Chapter 5 #2
I lay her back and take my time. I don’t perform tenderness; I practice it. I count her breaths against my wrist. I match the pace to the way her eyes go unfocused and then snap back to me, like she’s making sure I didn’t disappear when she stopped holding the reins. I don’t. I stay.
When the room gets quieter—the city, the elevators, the HVAC, all of it—what’s left is the rhythm we built between two songs at a party and carried here under our coats. It’s steady. It’s ours. It’s the sound a body makes when it stops being a locked door.
She closes her eyes; I say her name and they open again. “With me?” I ask.
“With you.” She answers.
“When I touch you.” I say, voice low, even. “You stay right here. You let me lead. Clear?”
She nods, but that isn’t enough. “Say it.”
“Clear.” She breathes.
I don’t smile. I approve.
I move closer, stopping just inside her reach. The shiver running through her skin tells me she feels me before I even touch her—the heat between us a halo.
“Hands where I can see them.” Her hands settle. “Good. Now breathe.”
I start at her wrist, my thumb tracing along a vein until her breath stumbles. I’m not exploring yet; I’m claiming territory.
“You feel that?” I ask, glancing up to meet the weight of her gaze. She hums, low and wrecked. “That’s what waiting tastes like.”
I take my time. Always one move shorter than she expects. Every pullback is both punishment and promise. Slowly, I claim my way down, settling between her legs.
Her hand reaches for my shoulder, trying to ground herself as a tremor moves through her, thighs pressing together in reflex.
“Patience.” I murmur. “You begged me for control. This is what it looks like.”
She doesn’t argue. She can’t. She’s caught between ache and awareness.
I watch frustration bloom, and something in me softens—not pity, possession. I keep her suspended, using words more than motion.
“You want more?” I ask, tracing a calloused hand along the inside of her thigh. “You don’t.”
She hisses—not out of fear, but need.
I lower my head, close enough that she can feel my breath trace her skin, just shy of where she’s silently begging me to explore. Tonight, nothing is hurried. Nothing careless.
“Only this,” I say, and the restraint burns hotter than any roughness ever could.
I press a kiss to her thigh, nostrils flaring at the intoxicating scent of her arousal. When my fingers begin to explore, her head tilts back, a sound caught between a sigh and surrender.
I edge her deliberately, controlling the rise and fall until she’s shaking with the effort not to fall apart.
“You’re doing so well,” I murmur. “Stay right there. Stay with me.”
Her sounds undo me—those soft hums and broken moans, the way she squirms against each flick of my tongue as I taste her heat. I take my time. Again—nothing hurried. Nothing careless.
It’s a reminder I keep repeating to myself while what’s raging in my pants begs to be inside her.
When I finally think I’ve taken her far enough—needy, soaked, trembling on the edge—I stop. Because I want her to remember this night when I do claim her. I want the next time to be explosive, unforgettable.
Silence drops like a blanket as I rest on my elbow beside her, searching her eyes as she searches mine.
I steady her, my palm cupping her jaw, forehead pressed against hers. “Breathe,” I whisper.
She exhales a shaky breath of relief. “That’s it. You’re safe.”
She collapses into me—not defeated, just emptied of everything but pulse and warmth.
I kiss her temple, lazy and reverent. “Only this tonight,” I repeat, quieter now. “Next time, you won’t have to ask.”
Afterward, the world returns in pieces—the hum of the vent, the thin seam of light under the blackout curtains, the soft, human sound the mattress makes when we both laugh at ourselves at the same time.
I roll onto my back, breathing like I just finished a backcheck I didn’t think I had in me. She drapes an arm across my chest, and I cover her fingers with mine. Her pulse beats steady against my ribs.
It’s a good address.
We don’t rush to dress the scene up with talk. We let breath do what speech can’t. When words finally arrive, they’re simple.
“I’m not sorry,” she says.
“I wouldn’t believe you if you were,” I answer.
She shifts, chin on my sternum, eyes searching my face like she’s looking for the cracks she can memorize while they’re still hairline. “You kept your promise,” she says.
“I’ll keep it again tomorrow,” I say. “And the day after, when you decide you need space, and the day after that if you don’t.”
She huffs, amused and a little pained. “You think you know me.”
“I know the you who stops running,” I say. “The rest I’m going to keep learning without pretending I’m owed it.”
Her mouth softens into something that isn’t a smile but is close kin.
She rolls onto her side and I turn with her, our knees fitting like we practiced more than once.
The room has that post-storm clarity—pressure gone, air washed clean.
It won’t last forever. Nothing good does without work. But for now, it’s enough.
“Wayne is going to try to kill you,” she says quietly.
“He can try,” I say, not careless—resigned. “I’ll let him hit me once if it makes him feel like a father doing his job.”
She swats my chest. “That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking,” I say. “I won’t disrespect him by pretending he shouldn’t be angry. I’ll only disrespect you if I let his anger decide how I treat you.”
She studies me, suspicion and relief passing across her face like weather. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
“I’m very sure of you,” I correct. “Of what I want to be around you. That’s new. I’m enjoying it.”
A quiet minute. Then: “What happens now?”
“Now?” I thread our fingers. “You sleep while I watch the ceiling and try not to scare it by smiling.”
She snorts, the unguarded kind that makes my chest warm. “That can’t be the plan every time.”
“No,” I concede. “Sometimes I’ll be the one who sleeps and you’ll be the one who remembers the shape of the room.”
“And outside of rooms?”
“We’re careful,” I say. “We’re honest. We don’t make a show out of what doesn’t deserve an audience. We don’t apologize when we’re together. We apologize when we hurt each other and then we stop doing the thing that hurt.”
She considers that like it’s a contract. “Okay,” she says finally. “Okay.”
I kiss the back of her hand. “Tomorrow you text me if you want me near you at the gala. Touch the ribbon if you want me closer. Put it in your bag if you need me to sit at the end of the table and be good.”
“You’ll be good?”
“For you?” I nod. “Always.”
She nestles closer, her hair a curtain that smells like hotel shampoo and something that’s only her. The radiator ticks. Somewhere down the hall, a door thumps politely. The city hums its midnight hymn and leaves us off the chorus.
I let my eyes close, not because I’m tired—though I am—but because tonight deserves to end inside, not out on guard.
Her breath warms my chest in slow, even cycles.
I match them. My last thought before sleep takes me is a stupid prayer to a God I don’t often bother: thank you for the girl who walked toward me and the man who waited right.
If the morning asks us for something complicated, we’ll give it. If Wayne asks me for blood, I’ll hand him every apology I owe him and none I don’t. If she asks me to leave, I’ll go and keep the promise intact where it matters most: her choosing.
For now, I hold the woman I hunted without teeth and the night we made without lies, and I sleep like a man who didn’t ruin anything by wanting it.