I took my time. Pushed his shirt up, watched the way his stomach jumped when my fingers traced the line of old scars. Not the neat surgical kind. The messy, life-happened kind. He tried to shrug it off, but I wouldn’t let him. I pressed my mouth to each one as if I were cataloging them. Mine now.
“Alejandro,” he groaned, hand curling in the sheets.
“Relax, Detective,” I smirked, getting back my confidence, then sat back on his thighs and stripped my shirt off. His eyes went hot and dark, dragging over me like a touch. For a second, I wanted to turn away, hide the ink and the bullet marks and the story written in skin. Then his hand came up, fingertips ghosting over my ribs with a care that stole my breath.
“You’re stunning,” Levi said.
“Nobody’s ever called me that.”
“They should have.”
He sounded pissed about it. It did things to me.
Clothes became a problem, so we solved it, piece by piece, with too many hands and not enough patience. I made him laugh once when I got stuck in my own sleeve; the sound loosened something in my chest. By the time we were pressed skin to skin, my head was buzzing, not from panic that I was risking everything, but from how right it felt.
“You sure?” Levi asked when I reached for the drawer by his bed and found what we needed.
“Yeah.” My voice didn’t shake. That surprised me. “But we do it my way.”
His lips twitched. “Bossy.”
“You like it.”
“Unfortunately.”
He let me take the lead. Let me set the pace, slow and controlled, every move deliberate. No rush. No grabbing. No forcing. I rode his cock, deciding how close, how deep, how much. He followed my cues as if he’d been doing it his whole life, hands firm on my hips but not pushing, not taking more than I gave.
I’d spent years letting pain happen to me because at least that was a choice. This was different. This was me choosing something that felt good—letting him in. Slow. Careful. He watched me the whole time, eyes wide and pupils blown, jaw clenched as if he was holding himself back from moving.
“Breathe,” he rasped. “Alejandro. Breathe.”
“I am,” I managed, although it didn’t feel like it. Everything was too much—the stretch, the heat, his hands, his voice, the way his control was hanging by a thread because I’d asked him for it.
“Tell me if?—”
“I’ll tell you.” I leaned down, put my mouth to his, swallowed the rest of the sentence. We stayed like that, forehead to forehead, until the shaking in my thighs eased and the edge blurred into something else. Something better.
Then I moved again.
I set the rhythm, slow at first, testing, my palms spread on his chest, feeling every shudder, every pant. He let me use him, let me ride out every flicker of fear and want until they tangled into something hot and endless.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”
“Shut up,” I said again, but there was no bite in it.
There was only him, and the way I found myself trusting him with parts of me I didn’t even like touching. Every time I shifted, his hands steadied me. Every time a flash of memory tried todrag me under, his voice was there, grounding me, telling me I was here, now, with him, not there.
Not with the cartel. Not with Raven. Not watching my mom die. Not in that house. Not a kid standing frozen while someone screamed.
Here. Now. Heat and sweat and the creak of the bed and his name breaking out of me like a prayer when everything went white-hot, and I lost the capacity to think.
I came first, with my nails digging into his chest and my head thrown back, a rough shout torn from me, and I didn’t care. For a few seconds, there was nothing but overwhelming release, my body squeezing around him so hard he swore.
He followed me over, hips jerking, breath hot and broken in my ear. I felt him let go, felt the tension snap out of him, and held on. Kept moving just enough to ride it down with him, to make sure he knew I was still there, still with him.
After, there was a lot of breathing. The good kind this time.
I wasn’t used to talking after sex. With anyone. But with him… it didn’t feel like stepping on a mine. It felt like something I almost wanted. Almost.
