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“This is undignified,” she informs me, halfway up.
“You picked me.”
“I’m aware. I’m filing a complaint with someone.”
By the time we get to my room I’ve worked out this is going to be the least graceful thing either of us has ever done, and she’s worked it out too, and instead of killing it that does the opposite. There’s no version of tonight where I get to be smooth. No version where she gets to be composed. So we both quit trying at the same second, and that turns out to be the whole thing.
She undresses me one-handed-careful, works the strap loose, won’t let me help, and when she catches me trying to do more than the list allows she sets two fingers in the middle of my chest and pushes me down onto the bed, gentle.
“No,” she says. “You don’t get to be the captain tonight. Lie there and let me.”
So I lie there and let her, which is a thing I have never once been good at. She gets the cream sweater off, the one I’ve thought about more than I’ll ever tell her. She’s careful with the shoulder the whole time, and every careful thing she does she does while looking right at me, and Sloane looking at you is not a careful thing at all. It’s the most direct thing there is.
She straddles me slow, mindful of the arm, one hand flat on the good shoulder for balance, and when she lines me up and sinks down onto my cock there’s no show in it for either of us. Just her face going open in a way she’s never let me see in daylight, and a low sound, like it caught her off guard.
“Okay?” she asks, watching the arm.
“You’re asking me if I’m okay.” I get a laugh out, rough. “Sloane. I’ve never been—” The word won’t come; the big ones never come; so I do the thing I learned downstairs and say it bad. “There’s no word for how far past okay I am. Move. Please.”
She moves. Slow, then less slow, her hand spread on my chest and my one good hand on her hip, and I let her run all of it, because I’ve got no choice and because I want to, because watching Sloane Beckett take what she wants with the walls finally down is better than anything I’d have scripted in my head. I get my hand between us and find her clit with my thumb and she stutters and swears, soft, a word she only ever uses in the dark, and I keep it for the rest of my life. She’s close. I can feel her getting close, and I want to watch it more than I’ve ever wanted to watch anything, so I do — I watch her come apart on top of me in the gray December light with no audience and nothing to prove. She takes me with her. And for a few seconds neither of us is performing one single thing for one single person, and it is the best I’ve ever felt inside a body that’s good at a lot of things.
After, she’s careful lowering herself down on the side of the good arm and fits her head into my shoulder. We’re both wrecked and neither of us bothers to hide it, which is new for the two of us.
“So,” she says, after a while. “Logistics.”
“’Course you’ve got logistics.”
“I have a job and a lease. I’m not one of your impulse decisions.” But she says it into my chest, which takes the edge off it. “I keep the room over the shop through the semester. Margaret’s going to want a reason, and I’m moving in with your grandson is going to make her insufferable. She’ll act like she planned it.”
“She did plan it.”
“She absolutely planned it.” A breath. “And Danny’s going to ask if you’re good to me. On the Wednesday call. He’ll do the still alive thing first and then he’ll ask, and he’ll know if I lie, so don’t make me lie.”
“I won’t make you lie.” I mean it light and it doesn’t come out light. “Tell Danny he can check the work whenever he wants. Tell him I said that.”
“He’ll like that. He’ll pretend he doesn’t.” She tips her head back to look at me. “I’m keeping my own coffee. Yours is an act of violence.”
“It’s a strong cup of coffee.”
“It’s a hostage situation, I’ve watched you make it.” She settles back into the good shoulder. “And I get a shelf. A real one, for the books. I’m not living out of boxes again, I’ve done enough of that to last me.”
“You get the whole case in the front room. I don’t read ’em. Might as well be yours.”
She goes quiet at that — the good quiet — and files it somewhere she won’t tell me about, which is fine. I do the same thing with hers.
“You’re going to be insufferable about the captain line. You’re going to bring it up at dinner.”
“I’m going to bring it up at our wedding.”
She goes still. I feel her whole body go still against me. I let it sit there, because I meant it, and because for once I’m not scared of a thing I said out loud.
“You can’t just say that.”
“I just did. Said it bad, probably. I’ll get better.” I look at the top of her head, the platinum gone soft and undone against my collarbone. “I’ve got a long time to practice.”
My phone goes off on the nightstand. I can’t reach it; she fishes it out and holds it up. Cash. house still need clearing or can wyatt come home, he is cold and emotional. And under it, before I can answer: say hi to sloane.
“Tell him no,” I say.
