Chapter 10 The Churuata Night #2
He undresses the rest of the way without urgency, lets me watch, lets me reach for him and trace the planes of his abs, the cut of muscle at his hip, the very obvious, very hard length of him that twitches under my palm when I finally close my hand around it.
His head drops, a low groan escaping as he catches himself, hips rocking once into my grip almost involuntarily.
"Patience," I tell him, and he laughs, breathless, forehead dropping to my shoulder.
"I have none with you."
"Good."
He settles between my thighs, the blunt head of him sliding through how wet he's already made me, teasing, not entering, enough that we both feel exactly how ready I am for him.
"Look at me," he says, the same words from my notebook, except this time there's no roar to lose anything in, no urgency forcing either of us forward. Only lantern light and his eyes locked on mine as he finally, slowly, pushes inside.
I feel every single inch of it. He doesn't rush the slide home; he lets me adjust around the feel of him, watching my face the entire way like he's reading a favorite book. When he's fully seated, he stills, forehead dropping to mine, both of us breathing hard from nothing more than that.
"Okay?" he asks, voice wrecked already.
"Fuck me, Santiago, or I swear—"
It's slow at first, deep, deliberate thrusts that make my back arch off the mattress, his name spilling out of me on every withdrawal and every return.
He hooks my leg over his hip, angles deeper, and the new angle drags a sound out of me loud enough that he groans in answer, hips picking up a rhythm that's still unhurried but no longer gentle, every thrust grinding exactly where I need him.
"Eighteen months," he says again, rough, punctuating it with his hips. "Eighteen months of wanting this. Wanting you. I am never, ever going back to pretending otherwise."
"Then don't," I gasp, nails dragging down his back. "Don't stop. Don't ever stop."
He doesn't, not for a long time—drawing it out, slowing when I get close, driving deeper when I beg him not to stop, until neither of us has any composure left to perform for the other, sweat-drenched and desperate and completely unguarded in a way that has nothing to do with waterfalls or ledges or stolen minutes.
This is the version with all the time in the world, and he uses every second of it.
When I finally come the second time, it's with his eyes locked on mine, his name breaking from me in a sound closer to a sob than a cry, my whole body clenching around him hard enough that he curses, hips stuttering out of rhythm.
"Nora—"
"Come with me," I tell him, and he does, shuddering through it with his face buried in my neck, hips driving once, twice, three times more, then he stills completely, full weight finally settling over me like something that's been holding itself up for eighteen months and has finally, gratefully, let go.
We lie there afterward, tangled in cooling sheets, the sound of the falls a constant presence through the open window, the candle by the bed burned down to almost nothing.
"Stay," he says, simply, like it's not even a question.
"I wasn't planning on going anywhere."
"Good." His arm tightens around me, mouth pressed to my hair.
***
Santi
She falls asleep before I do, and I lie there, watching her. Marveling at her here, in my bed.
Days ago, I sat four rows behind her on a floatplane and thought about the inside of a bathroom too small for what I wanted to do to her, and tonight she is asleep in my arms with her bare shoulder pressed against my chest, dark curls escaping everywhere the way they always escape, and the only thing standing between me and total, undignified disbelief is the simple, repeated fact of her breathing, slow and even, against my skin.
I trace one curl back from her temple, just to do it, for no reason beyond the fact that I can now, and she doesn't wake.
Mine, a voice in my chest says, low and certain.
It is the thought of a man who spent a year and a half watching the angle of her wrist when she writes, the shade her cheeks go when she's annoyed and trying to hide it, the sound she makes when she's three drinks deep and laughing at whatever Ryan said—filing every single piece of her away like data since data was the only version of her I was allowed to have.
I don't have to file anything away anymore. I get the rest of her now. All of it. Indefinitely.
I should feel guilty about how much that thought satisfies something old and possessive in me. I don't. Not even a little.
She shifts in her sleep, presses closer, one hand finding my chest like she's checking I'm still there even unconscious, and I go still and stupidly pleased about it, the way I imagine other men feel about closing a deal worth nine figures, except this is worth considerably more than that and I will fight anyone who suggests otherwise.
She mumbles something unintelligible against my chest and goes quiet again, and I let myself drift off thinking the same single thought I've been wishing for in some form for eighteen months: I get to keep her. I actually get to keep her.
***
I wake to an empty bed, and I force myself not to panic at her loss.
I find her on the terrace, coffee in hand, watching the mist lift off the lagoon in slow curling sheets.
Her dark hair is loose around her shoulders for once, instead of braided, and she's wearing my shirt, the sight of which awakens a dark, possessive, deeply satisfied part of me.
I stand in the doorway for a second to look at her. The line of her shoulders. The damp curl at the nape of her neck that never quite stays where she puts it. The way she holds the coffee cup with both hands, like she's protecting a small treasure instead of merely keeping warm.
High in the canopy above the lodge roof, Copérnico has reappeared, settled into his usual crotch of branches, tail looped loose around the trunk, watching the two of us with an expression of magnificent indifference—the same expression he wore through a tropical storm, a missing man, and an international incident, utterly unmoved by any of it, including this.
"I think he's judging us," she says, glancing back at me over her shoulder.
"He's been judging everyone since we got here. I don't think it's personal."
"It feels a little personal."
"He guided us through a kidnapping crisis with his pointing alone and didn't even get a thank-you card," I say. "I imagine he feels underappreciated."
Copérnico, as if personally offended by the conversation, turns his back on us entirely and disappears higher into the leaves without a single backward glance.
The jungle goes on without him, the way it would have gone on with or without any of us—mist lifting, macaws calling, the distant constant roar of the falls carried faint and steady on the morning air, alive and indifferent and completely beautiful, exactly as it was before any of this started, and exactly as it'll be long after we've gone home.
I find her hand on the railing and hold it. She lets me, and doesn't pull away, and a part of me that has been braced for eighteen months finally, fully unclenches.
She is mine now. Not in the way I used to think about it on that floatplane, half-shame, half-fantasy, a thing I wasn't allowed to want out loud. Properly mine. She knows it too, and chose me, and is currently leaning her shoulder into mine like it's the easiest thing in the world.
I don't know what Monday looks like. I don't know what HR's going to say, or what Derrick's going to say, or how long it'll take the office to stop being interesting gossip and start being just a fact of how things are now.
Watching the sun finally clear the tepuyes and turn the lagoon gold at the edges, I find that I don't actually care.
I got the thing I wanted. The whole, complicated, gorgeous person in my arms, not the idea of her, not a category, not someone—her.
I'm not in any hurry to get back to anything that isn't this.
Not yet.
Not for a long time, if I have any say in it at all. I intend to keep her forever.