“I’m going to—” I don’t finish.
“Lorenzo.”
The orgasm hits like a wall. My pussy squeezing his cock so hard he groans, my back lifting off the mattress. I cry out. Loud. His name wrecked in my throat.
And then he reaches for me. Not my wrist. Not the mattress. He reaches and our grip locks together. Tight.
That’s when he breaks. A groan he tries to swallow and can’t. His body going rigid above me, his face pressed into my neck. Like I’m the only thing keeping him in his body.
He doesn’t let go.
Silence. His room. The hum of the compound settling. A mockingbird outside the window.
We stay. His forehead on my shoulder. Still locked.
He releases. His thumb traces the inside of my wrist where the skin is red. Looking at the marks. His nostrils flare. His touch goes to my hair. Tucking a strand behind my ear.Smoothing it where it tangled. Eyes elsewhere while he does it. Autopilot. Care he didn’t plan.
If I say anything, he’ll stop.
He pulls out. Deals with the condom. Finds his shirt on the floor. Pulls it on and buttons it all the way up, which tells me everything about how exposed he’s feeling. But he doesn’t leave. He stands at the foot. Watching me lie in the sheets with my hair ruined and my legs still unsteady.
“You should eat.”
“You should stop telling me what to do.” I pull the sheet up. His sheet. “Bring me whatever Rosa made. Please.”
That flicker in his face again. The fourth time I’ve caught it.
He goes.
I press my lips together. Swollen. Stubble burn on my chin. The ache in my wrists. The ghost of being held in the one moment he couldn’t pretend.
He brought me here. Where he never let anyone.
And when he came, he reached for me.
I can’t think straight. That’s scarier than everything else happening combined.
16
LORENZO
Her hands are on my shirt. We’re in the hallway outside the office. An hour ago she was still at the keyboard. Talking to the screen. Running her fingers through her hair until it stuck up at angles that shouldn’t work on anyone. Ten minutes ago she closed the laptop, looked at me, and said “Your room or mine.” Not a question. A decision already made.
Hers. Because she needs ground she can control. Because the locks and the exits belong to her.
Except she’s reaching for my buttons. And my hand catches her wrist. Reflex. Same instinct that would stop a fist or a blade. I close around her wrist bones and hold.
“Don’t.”
She stops. Doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t fill the silence with analysis or deflection or the rapid-fire commentary that is her survival mechanism. She waits. Her pulse ticks under my thumb. Fast but steady. Her eyes on mine. Patient. Like she already knows what’s going to happen. Just waiting for me to catch up.
My grip loosens slowly, one finger at a time. Like unclenching a fist.
She doesn’t rush. The top button first. Worked through. Second. Third. The fabric parts. She pushes the shirt off my shoulders and it drops to the floor and I’m standing in front of her with the lamp on and nowhere to hide.
A decade of cover, stripped away as easily as a shirt.
She’s traced the forearms. Mapped the training marks and the blade gouge on my bicep. But the rest. No one has seen the rest outside of a hospital or a fight. The scars from throat to belt line. Knife work on the ribs. The bullet wound scar on my thigh, the one that aches when it rains. A burn on my shoulder from a hot engine at sixteen, when I was still learning cars before learning how to end men.
