Chapter 15
Santo
She’d put the pajama top on at some point in the night.
I’d felt her move—the brief absence of warmth against my chest, the rustle of flannel, and then she was back, the small moons pressed between us, her face finding the hollow below my collarbone like it had GPS coordinates for the spot.
Just the top. Nothing else. The buttons done wrong—one off, the whole line shifted, the kind of mistake hands made in the dark when the brain was still asleep and the body was just reaching for the nearest armor.
I didn‘t fix them. I liked them wrong.
When I woke, she was still asleep. The sleep of a person who had emptied herself completely and had nothing left to keep her at the surface. Deep. Heavy. The breathing so slow I matched mine to it without meaning to.
Midge was at the foot of the bed. Curled into a comma, the stub tail tucked, one ear up even in sleep—the eternal sentinel, monitoring for threats even when the threats had been dealt with and the house was quiet and the only danger was a man lying awake at six in the morning watching a woman breathe.
Her eyelids moved. The flutter I’d learned to recognize—the lashes trembling, the breath shifting, consciousness arriving in stages like tide coming in. A sound left her. Not a word. A hum. Low, private, the sound of a body surfacing from deep water and finding air.
Her eyes opened.
Dark. Soft. The brief, disoriented second where she didn’t know where she was—and then the recognition. The room. The light. Me.
She smiled.
“Hi, Daddy.” she said.
“Hi, Baby Girl.”
She kissed me. Morning-lazy, her mouth soft. The kind of kiss that wasn‘t going anywhere—or didn’t know it was going somewhere yet. Just contact. Just the first thing her body wanted to do upon waking, which was find mine and confirm it was still there.
I pulled her on top of me.
Her weight settled—thighs straddling my hips, the flannel top riding up, her bare skin against my stomach. She was warm. Sleep-warm.
She moved. Not deliberately—half-asleep still, her hips shifting, finding the position that felt right, and the position that felt right was directly over me.
The slow grind of her against my shorts.
My body responded before my brain—hardening under her, the blood moving south with tremendous speed.
Her eyes widened. She felt it. The press of me against her. Her hips rolled again—this time deliberate, the sleep clearing, the intent arriving.
“Wait,” I said.
She stopped. Looked down at me. The hair falling around her face, the dark strands catching the grey light.
“You’re not allowed to rush,” I said. The Daddy voice. Low. The register that made her breathing change. “We’re taking our time.”
“I don’t want to take our time.”
“I don’t care what you want.”
Her pupils dilated. I watched it happen—the black expanding, pushing the dark brown to a thin ring. The response that told me everything. The response that said she wanted exactly what I was going to give her, which was slowness she’d fight against and lose.
“Sit up.”
She sat up. Straight. Her weight settling more fully on me, the pressure of her almost unbearable. I reached for the buttons of the flannel top. The misaligned ones. My fingers found the first—small, round, the same buttons I’d done up two nights ago with clumsy hands and patient concentration.
I undid them slowly.
One. Two. Three. The fabric parting in a line down her center, the warm brown skin appearing in a widening strip. My hands worked without rushing. Each button a small event.
The last button. The flannel fell open. I pushed it off her shoulders — slow, the fabric sliding down her arms, pooling at her wrists before she shook it free.
She was bare above me. The morning light on her skin.
The small breasts, the dark nipples already tight from the cold or the want or both.
Her ribs visible—too visible, the architecture of a body that had been underfed for years showing through the surface.
Her stomach flat, the muscles there lean and defined, the body of a woman who’d been built by running and climbing and surviving.
My hands found her. Palms on her ribcage, fingers spread. I moved them up—slow, the roughness of my scarred knuckles against the softness of her, the contrast deliberate. Over her ribs. The sides of her breasts. My thumbs found her nipples and circled.
She inhaled.
I pinched. Sharp. The twist she loved—I’d learned this, filed it, the particular angle and pressure that made her back arch and her lips part. Her gasp was immediate, involuntary, the sound escaping before she could catch it.
“You’re beautiful,” I said.
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
She leaned down. Her mouth found mine—hard this time, the kiss landing with intent, her way of shutting me up the only way she knew how. Her hands gripped my shoulders. Her teeth caught my bottom lip.
I flipped her.
One motion. My hands on her waist, my hips lifting, the controlled violence of a man who’d been pinned by something he wanted and had decided to reverse the position.
She landed on her back with a small sound—surprise, not fear—and I was over her, my weight on my forearms, my body between her thighs, her hair spread across the pillow where the rabbit had been.
Her eyes were wide. Dark. Wanting.
I held her gaze. Let her feel the weight of me. Let her feel the warmth and the stillness and the specific, devastating patience of a man who had all morning and intended to use every second of it.
“Now,” I said. “We go slow.”
I started at her throat.
My mouth finding the pulse—the thin flutter under the skin. Fast. Getting faster. The rhythm of a body that knew what was coming and was already running ahead of it, trying to get there before I let her.
I wasn’t going to let her. Not yet.
I kissed down. The hollow of her throat.
The ridge of her collarbone. The space between her breasts where her heart was doing something frantic and visible, the skin moving with each beat.
I took my time. Mouth open, tongue flat, tasting the warmth of her — sleep and rosemary and something underneath that was just her, just the specific salt of Cora’s skin, the flavor I’d been learning since the first night I’d held her and pressed my face to her hair and understood that I was finished.
Her stomach tensed under my lips. The lean muscles contracting, the body bracing for what came next. I kissed the ridge of her hip. The sharp bone. The soft skin just inside it, where the texture changed and her breath caught.
I settled between her thighs.
She tried to close them. Instinct—the reflexive contraction of a body that was about to be seen in the place it was most vulnerable.
Not fear. Not refusal. The particular resistance of a woman who wanted something badly enough to be terrified of it, and whose first response to being terrified was to protect.
I caught her knees. Pinned them open. My hands on the insides of her thighs, the scarred knuckles against the soft skin, holding her where I wanted her with the kind of steady pressure that said this isn’t negotiable.
Her back arched. Her hands found the sheets.
“Ask me,” I said.
She didn’t. Her jaw set. The stubborn line I’d memorized—the particular compression that meant she was going to fight this, going to hold out, going to make me work for it because surrender didn’t come easy to her.
I waited.
My mouth an inch from her. Close enough that she could feel my breath.
Close enough that every exhale was torture.
I held her thighs apart and I waited and the waiting was its own kind of violence—patient, deliberate, the cruelty of a man who knew exactly what she needed and was withholding it until she used her words.
“Please,” she said. The word breaking loose. Small and wrecked.
I rewarded her.
My tongue found her—flat, slow, the full length of her in one stroke that made her hips lift off the bed.
The sound she made wasn’t a moan. It was something more fundamental—a release, a pressure valve opening, the specific noise of a body that had been holding its breath and could finally exhale.
My hands tightened on her thighs. I held her open and I tasted her and the world narrowed to this: her body under my mouth, her hands in the sheets, the small, desperate sounds escaping her like things she’d been keeping caged.
I brought her close.
I felt it building—the tension climbing through her thighs, the muscles tightening under my hands, her breathing going sharp and shallow.
I knew the sound she made right before. The specific pitch change, the way her voice dropped half a register and then broke upward. She was there. Right there. The edge.
I pulled back.
“No—“ The word came out of her like something torn. Her hips chasing my mouth, her body arching, the frustration physical and immediate. Her hand found my hair — gripping, pulling, the scarred fingers desperate. “Don’t stop, don‘t—“
I did it again. Brought her to the edge. Held her there with my tongue and my hands and the steady, relentless patience that was costing me everything I had. Then pulled back.
“Daddy, please—“
The sound of it. Those two words in that voice—broken, raw, stripped of every wall she’d ever built.
My body responded with a violence that nearly ended the whole exercise.
I was so hard it hurt, the pressure concentrated and blinding, and for three seconds I almost lost control.
Almost just pushed into her right then. Almost gave us both what we wanted because the sound of her begging was so fucking good.
I didn’t let her come. I kissed up her body instead—her stomach, her ribs, the underside of her breast, her collarbone, her throat. She was trembling under me. Full-body tremors. Her skin flushed, her eyes dark and wet and furious.
I entered her slow.