I move. Slow at first because I want to feel everything. Her hips meeting mine. Her hands on my back. The sounds she makes directly into my ear. “I’ve never done this, Ella, never.”
I feel every bit of her body, the way she clings to me, the way her pussy is made for my cock. Her legs wrap around my waist, and her heels dig into my ass, and I bury my face in her neck and breathe her in.
"You're everything," I tell her. "You know that? Everything."
She pulls my face up so she can see me. Her eyes are wet, but she's smiling, and the combination wrecks me. "You're my person, Bernard."
"I'm your what?”
"My big, ridiculous St. Bernard."
I laugh, which changes the angle, which makes her gasp, which makes me thrust harder. The rhythm builds. Her nails drag down my back, and I feel the sting and love it. She grips my shoulders and holds on.
"Harder," she says, and I obey, because Ella Rujkowski knows what she wants and I will give her anything she asks for as long as I live.
The bed creaks. The headboard taps the wall. She's loud, and I'm louder, and I don't care that Jason could come home and hear us through the floor because we're done hiding. We're done with rules, secrets, and separate sleeping arrangements. This is us, in our room, making noise, taking up all the space we want.
"I'm close," she says. "Bernard — right there — don't stop?—"
"I love you." I brace one arm beside her head and cup her face with the other and watch her. "I love you, Ella. Come for me."
She does. Eyes open, locked on mine, and the sight of her face in the moment she lets go is the single most beautiful thing I will ever see. It pulls me over the edge with her. I come hard, burying myself deep, saying her name like it's the only word in any language that matters.
I feel myself spurting in her body, hot and wet, and I imagine that one day, she won’t be on the pill, and this will be me making a baby with Ella. I see our forever together, and it sends another wave of release through my super-satisfied junk.
We lie in the wreckage of the bed, breathing hard, tangled up in each other and the sheets. Her head is on my chest. My hand is in her hair. The lamplight pools around us, and the room is warm and quiet and ours.
"Your knee is better,” she murmurs.
"My knee is great."
"I noticed." She traces a circle on my chest.
I kiss the top of her head. "I'm going to want to do that again. Frequently. Possibly constantly."
She tilts her chin up and looks at me. Flushed, satisfied, hair a disaster, eyes soft. "We have time."
"Yeah?"
"I'm staying, Bernard. I'm staying in Pittsburgh, and I'm staying in the ER, and I'm staying with you."
I pull her closer. Press my face into her hair. Breathe.
“Good because I wasn’t ever going to let you leave,” I say, and I mean it in every way a person can mean it — this bed, this city, this life I didn't know I wanted until she walked through an airport and revealed herself as everything I always wanted.
Chapter 27
Howie
There’s nothing more comforting than the smell of tape adhesive, rubber mats, and the rink stink of guys who push me beyond the limits of normal humans.
I've missed this, the ritual of it, the muscle memory of pulling on gear, the way the world narrows to a set of very simple instructions: skate, hit, shoot, win.
My knee bends clean as I squat to lace my skates. No pain. No hesitation.
“Dude!” Spinner shouts from across the room, stick-tapping the floor in my direction. “Our line is back.”
"Miss me?"
