6. Margot
Chapter Six
MARGOT
I wake in an unfamiliar bed and for three seconds I don't know where I am.
Then I feel him.
Rogue is behind me. Massive, warm, one arm heavy across my waist. His breathing is slow and even, deep enough to tell me he's still asleep.
His chest is pressed against my back and I can feel the steady thud of his heart through the thin cotton of the t-shirt I'm still wearing.
His shirt. His bed. His arm holding me against him.
Morning light creeps through the curtains.
Heavier ones than in room six, blackout-quality, but the Memphis sun is persistent.
The room is sparse. Bigger than mine, a king bed that actually accommodates his frame, a dresser, a closet with the door open showing a row of plain shirts and dark jeans.
A nightstand with a lamp, a phone charger, and a dog-eared copy of Sun Tzu's Art of War that is almost too on-the-nose.
I should feel wrong about this.
I don't.
My body is sore in ways I haven't been sore in years.
The good kind, the used kind. My thighs ache.
There's a bite mark on my shoulder that I discover.
Between my legs I'm tender and swollen and the sense memory of last night, the wall, his mouth, the relentless drive of him inside me, sends a pulse of heat through me that I don't try to suppress.
His arm tightens. He's awake.
"Morning," I say to the wall.
His lips find the back of my neck. A press. A confirmation of location. His hand spreads flat on my stomach, warm through the shirt.
"You stayed." His voice is sleep-rough. Deeper than usual, scraped raw.
"You asked me to."
"Didn't think you would."
I turn in his arms. Face him. He looks different in the morning light. Less sharp, less coiled. His hair is messed and there's a crease from the pillow on his cheek and his eyes are that pale grey-blue, sleepy, watching me with something that might be wonder if he'd allow himself the word.
"I'm here," I say.
He kisses me. Slow this time. Nothing like last night's desperate collision.
This is unhurried. Tasting. His tongue slides against mine and his hand moves from my stomach to my hip, pulling me flush against him.
I can feel him hard against my thigh, the rigid length of his cock pressing through the thin fabric of his boxer briefs.
"Margot." My name in his mouth sounds like a decision. Like he's choosing something every time he says it.
I push his shoulder and he rolls. Lets me push him onto his back and straddle his hips. His hands land on my thighs, gripping, and he looks up at me with a focused intensity that makes my breath catch. I pull the shirt off. Sit above him in nothing and let him look.
He does. His gaze moves over me slow and thorough. My breasts, my stomach, the flare of my hips, the bruise on my inner thigh from his grip last night. His thumbs trace circles on my hips. Purposeful. Like he's memorizing the geometry of me.
"Come here," he says.
I lean down. Kiss him with my hair falling around us like a curtain.
His hands slide up my back, rough and warm, and he grips the back of my neck to hold me against his mouth.
We kiss until I'm dizzy with it, until I'm grinding against the hard ridge of him beneath me and the friction through his underwear is making me crazy.
I reach between us. Push his boxer briefs down and wrap my hand around him. He groans into my mouth. A sound that vibrates through both of us. He's thick and hot in my palm and when I stroke him his hips surge upward, involuntary.
His jaw tight, the muscles in his stomach clenching. Then I position myself above him and sink down.
Slow. So slow it's torture for both of us. I take him inch by inch and feel every bit of the stretch, the fullness, the way my body accommodates him. He's gripping my hips and his head is pressed back against the pillow, throat exposed, tendons standing out.
“Margot…fuck." He tries to thrust up. I press my hands flat on his chest and hold him down.
"My pace," I say.
His eyes snap to mine. Something flares there. Surprise, hunger, the sharp edge of a man who's not accustomed to being told what to do. But he stills. Hands on my hips, holding but not directing. Letting me lead.
I ride him slow. Roll my hips in long, deep circles that drag his cock against every nerve I have.
It's different from last night. Last night was collision, impact, force.
This is precision. I find the angle that makes my breath stutter and I work it, grinding down on him, chasing sensation with methodical patience.
He watches me. Never closes his eyes, never looks away from my face. His thumbs stroke the hollows of my hips, find the crease of my thighs, slide inward until they're close to where I need them.
"Touch me," I say.
His thumb finds my clit and I shudder. He rubs slow circles, matching the rhythm of my hips, and the dual sensation, the fullness of him inside me, the focused pressure on my clit, builds and builds.
I'm bracing on his chest, fingers curling against his skin, and his heartbeat is hammering under my palm.
"You're beautiful," he says. And it sounds like it’s not something he’s used to saying. Like noticing beauty is a confession.
I lean back. Change the angle. He goes deeper and I gasp. A sound that seems to snap something in him because his hips buck upward and the thrust hits something inside me that makes my vision spark.
"Again," I manage.
He does it again. And again. Thrusting up into me while his thumb works my clit and his other hand grips my hip with bruising strength.
The pace accelerates. My control slipping, his patience breaking.
I'm bouncing on him now, graceless and desperate, chasing the orgasm that's building at the base of my spine.
"That's it," he growls. "Take what you need."
I come. It crests and crashes through me in waves, my back arching, my hands flying to grip his forearms. I clench around him and hear him curse, and then he's gripping my hips with both hands and fucking up into me hard and fast, using me, taking his own pleasure from the spasms of my body.
He comes with a groan that sounds torn from his chest. Pulls me down flush against him and buries himself deep, pulsing inside me.
His arms wrap around me and hold tight, and his face presses into my neck and for one moment he's not the president, not the killer, not the man with steady hands and a cold mind. He's just a body against mine, shaking.
We breathe together. Minutes pass. I'm draped over him, boneless, his softening cock still inside me. His hand moves up and down my spine in a rhythm that might be unconscious. Probably is. I don't think he realizes he's doing it.
"Regret it?" he asks. The same question from last night.
I lift my head. Look at him. His face is open in a way I haven't seen before. Unguarded. Like the defenses come down in the aftermath and he hasn't rebuilt them yet.
"No," I say. "Do you?"
"I should."
"But?"
His hand stops on my lower back. Presses flat. Possessive. "But I can't regret something that felt necessary."
Necessary. I turn the word over. It's not romantic. It's not meant to be. It's honest. This thing between us didn't feel like a choice. It felt like a conclusion. Like something the equation was always going to produce.
I roll off him and the sheets are tangled around us, damp, smelling like sex and sweat and skin. The room is warm. The AC in this part of the building struggles against July, and two bodies generating heat haven't helped. I don't mind. The discomfort feels honest.
"Come here," he says when I'm cleaned up. He pulls me against him again, my back to his chest, his arm across my waist. Like we've been doing this for years instead of hours.
"What happens now?" I ask. The same question from the gas station, but the context has shifted entirely.
"Now you stay." His lips against the back of my neck. "Not because I'm keeping you. Because you're choosing."
"Those sound like the same thing from the outside."
"Do they feel the same from the inside?"
I think about it. About the lock on the inside of the door, the unlocked exits, the three days I could have run and didn't. About the fact that right now, in this bed, I feel more present than I've felt in months of twelve-hour shifts and empty apartments and a life that was technically fine and actually nothing.
"No," I say. "They don't feel the same."
His arm tightens. His breath is warm on my neck. Outside, the Mississippi moves south and the Memphis morning heats up and the world goes on doing whatever the world does.
In here, there's just this. Two people who shouldn't make sense, making sense anyway.
I close my eyes and let myself have it.