Page 2 of Broken Trust

“Bedroom,” I say against his mouth, desperate for anything warmer than that chill. Dinner can wait. This can't.

He doesn't argue, and I let that stand in for proof. See? Paranoia. Probably the IVF hormones still working out of me. The doctor warned it would take time, though I never thought a year on it would still be in my blood.

I walk him backward down the hall holding his hand, and he lets me, laughing low, catching the doorframe once with his free hand. Our room is dark but for two more candles. Flattening a palm on his chest, I press him down to sit on the edge of the bed and take a moment just to hold his eyes, and I let myself believe it's going to be all right.

Then, before my nerve can fail, I lift the slip over my head and let it pool near his feet.

I stay standing there and don't cover a single part of myself, though every instinct I've built this past year is screaming at me to. My arms want to fold. My hands want to come up. I keep them at my sides and let him take me in, because if he's going to decide I'm not what he wants, I'd rather he decide it to my face than in the dark.

And he takes me in. My hips, my thighs, the soft belly I won't meet in mirrors. Then he's holding on to me like I'm the reward and not the compromise, like there was never a thing here that needed forgiving. He says my name, low and wanting, and the fist inside me loosens one finger. A man doesn't hold a woman like this and wish he were somewhere else.

So I take my time, the way no one has let me take my time with anything in a year.

Up comes the polo, and my palms settle on the warm plane of his chest, and the heat of him rises into me.

“Dante?”

“Mmm. Don't stop.”

That's all I need. His breath drags rough, the most honest thing he's given me in weeks. When his hands rise for me on instinct I catch him by the wrists and press them back to the mattress, and he lets me. My mouth finds the place his heart is racing, and I feel more than hear what it drags out of him. I want to nail time to the wall right here, before anything can go wrong, while he's still only mine.

“You're going to end me,” he says, one hand escaping to sink into my hair.

“That's the whole idea.” My mouth travels up his throat until he shivers, and the fear gives up another inch with every part of him that answers me.

Then I go the other way, down the center of his chest and the hard plane below it, his stomach tightening the lower I reach, his belt opening under my fingers without any hurry. A thousand times I've watched this man lose himself, and not once has he let me set the pace, so tonight I draw it out until his patience frays. When I finally take him in hand he says something that isn't a word. When I take him into my mouth he says my name like it's torn up by the root. His hips lift. My forearm comes down to pin them flat, and the helpless sound he makes at being held there lights something low in me and leaves it burning.

I keep him at that edge, patient and a little cruel, until his fist knots in the sheet and his breathing splinters. Then I sit back on my heels and let him go before he can fall. His eyes drag open, awake now, close to desperate, and I've wanted to be looked at like that for so long that my own breath catches.

His trousers go the rest of the way down, he kicks free, and he reaches for me. This time I let him guide me where he wants me. Straddling him, holding his eyes, I sink down slow and watch his whole face come undone as he fills me, and when there's no space left between us neither of us moves, both of us caught in the plain relief of being one person again instead of two strangers keeping a bed warm.

Then I begin, and I keep the rhythm mine.

His control tears loose. A hand leaves my hip, slides behind me, drags me down onto him hard, and his head goes back into the pillow.

“That's it,” he breathes. “You're such a dirty girl.”

The strangeness of it snags at me. We've never talked like this, not once in ten years. I tell myself it's new, that maybe there's a whole side of him tonight I've never met, and something in me leans toward it, half thrilled. I fold down against him, chest to chest, and turn my face into his neck to breathe him in the way I've been starving to for weeks.

“That's it. I'm going to fuck you so hard.”

He flips me over without warning and lifts my leg high.

“You like it like this, don't you?”

“Yeah,” I whisper.

This is me doing this to him. He's craved me as much as I've craved him, and after everything the last few years took from us, I'd half stopped believing we could find our way back here. But here we are.

“Harder.” He gives it to me, filling me up, driving into me until the room narrows to the slick sound of us and my own breath breaking. One hand pins my leg in the air. The other closes over my breast.

He's missed me I’ve longed for him.

Then his rhythm turns ragged, his fingers dig in too hard, his whole body pulls tight and desperate above me, and he tips over with a low sound wrenched out of the back of his throat.

He drops to the side, chest heaving, an arm slung over his eyes.

“Shit. Mia, you were wild.”