CHAPTER 17 #3
I set the pace. Unhurried at first, a deep roll of my hips, learning him, the slick stretch of it, the way he fills me; and he lets me, that's the astonishing thing, the enforcer lies back and lets me take what I want at the speed I want it, his hands roaming the give of me — the soft swell of my belly, the rock and sway of my chest as I move over him, his thumbs dragging across my nipples until I gasp and clench around him and his whole body jerks.
"That's — do that again, do that —" and I do, I grind down and clench and he swears like a man falling off something high.
"Filthy mouth," I tell him, riding him slower now, cruel-slow, the way he'd do to me, learning the lesson at his own school. "Even now. You can't help it."
"It's all I've — fuck — it's all I've got, malyshka, it's the only —"
"You've got a great deal more. " I take his scarred right hand off my hip and I press it flat between my breasts, over my own hammering heart, and hold it there.
"Feel that. That's mine, and it's going like this for you.
You've got everything I want, Gael, mouth and all.
" I roll my hips, deep and slow, and watch him come apart by degrees.
"Say it back. The thing you keep covering with a joke.
You don't have to say all of it. Just — let me see it. "
His face breaks open.
It just breaks, the charm sliding off it like the basting threads pulling free, and underneath is the boy who got told he was a tool and believed it, looking up at me like I'm a thing he'll spend the rest of his life not deserving and deserving anyway, and the word itself stays behind his teeth — the full confession belongs to some other night, I feel that, I let him keep the cover one more time — and instead he says, hoarse, shaking, "You picked me.
Say it again. Please. I have to — say you picked me. "
I lean down. I press my soft belly to his, chest to chest, his heart slamming under mine, and I move on him and I say it against his mouth: "I picked you.
I choose you, Gael. On purpose. Every day.
I'm keeping you out of that drawer for good.
You're a man, mine, and I want you, and I picked you first."
He breaks.
The cocky blade is gone, entirely gone, and there's just a man in the dark under me, shaking, his arms coming up around me and crushing me to him — all of me, every soft pound of me, held like the most valuable thing in the house — and he presses his face to the curve of me as I move, mouth open against it, breathing me in, and I feel him shake, feel the wet that leaks from the outer edge of his eye against my skin, and he lets me see it.
That's the gift, the thing he's never given anyone: he lets me see the blade weep, and he stays in it, holds my eyes through it, leaves the grin and the whistle and the easy joke all on the floor with his shirt. He just holds me and shakes and lets himself be chosen.
I ride him through it. I take us both there, my pace gone deep and certain, my hands braced flat on his chest, and when I clench around him and the clench turns to a long bright pull through my whole soft body I keep my eyes on his face, sovereign, unbracing, watching the chosen man watch me come apart on him.
"Amara —" he gasps, "I can't — you're — I'm gonna —" and I say "Then come, Gael, come for me, I've got you," and he does, his hips driving up, his arms locked around the give of me, his whole body bowing up into mine as he spills inside me with a broken sound that has my name buried somewhere deep inside it.
After, the record's still ticking in its run-out groove, the needle circling the place where the song ended, and neither of us reaches to lift it.
He's got me sprawled over him, my cheek over his heart, the slam of it under my ear and gradually, gradually slowing.
His scarred hand moves up and down my spine, over the swell of my hip, slow, like he's checking I'm real, like he's memorizing what he's allowed to keep.
"You came down a dark stair in your slippers," he says finally, into my hair, wondering, "to pick me."
"I did."
"Nobody picks me. " His voice is very quiet, the rooms very dark, the fog pressed to the windows. "I'm the one who makes the bad stop. That's the whole — that's what I'm for, trouble. I'm not the one anybody keeps."
I lift my head. I look at him, this dangerous beautiful undone man, and I put my palm flat over the falcon inked on his heart — a hunting bird, Nadia told me once, that mates for life — and I hold his green eyes in the lamplight.
"You're the one I keep," I say. "Get used to it."
His arms tighten. He's quiet a long time. Out past the windows the fog sits heavy and silent on the cold water, and inside it's warm, and I can feel his pulse under my hand finally, slowly, beginning to believe me.
"Say it again," he breathes, the cocky blade gone, just a man in the dark. The record turns. The needle rides the run-out groove and circles and circles.
"I choose you," I say, and mean it like a stitch that holds.
And Gael Sokolov, who in all his life has never been anyone's first choice, presses his face to my soft belly and shakes, and lets me see it.