Before I can speak, his mouth claims mine again, hot and certain. His kiss drowns out the danger Vale promises, until all that’s left is him.
I don’t fight it. I sink into it. He scoops me back into his arms and carries me the rest of the way to his bedroom, the shadows inside swallowing us whole. We fall together onto the bed, soft and unhurried this time, like the world outside doesn’t exist, like tonight belongs to us alone. Heat unfurls low and slow for the third time, as inevitable as sunrise.
“Again?” he asks, not cocky, just hopeful.
I answer with my mouth. With my hands. With every piece of me that refuses to stay away. We take our time, longer even than before. We kiss until the boundaries blur and reform and blur again. He turns me under him, not to take control but to carry it with me. His hands are patient, his mouth is generous, his body is a question I answer yes to in a dozen different ways. I guide him back inside me with a sigh that shivers us both. He props on one forearm, the other hand threading our fingers together and pinning them by my head. Our palms fit like this was always the plan. He watches me while he moves, eyes wide open, as if blinking might make me disappear. I meet that gaze and hold it, not flinching from what he’s offering or what I am giving in return.
“Say it again,” I whisper, not ready to say it back, but wanting it like breath.
“I love you,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
My body responds, heat catching, rolling, cresting. I clutch at him, at the sheets, at the edge of a future I’m no longer too proud to want. I shatter around him, my climax ripping through me harder than before, sharper, deeper, in ways I didn’t think was even possible. Dante follows, shuddering, saying my name like it’s the hinge his whole life swings on. After, he stays exactly where he is, covering me with his weight until the tremors fade.Then he eases out and gathers me into his chest again, cradling my head under his chin.
“What now?” I ask, my voice low.
Dante shifts to see me better. “Now, you keep leading your women. I keep digging into Vale and bring you what I find. We work together. We don’t undercut each other. We don’t lie. We don’t disappear when it gets ugly.”
“It’s not going to be easy,” I say.
“I don’t do easy,” he answers. “And neither do you.”
We lie there longer, letting the plan be simple before the world complicates it. I should go but I don’t want to.
He must feel it in the way my muscles coil. He tightens his arm around me. “Stay.”
His request lands right at the heart of me. I inhale, count to five, let it out.
“I can do a few hours,” I concede, though the thought of leaving makes something inside me ache.
“Good.” He tucks the blanket up over my shoulder. “In the morning, you’ll make coffee and I’ll make breakfast.”
I snort. “We’re not that domestic.”
“We could be.”
The quiet that follows isn’t heavy. It’s full. He strokes my hair until my eyes slide shut.
When I wake, I roll and find him watching me like he didn’t expect to find me still here in his bed. He kisses me slow and unhurried. We move together again, not for the fireworks this time, but for the way it knits last night to today.
“Dante,” I say, and my voice doesn’t shake. “I’m not good at this.”
“Neither am I,” he admits. “We’ll be bad at it together until we’re not.”
I laugh softly, because maybe that’s the truest thing I’ve ever heard. Maybe that’s what hope looks like.
I sit up, tug a shirt from the floor over my head, and pad to the bathroom. When I return, he’s in the kitchen with the coffeemaker, swearing under his breath at a filter that refuses to behave. It’s absurd, and perfect, and a flash of normal in a life that doesn’t allow much of it. I wrap my arms around him from behind, press my face between his shoulder blades, and feel him smile beneath my cheek.
The machine finally sputters to life. “I thought I was supposed to make the coffee?”
“Do you know how?”
My eyes narrow in him as he pours the sludge into a chipped mug and hands it over. I take a sip and make a face. “Do you?”
He laughs. “Pretend.”
“Oh alright,” I grumble, taking a sip to prove I can.
We stand at the window, mugs warm in our hands, the city wide awake below. In the glass, our reflections overlap, me with his shirt hanging off one shoulder, him unshaven and bare-footed, both of us marked up, both of us softer around the edges than yesterday.
