Epilogue #4
I love the way he tastes after a night under market lights. Salt and heat and the sweet ghost of chamoy on his skin. I love how his thighs tremble, how his fingers try not to dig into my scalp, how he forgets to be clever when I take him deep enough to make his breath stutter.
“Fuck,” he gasps. “Fuck… your mouth.”
I drag off him slowly, tongue pressing under the head, and look up.
His glasses are crooked.
His chains are twisted.
He looks like my favorite bad decision that survived a year and turned into my whole life.
“Hands on the door,” I say.
He puts both palms flat against the door above his head.
Hermoso.
I go back down and this time, I don’t tease. I work him with my mouth and one hand, fast and messy, letting him hear how much I want him. Wet sounds. His breath. My own rough groans around him. His hips twitch, and he catches himself against the door.
“Fabián,” he says, his voice cracking. “I’m close.”
I pull off.
He makes a broken sound that goes straight to my dick.
“No,” I say.
His eyes snap open. “No?”
“No.”
“That’s cruel.”
“You started this with the shorts.”
“You said you’d take them off with your teeth.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t say you’d edge me by the door like a villain.”
I stand, and he looks at me, breathing hard, mouth open, face flushed. I grab his jaw and kiss him. He tastes himself on my tongue and moans into it, hands coming down from the door to fist in my shirt.
Then his body rocks against mine, hard and needy. I feel him bare against me through my Dickies, and something in my head snaps clean in half.
“Bedroom,” he whimpers.
“No.”
His eyes widen and I hook my hands under his thighs and lift. He wraps around me automatically and his back hits the door again, harder this time, and the frame rattles.
“Nene—”
He clutches my shoulders, breathing all shallow. “Yeah?”
“I need to be inside you now.”
The words rip out of me with no patience left.
His pupils blow wide. “Then do it.”
“Elías.”
“Do it,” he says again, his voice rougher. “Right here.”
My whole body goes hot.
For one second, I think about the logistics.
Then I stop because thinking has never served me well around Elías Cárdenas.
I hold him up with one arm and shove my pants open with the other.
It is clumsy. Desperate, and he laughs once against my mouth, then the laugh turns into a gasp when I press my hips forward.
“You’re gonna drop me,” he breathes.
“I’m not.”
“You sure?” He trembles a little, and I feel it in my hands.
“I’ve carried engines heavier than you.”
His mouth falls open. “That was almost sweet.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
He kisses me hard, and I reach blindly toward the little entry table, knocking my keys to the floor before my fingers find the lube I absolutely did not leave there for emergencies.
Except I did.
Because I am disgusting.
And practical.
He sees it and laughs breathlessly. “For shame, keeping lube by the door now?”
“You wore yellow shorts.”
“So this is my fault?”
“Yes.” I slick my fingers fast, too impatient, but he grabs my wrist.
“Hey.”
I stop immediately.
His eyes hold mine. “Don’t rush that part.”
My breathing shakes; he’s right.
I kiss him, a little softer and a lot less crazed. “Sorry, nene. I know.”
His expression softens too, then he opens his legs wider around my waist and says, “But don’t take all night either.”
I laugh against his mouth.
“Fucking brat.”
I work him open against the door, one hand under his thigh, the other between us, his breath hot against my cheek. It is not as slow as the bed would be. Not as controlled. But he talks me through it like he always does, even when his voice breaks.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“More.” He pants as his head hits the door. “Right there.”
“Fuck, Fabián, I need you.”
And when I get myself lined up, he is shaking.
So am I.
He grabs my face with both hands. “Look at me.”
Elías’s eyes are dark and wet and mine. “Give me all of you, carino,” he whispers.
I press in, and the first inch steals the room.
His body opens around me, hot and tight, and my grip on his thigh almost slips because every time still feels like the first time and all the times after it.
The barbell drags, catches, and pulls a sensation through me so sharp I have to bury a groan against his mouth.
Elías’s head drops back against the door. “Fuck.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.” His nails dig into my neck. “More. Papi, more.”
I give him more, and it’s slow enough not to hurt him.
Fast enough to feel like losing. When I finally sink all the way in, both of us go still.
The door presses against his back. His legs are locked around my waist. My pants are shoved halfway down my thighs.
His shorts and briefs are still around one ankle, bright yellow and ridiculous.
I have him suspended against our front door, and I am so hard, so full of him, so in love I can barely breathe.
He touches my face. “Fabián.”
“I love you,” I say.
His lips part.
I don’t mean to keep going.
I really don’t, but something about being inside him here, at our door, with the whole night still on our skin and that conversation at the booth still burning in my chest, cracks me open.
“I love you,” I say again, rougher. “Fuck, I love you.”
His face softens.
Then I move deeper, and his softness shatters.
The first thrust knocks a sound out of him that makes my knees almost buckle.
I pin him harder to the door and fuck him there, short and deep and desperate, because I can’t wait.
I can’t make it to the bed. I can’t pretend I haven’t spent an entire year learning that every time I get him alone, I still want him like I’ve never had him before.
He clings to me and takes me. Whispers my name against my mouth like a prayer. All while the door rattles. My belt buckle hits my thigh with each thrust of my hips.
The keys are somewhere on the floor, and leftovers are definitely getting cold.
“Elías,” I groan, and his hand slides to the back of my neck.
“Yeah?” he says through a moan.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Have a baby with me.” The words just fall out of my mouth.
He goes still, and that makes me stop. My whole body goes cold because now the words hang in the space between us.
Heavy.
Insane.
Too much.
Too soon even after a year.
Not soon enough because I’ve thought about him with Fatima on his hip, him in my kitchen, him in our bed, him at my family’s table, him laughing with my tía, him calling my tío “Tío Jorge” like he was always allowed to.
I have thought about a baby with his eyes or mine or neither. A baby that comes to us through paperwork and waiting. Or one that takes lots of money, family support, and every complicated thing that might be worth it if he’s beside me.
I’ve thought about it.
I just didn’t mean to say it while buried inside him against the front door like a man with no sense and too much heart.
“Elías.”
He grabs my chin in a firm grip and forces my eyes to his. “?Me estás tratando de preguntar algo?”
My breath catches and his thumb strokes once along my jaw. His face is flushed and wrecked, still full of want, but his eyes are clear.
“Fabián,” he whispers. “Ask me.”
My throat tightens so hard it hurts. This is so not how I imagined asking him. Not against our front door and definitely not with his yellow shorts still around one ankle.
But here I am asking him while I’m inside him, shaking like every brave part of me has decided to crawl out through my mouth at once.
It’s messy.
Desperate.
Too honest to be pretty.
Entirely us.
I hold his face with one hand, keeping him close, keeping myself from looking away. “?Quieres ser mi esposo, muneco?” I whisper. “?Quieres tener un bebé conmigo?”
His lips part, but I don’t stop there.
“Porque yo sí quiero estar contigo el resto de mi vida.”
For a second, he forgets how to breathe, and then it’s like the meaning of it all lands.
My husband, and a baby someday.
Forever.
His eyes shine. “Fabián.”
“You asked me to ask.” I pant, then give him a sheepish grin.
A laugh breaks out of him, and it’s one that tells me everything I need to know before he says the word.
“Sí,” he whispers.
My chest caves in. “What?”
“Yes, pendejo.” He grabs my face with both hands. “To all of it.”
For a second, I can’t move.
I forget how to breathe and can’t do anything except stare at him while my whole life rearranges itself around one word.
Sí.
He smiles, but it trembles.
“You wanna marry me and have a baby with me while you’re inside me against our front door?” he whispers. “Fine. Very on brand for you.”
I choke on a laugh. “I love you.”
“I know.” His thumbs brush my cheeks. “I love you too.”
I kiss him, laughing into it because I’m about to cry against our front door with my dick still inside my boyfriend, future husband, and someday father of my kid, and if that is not the most ridiculous fucking thing my life has ever handed me, I don’t know what is.
He kisses me back with both hands on my face.
Not letting me hide.
When I pull back, I rest my forehead against his. “I’m going to marry you,” I whisper. “You and your ridiculous little shorts.”
His body clenches around me, and I almost come.
“Say that again,” he breathes.
I thrust once, deep enough to make his head hit the door softly.
“I’m going to marry you.”
“Fuck.”
“And we’re going to have a baby.”
His mouth opens and a sound comes out that I will remember until the day I die, because it is his whole heart trying to speak through pleasure.
“Papi,” he whispers, wrecked.
“Yeah?” I grunt, thrusting into him.
“You better not be saying that just to get me to come.”
I laugh, then bite his jaw. “You think I need help?”
“No.” His smile trembles. “But it’s working.”
I kiss him again and fuck him against the door, slower than before, deeper, holding him like I already said vows. His body rocks with mine, his breath catching, his hands everywhere.
My shoulders.
My face.
My throat.
He touches me like he is checking that I’m real.
I am. I’m more real than I’ve ever been.
I slide one hand between us and wrap my fingers around him; he gasps.