I smell coffee twenty minutes before I realize he's no longer next to me. Sun just beginning to creep through the curtains, I pull the duvet up to my nose, take a deep breath, smile. Everything smells like him: spice and soap and clean, masculine skin. He smells right, much in the way he felt right last night, when he took my hands and put them on his hips and his lower back, told me to guide him, show him how I preferred to be taken.
We'd crossed paths over dinner; he was still in uniform, fresh off the job, looking for a hot meal and a quiet place to sit; I was in a dress with red lipstick and no one to talk to. "Sometimes a girl just wants to look pretty," I'd said, and he'd sat at my table without asking and said, "You always look beautiful," before realization hit and he looked away. Signaled the waiter, ordered a double whiskey.
If he'd been another sort of man he would've blushed, I think. But instead he offered to buy me dinner, and then promptly changed the subject. And he kept changing the subject until he was six glasses in—time and laughter and sense getting away from him—and I had to practically drag him out to my car.
"I meant what I said earlier," he told me, words not slurred but just on the edge of it. "You're fucking beautiful." He frowned when I laughed ("I've never heard you say fuck before, Sheriff."), leaned in without warning. Gentle; a question, not a kiss.
He tasted like vanilla and whiskey and salt, and he smelled even better, and then his hand was on my waist and the answer to his question was most definitely: yes.
"Your bed's smaller than it looks," he'd said, chuckling low in his throat as he teased me, played with me, spread my legs and nipped the skin above my kneecap. "Not much room in here." I'd asked if that was a problem, and his answer was most definitely: no.
And now he's in my kitchen, awake and sober and leaving behind his scent and his presence, and I let my eyes drift shut for a brief moment, remember what it's like to have his weight atop me and his breath on my neck and his come between my thighs.
The clatter of pans startles me from my daydream; I can smell bacon now, too, and warm butter. Breakfast. Eggs and bacon, I think, and fresh coffee, and though I strain to pick up anything else he might be whipping up down there, all I can hear is the shuffle of fabric as he moves around the kitchen.
I'm up within a matter of seconds, prodded awake by the sun and the aroma and the sudden, nigh unexpected stir of desire, the memory of him almost too much to bear. A glance in the mirror tells me what I already know: his fingers left marks in my skin. Not bruises, exactly, but still pink from pressure; fond reminders of his eagerness.
He's left his uniform shirt draped across my dresser. I walk over, hold it to my nose, breathe him in. Feel it hit me like a hot stab low in the gut; like butterflies or fear or lust or some combination of all three. But when I hear a pan crash to the floor, and a quiet string of curses—maybe he's tired, or hungover, or simply not a morning person—and an idea takes root.
I slip it over my shoulders, leave it unbuttoned. I don't bother with anything else; no panties or bra, no pants or dress or even a little slip. Just his shirt, and my flesh—the flesh he's marked, claimed, kissed like he wanted to own every inch of me—and a spritz of perfume on my neck.
"Christ, you're soft," he'd groaned into the crook of my neck last night, seconds before his fingers tightened around my rib cage and he shuddered into me. "You're so soft, and you smell so good."
Alcohol and lust, I thought, a potent combination.
His back is to me when I hit the bottom stair. I creep down, practically tip-toe, and simply hover there for a moment, watching. Silent.
He's fussing with the coffee maker, quietly muttering under his breath—the damn machine's impossible, I should've warned him earlier—but he's managed to boil a fresh pot. He pours a cup for himself, oblivious to me. Wears nothing but his uniform trousers and a black t-shirt. Moves here and there, cleaning up the counter and washing his plate. There's another one wrapped with aluminum foil, and I know it's meant for me; he hadn't wanted to wake me.
"Breakfast already?" I ask.
He startles slightly, turns around, and I see the urge to greet me collide with sudden realization. His shirt flutters lightly at my sides, more a curtain than a garment, and I watch his gaze flicker from my eyes to my breasts to my lips and back down. He swallows hard; I can see his adam's apple bob with the force of it.
A corner of his mouth quirks up into a small smile. "So, that's where my shirt went," he says, but he's staring at my thighs all the while. But then he meets my eyes again, and smiles wider, holds his hand out to me in silent invitation.
The moment my fingers slide over his palm he closes his hand around mine and pulls me into him. We say nothing, because nothing needs to be said. I fold myself into his chest and he wraps his arms around me, fingers sliding through my hair to cradle the back of my head, the other arm around my waist, and it's become apparent since last night that this is simply how he is: protective, ever-watchful, almost paternal.
He holds me, cradles me, the way I'd hold a child: like no terror in the world would be strong enough to rip them from my arms. It's absolute protection, undying care; Alex Romero shows his love with his gun and his instincts and how tightly he pulls you against him.
But then I tilt my chin and nuzzle his jaw with the bridge of my nose, urging him to let his head fall back. Which he does, and I lean up and place a tender kiss in the hollow of his throat—he makes a low, soft, distracted noise when I do—and playfully suck on his adam's apple. But it's only when I duck down and bite his shoulder, hard enough that I feel him flinch in surprise, that he grabs my waist and grinds himself against me. Already hard, already eager, his hands finding the apple of my ass and lifting, so that my legs wrap around his hips and my arms loops across his shoulders.
We travel a short distance, no farther than the kitchen table. If there were dishes before they're gone now, because with one arm he sweeps the surface clean and then lowers me onto it. His shirt falls open even farther and the second he looks up, and I watch his eyes travel over me head to toe for the fifth time in as many minutes, he groans. "Jesus Christ," he whispers.
He reaches to touch my face but I giggle, crane my neck and draw the tip of his finger into my mouth. His eyes widen for just a moment; surprise or shock or lust or all three. But then those same eyes go dark, pupils blown wide, and he grabs my hips roughly, rolls me onto my belly and pulls me back until I feel my ass press against the front of his thighs.
Nothing needs to be said but I look over my shoulder and say, "I want you," nonetheless, and his fingers trace the backs of my thighs in response. A sweet, ticking path down to the backs of my knees, and when I hear him fumble with his zipper I spread myself for him; push my hips back so that he knows I'm ready, and eager, and submissive.
Lips brush the base of my spine, electric on my skin, a thousand nerves I never knew I had on fire, and I gasp. But that gasp turns to a moan when he moves up my body, pushing up his shirt a bit, settling only when he reaches my neck. I tilt my head, jugular exposed for him; vulnerable, trusting, and he tells me I'm beautiful again, the words nothing more than a gust of breath on my skin, making me shiver. And when he nips the back of my neck—dominant, affectionate, playful—I whisper "please," and I feel him slide into me.
He keeps his weight above me, a warm, soothing presence. His rhythm is slow, and he kisses my ear lobe and my temple and my shoulder blade beneath his shirt.
"You're so soft," he whispers again, an echo of last night, and my body tightens around him in response. He groans, thrusts into me hard, and already I can hear myself whimper, a trill of soft, inarticulate noises, the heat between us building rapidly, without sense or reason.
If last night was slow and sweet and maybe a little messy in the drunken haze, then this is rough and rushed and absolutely perfect, and it occurs to me that it could only ever exist with him. Perhaps the only man I'll ever trust, the only one who sees every flaw and whim and scar and remains silent.
Instead, he kisses everything he can reach. He traces those scars with his fingers. He whispers about my beauty and his devotion when he's buried inside me, and I don't mind in the slightest because I know he'll do the same when he's finished, and the next morning too.
He tangles his fingers in my hair, pulls just hard enough that I lean my head back into it, and he takes me deep, the motion of his hips getting faster and faster, matching the rapid cadence of his breathing. And I can tell he's getting close, afraid of finishing before me, because the hand not tangled in my hair slides beneath us, up and between my thighs. A finger, or maybe his thumb, gently circling around my clit, so that my hips buck beneath him and after a minute I lose all sense and reason.
We're lost to our heat and our need, and our love, too. Because it's love when he murmurs to me, and it's love when he fucks me hard, and it's love when the orgasm hits like fireworks, bright and hot and blinding, so that he holds me against him and thrusts into me hard while my whimpers become a series of messy, haphazardly strung together half-words and moans, and only when he feels me begin to still beneath him does he let himself go.
He leans down and bites into his own wrist because he won't bite me, and the force of his hips make the table shake, will leave me with more bruises tomorrow morning, but I don't mind at all. He gasps for air and pulls my hair tight and I can feel our sweat mingling, soaking through the back of his shirt.
But he kisses my neck and my jaw and every inch of the side of my face that he can reach so that I laugh, high-pitched and exhausted, and when he slides out and takes me in his arms and turns me over onto my back so that he can stretch out across my body and rest his head on my chest, I'm all too happy to cradle his head and stroke his hair as he desperately tries to catch his breath.
It takes several minutes, but eventually he does.
"Well," he says, voice gravely with the strain of our encounter, "I think we may need to do laundry."