Page 16 of Roulette

“You don’t have to keep doing that,” I said.

The words came out softer than I’d meant them to, carrying neither accusation nor gratitude.

His expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes recalibrated. “I know.”

Two words. Blunt. Final. He sounded neither defensive nor explanatory, only aware of the fact and resolved to do it anyway.

I set the blanket aside. I pushed myself up from the couch, my bare feet meeting the hardwood floor. My knees felt stiff from sitting too long, and I flexed them once before crossing to his chair. I perched on the arm first, my hip against the padded leather, close enough that I could smell the clean, soapy note of whatever he’d washed with that morning and the faint trace of engine grease that never quite left his hands. Then I shifted, and the chair accepted me with a soft creak of protest, and I was sitting beside him, our thighs pressed together from hip to knee, the arm of the chair digging into my ribs because the thing had been built for one person and we were definitively two.

He stayed still long enough for me to choose the closeness. Then his arm lifted, settled across the back of the chair, and his hand came to rest on my shoulder -- warm, certain, asking nothing.

My head dropped to his shoulder. I didn’t plan it. My body did it before my brain had time to object, and then his shoulder was there, solid and warm under my cheek, and the rise and fall of his breathing became something I could feel through my own ribs. I kept my eyes open. The living room looked different from this angle -- the TV higher on the wall, the coffee table farther away, the lamp casting a longer shadow across the floor than it had from the couch. My fingers found the hem of his shirt, the cotton soft and worn thin at the edges, and I held it loosely between my thumb and forefinger, not pulling, just anchoring.

Neither of us commented on it. There was nothing to comment on. This wasn’t something new starting -- it was the same thread from that afternoon, picked back up without either of us needing to say so. His hand was warm on my shoulder. His breathing was steady. The chair was too small and neither of us cared.

I tilted my face up. His jaw was close enough that I could see the shadow of stubble along the line of it, the small scar at the corner of his mouth that I’d noticed earlier when his forehead was pressed to mine. He looked down. His eyes were dark in the lamplight, the kind of dark that held more than it revealed, and the space between us narrowed by degrees until there was no space left at all.

He kissed me again. Slower this time, his mouth warm against mine, his hand moving from my shoulder to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair where it had come loose from its knot. I exhaled against his lips. My hand left the hem of his shirt and found his chest instead, palm against the cotton, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath my fingertips. His other arm came around my waist, pulling me closer, and I went with it, my body following the pull of his hand without hesitation.

Outside, the compound went on without us. Inside Roulette’s living room, in a chair too small for both of us, something that had been building for weeks finally found its shape.

He stood without a word and held out his hand. Palm up, fingers relaxed, the same hand that had passed me lug nuts in my driveway a lifetime ago. I looked at it for one beat, two, then I placed my hand in his and let him pull me to my feet.

The hallway was dark except for the spill of amber light from his bedroom at the end. Our footsteps on the hardwood made no sound -- his boots had been shed by the front door hours ago, my bare feet soundless against the grain. He led without pulling, his hand warm around mine, and I followed because there was nowhere else I wanted to go.

His bedroom was spare, the room of a man who owned little and needed less. A king bed dominated the far wall, the dark gray comforter pulled taut across the mattress, no pillows visible because they were tucked underneath at the headboard. A single lamp on the nightstand cast low, amber light that pooled across the bedding and left the corners of the room in shadow. His work boots stood in a neat line beside the closet door, toes pointing outward, the leather scuffed and dusted with gravel from the compound yard. The gun safe sat where I remembered it, pushed against the closet wall, heavy and squat and bolted to the floor. His leather jacket hung over the back of a wooden chair, the cut draped across it, the Hades Abyss patch facing the wall like it was turned away on purpose.

I stopped near the foot of the bed. My hand had left his somewhere between the hallway and the threshold, and now I stood with my arms at my sides, suddenly aware that my T-shirt had slipped off one shoulder, the sleeve hanging loose against my arm. I reached up automatically, fingers finding the thin cotton, tugging it back into place with the efficiency of someone who’d been adjusting her own clothing for nineteen years without anyone’s help.

Roulette’s hand covered mine, his palm warm over my knuckles, resting there before he moved my hand away with a gentleness that caught me off guard. His fingers found the sleeve instead. He adjusted it slowly, his thumb brushing the curve of my shoulder as he lifted the fabric back into place, and the entire time his gaze never left my face.

I could have looked away. Could have dropped my gaze to the comforter or the floor or the boots by the closet -- anywhere but the steady, unwavering attention of a man who missed very little. I didn’t. My chin lifted a fraction of an inch, and I held his gaze, and something in his expression softened at the edges.

He reached for the buttons of his shirt. One at a time, slowly, his fingers worked the small discs of plastic through their holes with the same deliberate focus he brought to everything. The shirt came open. He shrugged it off his shoulders and let it fall over the chair beside his jacket, the fabric settling with a soft whisper against the leather.

I reached out first. My palm found his chest, and the warm skin over his sternum. I felt him go perfectly still beneath my hand. His jaw tightened. His hands stayed at his sides, fingers loose, not reaching for me, not moving. Letting me set the pace. Letting me decide. The muscle under my palm was hard and warm, and I could feel his heartbeat through my fingertips, steady and a little faster than it had been in the living room chair.

I stepped closer. He stood close enough that I had to tilt my head to meet his gaze. I took his right hand -- the one with the calluses thicker across the knuckles, the one that had changed my tires and checked my locks and turned the cup handle toward me without making a production of it -- and I guided it to my waist. His fingers settled there, tentative at first, and then firmer when I didn’t flinch, his thumb finding the curve of my hip through the denim of my jeans.

His other hand came up to my face. Cupped my jaw the way it had that afternoon in the living room, his thumb tracing the line of my cheekbone, and then he leaned down and kissed me, and this time there was nothing tentative about it. His mouth was warm and sure against mine. I felt the shift in his breathing against my collarbone, his chest expanding on the inhale and holding for a beat too long on the exhale. My hands found his hair, shorter at the sides, longer on top, the texture coarse between my fingers, and I pulled him closer because close wasn’t close enough.

He undid the button of my jeans with one hand, the zipper following, the denim loosening around my hips. I stepped out of them without being asked, kicking them aside somewhere near the foot of the bed, and then his hands were on my waist again, lifting me, and the mattress was at my back and Roulette was above me, one knee between mine, his weight braced on his forearms on either side of my head. The lamp threw his shadow across the comforter, across my body, and I reached for the hem of my T-shirt and pulled it over my head. My bra came next, unhooked and gone somewhere over the side of the bed, and then there was nothing left between his gaze and me.

He looked at me, his gaze lingering as it traveled over my face, down my throat, across my chest, then slowly returned to mine. Whatever usually stayed locked behind his calm expression had slipped free. There was no restraint left in it, only quiet honesty. His hand traced the curve of my ribs, his callused palm gliding over my bare skin. I leaned into the touch, a soft breath escaping before I could catch it.

“Tell me if you want to stop,” he said. Almost hoarse. His voice had dropped to a register I’d never heard from him, thick with something that wasn’t quite a question.

I answered by pulling him down. My hands on his shoulders, my body lifting to meet his, and then his mouth was on my throat and his hand was cupping my breast and the sound that escaped me wasn’t a word, but it was an answer all the same. He took his time. Of course he took his time. Roulette did everything with the same measured focus, learning me by increments -- the hitch in my breathing when his thumb circled my nipple, the arch of my back when his mouth replaced his hand, the small, involuntary sound I made when his teeth grazed the sensitive skin just below my ear. He was methodical even here, even now, his attention fixed on every reaction, every shift, every signal my body gave him without my permission.

I guided his mouth back to my throat, wanting to feel his breath against my pulse. My hands found his belt next, working it loose because I needed his skin against mine more than I needed anything else in that moment. The rest came off in a rush of hands and fabric, impatient now, until there was nothing left between us at all. I wrapped my legs around his hips and pulled him closer because the solid press of him above me was the most certain thing I’d felt in weeks, and I needed it more than I needed air.

He entered me slowly.

One hand braced beside my head, the other gripping my hip, his forehead pressed to mine, and the fullness of him drew a gasp from my throat that I didn’t try to swallow. He held still for a long moment, his jaw clenched, his breathing ragged against my mouth, and I could feel the effort it cost him -- the control, the restraint, the same discipline he applied to everything channeled now into not moving until I was ready.

I was ready. I moved my hips, a small, deliberate shift that brought him deeper, and the quiet sound that escaped him sent a jolt through my chest before settling low in my belly. His hand tightened on my hip. His pace found its rhythm, and I matched it, my body rising to meet his, my fingers digging into the muscles of his back where they flexed beneath my palms. The bed creaked. The lamp cast its amber light across the tangle of our bodies, across the sweat gathering at the hollow of his throat, across the place where my hand gripped the comforter and then let go to reach for him instead.

He came with his face buried against the curve of my neck, one hand threaded through my hair as though he couldn’t bear to let me go. My name left his lips in a voice so quiet I almost missed it, carrying an emotion I’d never heard from him before. I held him through every second of it, my arms wrapped around his back, my legs still locked around his hips, feeling the tension slowly drain from his body. He didn’t pull away when it was over. He stayed there, forehead resting against my shoulder, his breathing gradually evening out as though this was the only place he wanted to be.