Page 191 of Levi

The Christmas lights stay up. They never come down at the Roadhouse.

Chapter 73: Levi

Our house is finally quiet.

For several days it wasn’t. It held Dante’s family. His mother, his sisters, tía Rosa, and a level of noise I had never in my life lived inside of. They cooked at all hours. They argued about the cooking. They argued about the wedding, the outfits, each other, me. A rolling, good-natured roar that never entirely stopped. Even at night you could hear it coming up through the floor.

They folded me in the way that family folds everybody in. Completely, loudly, with food, and giving me no say in the matter whatsoever.

I loved every minute of it.

Two days ago, they flew home to Miami, and the house went silent. At the door, his mother took my face in both hands and told me about Nochebuena. December, Miami, her table. Settled.

I keep waiting to feel the relief of the silence, the kind I used to hunt for when Freddie’s people cleared out of whatever rented place I was in. But it doesn’t come. This is a house with one other person in it who I want there, and I’m still learning the difference between peace and emptiness. For twenty-five years they were the same state.

Tonight the bedroom balcony door’s open, the way it has been every night since we moved in. Cool night air moves across the sheets and over my bare skin, carrying the constant hush of the Gulf.

Dante reaches for me in the dark.

His hand finds my hip first, palm warm and steady against the bone, then slides up under my shirt, fingers spreading over my stomach.

He kisses me like he’s got all night. Soft at first, then opening me up, his tongue grazing mine. I can feel the slight roughness of his stubble, the heat of his breath.

He strips me with sure hands. The shirt comes over my head, fabric catching for a second on my shoulder before it gives. He loosens the drawstring of my shorts, pushing them down my thighs until the air cools against my bare legs.

His own clothes follow, pulled away and kicked to the floor until there’s nothing left between us but the weight of his body settling over mine.

He trails a path down my stomach, lower, until his fingers wrap around me. I’m already hard for him, wetness pooling at the tip. He strokes me, thumb sweeping in slow circles over the sensitive ridge while his other hand eases my thighs farther apart.

He finds the lube in the nightstand drawer without looking, the smooth press of his fingers cool against my skin. When he works me open, it’s with a patience that used to undo me and now just settles me down into the mattress. One finger first, pressing in carefully, the stretch familiar and welcome. Then a second, curling just enough to touch me where only he ever has. My breath stutters and my hips lift.

He takes his time, scissoring gently, watching my face the whole while. His mouth stays on my throat, teeth grazing the tendon there before his tongue soothes the sting, then lower, kissing the hollow of my collarbone.

“No hurry,” he murmurs against my ear. “Nowhere either of us has to be. Just this. Just us.”

By the time he aligns himself against me, I’m shaking with want. He presses slow, filling me inch by inch until he’s buried to the hilt. I can feel his heartbeat inside me, the thick length of him resting against places that make my thighs tremble.

The sound I make is completely unguarded. He likes me loud, and I am.

He moves, hips rolling in a steady rhythm that drags against every sensitive spot inside me. The friction is relentless in its gentleness. Hot, smooth, perfect.

He’s watching my face. There’s no hiding left in either of us.

Just Dante, who looked at me on the floor a lifetime ago and decided I was worth keeping, moving inside me like a man with all the time in the world to prove it.

Somewhere in the middle of it, the whole distance I’ve traveled lands on me. There isn’t a single mile of that road I could’ve walked without him right now, and he’d argue the point, because he thinks I saved myself. We’ve agreed to keep disagreeing about it for the next fifty years.

“Stay with me,” he whispers, feeling my mind wander. “Only with me.”

“I’m here.” And I am. All the way here.

The sound of his body against mine fills the space between our breathing. Every thrust pushes a soft, helpless noise out of my chest. My body opens for him, clenches around him, pressure building low in my gut with every slow roll of his hips.

I get my hands in his hair and pull him down. “I love you,” I tell him.

It comes out easy. That word took me twenty-five years to get to, and now it turns up in my mouth over breakfast, in the middle of ordinary afternoons. But here, with him buried inside me, it still feels like something sacred.

“Te amo,” he breathes back. “I love you. Te amo.”