, pulsing inside me while I milked him through it, our sweat cooling in the lamplight, his hands finally gripping my hips with my full permission and my blessing.
We lay tangled and breathing hard, him still inside me, my cheek on his chest over his hammering heart, his skin damp under my palm and his breath slowing by degrees.
His hands rested open on the blanket, neither holding nor claiming, exactly as promised.
I traced one fingertip along the tendons of his forearm, feeling the strength there held deliberately idle, and the trust of it moved through me warmer than the climax had.
Outside, a truck passed on the distant avenue with tires hissing on cold asphalt, and the furnace answered under the floor, and the room held.
After a while I rose on one elbow and looked down at him. The smeared Huntress-red still marked his mouth. I pressed my lips to his chest above his heart deliberately, leaving a fresh red kiss mark stamped on his skin.
“There,” I said. “Mine.”
“Yours,” he agreed. “May I stand? Two seconds. I will fetch your ribbon from the mirror.”
He returned minutes later with rain-cold on his hands and the cornflower silk in his fist. He knelt beside the bed and held it out. “Your hands,” he said. “Two seconds. You tie it where you choose. I suggest my right wrist, so every job I drive remembers who I answer to. But you choose.”
I took the ribbon and knotted it twice around his right wrist, snug but sliding, the way it had ridden mine for twelve years.
The silk looked startling against his scarred knuckles.
Then I bent and set light tooth-marks at his shoulder by my own choice, a crescent to match my knee, pressure and no pain, and he shuddered under my mouth.
“No bruise that shows,” I whispered. “Only ours.”
He turned his wrist and looked at the knot for a long moment. “Then hear the claim,” he said. “No threats. No teeth. You are the map I drive by now. Gold and ash, both. I burn for no one else.”
The silver lighter went clack then clink on the nightstand as he set it down without lighting it. The vanilla stub burned lower, flame drowning in its own wax pool, and at 3:12 a.m. it gave one last hiss and went out, smoke curling up gray in the lamplight while we watched it die together.
He banked the lamp low, and I locked the loft door from the inside with my own hand while he held the blanket back for me.
He left water on the nightstand and drew the blanket over us both.
We slept with our hands open side by side on the blanket, fingers nearly touching, no wrist hold anywhere in the dark.
For the first time in twelve years I did not dream ash.
Near dawn the burner phone lit the dresser with an Opal masquerade invite for October twenty-fifth glowing on its screen, and I turned toward the warmth of him and let morning wait.