6. Dove #2
The angle. The depth. He’s deeper than he’s ever been—I feel him in a place past where I thought the feeling went, a pressure that rides the edge between too much and exactly right.
My breath catches and his hands go to my hips, holding me where he wants me, and he drives forward and the sound I make is not one I’ve heard from myself before.
“There,” he says. His jaw tight, his eyes on where he’s disappearing inside me. “That’s what I’ve been wanting. You held open and me all the way in.”
“Ezra—god —“
“I cleared a contract in Bogotá and I was on a rooftop packing a rifle and I was thinking about this.” He pulls back and drives deep again and my hands slip on my knees and he catches my legs and pushes them higher.
“Packing a suppressor into a case and thinking about folding you open and going so deep you can’t breathe. ”
The sound I make is embarrassing. I don’t care.
“A man was dead on the street below and I was hard thinking about your pussy.” He moves steady, each thrust bottoming out, and I’m gripping my own legs and staring at the ceiling and everything is concentrated on the place where he ends inside me.
“That’s what you do. That’s what you’ve done since the first night through the scope. ”
“Don’t stop?—“
“I killed a man in Marseille and drove six hours to a safehouse and jerked off thinking about being this deep in you.” His hand slides between us, finds my clit, and the combination—the pressure inside, the circles outside—is too much and not enough.
“You were making dinner. Through the scope. You had paint on your wrist from the afternoon and you were singing and I put a hand around my cock in the dark and stroked myself raw thinking about exactly this.”
I come. Hard, sudden—my body clamping around him from the inside, my legs shaking in his grip. He holds me folded, doesn’t let my knees drop, keeps driving through it. The orgasm keeps going, rolling, because every thrust hits the deep place and there’s nowhere to retreat.
“Again,” he says. “Give me another one. Keep your legs up.”
My arms are shaking. He takes over—one hand behind each knee, holding me open, his weight on me, his cock hitting bottom with every stroke. I’m pinned by the geometry of it, folded and held and full of him.
“You held the note up to my scope,” he says. His breathing harder now, cracks in the control. “You stood in the window and stripped for a man who kills people. You left the door unlocked for these hands.” He drives deep and holds. “Tell me you chose this.”
“I chose it.” My voice sounds wrecked. “I chose you. I left the door unlocked and I knew—I know what you did to Connor and I left the door unlocked anyway —“
His hips snap forward and I arch and cry out and his hand covers my mouth from this new angle, his palm over my lips, his fingers pressing into my jaw, and the weight of him pinning me folded in half.
“Louder would wake the neighbors,” he says. “And I’m not done.”
The second one builds from the base of my spine. He releases my mouth and puts both hands behind my knees again and fucks me deep, every thrust landing at the limit, and I’m gripping the sheets and his name is the only word left.
“Now,” he says.
I come with his name in my mouth and his cock buried so deep I can feel him in my chest and when he follows me over he drives all the way in and stays and I feel the warmth of him filling me—his cum inside me, the signature I’ll carry tomorrow and the next day, the warmth that’ll be there in the morning when I check for it first thing.
After, we lie there. My legs ache from being folded. The good kind.
“The curtains,” he says.
“Open.” I left them open before he came. I’ve been leaving them open. “I ordered sheers.”
He goes very still.
“For the bedroom,” I say. “Ivory. Lets the light in during the day. The view stays open at night.”
Silence. His hand on my face, turning me toward him. He looks at me with the look that’s been building since the first night—the one I didn’t see through the scope because it needs close range, needs two feet not two hundred meters.
“The scope stays up,” he says.
“Obviously.”
“I’m going to keep watching.”
“I’m counting on it.”
“Even when I’m here. I’m going to watch.”
“Ezra.” I put my hand on his jaw. The stubble under my palm, the jaw that doesn’t give when I press it. The jaw of a man who talks about kills the way other men talk about work trips. “I’m not asking you to stop.”
He looks at me. The want he’s been holding at controlled distance for weeks—the scope, the alley, the breaking and entering—fully visible now. No glass between us.
“The sheers,” he says. Like he’s still sitting with the information.
“Ivory linen. I measured the window Wednesday.” I put my thumb along his jaw.
“I wanted you to keep watching. The curtains I had before were blackout. I bought them because I thought no one could see in anyway. Once I knew you could see in—once I knew you had been seeing in for six weeks—I couldn’t put them back up. ”
“Because you wanted me to keep seeing.”
“Because I wanted the man with the rifle scope to keep seeing. The contract killer. The one who put a bullet in Connor Reyes because he texted me.” I hold his eyes. “That’s who I ordered sheer curtains for. That’s who I left the door unlocked for.”
He stays until nearly seven. When I wake up he’s at the window—dressed, jacket on—looking across the alley at his building. The scope is a point of glass in the dark apartment.
He looks at it. Looks at me. Looks at it again.
“Come home early,” I say.
He turns. The thing I’ve been watching has a name now, I think, though I’m not ready to say it yet.
“I don’t have a home,” he says.
I reach across and push the right side of the pillow toward him. He looks at the pillow. Then at me.
“You’re working on it,” I say.