Chapter Text
He does stop sleeping with other women.
Well.
At first.
Elizabeth allows him to stay in her bed—their bed, he thinks, self-satisfied and smug, eyes glazin’ over a tie clip Dean’s left on his bedside table—sprawled out naked for longer than Rio expects.
After she slips into the robe, she peeks over her shoulder at him, but she doesn't say anything about him leaving. She just gets up and starts putterin’ around the room, tossing the panties he pulled off her with his teeth into the hamper, fluffing the pillows on her side of the bed, retucking the sheets. Then she picks up and sets her abandoned laundry basket on the dresser and starts putting folded clothes away, letting her eyes skirt over to Rio every so often as she opens and closes drawers.
She’s probably waitin’ for him to get up and go, and he thinks about doing it himself, but something keeps him where he is. He watches her, quiet, his eyes fixed on the careful press of her fingers along a seam as she refolds a shirt. As much as he’s been in her house, as much as he knows that this side of her exists, he hasn’t seen it much—her bein’ all domestic and shit.
She slides her husband’s pajamas into a drawer, and then disappears into the closet to pull out an ironing board.
She begins pulling out the last items at the bottom of her laundry basket, dresses to iron and hang, dresses he’s never seen her in—some iridescent floral number, a simple green one. Where does she wear them, he wonders?
To work?
To fuckin’ anniversary dinners?
He pushes the thought away, ‘cause he’s lyin’ in the guy’s bed right now with his wife’s cum on his cock, so he figures he’s won—at least in all the ways it matters.
And now that every muscled knot in his body has been pressed out, uncoiled, he thinks that it will be better.
(It’s got to be better.)
He’ll be able to start sleeping with blondes, at least.
(Never mind that thinkin’ about another woman as he’s slipped between her sheets makes him suddenly focus intently on a stray thread on her bedspread, something he feels the need to cut off or rip out).
Then Elizabeth pulls the dress out of the basket.
“That your Sunday best?” he asks, unable to stop himself, but it’s only half a question. An affectionate tease, not mean-spirited, though at another time? Maybe.
He nods at the dress, but she’s focused on the task at hand, zigzagging the iron down the silk, so she doesn’t catch it.
“I don’t go to church,” she corrects him obliviously.
“Yeah, ma, I kinda picked up on that,” Rio taunts, gesturing to himself, naked, covered in a sheen of sweat in her marriage bed.
Elizabeth pinkens.
He sees it, when she puts it together, starin’ down at the black and white polka dot dress underneath her iron. She registers that it’s the one she wore that got them to this point, however indirectly, however long it might’ve taken.
Elizabeth presses firm on the iron. Steam ascends into the air, disappears.
“This isn’t a church dress,” she clarifies, a hint of defensiveness in her voice.
And yeah, he knows she thinks that. Knows she felt real good in it, sidling up next to him in that bar. Knows it did somethin’ to him, too, even though it shouldn’t have—‘cause it was her, for one, and ‘cause the thing landed past her knees, for two.
It was a church dress. Unsexy on anyone else, but shit. She’d moved through that crowd like a serpent, ready to find him and strike. He’d seen a peek of her, the version of her from before, but, fuck, somethin’ new, too—and maybe it had tugged on somethin’ in him, the way she could use the same moment to remind him of the ways she was familiar and the ways she could still surprise him.
He’d had a flicker of annoyance, that she was tryin’ that tactic at all, but maybe he’d had a flicker of somethin’ else, too, ‘cause she was interested in tryin’ it.
He didn’t want it to work.
Only then she’d made him laugh.
(After, he’d taken a nameless, faceless woman back to her place and fucked her against the foyer wall. She’d asked him to choke her, and he did, but he came thinkin’ about what Elizabeth might look like with his hand wrapped around her throat, that dress pulled up around her thighs.)
Rio glances at the clock, then back at the sliver of Elizabeth’s leg he can see peeking out of the closet as she hangs the dresses.
He thinks he should go before she kicks him out, but he finds he wants to let her lead, see where she goes.
The last item in the basket is one of Dean’s button-ups. Elizabeth goes to lay it out on the ironing board, but then she seems to think better of it, putting it directly on the hanger. Even from here, Rio can see that it’s still a little wrinkled.
“My… kids will be home soon,” she announces from the closet.
He catches the pause, the course correction.
“A’ight,” he says lazily, unmoving.
“I’m going to shower,” she says, appearing at the doorway, fingers fiddlin’ at the collar of her robe.
The familiar route of the conversation makes Rio run his tongue along his teeth.
He wants to huff out a laugh, ‘cause it figures she’d pull the exact same shit, try to say it’s over, never again, but fuck. He knows it ain’t over—it wasn’t then, when she’d shown up in his apartment and tried riflin’ through his stuff like she didn’t have him feelin’ fuckin’ exposed half the time already, and it wasn’t over now, either.
Shit, less than an hour ago she’d confessed she wanted him “all the time.”
(He doesn’t think about what he told her.)
“That right?” Rio challenges, ‘cause he wasn’t gonna let her off the hook. He wants to make her say it. It’s a scab he can’t help scratchin’ at. He wants to dig at it, lift it off his skin, and bleed.
But then her hand slides up, and she’s twirlin’ a finger around her hair, and she looks almost shy for a second.
“Do you want to join?”
He looks at her sharply. Licks his lips.
He does.
So she doesn’t so much kick him out as she does hand him his clothes and turn on the blow dryer just after she tells him where he can find his funny money.
He knows it’s a dismissal, but Rio comes up behind her, anyway, once he’s dressed. He stares at her starin’ at him in the mirror, her skin all damp and soft. Curious, she flicks the blowdryer off and he reaches around her, tracing a finger over a visible hickey he’s left behind on her neck. Triumphant, he smirks, lockin’ his gaze with hers in their reflections, and in her wide eyes, he sees her thinkin’ about her husband. Then Rio nips at her ear, distracting her, and when her eyes flutter shut, he pulls away from her and disappears.
His hand is on the handle of the french doors when he hears the sound of the front door opening and Elizabeth’s brood spilling into the foyer, screaming and shouting. He hears Dean reminding ’em about taking off their shoes in the house, but the immediate drum of feet clamoring up the stairs drowns out any illusion that they listen to him.
Rio pauses for a moment, hearing Dean call her name, wonderin’ where she is. She comes to the door of the bathroom, a glob of foundation at her neck. She spots Rio immediately and stares at him, wide-eyed.
“I’ll be out in a minute!” she trills to Dean, and Rio recognizes that voice—it’s the one she tried on him at the bar with that polka dot dress, all dainty and sweet.
He didn’t like it then. He hates it more now.
“You got something in the mail from Asmita,” Dean’s calls, his voice getting closer with each successive word, and Rio wonders what that means, who that is.
Beth shoots Rio a pleading look, and he smiles the faintest smile at her, watchin’ as the blood drains from her face. Then he slips out a few seconds before he hears the dull sound of Dean’s voice in her bedroom, just a murmur of words Rio can’t make out. Rio’s lips thin into a line, and then he turns, taking his hand off the door handle.
The funny money is in the laundry room. He steps over the duffel bag of one dollar bills he left on the back porch when he arrived to grab the bag off the dryer, feeling the weight of it in his hand. She doesn’t mess around with being short anymore, not since he’d had his boys empty her house and only to give it back to her in dribs and drabs.
He wonders what her husband thought about that, him in control of everythin’ she owned—her perfumes and her robes and her li’l silk panties. Or he imagines, anyway.
He never had gone to look at any of her things stuffed into that storage locker—had just kept payin’ the bill without lookin’ too closely at it. Mick had asked once, if they could empty it. They had product to store, after all. But Rio had shook his head sharply. Mick had stared at him a second too long, and then, like he knew better, he’d never said anything else about it again.
Rio shuts the laundry room door behind him and swipes up the second duffel before he leaves, unnoticed, traipsing across her yard.
She’ll think he forgot to leave it by mistake, maybe. Or she’ll think it’s one of his games, some way he’s tryin’ to pull one over on her or punish her. He shrugs. Whichever way it was, she was gonna have to call him to come deliver before she could make a new batch.
Elizabeth doesn’t pull her usual move—she doesn’t go back to pretendin’ none of it happened.
She does wait an extra day to call, though, like she didn’t notice immediately that he didn’t leave anythin’ behind for her. And even though she banned it, she invites him to Paper Porcupine for the drop-off.
He wonders if she thinks it’s better than letting him appear in her bedroom again, as if the paper shop is somehow neutral, like it wasn’t where he fucked her against a metal table last month.
But when he walks in the store, the door chimin’ his arrival, the first thing he sees is that she’s wearing the keyhole sweater again. His eyes zero in on it immediately, and she flushes up to her neck, where she’s still got her hickey covered up with makeup.
Damn, he thinks. He’d wanted to see the purple bruise on her pale skin, the evidence of his mouth on her.
But at least she’s figured out how to dress for him, he muses, as she sucks in a breath and then leads him to the back room. There’s nothin’ church about that peephole.
Rio passes her the duffel, and she hoists it up onto a chair. Then, opposite each other, they each stand against the table behind them.
“Thanks for bringing it,” she says, brushing her bangs back.
Rio nods, letting a beat pass, eyes locked on her, waiting. Elizabeth doesn’t react either way, no blush, no breaking his gaze. All she does is scratch her nail against the table, once.
He gives her another three seconds, then shrugs. “A’ight—”
And the second he twists as if he’s about to walk away, she starts chirping. Small talk, nothin’ important. When she’ll have the batch ready (the same day as usual). How they just got a new order of peach bellini in (he has no idea what she’s talkin’ about). That she just got the press oiled (not information he particularly needed to know).
It’s like she’s tryin’ to get him to stay.
Maybe Paper Porcupine had been chosen very deliberately, after all.
“Mm,” Rio says in response to her blatherin’ about how she thinks they need a new blender, a more industrial one, to make the paste. He leans back against the table, hands stuffed in his pockets as Elizabeth keeps rattling off all the benefits, all the features.
It reminds him of watching his sister try to convince her husband to let her get a Kitchenaid mixer, listing out what each button did.
“I have one picked out. If you want to see,” she says, finally. Coy.
Rio lifts an eyebrow. Elizabeth flushes pink. He doesn’t care much about the blender, but he’s still parsin’ out whether it’s all a ruse ‘cause she still ain’t figured out how to seduce him, or if it’s that and she really wants him to buy this blender.
Either way, he can tell she wants him.
Here, now, again.
She just doesn’t know how to say it.
He could initiate things, speed along the process, but this is kinda fun, watchin’ her all awkward and shy, tryin’ to lead up to it.
It’s amusing to him that someone could look like Elizabeth does and not know how to weaponize her sex appeal—but shit. If she did, he doesn’t know where he’d be.
“Show me,” he says.
Elizabeth walks over to him, sliding her feet between his open stance, getting closer than necessary to show him a website she’s got pulled up. If he wasn’t leanin’ back, they’d be chest to chest.
“Looks nice,” he agrees, looking at a picture on her screen. He runs a hand over his mouth ‘cause, shit. It’s just a blender. “Scroll down.”
Lips twistin’, Elizabeth moves her thumb along the screen until a bright red price tag appears.
“It’s on sale,” she presses.
Rio’s jaw clicks. “You want me to drop more than a G on a fuckin’ blender? ”
“Barely over, with the sale,” she clarifies, like it makes a difference. She stuffs her phone back in her pocket and starts listin’ the features again, like he ain’t remember ‘em from two minutes ago.
He was gonna have to retrain her in the art of seduction—more liftin’ up her dress in a bathroom bar, less arguin’ over a small investment in a kitchen appliance.
Pressin’ off the table so that he towers above her, Rio cuts her off. “What we got now works fine.”
“Not if we have to keep replacing it. In a year we’ll have spent—”
“And when this one needs replacin’?”
“It won’t,” she bites. As if she could know.
He shakes his head. She always had blind confidence about the strangest fuckin’ things.
“Yeah? You read the reviews from the other counterfeiters who are makin’ paste with it?”
“It’s spending a little more now to save a lot later. You’re supposed to be good with money, you tell me which—”
“Fine. I’ll take it outta your cut, then.”
“It’s not a personal expense,” she snaps. “It’s just business.” As an afterthought, she lazily waves around some air quotes, drops her voice an octave. “‘Darlin’.’”
Rio arches a brow. She had a funny habit of refusin’ to admit what this thing was between ‘em when things were good—and then demandin’ some sort of definition when they were in the middle of a fight.
Let’s not label it, she’d said, when things were still simple.
That’s what I am? Work? she’d asked, expression stony, when he could hardly stand to look at her.
And now she was mad about bein’ called business when she was asking him for a business decision?
“I know it is, darlin’,” Rio says smoothly, voice honey sweet as his eyes glaze down her face, her neck, landin’ on that keyhole before he snaps his eyes back up to her. “That’s why dressin’ up for me ain’t gonna do shit for this pitch.” Rio puts his hand on her shoulder and pinches the material of the sweater between two fingers.
“I did not dress up for you,” she denies.
“No?”
“No.” But her cheeks burn red and Rio’s eyes burn bright.
“Who’s this for, then? Your customers?” He smirks at her. “Or how ‘bout your husband? That somethin’ that works, when you want somethin’ from him?”
Elizabeth scowls, but she doesn’t back away.
“But then again, I guess that’d mean he’d have to have somethin’ you want, huh?”
Rio watches as her face sets into something haughty. Gently, he slides his hand up over her shoulder toward her neck where he presses his thumb to her hickey. He looks at her, head tilted.
“How long it take to cover this up so he won’t see it?”
Beneath his thumb, Rio feels her muscles shift as Elizabeth sets her jaw. They stare at each other, fierce and guarded, and Rio licks his lips, considerin’ her.
“Why’d you put on that lipstick?” Tilting her chin up at him, Rio brushes his thumb along her cherry red lips. Elizabeth holds her breath. “It wasn’t cause you wanna get me back? Mark me up?”
He pops the ‘p’ of ‘up’ and Elizabeth blinks.
With a firm swipe, Rio smudges her lipstick onto her pale skin, blemishing her. He swallows, leans in closer to her ear. “You didn’t wanna see it stainin’ my lips? Smeared around my cock?”
Infinitesimally, Elizabeth shakes her head, but her eyes go dark.
“That’s too bad,” Rio whispers. “Was kinda hopin’ you did.”
He knows she dressed up for him, but she won’t break, won’t make a fuckin’ move. And he ain’t got time for this. Shrugging, Rio drops his hand and steps to the side, away from her, as if he’s making to leave.
“Wait—” Elizabeth reaches for him suddenly, and Rio’s eyes snap to her li’l fingers snapped around his wrist.
He looks at her, smug. She wasn’t gonna let him go.
“What about the blender?”
The laugh that bubbles up out of Rio is just as genuine as it was when she’d asked about her ottoman.
“Oh, baby. I ain’t your husband, yeah? You’re gonna have to do more than dress up and talk sweet when you want me to fall in line. Come up with a better pitch. Somethin’ more…” His eyes flick up and down her body. He wraps his fingers around hers and pulls them off his wrist. “...enticing.”
Elizabeth blushes, but she squares her shoulders, steelin’ herself, and Rio feels his cock twitch.
“You think I want a blender that bad?”
“No,” Rio says simply with a small shake of his head.
“Then—?”
He steps closer to her. “I don’t think you want the blender at all.”
He hears her swallow thickly. “And just what do you think I want, then?”
“To get on your knees.”
His lips are an inch from hers, and she’s so still, she’s gotta be holdin’ her breath. Elizabeth doesn’t look away, but her eyes dart wildly.
“Get on your knees, Elizabeth,” Rio tells her, tuckin’ her hair behind her ear. “Now.”
And fuck—the second that she starts to listen to him, the second that she starts to drop to the floor—Rio feels the blood start rushin’ to his cock. But before she can get all the way down, he finds himself bending over, grabbin’ her chin in his hand so he can press a filthy fuckin’ kiss to her lips, lickin’ into her mouth.
Elizabeth moans, fumbling and reaching for his belt, breakin’ the kiss and sinkin’ to her knees on the hard concrete floor. She wrenches his pants down to his thighs, then reaches up under his shirt to scratch her nails down his body from his ribs to his hips. When she snags on one of the scars, Rio hisses, a flash of white-hot fury surging through him. But before he can process it, she’s got his briefs down, his cock bouncin’ towards her face. She looks up at him, eyes impossibly wide and blue, and his heart hammers as she wraps her li’l hand around him.
Her lipstick is already smudged, and Rio’s tongue darts out over his bottom lip in anticipation, ‘cause she hasn’t done this for him before.
He’s thought about it—a lot. First, it was an inexplicable image that got him off quick in the shower in that hotel room that Turner had locked him in, but he’d refused to give too much thought to it. Then, though, it’d morphed into somethin’ he thought about outside the shower, his mind wandering in the middle of the afternoon one day when he got bored of TV and model planes.
It was a lazy fantasy, slow and languid, him drawin’ it out on the couch, his hand around his cock. He had shut his eyes, blocking out the sunshine streaming into the room, and imagined her crawlin’ beneath the sheets to wake him up with her mouth, so that he would open his eyes to see the shape of her bobbin’ up and down beneath the blanket. He’d let her know he was awake by pressin’ a hand on the back of her head, encouragin’ her to take more of him, to go deeper, til he felt himself hit the back of her throat, heard her gag around him. He didn’t see her face, just felt her hot, wet tongue on him as he fucked up into her mouth and she took and took and took everything he was giving her.
When he’d finished with a groan, he saw her crawling out from underneath his sheets, naked and sleepy, a dribble of his come at the corner of her mouth. Then he realized he’d been fantasizin’ about her stayin’ over in his bed, and it was ruined.
Now though, it’s really her, and she’s lifting up his cock to run her tongue lightly up the length of it before she presses a tender kiss to the head—and it’s so fuckin’ stupid, but Rio thinks about the first time she’d kissed him, how soft that was, too.
He huffs out a breath.
She pauses, blinking up at him, and he can see the red lipstick she leaves behind. He groans, fistin’ his hand into her curls as she opens her mouth and closes her lips around him.
The tight, wet heat of her moves up and down his length, her fingers tightening around what she can’t fit into her mouth. It’s so fuckin’ good watchin’ the way he fills her up that he hears himself sayin’ all sorts of shit to her as he runs his fingers through her hair, but he can’t discern his own words—it might be directions, compliments, encouragements. Could be nonsense. Whatever he’s saying makes her close her eyes and moan around him, though, and as she sucks harder and faster, he feels himself losing control.
“Elizabeth,” he grits out.
She digs her nails into his hips, and it burns in a way that makes him take in a sharp breath.
“I’m gonna come,” he pants, and she just keeps sucking him off, moving one of her hands down to his balls, rolling them gently in her fingers, coaxing him closer. “Yeah? You like the idea of that, huh? You want me to come in your mouth? Fuck.”
She opens her eyes, hollows out her cheeks, and watches him closely as she makes him come apart. That’s the end. Rio exhales long and slow, feeling the release as he spurts into her mouth. She pulls him out gently, then looks up at him, daintily wiping her pointer finger over her lips as she swallows him down.
Her mouth is wrecked, half her lipstick left on his cock, her swollen lips pink.
“C’mere,” he says, yanking her up after he zips his pants. He puts his hands around her hips, feeling her softness, and then he tugs her to him so she nearly stumbles. He catches her with his mouth, tasting himself on her, and she relaxes, exploring his shoulders timidly with her hands.
When he pulls back, they’re both breathless. They stare at each other, and probably one of them should say somethin’, but there doesn’t seem to be words.
The bell dings from the front of the store.
“Customer,” Elizabeth whispers, trying to clean herself up by wiping the back of her hand across her mouth.
Rio tucks her hair back, fixin’ it, makin’ her presentable.
“Guess I’d better go, then. Wouldn’t wanna draw attention,” he says, parroting back her words with a grin.
She scowls, pushing her hands against his chest to press back from him.
Tuggin’ down her sweater, she asks, “Do I look—?”
“Hello?” the customer calls, a high-pitched chirp. “Yoohoo! Are you open?”
Rio licks his finger and rubs it along Elizabeth’s lower lip, wiping off the last of a smeared bit of lipstick. Her lips are still swollen, but there was nothin’ she could do about that. He gives her a sharp nod. “You’re all good, mama.”
She doesn’t move for another beat, staring up at him, and there’s a part of him that wants to look away, but he doesn’t. Just holds her gaze, blinking slowly.
“Anyone here?” The voice is closer as they make their way to the door leading to the backroom where they stand inches from each other.
“I’m here! Just a sec,” Elizabeth calls, wiping her hands on her jeans.
When she turns and walks away, she glances back at him.
“We’ll talk more about the blender later?”
He guffaws so loudly that the customer’s gotta hear it, but Elizabeth doesn’t respond, disappearing so quickly he doesn’t even have a chance to tell her no.
By the end of the following week, though, they’ve got a Waring One-Gallon blender with a fuckin’ electronic keypad. It whirs smoothly, doin’ nothin’ to drown out Elizabeth’s cries while he eats her out on the countertop the next time she’s makin’ his money.
It’s a good fuckin’ batch. Crisp as hell. He tells her that when she’s riding him in the backseat of the G Wagon an hour after they do the drop as usual with Mick and her girls flanking ’em, her skirt hiked up around her waist so that he can watch her take him.
“Told you so,” she says, sinking back down onto him.
“Told me what?” he asks through his teeth, gripping her hips and lifting her up and down, feeling her come apart around him. He throws his head back against the seat, breath heavy.
“That it was worth it,” she says, gasping as she looks down at him, her nails digging in at the base of his skull as he fucks her through her orgasm.
And when he’s coming in her a moment later, her cunt gripping his cock, the smell of her sweat in his nose, her nipple caught between two of his teeth, he can’t help but think that she’s right.
So that’s what it’s like, for a while. Rio doesn’t sleep with anyone else. It’s not a conscious decision, it’s not like he’s makin’ choices based on the fact that she told him not to even think about crawlin’ into another woman’s bed.
Nah. He’s just busy.
With Elizabeth, a lot of the time, it’s true. But it’s good and he’s calmer, more focused now. They meet once or twice a week at first, but after a while, he starts getting antsy again and then it becomes two or three times.
She makes him initiate every time, even when she’s the one lettin’ him know where she’s gonna be—Paper Porcupine after hours, at the end of a bar on his side of town on a Friday night. Once, an empty movie theater on a Tuesday afternoon. She never, ever touches him first. It takes him a minute to notice, to realize that he’s still gotta work to get her underneath him.
It would annoy him more, but she answers every time he sends her a text, too. Shows up in the alley outside his bar, late, after her kids (and her husband) are asleep. Raps her knuckles against the frosted glass of his office door when she comes in the middle of the day when she knows it’s a night he’s got Marcus at home.
It’s never at her place again. But eventually, inexplicably, he starts takin’ her back to his.
It’s not a big deal, he rationalizes. If she wanted to find him, she could. Wasn’t like she hadn’t done it before. And it was just stuff —stuff he paid an interior designer to pick out and mock up for him to approve. It was all impersonal, replaceable—besides the photos of Marcus, and shit, she already knew what he looked like.
(Already knew what his name was, how good he was at soccer, how much he liked airplanes—fuck, she probably knew his birthday, too, considering it passed while he was still holed up at the Westin).
She scans over his new loft, taking in the furniture, the art. It’s not all that different—same aesthetic, new configuration, a change in color scheme (blues and grays, instead of greens)—but she’s wide-eyed and deliberate as she fingers a potted gardenia on a bookshelf, telling him, “It needs more sunlight.”
He hums, ignoring the comment as he pushes her hair to the side and presses his lips to her neck, his arms already wrapping around her to unbutton her jeans.
“Mythos?” she asks, reaching up to the top shelf. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for—”
Rio slips his hand into her jeans, cupping her cunt. Her head falls forward as she drops her hand over his, forgetting all about the book.
He’s particularly rough with her that first afternoon, feelin’ like a specimen underneath her microscope, knowing the ways that she’s trying to catalogue pieces of him, making notes as if learning what books he owns or what plants he keeps means anything at all.
It’s just a matter of practicality, bringing her here, he insists to himself as he maneuvers her away from the shelf to push her onto the bed so that she’s on all fours. He yanks down her panties and thrusts into her before she’s entirely ready, but she adapts quickly, his harsh pace eliciting jagged moans.
He just wants to fuck in a bed, that’s all—he ain’t twenty-five anymore and shit, sometimes his knees hurt.
He wants to hear her loud, too. Wants her to stop biting down on his shoulder to stop herself from wailin’ out. And fuck it—he wants to lounge around afterward, wait a minute and then go for round two.
It doesn’t mean anything, he thinks, but when she leaves, he moves the gardenia into the dining room in front of his brightest window.
She notices the next time she’s over, and Rio sucks his teeth when she says, “This light is too direct. They’re finicky plants. Here.” Then she moves it onto the side table next to his bed.
It’s a fragrant plant, and at first Rio thinks it’ll bother him when he’s trying to fall asleep. It’s too delicate, too sweet—but he gets used to it.
They never talk about it—or much, really—besides business. But he does learn a few superficial things about her over the months.
First, when she’s free—which means he figures out her kids’ schedules—like that the oldest’s got football three times a week, even though he hates it—or he learns when her youngest has a dance recital comin’ up, ‘cause suddenly there are extra rehearsals. She doesn’t say it, but he pieces together that this all falls under her domain. He catches half of an argument she has on the phone one day, tucked behind the door of his bathroom. She insists she’s busy, that she can’t pick one of ‘em up—that he’d promised to do it this time—but two minutes later Rio’s jaw rocks when she comes out and starts putting her shoes back on, announcing that “something came up.”
He learns that after she’s spent, she’s usually snacky. She prefers somethin’ salty—fries, potato chips, trail mix. She’s a grazer, though. Takes out a bag of pretzels from her purse and eats a few before getting distracted, checkin’ up on the gardenia or tiltin’ her head as she studies one of the abstract paintings, like maybe she could figure it out if she just looked hard enough. Then she’ll crawl back into the bed with him, reach back over to the pretzels on the side table, offer him some.
He learns she usually has a pedicure hidden away in her boots, and that it’s usually some impractical color he’d never imagine her going for—electric blue, pale purple, silver sparkles. When he points this out to her, grabbin’ her foot in his hand, that’s when he also learns that she’s real ticklish (and then he knows what she sounds like when she’s gaspin’ for breath from laughin’ too hard—and fuck if he doesn’t like it as much as the sound of her gaspin’ when he’s got his head between her thighs, too).
They don’t stop meeting in darkened parking lots or at the bar, but it’s less often. She comes over in the daytime, mostly, but also sometimes real late, after her kids (and her husband) are in a deep sleep.
They’ve fallen asleep together a few times in the middle of the afternoon, the sun warmin’ their skin as it filters in through the floor-to-ceiling windows in his bedroom that overlook a busy downtown street. Usually, he wakes up before her and steals a few minutes of seeing her loose and relaxed in a way she usually isn’t, but one time he blinks his eyes open, feeling her trace a gentle finger over each scar she gave him.
He swallows, Adam's apple bobbing, ‘cause she’s always ignored ‘em before this, pretended she didn’t see, and he’d let her—preferred it, even. They’d never talked about it, and now any reminder that she was the last person that should be in his bed—that she hadn’t earned it—pissed him off. Whether he was mad at himself or her, he didn’t know. Maybe both.
Now, though, she presses her lips lightly to the small gnarled knot over his lung, then his spleen. He doesn’t stop her. She keeps going down, down, down. His breath hitches when she disappears under the sheet and he feels her take him in her mouth.
He can’t help comparin’ it to the fantasy in the hotel room. Rememberin’ the power it had over him then—realizin’ the power she has over him now—he comes quickly, reaching under the sheets to fist his hands in her hair. The second it’s over, though, he rolls off his mattress and tugs on his clothes, feeling like his fuckin’ sternum’s been cracked open with a hammer.
He only invites her over at night for a while after that, ‘cause at night she’s always quick to leave right after, no lingering in his bed.
Better that way, he figures. Less complicated.
One night, though, things change.
Her middle boy had been sick, and then he’d passed it around, first to his brother, then to one of his sisters, so Elizabeth hadn't come around for a bit. At the drop the previous night, though, she’d mentioned, offhand, that everyone seemed to be better—a piece of information that Mick and her girls had found out-of-place, and which Rio had pretended to ignore.
He texts her at 11, but it’s nearly 1 a.m. when she finally appears at his door. Elizabeth’s got an explanation on the tip of her tongue: “Sorry, it’s just that—” she starts, but she swallows it, offering only a flailed hand. He knows it’s gotta be somethin’ with her dumbass husband, but he doesn’t push for more details. He doesn’t care.
It’s not like he spends a lot of time thinkin’ about the guy, but whenever he’s reminded of her decision to continue sharing a bed with him every night, he can’t wrap his head around it—much like her insistence that Rio keeps makin’ the first move, no matter how enthusiastically she’s cryin’ out ten minutes later.
He’d tested it out a few times—done nothin’ but sit silent beside her nursin’ a drink at some bar, let a drop remain a drop only—but excepting once or twice, she always did somethin’ to get him to stay. Ordered him another drink before he could slide off the stool, asked a question about a supplier, sometimes told him an anecdote about her day. He always broke, and by the time he had his tongue in her mouth or his fingers in her cunt, he forgot to care about the reasons for her strange behavior.
(‘Cause he's won, right? He knows the guy ain’t gettin’ inside of her, and it’s not like Rio’s itchin’ to trade places. There were two sides to Elizabeth, and Rio reminds himself he has the one he wanted.)
This particular night, though, he’s already tired from waitin’ up for her by the time he pulls her to him, sinking ‘em both onto his bed. He’s slow and deliberate in his ministrations, kissin’ her deep, runnin’ his lips over every inch of her, swirlin’ his tongue almost lazily over her clit. He fucks into her with his fingers rhythmically til she’s writhin’ underneath him, beggin’ him to go faster. He doesn’t. Just switches his cock for his fingers, breathes her in as he drags it out, thrusting into her with a steady pace til Elizabeth’s impatiently reaching a hand down to touch herself. Then he rips her hand away, pinning it above her head.
“Nuh. Don’t be greedy,” he whispers, nipping at her breast. “Take what you’re given, Elizabeth.”
She glares at him, hisses, “Don’t tell me what to do,” before she reaches up and bites the soft skin of Rio’s inner elbow. Snarling at the surprise, he snaps, switching to a punishing pace, rubbin’ frantic at her clit til she’s crying out, desperate for a break as he fucks her through two back-to-back orgasms.
“It’s too much,” she whines after he comes inside her and kisses down her body to eat her out again, lifting her boneless leg over his shoulder. “I don’t think I can.”
“I think you’d be surprised,” he murmurs, lickin’ into her cunt and tasting the both of them mixed together, “to learn what you can handle.”
The closer she gets, the more she squirms, hips lifting as she tries to wriggle away. He yanks her back to him, grip firm on her thighs as he locks her down to the mattress, sucking on her clit until she’s wailing, gushing around his fingers and digging her nails into his scalp.
Fucked out and panting, Elizabeth lies there, staring at the ceiling, until Rio crawls up to collapse beside her, his mouth still wet with her. A sliver of moonlight illuminates her pale face when she turns to look at him, blinking slowly. They don’t say anything, just lie there together, and Rio idly runs his fingers along her bare belly, rubbing back and forth over the ridged C-section scar she’s got there.
He’s not sure who falls asleep first.
Just knows that he wakes up to Elizabeth jolting upright. Suddenly feeling cold, he rubs at his eyes blearily. He barely takes in the blue twilight sky through the windows as she starts snatching her clothes off the floor.
Mouth dry, Rio runs his tongue along his teeth. “What—?”
“It’s six am,” she hisses, yanking her panties up her legs so that everything on her jiggles. Rio licks his lips, fixating, before he registers what that means.
He rubs his jaw, and Elizabeth fumbles with the clasp of her bra, missing twice and then letting out a sharp grunt of frustration.
“C’mere, mamí,” Rio says, sitting up, and she does, but he has to bat her fingers away so that he can use his steady hands to clip her back into her clothing.
There’s a small, round indent in her skin between her shoulder blades that he’s studying, when all at once he realizes that it’s the pendant of his necklace. It must’ve been pressed between them while they slept. He’s running his finger over it when she snaps, “Are you done?”
Rio scowls, but she’s already striding away from him, eyes scanning the floor before she’s flipping his sheets back, mussing everything up.
“Where’s my shirt?” she asks, frantic.
“Dunno,” he answers shortly.
“Maybe if you were more careful,” she mutters, bending to look under the bed.
“You got a problem with how I undress you?”
She ignores the question, letting out a noise of irritation when she finds her shirt under there and she has to get on her hands and knees to retrieve it.
He should probably ask her a few questions—whether she thinks he’ll be up, or what she plans on telling him if he is. Maybe he should even ask her why she’s still goin’ home to him, why he’s still got a spot in her bed.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, Rio scratches behind his ear, watching her button up her blouse with shaky fingers.
“Shit,” Elizabeth fumes, glancing at her watch, like it’s the extra three minutes it took for her to find her blouse that’s the problem.
“Relax.”
She looks at him furiously. “What did you say?”
“You been sneakin’ out of his bed in the middle of the night for months and he’s never noticed. Clearly he ain’t payin’ attention to you, yeah?”
Elizabeth’s face pales as her jaw sets, but she doesn’t respond. She just tugs on her jeans and plucks her purse off the floor and lets the door slam behind her on the way out.
It’s fine, he thinks, rolling back over, stealing back the pillow on her—on the other—side of the bed to shove it under his. He ain’t worried about it. The guy had been oblivious this long, and shit, who cared if he did find out, anyway?
Not him, and he had to figure not her, either. Wasn’t like she had been all that careful this whole time, so.
Only she doesn’t text him back that night.
The radio silence bugs him, but he’s too proud to text her again. She’s cold and perfunctory at the next drop with Mick and the girls, and Rio volleys it right back to her, pretending to be completely unphased by it—or her absence.
In reality, he finds himself on edge, like he’s got too much energy boiling over and he doesn’t know where to channel it. He runs, he boxes, he decides to handle a low-level rotten egg himself instead of passing it off to one of his boys. It doesn’t work.
He ends up at a bar one night, flirts with more than one woman, gets more than one phone number written on a napkin.
But he goes home alone, tosses the napkins in the trash, and finds himself pulling down a box at the top of his closet and digging around, jumpstarting a dead habit.
He reaches for the pearls, but no. She may have given them to him, but he knows where they came from. He pulls the panties out, feels the silk between his fingers, but he pauses. That night, she’d been on a date with him—and he ain’t sure, really, who she’d put them on for.
He’s left with the only thing she’s given him that was completely his.
He takes them into the shower where he turns the water up as hot as it will go. Then he leans against the shower wall, the bullets clenched in his fist as he uses his other hand to stroke himself, his mind jumping around to all the images he has saved up of her. His cock disappearing into her as he fucks her from behind. Her tits in his face as she rides him. Her finger pressed into her collar bone as she’d breathed, “Here,” when he’d asked her once where he should come (and then, the picture of her stained by him).
But although he flits through these—and more—the image he lands on is her falling back onto her bed, him crawling on top of her, bare chested and still unmarked by her. A blank canvas. He remembers the way her eyes had searched his when he’d first pushed into her, the way they’d flickered closed, the slightest crease in her forehead forming as she let out the softest sigh. He’d stilled, letting her adjust, and reached down to kiss her. Her hands had come up to his jaw, and she’d kissed him back, her mouth falling open into a moan as he’d begun to move. “You good, mama?” he’d whispered, and she opened her eyes to look at him, promising, “Yes.”
He’s forgotten the names and faces of so many of the women he’s touched, but he’d mapped out every freckled inch of her that day and it had seared itself into his memory, the first time he’d gotten to see her naked, the only time she’d felt like she was entirely his.
The bullets dig into his palm so hard that it hurts, and he comes remembering what it had felt like the first time he'd heard his name on her lips.
At the next drop, more than two weeks since they’ve been together, she wears a polka dot dress—but it’s not either of the ones he’s seen her in. It's summery—yellow, sleeveless. He can see her shoulders, a hint of cleavage. She wears lipstick, too.
Mick clocks it, too, eyes sliding over to Rio to gauge his reaction. He doesn’t give one.
But he knows what it means, and when he gets home, he pulls up their text thread, indecisive about caving until he sees the gray ellipsis bubble pop up, showing that she’s typing something to him.
It’s there for a long time, and then it disappears. It reappears again a minute later, but no text ends up coming through.
Fuck it, he decides.
He texts, Come over.
It only takes ten minutes before she’s knocking on his door, and Rio smirks, stepping aside to let her in.
She lives thirty minutes away.
They don’t make it to his bed. As soon as she walks in, he’s pinning her chest-first against the wall in the entryway and kissing her shoulders. His hands explore her hips, her stomach, her breasts as he murmurs, “You dress up for me, mamí?”
“No,” she says, but she twists her face to look at him and she’s smiling.
“You’re a bad liar,” he says, hiking up her dress to reveal black lace panties.
“Wasn’t trying too hard,” she admits.
“You know, I ain’t got a thing for polka dots,” Rio tells her, sliding his hand into her panties to find her wet and ready for him.
She pushes her ass out, wriggling against his erection.
“You’re a bad liar,” she tells him, gasping when he slides two fingers into her and plies her open.
Nipping at her ear, he whispers, “Wasn’t tryin’ too hard.”
He takes her there, right against the wall, his fingers gripping his hips so hard he thinks he might leave bruises. When they’re done, Elizabeth pulls up her panties from around her ankles while Rio redoes his belt and zips up his pants. There’s a punctured moment where, so close to the exit with no excuse to lie together in bed, they each seem to wonder if she should just leave.
She doesn’t, though. Instead, smoothing down her dress, she clears her throat and asks, “How’s the gardenia?”
Rio huffs out a laugh, but she treks across the length of the loft, her shoes clicking on the hardwood floor. Trailing after her, he plops on the bed, idly wondering if she might join him and if he could get her out of the dress—or whether she’ll recoil, worried about falling asleep again.
She is over earlier than usual tonight, though. Probably not so tired.
He wonders what she told her husband.
“It’s stressed.”
Rio turns to look at her, confused. “Huh?”
“Some of the leaves, they’re yellow.”
“Mm.”
“You didn’t even notice, did you?” She smiles, then sighs, like she’s teasing him. “What would you do without me?”
Rio runs his tongue along his teeth and scratches at his beard, and somethin’ pulls tight in his ribcage.
Sticking a finger into the soil, Elizabeth says, “I don’t think it’s getting enough water.”
“Last time you said it was gettin’ too much,” Rio says defensively.
“You overcorrected. Like I said: they’re finicky plants.” Elizabeth takes her finger out of the soil and walks into the kitchen. She pulls a cup out of the cupboard, knowin’ exactly where they are, and fills it with water. “Why do you even have one? They’re notoriously difficult to keep alive, especially indoors.”
“It was a housewarmin’ gift.”
Walking back to the flower, she eyes him, and he can tell she’s wondering, from who? But she doesn’t ask. It’s not in the realm of things they talk about—friends, family. Anythin’ that matters. It’s not what they’re good at.
So Rio doesn’t know why he says it, why he seems to want to poke at the bruise.
“Rhea got it for me.”
Standing at the plant, Elizabeth freezes, her back to him. A beat passes.
“Oh.”
Everything they pointedly avoid bubbles between them.
It makes him think about what Rhea would say, if she knew what he’d been up to. It’s pretty easy to guess, and not just ‘cause he knows her so well.
She tried to kill you.
“It’s Kenny’s birthday this Saturday,” Elizabeth blurts out of nowhere. “It’s Minecraft themed? We’re doing a whole thing. I’ve been wrapping boxes and I made a piñata to look like these weird, old-school video game graphics. I don’t really get it but…”
And she continues to babble on, Rio realizes what she’s doing—it’s that small talk thing she does when she’s feelin’ awkward. It ain’t cute this time. For some reason, it irritates him.
“Maybe I’ll pop by."
“What?” she asks blankly.
“Yeah. Make it a tradition.” He looks at her pointedly.
He thinks about the party he’d crashed three years ago, the way he’d caught her eye immediately, the way she’d ditched her husband to follow him into her bedroom.
Fuck, he’d barely known her then, and despite the ways that everything had changed, he still had the same answer to her question: What do you want?
“You can’t,” Elizabeth says, face draining of color. “Dean will—he’ll—he’ll lose it.”
And yeah, he knows that. Remembers him comin’ into the bedroom and interruptin’, butting in. Some things, apparently, were bound to stay the same.
Rio pops off the bed and walks to the bar cart, pouring himself a shot of vodka.
“Yeah, baby, it was a joke. I ain’t got no interest in watchin’ you put on your pearls and play at being Mrs. Cleaver, yeah?”
Elizabeth doesn’t react.
Rio drains his vodka.
“Why are you still here? You should go.”
He doesn’t look at her to see how she reacts, but he does pick at the scab and watch her leave. She shuts the door with a click so soft he can barely hear it.
“What’re you doing here?”
“It’s my bar, ain’t it?” Rio asks, squinting at Mick a few afternoons later as he takes a swig of his vodka before setting it on a tall table and snagging two pool cues off the rack.
Mick grunts, like that doesn’t answer his question.
It’s Saturday, but still early, and the place is only half-full. A few regulars sitting alone at the bar flag down Archie for refills, but it’s mostly quiet, the hum of generic pop music louder than the laughter and conversation coming from the few booths filled with trios of friends or couples on dates.
“What the fuck is this?” Rio asks, glancing up at a speaker on the wall.
Mick shrugs. “Archie’s choice.”
“I don’t remember bein’ asked.”
“You weren’t around.” Mick takes a pointed sip of his beer.
“Been busy,” Rio says, handing Mick a stick and raising his brow as an invite to a game.
Mick takes it, chuckling under his breath. “Yeah, how’s ‘business’?”
Rio runs his tongue along the sharp edge of his teeth, arranging the pool balls into the triangle and bendin’ low to make sure everything’s lined up just so.
He figured Mick had caught on to what’s been going on (Elizabeth had shown up at the bar enough times when he’d been there, too) but he’s never said anything. He’d rolled with almost all of it. He’d posted up at Elizabeth’s house without comment when Rio came back from the dead, silently delivered her here to the bar the night Rio agreed to let her buy back her life, and quietly accepted Rio’s explanation that they needed her alive because he needed her business.
He only started side-eyeing things after she’d failed to deliver. That night with the van, he’d watched Rio allow her to pop off when she was on ice so thin she may as well have been half-submerged, one foot in a watery grave. But Rio had ordered Mick to shoot that girl in her place, and when they drove away, rumbling along the road, the smell of her blood thick in their noses, Mick had stared at him long and hard. Rio had looked away, eyes catchin’ on the small, limp body on the floor that he realized, then, would apparently never be Elizabeth’s, no matter what she pulled. And he knew Mick knew it, too.
“‘Bout to resolidify a deal with Bellarosa,” Rio says, pretending not to catch Mick’s meaning as he leans over the pool table and takes his first shot, the balls exploding with a crack. They disperse all over the board, but none of them make their way into a hole. Rio frowns. “He was spooked after we shut down, but I think I can get him to start distributin’ in Indianapolis again.”
“Didn’t know we were ready to expand like that.” Mick sets his beer on the edge of the pool table, but when Rio eyes the condensation sliding down the glass, he moves it onto a cardboard coaster next to Rio’s vodka instead. “You think Mrs. B can keep up with those production levels?”
Rio rubs his jaw. He hates that Mick calls her that, but he prickles at the thought of him calling her Elizabeth. He’d prefer it if Mick would just call her nothing at all.
“She’s gonna have to.”
“Yeah?” Mick asks, and Rio hears the silent challenge: Or what?
Mick takes a shot, sinking a striped ball into the pocket.
“She just asked for an extension on this week’s drop.”
Rio looks at Mick sharply. He didn’t know that. He hasn’t talked to her since he kicked her out of the loft.
“Yeah, busy birthday weekend, I guess,” Mick explains, moving around the table and looking for his next move. “Said she’s got a lot on her plate.”
Lip twitchin’, Rio reaches for his vodka again and drains it in one drink. Catchin’ Archie’s eye, he lifts his glass for a refill.
Rio’s thoroughly buzzed and down by three balls when he feels a pair of eyes on his back. The hairs on the back of his neck prick up, but he continues with his shot, calculatin’ the angle and power he’ll need in order to try and sink two balls at once.
“Pura basura,” he mutters when the orange striped ball tips over in the pocket instead. He’s off his fuckin’ game.
Mick grins, rubbing his hands together in victory, but Rio’s already turned his neck, throat tight when he catches a glimpse of a blonde at the end of the bar.
But it ain’t her that’s watchin’ him (of course it’s not—she’s probably lightin’ the candles on a cake right about now, standing beside her husband and whispering in her son’s ear to make a wish).
It’s just some woman with long, tanned legs peeping out of bright red wrap dress with a plungin’ neckline.
“Nice shot,” she compliments, chin on her hand as she smiles at him, revealing a gap between her teeth.
Mick laughs because it wasn’t, but she doesn’t catch it. She’s fixed only on Rio.
Rio drags his gaze up and down her body, and when he lands back on her face, she’s smiling bigger, not even a hint of a blush.
“I’m Mel,” she says, taking a drink of pink martini.
“Christopher,” Rio says, fingers knitted on top of his pool cue.
She tilts her head. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Rio’s drunk by the time the Uber pulls up to the house in the darkness. He tips well, and then takes his phone out of his pocket, pressing the green square for his text messages.
It automatically pulls up the last thing he’d had open—a thread with an unsaved number, one single blue text bubble: It’s Mel!
He presses the back button and finds the thread he’s looking for, taps out, I’m outside.
It’s late, nearly midnight, but the reply is almost immediate. A gray ellipsis bubble appears, then dies, and then there’s a message from her: ?
Come out.
He’s already halfway up her drive and reaching his hand over her gate to unlock it, slipping into the backyard where he can just make out the vague outlines of decorations still taped up along the fence.
She’s on the porch when he rounds the corner, barefoot, stickin’ out like a sore thumb in the darkness in some long, bright white nightdress that looks like it belongs in some period movie or somethin’—capped sleeves and a scrunched neckline with a li’l bow in the middle just over her cleavage. It’s thin. He can see the shape of her underneath, and shit, it does somethin’ to him for the obvious reasons, but there’s somethin’ else that gets him, too, about seein’ her in a way he doesn’t get to see her—
(Or, well. Besides that one time.)
“Where are your old lady pajamas?” he blurts out.
Elizabeth crosses her arms. “It’s summer.”
Rio squints, not fully understandin’, but Elizabeth’s already looked away from him, head turned over her shoulder to glance at the french doors behind her.
“It’s late. What do you want?” she asks shortly.
“You got a problem with me bein’ here?”
She swallows when he steps closer to her. “My family is asleep.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t got business with ‘em.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Rio clicks his jaw, scanning the brick patio.
“Don’t remember you bein’ so uptight about it the night I put a gun to your head.” He looks up and Elizabeth’s brows are knitted. “Don’t think you told me to leave once. Remember, darlin’? Your husband came out here with your kid wrapped around him like a human shield, and you lived to see another day.”
Elizabeth pales, but her face hardens into a glare.
“What do you want?” she snaps again.
Rio shrugs, like he’s bored of the game. “Mick said you asked for more time.”
“I did.” She looks behind her again, and Rio’s fingers twitch along his leg. She doesn’t even offer an explanation.
“The answer’s no.”
She blinks, lips fallin’ open just the slightest bit, and Rio can see the bags under her eyes, how exhausted she is. Must’ve been some party.
“Nah, see, when you gonna understand that ain’t how all this works?” he asks, his voice sharp. “The deal is—”
“I just need an extra day. I’ve been swamped with all the birthday celebrations, and Danny’s got a Boy Scouts trip coming up on Monday, and the girls—”
“Thought that was what you kept that husband of yours around for, no?” Rio raises a brow, challenging her. “Ain’t he supposed to help with this shit? Fifty-fifty?”
Elizabeth scowls, her crossed arms pressed tight against her chest in a way that makes Rio's eyes dart down.
“Production don’t stop just ‘cause you gotta play housewife, yeah? I know he can’t run a business or satisfy a woman, but shit, he’s gotta be good for somethin’. Gotta be some way he earns his keep in your bed.”
She looks up at him, face red and blotchy.
“That’s what this is about?”
“What?”
“This isn’t about the drop. This is about—” She gestures between them, like she can't find the words to describe them.
“Nah,” Rio waves a hand at her dismissively. “It’s just—”
“‘Business’?” she cuts in, mocking. “Spare me.”
Rio’s jaw tightens. Again, she was demandin’ labels at the moment he least wanted one, at the moment he could least stand her.
He thinks of the way Mick had watched him shake off Mel at the end of the night, about the way he’d looked when Rio had shrugged and said he had business to handle. About the face he will make, if Rio comes back and tells him that he gave Elizabeth the extra time.
“I know you think you special, sweetheart, but I ain’t in the business of handin’ out favors just ‘cause—”
“‘Think’?”
Rio’s eyes flash dangerously. “What?”
“I don’t think. I know.”
Rio tilts his head, looking down at her condescendingly. “Look, mama, I know you ain’t never been fucked right, but don’t get it mixed up—”
“Lung.” She presses her finger to his scar, knowing exactly where it is on his body even through his shirt. “Spleen.” Rio recoils. “Shoulder.” She pushes him back with a single finger. “And not only am I alive—you’re inviting me into your bed three times a week.”
Rio grabs her wrist, crowding back into her space. He towers over her, electricity humming through every part of him, furious that it’s true, that she would name it, put it into words.
He wants to destroy her.
“That’s what you think, huh?”
She glares at him, face hard and stony. She tries to yank her wrist back, but his grip is firm.
“Baby, you’re alive because I own you.”
Elizabeth’s eye twitches—the one that goes a little wonky when she’s stressed or tired. But she meets his gaze, defiant, and somethin’ hot sparks in him.
“Your time? Mine. Your business? Mine.” Her lips thin into a line. “Your cunt?” He flicks his eyes down, lookin’ over her form. “Mine.”
“You sure about that?” she challenges. “You don’t ever wonder if I give it to him? If I reach for him in the middle of the night? If I crawl on top of him and—”
With his free hand, Rio cups her through her night dress and watches her swallow, all the muscles in her throat jumpin’. But she don’t back away, and she don’t move his hand, and the material’s thin enough that he can feel how damp she is in her panties. Nothin’, not even hate, ever seemed to make them stop wanting each other.
“Nah.” He grins, sharkish. “I only wonder how much you touch yourself, thinkin’ about me while you’re lyin’ next to him. Is it hard, keepin’ quiet?”
In the darkness, Rio can only just see the blush that spreads from her cheeks down to her neck, disappearin’ underneath that gown.
“You gonna touch yourself when I leave? Gonna try to chase an orgasm that you know ain’t nothin’ compared to the way I make you fall apart with my tongue? On my cock?”
“No,” she grits out. “But you are.”
Rio laughs, short and sharp.
“No, I think you’re gonna let me fuck you against that wall,” Rio says, jerking his chin up at the spot. Elizabeth turns and looks, even though she knows exactly where he’s talking about: the small section of siding that separates them from Dean. “And after, I think you’re gonna crawl back into that big ol’ bed next to him, my come leakin’ outta you, and you’re gonna reach down—” and here, Rio reaches down too, bunching her dress up in his one hand at the same time that he uses the other one to lead her own hand to her cunt, “—and you’re gonna taste me.”
Elizabeth freezes. “And why would I do any of that?”
“‘Cause I told you to,” he says simply. “Touch yourself, Elizabeth.”
She glares at him and the air is thick with hot anger, but he feels it, his fingers still wrapped around her wrist, when her hand slides slowly down into her panties.
He figures she does it for the same reason that he keeps initiation’ things even though he hates it: it’s a hard game to play when losing feels so much like winning.
Her eyes flutter closed when she runs her fingers through her folds, and Rio licks his lips. Then the smallest moan escapes her and Rio’s cock gets hard.
“You wet for me?”
She shakes his hand off of her wrist and reaches her glistening fingers up to his mouth. And then, voice low and husky, she asks, “You want it?”
Rio’s fingers snap back to her wrist, and he pulls her fingers into his mouth, tasting her. It’s only been days, but it feels like too long since he’s had her on his tongue.
Fuck, he wants to be inside her, to feel her all around him, to own her for real. He’d thought it’d die down, this want, that it would ebb eventually, that once he knew what it was like to have her in every way imaginable, he’d feel like he’d had enough. But it ain’t like that, not at all. Having a piece of her only makes him want more. She makes him greedy.
She’s like money. He can never get enough.
When he pops her fingers out of his mouth, it happens fast. His lips are on hers and he's guiding her back until she stumbles into the wall with a soft thud. She freezes, breaking the kiss to look over at the french doors, but when no light flicks on, she pulls Rio’s face back down to her own.
He kisses her, tasting her mint toothpaste, and her fingers work frantically at unbuttoning his pants. His cock is barely out of his briefs when he reaches down to the backs of her thighs, hoisting her up to pin her between him and the wall.
He can’t help thinkin’ of their first time in that bathroom, both of ‘em clothed and desperate, but it’s not the same.
No, now they can lose themselves in each other. Now Rio can tug down the sleeve of her nightie and see her naked for him. Now he can kiss her so hard that their teeth knock together. Now she will let herself cling to him, her hands on his neck, running up over his hair, landing on either side of his jaw—just— touching him. Now she coils her legs around him, her feet digging into his ass, so she can pull him close, close, impossibly closer—like she means to absorb him into her.
It shouldn’t be like this.
(But it is.)
Rio presses himself against her, letting her feel exactly what she does to him. She moans softly before she tilts her head back against the wall, trying to swallow the noise.
“You gonna be quiet, Elizabeth?” he whispers, reaching a hand down between them to pull her panties to the side. He lines up and starts to slide his cock into her cunt, his eyes falling shut as he feels her take him without any warming up. “Can you handle that?”
She shakes her head, eyebrows pinched, as he sinks deeper into her. “No, no—I can’t—” She’s panting, digging her nails into his skin.
“I know. You like bein’ loud, huh? Like lettin’ go? Losin’ control?”
Rio thrusts into her hard, all the way, and the moan that spills out of her is guttural.
“Fuck—” she grits out. “Slower, slower—please—I can’t—”
“You can,” Rio promises her, thrusting again, harder, and he feels her clench all around him, tight and wet and perfect, and she’s nodding, biting her lip, trying to be quiet—only then Rio reaches down to circle her clit.
Elizabeth’s squirms, mouth open and face scrunched in a desperate attempt to be silent as she flutters around him. She sucks in a breath.
“Please—”
“You gonna come for me, baby?” he asks her, nibbling at the spot just under her ear. He takes a lobe between his teeth and increases the pressure of his finger. “Right quick, too. You missed this, huh? Missed the way I fill you up?”
A high-pitched, quiet whine spills out of her. She’s so close, and fuck, Rio wants to make her fall apart, wants to make every possible noise tumble out of her lips—but instead he moves his hand to up to her face, clamps it over her mouth, mufflin’ her. She clenches again—almost there.
“Yeah, you like that, don’t you?” he asks, smiling darkly, snapping his hips to hers. He can feel her breathing hard against his palm. “Got you pinned and all you can do is take it.”
He searches her big, blue eyes, wide in surprise. She nods, diggin’ her nails into his skin at the back of his neck like she’s trying to burrow into him.
“Fuck, mamí, your cunt feels so good,” he grunts in her ear, thrusting into her as deep as he can.
She groans underneath his hand, long and low, and he feels her go rigid, constricting around him before she releases, toppling over the edge. He buries his face in her neck, licking over her collar bone, tasting her sweat as he fucks her through her orgasm. And then he feels her bite into his palm as she tries to stifle the sound of her moans, and the shock of feeling her teeth sink into his skin has him coming before he knows it’s happening.
For a minute, they stay like that, both panting while he holds her up, softening inside of her. She’s limp in his arms, her head on his shoulder. The smell of their sex mingles with the smell of the warm summer air—and fuck, Rio thinks, recognizing the scent of gardenias from her garden, too. It all washes over him, sweet and fragrant, and maybe Rio allows himself to breathe it in, just for one more second.
Elizabeth sighs, and Rio bends his knees, lowering her to the ground. Tugging her sleeves up, she redresses herself before she starts smoothing her hair. Rio tucks himself back into his pants and zips up.
“I need to…” she trails off, eyes catching on the laundry room door.
Rio runs a hand over his mouth, and then, glancing at his palm, he sees the red indents from her teeth, still there, but fading.
“Yeah, wouldn’t want him noticin’ you comin’ back smelling like sex, huh?” He doesn’t look at her when he says it, but he feels her stiffen, and the air crackles between them. “But I guess first he’d have to notice you were ever missin’.”
He lifts his head and looks past her, her face a taut, red blur in his peripheral vision as he focuses on the siding where he’d pinned her. It’s no bed with mussed sheets. There’s no evidence, anywhere, of what they’ve done—not that he’d touched her, not that he’s ever had her at all.
“You sound jealous.”
Rio scoffs. “Yeah, of what? That you about to go to sleep next to the guy in a bed you haven’t been fucked in since I was in it last?”
“You seem awfully confident about that. We are married, you know. Even got a couple of kids,” she spits, and Rio jerks up to look at her, reading her, but the mask is on.
Did he really think they didn’t, not ever? That someone could lie that close to her and not want their hands on her skin? That she wouldn’t ever say yes?
“Just make sure you shower before you slip into the sheets, yeah? Or would he even recognize what you smell like when you come?”
“Don’t be crude,” she snaps, and he has to smile, ‘cause of course she’d get offended over words.
“Oh, baby, what do you think good sex is? Polite?” And then he laughs at her.
“You need to leave,” she sniffs. “And not come back here again.”
“Wouldn’t have to come here at all if you just did your job as well as you pretend to be a happy li’l housewife.”
Elizabeth ignores that. “I’ll let you know when I have the money ready.”
“You’ll let me know? Nah, you’ll be there at the usual time or—”
“Or what?” she challenges, and Rio’s jaw locks. “See, that’s your problem, boss.”
He has to bite back the feelin’ that springs up every time she calls him that.
“What’s that?”
“I know you. And I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
And with that, she strides to the door and disappears into her house.
His head throbs, and he feels a hangover coming on while he waits fourteen minutes for an Uber to drive out to the suburbs.
He paces back and forth on the empty sidewalk in front of her house, unable to stay on that back porch with just a thin wall between them—him and her, him and them.
It’s just enough time for him to decide fuck it.
He texts Mel.
Turns out, she’s still awake.
