Page 66 of Raspados & Regret

But I don’t want to lie. “Maybe it is.”

His expression shifts, and the smirk fades.

“Fabián… what the hell does that mean?” His fingers loosen on my shirt, then curl again, softer, almost gentle, and the noise of the market hums behind us like static.

For one second, there are no trailers, family, TikTok comments, no years of beef or forced booth space—no bullshit. Just Elías looking at me like he heard what I didn’t quite say. How the fuck do you say, “You’re different, you’re the only one. I don’t know how to do this, but I can’t stop?”

He swallows, throat working. “You good?” he asks.

I huff, trying to find my voice. “I hate that fucking question.”

“I know.” He smiles, and it’s soft again.

“I’m fine,” I sigh

“Ugh, I hate that answer.” His mouth curves, slow and real, not the teasing smile but something else, something that looks almost like fondness, like relief.

We’re back on familiar ground. Mostly.

He taps my chest with one finger, right over the silver bar, and I flinch, sensitive, oversensitive. “You wanna stop?”

Under the jokes and shorts and mouth, under the teasing and the taunting and the deliberate provocation, he’s asking me. He’s checking in with me.

My throat works. “Nah.”

His eyes darken again, pupils blowing wide, and he breathes out like he’s been holding it, like he was afraid of the answer, like he needed to hear it as much as I needed to say it.

“Good,” he whispers. “I don’t want to either.”

Then he kisses me, and this is like the first time all over again.

It’s still hot and still messy but less like a fight.

More like a dare we both survived and decided to repeat. His hands slide up my bare stomach, and I shudder when he reaches my chest. When he brushes his thumbs over the piercings again—more confident now, more deliberate, rolling them slightly—and I groan into his mouth before I can stop it, the sound is torn out of me, raw and needy and his.

Elías pulls back, eyes wide and dark and pleased. Way too fucking pleased.

“Damn,” he says softly, wonder in his voice. “That works.”

I grab his jaw, thumb pressing into the corner of his mouth. “Don’t get cocky, muñeco.”

“I was born cocky.”

My mouth catches his in a bruising kiss. I refuse to let him win every exchange because I need him to feel as unsteady as I do, as desperate, as undone. His hands keep moving, exploring.

Mine do too—over his hips, his waist, the hard muscles of his thighs, and the back of his neck, where I grip him and angle his head to take the kiss deeper. He is solid under my hands, all heat and muscle and restless energy, arching into my touch like he’s starving for it.

Nothing’s soft about him except the little sounds he makes when he forgets to be an asshole for half a second, when my thumb brushes the waistband of his shorts and he whimpers, when I roll my hips against his and he moans, low and broken.

Those sounds are going to ruin me. I want more of them.

I want all of them.

He turns his face, dragging in air like he’s drowning. “We should go back.”

“We need to go back,” I mutter into the crook of his neck, my tongue licking from the base to his earlobe, my teeth tugging on one of the little hoops.

Neither of us stops.