Page 23 of Rogue
I drank.
“Grant,” I said.“Grant gave me a diamond bracelet for our six-month anniversary.He clasped it on my wrist himself, in a restaurant, and the table next to us applauded.And on the car ride home he told me he’d seen me laugh at something one of his cousins said at dinner.He told me he didn’t ever want to see me laugh like that at another man again.He didn’t raise his voice.He took my hand.He kept his thumb on the inside of my wrist, right over the bracelet, the whole way home.”
My voice had dropped.I could hear it.I could hear myself going quieter.“Every kindness,” I said.“My whole life.Every single one of them had a cost.I just didn’t always know when the bill was coming due.”
I waited for him to say something.
He set his mug down on the coffee table, the motion slow, but I saw the muscle in his jaw jump once before the ceramic touched the wood.He turned toward me on the couch -- a full turn, his knee on the cushion between us -- and waited until I looked at him.So I did.
His face was a mask of control, the same one he’d worn at the meeting table, but his eyes were harder now, the softness I’d seen on the road gone.“I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give.”
No emphasis on any one word, because the whole sentence carried the same weight.I searched his face, looking for the catch -- the thing in the corner of the mouth, or in the eyes, the small tell of the lie under the line.I went over all of it, and then I went over it again.
There was nothing there.
I pressed my lips together hard.
He reached over and covered both of my hands where they were holding the mug.His palm was warm.His fingers wrapped around the back of mine.He didn’t pull.He didn’t squeeze.He just put his hand there, and he left it there, and he waited.
I didn’t pull back.
I sat on his couch with a mug of coffee gone cool between my palms and his hand over mine, and I let my eyes be wet without doing anything about it, and after a while I breathed out, and the breath came out long and uneven and I let that happen too.
He stayed where he was.
He didn’t ask me anything.
I set my mug on the coffee table next to his, and I stood, and his hand slid off mine.He looked up at me from the couch.He didn’t ask.He just watched, with the attention of a man who’d decided not to make any of the next moves until I had.
I held out my hand, and he took it.He stood.I walked.He followed.
The bedroom lamp was on the nightstand on the side that had stopped being his and started being mine, by a process neither of us had named.He’d turned it on earlier.He turned lights on and forgot to turn them off.The light it threw was low, warm and yellow at the corners of the room, and the bed was made -- tight at the foot, the quilt folded across the bottom.
He stopped in front of me.
He let his hands hang at his sides.He didn’t reach.He stood there and looked at me and waited, and I understood that he was going to let me set every inch of this.I reached up and placed my fingertips against his jaw.The stubble there was rough under the pads of my fingers, and his skin under it was warm, and I held my hand on his face and looked at him and felt his breath move the small hairs at my wrist.
He moved then.
His hands found my waist -- careful, the flat of his palms against the hoodie, the pressure light.He let them rest there a beat.He looked at my face.He closed the remaining distance between us and bent his head.His mouth came down on mine -- controlled, unwavering.
He kissed me, long and deep.I felt his hand slide up the line of my back, slow, under the cut, and he eased it off my shoulders.He caught it before it hit the floor and laid it over the chair, then he came back, stood in front of me and waited again.
He unzipped the hoodie and dragged it down my arms, then folded it and set it on the chair seat.Rogue placed his hands at my waist again, lower now, at the hem of the flannel.He looked at me, and he swiftly unbuttoned the flannel and slid it down my arms.
He took off his own shirt and pants without looking away.I devoured every inch of him with my gaze, never having seen a man more perfect.My fingers twitched with the need to reach out and trace each tattoo, to feel every muscle.Rogue reached for me again, his hands on my ribs, and inching toward my plain bra.My cheeks flushed and I wished I’d had something prettier to wear.He paused, and I met his gaze.
“Hey.”He put one hand flat against the side of my face, the same way he’d held my forehead against his this morning, and he held me there.“Just me.We can stop anytime you want.Just say the word.”
“I’m good.”
He waited a moment before continuing, but he didn’t rush.Rogue leaned in and kissed the place under my ear.I felt his hand skimming my curves, and soon we were moving toward the bed.
He took the rest of my clothes off in a way that included a small held breath each time before the next thing, an unspoken -- okay?-- that I answered by staying exactly where I was.By that time, we were on the quilt with the lamp still on and his weight braced on his elbow over me.
“You’re okay,” he murmured against my collarbone.Then I felt his lips against the hollow of my throat.Then lower.“I’ve got you.”
I heard myself make a sound I hadn’t made before.Small.Surprised.I lifted my hands to his shoulders, and I held on.
