Page 37 of Property of Thrasher
I didn’t rush the climb. I drew it out; I let it live in my chest and belly and thigh until I could tell where she wanted more and where she wanted me to stay exactly as I was. When I changed angle, it was an inch at a time, watching her face, finding the place that pulled a sound out of her that made me grit my teeth to keep from losing the pace I’d promised her. She reached for me, then stopped, uncertain, and I guided her hand where I liked it, low at my side, the grip that steadied me.
“You’re doing fine,” I said, and I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t even being kind. She was new and she was good and she was mine in a way that I hadn’t ever felt before.
Her hair stuck to her temple. I smoothed it back, kissed the skin I uncovered. Her mouth opened for me like a secret. The next breath she took broke on a sound that let me know the pain had drifted into something warmer, something that lit behind her ribs and moved outward.
“Better?” I asked.
Her answer was the way she lifted her hips to meet me, the way her nails bit just enough into my back to write her name there.
I let myself give her a fraction more. Not speed, instead depth. Not force, but complete certainty. The bed creaked a rhythm that became ours, a quiet drum under the blood in my ears. I felt the change before she did, the way her body gathered itself, the way her breath forgot how to behave. I didn’t push past her, didn’t run ahead. I stayed with her, right there in the moment.
“Go,” I commanded, and the word lived at the back of her throat when she did.
It wasn’t loud. It was honest. It rolled through her in waves I rode out with my jaw clenched and my eyes on her, taking every frame into me like evidence. When she came down from it, she pulled me in with her arms and I let the restraint I’d held onto go. I buried a curse in her shoulder and followed her over the edge planting my seed deep inside her womb.
For a long string of breaths, we stayed exactly where we were, joined and breathing like the world had narrowed to oxygen and heat and the steadying weight of a hand sliding up a spine.
I eased out, slow and careful, and settled half on my side, half over her, not ready to surrender the contact. Her eyes were closed; her mouth was soft in a way I hadn’t earned before tonight. I watched the pulse at her throat notch down, felt mine climb down after.
I brushed my knuckles down her cheek. “You okay?”
Her eyes opened. There was shine there, not tears, something like peace. “Yeah,” she said. The word was small and complete. “I’m um… yeah.”
“Good.”
I didn’t dress the moment with pretty talk. I don’t have much of that. I didn’t hand out promises I wouldn’t keep. But if I’ve got a vow in me, I wouldn’t hide it, either.
I tilted her face up with two fingers under her chin. “No other man’s gonna taste what’s mine. You hear me? You’re in this until I say we’re done.”
The words weren’t gentle. They weren’t meant to be. I watched them hit. I watched the first flicker of that fire I’d seen at the party kick in her eyes—surprise, then the quick assessment—then a resolve that warmed my chest in a way I didn’t expect.
“Okay,” she whispered, “but, you should know, I don’t know your world. You don’t know mine. I’m not owned by you even if you gave me the best night of my life.”
I bit back the desire to laugh because she was serious. “I like your honesty. It’s refreshing, Melody.”
“You know my name?” she asked in surprise.
“Yeah, birthdate too.” I told her playfully.
She gasped into the air between us. “I’m no better than them. I’m one of them,” the words were barely a whisper.
“What is that?” I asked feeling the blood pulse quicker in my veins because I had a feeling and I didn’t like it.
“A bunny. I just had sex with you and I don’t know your actual name.”
I turn over and meet her eyes with mine. “You are not a bunny. I don’t share, Melody. I won’t share you or the gift you just gave me. My name is Enzo, everyone calls me Thrasher but you call me whatever you want, baby. I don’t know what we got or how long this will work. What I do know is I’ll end any motherfucker that touches you. Before you and I decide this doesn’t work anymore, no one handles what is mine. Do you get me?”
She studied me hard. “You don’t share. Well, Enzo,” my name on her lips had me getting hard again, but I tried to ignore it. “you need to know, I don’t either.”
“Baby, I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Relief washed across her face. I rolled to my back, pulling her with me and arranging her to be half draped over my body. We lay there a while, the air cooling around skin that hadn’t gotten the message yet. I memorized the weight of her head on my shoulder, the way her palm rested over my heart like it had found a place it recognized. Every now and then her thumb moved, absent, like she was counting beats. I let her, even as the old part of me, the part that looks for exits told me I was doing the stupid thing.
Eventually we made our way up out of the bed, the slow, clumsy shyness of two people who’d just crossed a line. She padded to the bathroom and I heard water run, the soft rustle of towels. I sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled my jeans on, leaving the zipper open, not in a hurry to be anything other than here.
When she came back out, she’d dragged my T-shirt on instead of her own, and the sight of her in it did violence to my self-control I was barely done rebuilding. It hung off one shoulder. It put something possessive and quiet in my throat that I didn’t voice because the room already knew it.
Moving around the space, I watched her from my perch on the bed. I fought the urge to yank her to me and take her once again. She was probably sore. She found her clothing piece by piece and put it on, finally tossing my shirt back to me.
