CHAPTER 2 #4
The rhythm was different this time. Faster, more urgent, the edge of control he'd maintained earlier stripped away.
His hands gripped my hips, pulling me back onto him with each thrust, and the sound of our bodies meeting echoed in the empty bar.
I could see our reflection in the mirror behind the backbar—his broad frame curved over mine, my face flushed and mouth open, the pendant lights casting everything in gold.
"Is this what you wanted?" he asked, his voice rough. "When you said to act like we owned the place?"
"Yes. God, yes."
"Good." He reached around and found my clit with his fingers—still sensitive, still wet—and I cried out. "Because I've thought about this. More than once."
"Doing me on the bar?"
"Doing you everywhere. The bar, the panic room, the alley behind the building. Every surface in this place, I've imagined you on it."
The words sent a fresh wave of heat through me. I pushed back against his thrusts, meeting him, and his fingers on my clit circled faster.
"I'm close," I warned, and the fact that I was already building toward another orgasm—so soon after the first—made me dizzy.
"Good. Come for me. Again."
The command in his voice tipped me over. I shattered around him, clenching hard, and I heard myself make a sound that was half-moan, half-sob. Cole's rhythm stuttered, and then he was coming too, his cock pulsing inside me, his groan muffled against my shoulder.
We stayed there for a long moment, bent over the bartop, breathing hard. The pendant lights hummed overhead. The ice machine cycled. Somewhere in the back booth, Marcus snorted in his sleep and shifted position.
"That was..." I started.
"Yeah."
"Extremely unprofessional."
"The most unprofessional thing I've ever done." He pulled out gently and helped me upright. "Worth it."
I looked at the bar—the polished walnut, the scattered dropper bottles, the coupe glass with its wilted chamomile flower. "You're going to have to sanitize this entire surface."
"I'm going to have to burn this entire surface and replace it."
"Don't you dare. It's reclaimed walnut. Eighteen hundreds."
He smiled, the real one that reached his eyes, and pulled me into his arms. I leaned against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow, and felt the exhaustion of the last twenty-four hours finally catch up with me.
"Your brother's still here," I murmured.
"I know."
"What happens tomorrow?"
"Today. It's already today." He kissed the top of my head. "Coffee. Breakfast. I'll figure out why the door was unlocked. You'll go to your hospital shift if you have one, or sleep if you don't."
"And then?"
"And then we figure out the rest." His arms tightened around me. "One day at a time. That's all I know how to do."
From the back booth, Marcus stirred. His voice came out groggy: "Cole? That you? Who's there?"
Cole sighed. "Go back to sleep, Marcus."
"There's someone with you. I heard voices."
"It's Mara. The bartender."
"The one who lives here."
"Temporarily," I said.
Marcus squinted in our direction, his eyes still unfocused. "You two... you're..."
"We're going to have a conversation about boundaries in the morning," Cole cut in. "For now, sleep. That's an order."
"Since when do you give orders?"
"Since I own the building you're sleeping in."
Marcus grumbled something unintelligible and slumped back against the booth. Within seconds, his breathing had evened out again.
"He's going to remember this in the morning," I said.
"Probably not. He was pretty drunk."
"And if he does?"
Cole looked at me, his expression unreadable. "Then he'll know I'm happy. That's not a bad thing."
Happy. The word hung in the air between us, simple and weighty. I wasn't sure I'd ever heard him use it before—not about himself, not like this.
"I should get dressed," I said.
"Or you could come back to the panic room. Sleep for a few hours." He brushed a strand of hair from my face. "I'll take the couch."
"The bed's big enough for two."
"It is. But I didn't want to assume—"
"Cole." I put my hand on his chest, over his heart. "Assume."
He kissed me once, softly, and then helped me find my jeans.
We turned off the pendant lights, checked the lock on the alley door—still secure, the magnetic catch engaged—and made our way back down the spiral staircase.
The emergency lights had faded, replaced by the soft glow of the panic room lamp.
The fern was still there. Standing sentinel on the nightstand, its fronds unfurling toward the warmth.
Cole slid into bed beside me, and I curled against his side, my head on his chest. The ventilation system hummed its steady white noise, and somewhere above us, the bar settled into silence.
"Cole?" I whispered.
"Mm."
"This thing with your brother. It's going to be complicated, isn't it?"
A pause. "Probably."
"And us. Also complicated."
"Also probably."
I traced the scar on his ribs—the one I'd noticed earlier, a pale line against the warmth of his skin. "I'm not good at complicated."
"That makes two of us."
"But I'm willing to try."
His arm tightened around me. "That makes two of us," he said again.
I closed my eyes and let the exhaustion take me. Just before sleep pulled me under, I thought about the pomegranate tincture—the way it had bloomed on my tongue, tart and sweet and unexpected. The way Cole had tasted it on my lips.
The way everything in this strange underground room felt like the beginning of something I wasn't ready to name.