“It’s fine.”
“That is not the agreed-upon answer.”
“Mild,” I said. “Manageable.”
“Upstairs?” he asked.
I nodded and followed Luca to his room.
He undressed me the rest of the way with the careful attention he brought to everything. His touch was deliberate without being clinical. When I lay back against the pillows, he looked at me in the afternoon light.
“You’re going to tell me if anything pulls,” he said.
“I’ll tell you.”
“You won’t. You’ll remain quiet and decide it’s fine.”
“Luca.”
“Thiago.”
“I’ll tell you.”
He kissed me then, not a beginning so much as a continuation, the way it had always been between us, each time picking up precisely where the last left off.
He was still fully dressed. I reached for his shirt buttons with my right hand, and he shifted to let me manage it, patient while I worked through each one slowly. His collarbones appeared, and the fine silver chain he wore.
“You’re taking your time,” he said.
“Yes. Is that a complaint?”
“No.” He finished what I’d started, shrugging the shirt off and dropping it somewhere off the edge of the bed. “It’s an observation.”
Luca worked his way down my throat, collarbone, and the center of my chest with his tongue and lips. His mouth was warm.
His hand moved low on my stomach.
“Tell me what you need,” he said against my skin.
“Whatever you want to give me.”
He lifted his head and looked at me directly. “That’s not an answer.”
He was right. I had given that answer for years when what I meant was I didn’t know how to want things I couldn’t easily leave behind.
“You,” I said. “I want you.”
“I’m yours,” he whispered against my skin.
He kissed his way slowly down my stomach, his hands at my hips, and I stopped thinking about the shoulder or the brace or the careful angles required.
He took his time. He knew what he was doing, learning what I responded to with the same quiet attention he brought to everything. When I reached for him with my right hand, he caught my wrist gently.
“Not yet,” he said. “Stay here.”
I stayed. I let him take me apart at whatever pace he chose. When I finally finished, it was with his name on my lips and my right hand twisted into the sheets, holding nothing back.
The silence afterward was easy. That was the difference. Not the urgency of the first time in the kitchen or the careful vulnerability of the hospital room. This was something that belonged to two people who had made a decision, and both of us knew it.
