Page 92 of Rhodes
Then he moves again, deeper this time, and the laugh disappears. I hear that low catch in his throat I've learned means he's close. I tighten around him on purpose, the sharp throb in my elbow mixing with everything else and pushing the rush higher.
His eyes shut.
"Tallulah," he warns.
"Come with me, Rhodes. Let go.”
"Tallulah." It comes out wrecked. "I'm going to come. You feel too fucking good."
“I’m about to—“
I don't get the rest of it out. Hearing him come apart is what takes me with him, and I go hard enough that I scream. He's a breath behind me, and neither of us is quiet about any of it.
He's heavy on me, and I don't ask him to shift. His weight on me after sex has become something I enjoy almost as much as the sex. The house is dead quiet now, and I'm suddenly aware that it wasn't a minute ago.
When he finally moves, it's only enough to make room for my ribs to fully inflate. I bring a hand up onto his chest, and run it down over the sweat beads on his skin. Goosebumps come up under my palm in a wave.
He catches my wrist and brings my hand to his lips.
It goes through me worse than anything he did with his mouth, because nothing we agreed to on that first night covers a man kissing your hand.
I should leave it alone, but it's nearly exploding out of me. It's all I can think of. Tomorrow is waiting, whether I talk about it or not.
"So," I say into his shoulder. "Home tomorrow."
His hand stills against my back.
"We go back to normal. Right?"
"Yeah," he says after a beat. "That's what we said, right? We leave what happened in Italy in Italy."
"Exactly." I settle closer. "Back to keeping it simple."
His arm tightens around me, but we both stay silent. A small pull in my chest triggers a deep breath, but I blame the hour, the week, the fact that good things always feel bigger when they're ending.
TWENTY-THREE
Rhodes
Settling: A house never stops moving. Doors that stick in August swing free in January, and no room in this city ever comes back to precisely the shape it held before.
I knock, then open the door, dropping my bags in the small foyer of Tallulah's villa. Libba left about an hour ago.
"Tell me you found the other charger," Tallulah calls from the kitchen. "The white one. Not the black one. We both know the black one is dead."
"It's in the bowl on your kitchen counter."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I put it there last night when I found it on the floor."
She appears in the doorway holding two cups, her hair still wet at the ends. She's wearing the leggings she flew here in and one of my button-down shirts that she hasn't admitted to taking. She hands me a coffee like she's done it every morning of her life.
"You're helpful at times. Let's sit on the terrace. The car's not here for forty minutes."
I follow her out. The light's gone all gold and slow over the water, the way it does in the late afternoon, hitting the lemon tree and the chairs still shoved crooked from our last lunch in Italy with the last of us. She goes straight to the railing and leans on it, coffee in both hands, looking out at nothing in particular.
I stand next to her, close, and I don't check the doorway behind me, because there's no one to walk through it.
