Chapter 28 #2
His hands tighten at my waist. “I’m always going to be careful with you.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I begin undoing the buttons on his shirt. “Don’t hold back with me.” I tug his shirt tail out. “And I’ll return the favor.”
“Evie.” His voice is low and rough around the edges.
“I know,” I say. Because I do. I understand the weight of what we’re walking into and I’m choosing it anyway. I’ve been choosing it in increments without letting myself admit it. “I know.”
He kisses me then—deeper than before, one hand sliding into my hair, the other flat against my lower back, pulling me flush against him. I can feel the tension in him, the deliberate restraint he’s still keeping even now, and I want to dismantle it piece by piece.
He lets me remove his shirt, and the undershirt, and then his hands find the buttons of my cardigan—methodical, unhurried, like he’s determined to take this apart slowly whether I cooperate or not. He pushes it off my shoulders.
“Okay?” he murmurs against my temple.
I’m so done with that. I spin him so he’s the one with his back to the bed and work his belt buckle.
We’ve done a lot, but I haven’t yet tasted him.
The belt buckle angles down upon release, and I undo the button and the zipper. I press up on my toes, taking his mouth as I release his hard length.
When I break the kiss, I pause for a moment, my grip tight around him, and stroke, his gaze locked on mine.
I guide him back a step, until his legs meet the mattress, and he sits, feet flat on the floor.
Then I slowly kneel.
I flatten my tongue against his shaft.
My tongue circles his crown, taking in his salty taste.
He’s transfixed. The comforter gathers where he fists it with one hand, while the other brushes back my hair.
I take him deep and hear his groan.
It doesn’t take me long, working him with my mouth and my hand at his base before he stops me on a gasp.
I peer up, questioning.
“That feels amazing. But that’s not how I want you. Not tonight.”
I push up from the floor.
His pants are undone, but he’s still dressed.
“Remove those.” I gesture with my chin. “And get on the bed.”
I can tell I’ve surprised him—and I don’t fight my smile.
As he tackles his shoes and pants, I remove my sweater. After returning from the senator’s office, I changed into something more comfortable, an outfit that’s easily removed, leaving me in only my bra and panties in under a minute.
Undressed, he falters, taking me in.
I point at the headboard.
“Get up there. Now.”
He smirks. Entertained. But based on the evidence at hand, very turned on. And he obeys.
I crawl up on the bed too, near his legs.
He reaches for me, but I remain out of reach, unsnapping my bra. The straps loosen, and slowly, one strap falls, then the other.
I toss it aside and then straddle him.
I’m still in my panties—really a thong—and the slip of material won’t pose a problem.
I crawl over him, slowing only when my lips are inches from him, and lower my core, trapping his length to my center. The silk lies between us, but I feel every bit of him, even the ridge of his crown as I slowly shift back and forth.
“Jesus, Evie.”
His mouth finds my throat first. My collarbone. Then lower—tracing the curve of one breast, his tongue circling slowly.
I push back, seated against him, and he comes with me, hands over my breasts, my back. I keep rocking, but at this angle, it’s not quite enough.
“Here?”
I pull back and watch as he slides the silk to the side, replacing the scrap with his fingers.
I take his mouth, rising up to give him space.
“So wet.”
With a slight shift in the angle of his wrist, the pressure of his fingers inside me, on me—a sound escapes that I don’t recognize as mine.
“There she is,” he murmurs.
“Don’t be smug about it.”
“I’m not." He sounds like he means it. Like smugness is the last thing this is.
His fingers move in slow circles, reading me the way he reads everything—cataloguing what makes my breath catch and adjusting accordingly.
I reach up and slide a hand into his hair.
He presses in, and I stop being able to form complete thoughts.
“Gabe—”
“I’ve got you.”
He does. That’s the thing. He absolutely does.
I come apart quietly, arching into him, and he kisses me through it, swallowing the sound.
When I come back, he’s looking at me with that same expression.
He reaches past me to the nightstand—his wallet, a condom, practical even now, which is so entirely him that I almost smile.
“You don’t have to, you know.”
He hesitates, looking back at me.
“I have an IUD. I haven’t been with anyone in ages.”
“I’m clean,” he says. “You’re sure?”
“I want to feel you bare. Without anything between us.”
I lift up, the silk thong already pulled to the side. I guide him into place and sink slowly.
We both inhale.
This. It’s what I’ve needed.
Once I’m completely seated, he takes my mouth.
Our lips collide as my hips rock back and forth.
He breaks the kiss, holding me still. “God, you feel incredible.”
Then he shifts, and I find myself on my back, with him settled between my thighs, braced above me.
“I love you, Evie Thompson."
I don’t say it back—not with words. But I pull him down to me, and I think he understands.
He sets a slow pace at first—deliberate and thorough, so very Gabe. And then something gives. That last layer of restraint, the one I wanted to dismantle, finally comes loose. He moves harder. Deeper. Fast. Powerful.
His hand slides to my hip, steadying me, and I wrap my legs around him and pull him in and feel him groan against the side of my neck.
“Evie.”
“I know,” I breathe. “I know.”
I do know. I know what this is. I’ve been choosing it in increments without letting myself admit it, and now that we’re finally here, the last of my armor gives way.
I come a second time with our gazes locked and his hands holding me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear, and he follows moments later, head fallen, mouth at my throat, shuddering, his breath rough against my skin.
For a long moment, neither of us moves.
Then he presses his lips to my temple. My cheekbone. The corner of my jaw.
Quiet, deliberate punctuation.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Better than okay.”
He pulls back just enough to look at me. No operator mode now. No calculation, no reading the room. Just him. This might be what he looks like when he lets himself be seen.
“We’re okay?”
“Better than okay.”
“Good,” he says.
His arm settles around my shoulders, his fingers tracing an absent pattern along my skin.
“Hey, Gabe?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“I love you too. I probably always have.”
“I feel the same.”
He tugs me against him, holding me down, and I listen to his heartbeat slowly wind down.
“Well,” I say into his chest, “that took embarrassingly long to say out loud.”
I feel his chuckle, and his smile, and the press of his lips against my head.
Eventually, I get up and go to the bathroom and when I return, we bury under the comforter.
The rain against the window has steadied to something constant and low.
I’m tucked against his side, his arm around me, his fingers trailing along my shoulder.
He stares at the ceiling with the same focused quiet he brings to surveillance—but softer now.
The set of his jaw, the line of his shoulders.
All of it slightly different than the man who walked through my back door two hours ago.
“What’re you thinking?” I ask.
“That I wasted a lot of years.”
I press my lips together against a smile. “We were different people.”
“I wasn’t, though.” He glances down at me. “That’s the thing. I wanted you when I had no business wanting you and I just…” He exhales. “Decided it was better to want you from a distance than deal with what it meant up close.”
“Very logical.”
“It was a terrible plan.”
“It really was.”
His mouth curves. Just slightly—the ghost of that rare full smile that still catches me off guard when it surfaces. His hand stills on my shoulder, then resumes.
“I meant what I said earlier,” he says. “About telling you everything. About not making decisions for you.”
“I know you did.”
“I’m going to have to work at it.” He says it without apology but also without defensiveness—just the flat, honest acknowledgment of a man who knows his own patterns. “I’ve spent a long time thinking protecting people means controlling the variables. It’s going to take time to rewire that.”
I tilt my head to look up at him. “I know.”
“The longer we’re together, the closer we get, it’s gonna be that much harder. I saw what my mother went through when she lost my dad. I just don’t want you to be surprised when I—”
“Gabe.” I put a hand on his chest, over his heart. “I’m not asking you to be someone else. I’m asking you to ask me first. That’s all. Let me be a part of the discussion.”
He looks at my hand on his chest. Then covers it with his.
“I can do that,” he says. “I meant what I said earlier—I love you. And that feeling, it’s not going anywhere. I honestly don't know what I would do if—”
I silence him with two fingers, then a press of my lips.
“Me, too. If dreams are any indication, I’ve always wanted to end up here, but I didn’t really believe…
” I blink that back because this isn’t the time for self-doubt.
“I promise I’ll work at this, at us, because you’re important to me.
” And that’s something I’ve never said to anyone, because it’s something I’ve never felt before.
Outside, the rain keeps on. The lamp casts its small, warm circle. His hand covers mine and stays there, and for the first time in longer than I can remember, I don’t feel the particular tension of being alone with something too big to carry.
It doesn’t feel like surrender.
It feels like choosing a future.