Page 92 of Make Them Bleed
My throat goes tight so fast I make a tiny, embarrassing sound. It’s not a surprise-love. It's afinallylove. Heat breaks behind my eyes. I grip the door and breathe around it.
“Say it again,” I whisper, greedily.
“I love you,” he says, with that earnest, infuriating steadiness that makes me want to kiss him and yell at him and hand him my future to hold all at once. “I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to say it.”
The tears tip over. I let them. “I love you too,” I say, because I do, because I’m not doing the casual deflection version of this anymore, because if we’re in a horror movie we’re in the scene where the final girl picks up the axe and tells the truth. “You ridiculous, careful man.”
He exhales like I handed him oxygen. The coffees and the bagel bag hit the entry table with a thunk. His hands find my face—warm palms, careful thumbs at my jaw—and I’m already rising on my toes before he’s even halfway to me.
The first kiss is relief. The second is hunger. The third—God, the third—is the sound your heart makes when it sees home and runs.
He presses me gently back into the door, not trapping, just guiding, like the world is a big dangerous room and he’s making us a corner.
He kisses like he did the first time—meticulous, a little bossy, entirely focused. His mouth is warm and sure. His thumbs tilt my chin, micro-adjusting, finding the angle that makes me gasp. He swallows the sound, and the apartment narrows to the square of space where his body is pressed to mine and the door is pressed to my back and I feel held on both sides.
“Don’t stop,” I say, wanting so much more of him. All of him. The truth can wait.
“Demand noted,” he says, and obeys—kissing me deeper, then slower, then deeper again, that maddening rhythm he uses when he’s trying to make me forget words. It works. The world blurs. The paper bag rustles as one of my hands flails for balance and lands in nothing. He steadies me with a palm at the small of my back.
He goes very still for a second, like a man being careful with a live wire, and then—oh—then he moves. He’s demanding without being a jerk, guiding without grabbing, the kind of hungry that asks before it takes. He lifts me just enough that my boots squeak against the door and my laugh hits his mouth and gets turned into something softer, deeper. His hands roam over my body.
Somewhere betweenthis is unfairandnever stop, I drag him toward the bedroom by the hem of his sweatshirt, because the door is fun but my spine would like to keep its cartilage. He lets me lead. He always lets me lead when I pick a direction.
We fall onto the bed in a tangle that somehow doesn’t feel clumsy at all. It’s a blur and it isn’t. He doesn’t rush. He layers patience and want until my breathing is a metronome for something that doesn’t exist outside of this room.
We remove all our clothing in a flash, and he climbs back onto me.
“I love you,” he whispers as he slides into me. “I love you sofuckingmuch.”
I cup his face. “I love you too.”
He slams into me harder, pinning my wrists above my head. “I’ll never tire of owning this pussy.”
“It’s yours,” I sing in a chorus of heartbeats. “All yours.”
This makes him smile. Not in a cheesy, goofy grin-type of way, but in a possession-type of grin, like he finally knows he’s got me.
We find a rhythm, and my orgasm hits me like a ton of bricks. It’s relentless. It’s all-consuming. His tumbles us to the floor.
When we finally break, my room looks like a tornado ripped through it. My hair is a crime. His sweatshirt is halfway to the floor. The coffee’s sitting on the entry table out there getting cold.
I roll onto my side and nest myself into his chest, one leg slung over his hips, his palm at the small of my back like it belongs there. His heartbeat is ridiculous, rabbit-fast, and mine answers like an echo.
He kisses my hair once, not strategic, just because. “Truth?” he says, voice low.
“Truth,” I say, and prop my chin on his sternum so I can watch his face.
“We went to see Paul last night,” he says with no preamble. “Me, Ozzy, Gage.”
I go still for a second, not because I’m shocked—because I’m not, not really—but because I need a moment to process the information.
“We didn’t tell you,” he continues, steady, “because I knew you’d want to come. And I didn’t want you to get made by a man who has seen you at Bob’s barbecues and is three degrees from the Five. I also didn’t want you arrested if it went sideways. You asked for truth. This is all of it.”
“How sideways?” I ask.
“Oh, you know, typical sideways,” he says with a cute smile. “We grabbed him at the door. Sat him in his own dining chair. Tied him off with nylon that won’t leave marks. We wore the idiot presidents.”
A laugh escapes me, sharp as a hiccup. “You interrogated Paul Felder as Hoover? I miss him.”
