“Come here,” he barks finally.
I go.
It’s ridiculous how simple it is.
Chapter 12
Carol
Two steps and I’m in his shadow again, looking up at the biker who wants me.
“Carol,” he says and touches my cheek with rough, hot fingers.
Then he leans down, scoops me up.My legs wrap around his middle as my hands cling to his thick neck.The kiss isn’t wild this time.It’s heat built slow, banked and coaxed.He tastes like coffee now, not whiskey, like we might make better decisions but are choosing not to.His hands are careful, one at my hip, one at the back of my neck, holding just enough.I melt into him because my body already knows the map.
“Tell me to stop,” he says against my mouth.
I shake my head, forehead to his.“I can’t.”
He breathes out like a man who’s been underwater too long and finally broke the surface.“Me neither.”
We don’t rush.The storm beats the roof in a steady hush, like the world has decided to keep our secrets for once.Sitting me down, he slides the hoodie up, fingers catching the hem of my sweater underneath, and I’m shivering again but for a different reason.He kisses my throat, the place where my pulse lives, and the sound that breaks out of me is one I don’t recognize and don’t want to unlearn.
I memorize him in pieces.The scar that tugs near his jaw, the gray threaded through his dark hair, the way his mouth softens when I trace the wrenches inked on his forearm.He says my name like he’s fixing something with it, slow, precise, meant to last.
When he lifts me again, it’s not about throwing me anywhere.It’s about holding.I feel it in the way he lays me down on the battered couch like I deserve better than the world.The heater hums and the snow hammers and somewhere between those sounds my fear slides away.What’s left is want that doesn’t feel like hunger anymore.It feels like choosing.
Humbug goes for my pants, tugs them from my legs, taking my panties with them.I pull him down.He undoes his jeans, positions himself and slides inside, like he never left.
Damn.Tears form.I’m whole again.And very, very full.
My body is loose in ways I forgot it could be.My heart is not.It pounds like it forgot it’s supposed to behave.Humbug is half on the couch, half on me, but all the way inside.The impossible weight somehow feels like relief as his breath warms the hollow below my ear.
I hum without meaning to, the note slipping out of me on the exhale.He goes still, the way a dangerous animal does when it hears something it recognizes.
“Don’t,” he rasps, his smile I can feel pressed to my skin.“You’ll kill me.”
“I think I’m already dead,” I whisper.“Died and gone to heaven.”
He lifts his head.The look he gives me is a soft, devastating thing that has no business living in a face like his.
“You sleighed me,” I joke, because the moment is too heavy.
He doesn’t laugh.“Seriously, you okay?”
The word okay is too small.I nod anyway.“You?”
He huffs a laugh that’s afraid to be happy.“I ain’t been okay since the night I walked into that bar and heard you hummin’ to yourself.”
I remind him of facts.His divorce isn’t final.“You’re married,” I say, and the truth tastes like blood even with the sweetness of after on my tongue.
He rolls his hips, striking me hard.“Not in the way that counts,” he says.“Paper don’t keep two people together.Neither does stubborn.”
“And what is this?”I ask, hating the tremor in my voice.“What are we?”
“Wrong,” he says softly.“And real.”
My eyes sting.The ceiling blurs.I’m not a crier.I hate crying.It feels like leaking.But the tears that slip are quiet, the kind that happen when relief shows up disguised as surrender.
