26. Mia #2
Clothes disappeared between the hallway and the bed. His shirt. My shirt. Everything that was in the way of getting closer. I needed his skin against mine the way I needed air. Not a want. A requirement for continued existence.
The light through the window was warm. Late afternoon. Golden. It poured across the sheets and painted him in amber and shadow, and for one second I saw him the way he saw the world. The way an artist sees. All contrast and light and the beauty in things that are broken.
He pulled back just enough to look at me. His green eyes were bloodshot and swollen and the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. There was a question in them. Not asking for permission. Asking if I was sure. If I was here. If this was real.
I answered by pulling him closer.
I'm not going anywhere.
We fell into each other. Not graceful. Not careful. Just the desperate, gasping relief of finally letting go.
There was no pretending. No performance. No walls. Just two people stripped down to the rawest version of themselves, choosing each other in the middle of the wreckage.
His hands found me like he was memorizing something he was afraid he'd lose. Slow at first. Tracing. Learning. Like he was painting me with his fingers instead of a brush. Then not slow at all.
"Don't stop," I whispered. Not because I was afraid he would. Because I needed him to hear that I wanted this. That I wanted him. All of him. The broken parts and the brave parts and the parts he'd never shown anyone.
He pressed his forehead against mine. Our breathing was ragged. Tangled. The same air passing between us until I couldn't tell where mine ended and his began.
"You're shaking," he said, voice hoarse.
"So are you."
Something almost like a laugh. Almost. It cracked at the edges and turned into something else. Something fierce. He held on tighter.
I held on tighter.
There was a moment, in the middle of it, where everything slowed. Where the desperation burned down to something quieter and hotter and more dangerous. He looked at me. Really looked. Like he was trying to memorize every detail in case someone took this away from him too.
I put my hand on his jaw. Three days of beard under my palm. The crease between his brows that made him look like he was solving the hardest problem in the world. I smoothed it with my thumb.
"Stay with me," I whispered. "Right here. Right now. Just us."
His eyes closed. He turned his face into my palm and pressed his mouth there. A kiss so gentle it almost destroyed me.
The contrast between what his body was doing and what that single kiss said. This was a man at war with himself.
The part of him that had been taught that touch was danger fighting the part of him that knew this was different. That I was different. That this was the opposite of every locked room and every stolen thing.
"You're safe," I said. The words came out before I thought about them. "Tony. You're safe with me."
His breath hitched. Just once. A tiny fracture in all of that control.
Then he moved and I stopped thinking altogether.
Tony’s hands slid down my body. He stood a full foot taller than me and his frame covered mine as we hit the bed. His cock pressed thick and hard against my thigh, the head already slick.
He flipped us so I straddled him. “Fuck, Mia,” he said. “Your pussy is soaked. You are dripping all over my cock.”
I wrapped my fingers around his thick shaft and sank down, taking him inch by inch until he filled me completely. The stretch made me gasp. I rocked my hips and rode him hard, my tits bouncing with every slam.
“Ride my cock,” he said. “Take it all. Fuck yourself on it like you need it.”
His hands gripped my hips. I moved faster, the wet slap of skin loud in the room. He pinched my nipples and I moaned.
“Shit, your cunt squeezes me so tight,” he said. “You feel so fucking good.”
The need for more hit me hard. Tony sat up, wrapped one arm around my waist, and flipped me onto my hands and knees. He leaned over my back and thrust back inside me in one deep stroke.
“Oh fuck, Tony,” I cried out.
“Take every inch of my cock,” he said against my ear. “This pussy is mine right now. So wet and tight. I am going to fuck you until you cream all over me.”
He pounded into me from behind, one hand reaching around to rub my clit in rough circles. Each thrust pushed me forward on the sheets.
“You like that?” he asked. “Like me wrecking your cunt? Cum on my dick. Let me feel it.”
He pulled out, flipped me onto my back, and hooked my legs over his shoulders. Folded open beneath him, I took him even deeper as he drove in again.
“Look at you,” he said, voice rough. “Legs spread wide, taking my cock so deep. Your pussy is creaming all over me. Cum again. Soak my dick.”
My orgasm crashed through me. My walls clenched hard around him as I shook and cried out. Tony thrust deep one last time and groaned as he came, spilling hot cum inside me.
We moved together like we’d done this a thousand times and like it was the first time all at once. The urgency faded into something deeper. Not slower. Just more. More of everything. More honest. More open. More terrifying.
Because this wasn’t just need. This was trust. And trust was the thing Tony Rossi didn’t give anyone.
He was giving it to me.
I could have cried. I almost did. Not from sadness. From the sheer, staggering weight of being chosen by someone who had every reason to never let anyone close again. From the privilege of it. From the responsibility.
I wasn’t thinking about Angelina. I wasn’t thinking about Hadley or the TV studio or the three million viewers or the secret I still carried like a stone in my chest. I wasn’t thinking about anything except the man in front of me who had just done the bravest thing I’d ever witnessed and who was now coming apart in my arms in a completely different way.
There was a moment near the end where he whispered something against my neck. So quiet I almost missed it.
“Thank you.”
Not for this. Not for the physical. For everything. For listening on the porch. For not saying “I’m sorry.” For stepping in front of Angelina’s hand. For being here. For staying.
Two words. They wrecked me more than anything else that had happened in this cottage.
He gave me everything. Every wall he’d ever built came down.
And I caught him.
The way he’d caught me when I stumbled on the icy path that first week. The way he’d caught Avery when she launched herself off the porch railing. The way he caught the light on canvas and turned it into something that made people weep.
I caught him and I held on and I didn’t let go.
Afterward, neither of us moved. The cottage was quiet. The golden light had shifted, stretching long across the floor. His breathing slowed against me. His heartbeat, which had been hammering, settled into something steady.
The sheets smelled like us. Like paint and coffee and something warm I didn’t have a name for.
The curtain moved in a breeze from the window we’d forgotten to close.
Somewhere outside, a bird was singing like nothing had happened.
Like the whole world hadn’t just cracked open and rearranged itself in this tiny cottage in the mountains.
His forehead rested against mine. Our breathing was still ragged. His hand was in my hair, fingers tangled, holding on. I traced the line on his forearm where the paint never came off. Faded blue. Permanent as a tattoo.
Neither of us spoke for a long time. The cottage was warm. The light through the window had turned golden.
His heartbeat was slowing against my ribs.
Then Tony said, "She recognized you."
I went still.
"What?"
"Angelina." He was quiet for a moment. "When you stepped in front of me. Her face changed. Like she knew you."
I stared at the wall. My pulse started climbing.
"Whatever she was trying to place, she'll get there," he said. "Maybe tonight. Maybe this week. But she will."
The air in the cottage changed. I was back in the studio. The lights turning my brown eyes honey. Angelina in her cream suit. Three million people watching me say "Our Lady of Perpetual Victimhood" with a smile that could cut glass.
She'd watched that clip. I knew she had. Watched it and rewatched it and hated every frame.
My voice. My rhythm. My delivery. Those things don't change just because you dye your hair and trade a blazer for a T-shirt.
I'd been too angry to think. Too protective. Too full of adrenaline and fury and the sight of a man I loved naming the worst thing that had ever happened to him. I'd slipped into Hadley's voice without thinking.
And Angelina was a predator with a long memory.
"Whatever's coming," Tony said, pulling me closer. His arm around me, heavy and warm. My head fit against his shoulder. "We face it together."
I nodded. The words wouldn't come. Because I knew something Tony didn't.
Whatever was coming was so much worse than a grandmother with a grudge.
And I still hadn't told him the truth.