Page 80 of Honeyfires

"I like hearing you say it."

I cupped her face and kissed her, and she made a sound against my mouth like something thoroughly satisfied.

"Bedroom," she said.

"Bedroom," I agreed.

We left a trail of water across the hardwood.

Our bedroom was the only room that still looked like itself. Vera had arranged it first, before the boxes, because she believed in making sure I'd be sleeping well and at home from day one. The bed was made with fresh sunset-pink sheets.

She lay back against the pillows and looked up at me, and this was different from the other rooms. The rooms had been heat and play and the satisfaction of constraint. This room was something else.

"Come here," she said.

I lay down beside her. Just that, for a moment. Side by side, the evening going quiet around us, the sounds of the apartment settling into itself.

"We live here," she said.

"We live here," I agreed.

She turned on her side to face me, and the expression she wore was one I had no name for.

"I want to feel you," she said. "Just you. No game, no rules. Just—this."

"Yeah," I said. "Okay."

I moved over her, and she pulled me down, and it was slow and close and nothing held back from either direction. I watched her face the whole time—the way love moved through it, the way she stopped trying to contain any of it—and she watched mine, and neither of us looked away.

My fingers curved inwards, found her g-spot, and worked roughly against it until she was panting. When she came, it was quiet, her hands in my hair and her forehead pressed to mine, her breath unraveling against my lips.

I followed her down.

We lay tangled afterward in the cooling evening, her head on my chest, her fingers tracing their habitual path across the tattoos until they settled, as they always did, on Lucas and Santi's initials.

Acknowledging them. Including them. Keeping them a part of our lives.

"Four," she said, muffled against my chest.

"Four," I confirmed.

"I'm never moving again."

"We live here together now. You don't have to."

A pause. "You live here," she said softly, like she was testing the weight of it in her mouth. "We live here together."

"Ours," I said.

She smiled against my collarbone.

Outside, the desert went dark, and the apartment settled around us, our books on the shelves, her dresses beside my masculine clothes in the closet, my boots at the door beside her heels, and I lay there with her warm and heavy against my side and thought: every road led here.

Every single one.

Passive Concealment of Relevant Information

Chapter Fourteen