Chapter 26: The Writer's Touch
The rain had softened to a mist by the time Pedro’s key turned in the lock. Cymra heard the thud of his bag hitting the floor, the rustle of his jacket being shrugged off. She was at the stove, stirring a risotto that didn’t need it, the mundane ritual a anchor in the strange, placid sea their life had become.
“Something smells like heaven and looks even better,” his voice came from the doorway, warm and textured with the long day.
She turned. He leaned against the frame, his hair damp from the mist, his smile reaching his eyes in a way that still made her breath catch. It was the unguarded Pedro, the one only she and a few trusted souls ever saw. The one she’d almost lost to the quiet rooms.“Long day?” she asked, setting the spoon down.“The longest. Evans is a perfectionist, which is why he’s brilliant and also why I wanted to strangle him by take seventeen.” He pushed off the doorframe and crossed the kitchen, his cologne cutting through the aroma of wine and garlic.He didn’t stop at the stove. He came right up to her, his hands settling on her hips, pulling her back against him. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, breathing her in.“Fuck, I missed this. Missed you.”
She leaned into the solid warmth of him, tilting her head to give him better access. “You saw me this morning.”
“A lifetime ago.” His lips brushed her skin, a soft prelude.“RDJ cornered me in makeup. Said you’re wasting your talent watching rain and that if you don’t come to set tomorrow, he’s sending a detail to kidnap you. He’s got a scene that’s ‘a fucking corpse on the page’ and needs your witchy writer fingers.”
A flutter, something dormant stirring in her chest. “He said that?”
“He did.Chris seconded it.They’re terrified of you. It’s fantastic.” His hands slid up from her hips, over her ribs, his thumbs brushing the undersides of her breasts through the soft cotton of her dress. “So you’ll come?”
“Maybe.”
“Good.” His voice dropped, the Chilean cadence thickening.“But not now. Now is something else.”
His fingers found the straps of her dress and pushed them down her shoulders in one slow, deliberate motion.The fabric pooled at her waist. The cool air of the kitchen kissed her skin, raising goosebumps immediately chased away by the heat of his palms. He turned her to face him, his eyes dark and focused, taking her in. There was a possessiveness in his gaze now, a raw claim that had been simmering since Argentina, but it was tempered by a reverence that made her throat tight.
“You are so fucking beautiful, Cymra,” he murmured, his hands cupping her face.“Every day.Every second. It feels illegal to get to have this.”
He kissed her then, not like a best friend, not like a co-conspirator in a lavender marriage.He kissed her like a man drowning who’d found air. Deep, hungry, his tongue sweeping into her mouth, claiming the taste of her. She moaned into the kiss, her hands flying to his hair, gripping the waves still damp from the Vancouver mist.
He walked her backward, out of the kitchen’s light, into the dim expanse of the living room. The floor-to-ceiling windows were a sheet of obscured grey, the world outside softened and blurred by the condensation of their private warmth against the cool glass.“Pedro,” she breathed as her back met the cold pane.
“Shhh.” He sank to his knees before her, his hands pushing the fallen dress the rest of the way down her legs.It puddled on the floor around her ankles. He hooked his fingers in the lace of her panties and drew them down, his knuckles grazing the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. The air was cool on her exposed sex, but the heat of his breath was immediate, a shocking promise.He didn’t tease. He pressed his mouth to her, his tongue finding her center in a long, flat, devastating lick. She cried out, her head thumping back against the glass. His hands gripped her thighs, spreading her wider over his shoulders, opening her completely to his mouth. He licked her again, slower this time, circling her clit with a precision that spoke of a deep, studied attention.He had always been an observant man. He applied that skill now with devastating effect.
“Fuck, Pedro… yes…” The words were torn from her, crude and honest.He growled against her, the vibration shooting through her core. He ate her with a single-minded intensity, his tongue fucking into her, then lapping at her sensitive bud, then sucking it gently between his lips.One hand slid from her thigh, his fingers finding her soaking entrance. He pushed two inside, curling them upward, stroking that spot inside her that made her vision blur. He worked her with his mouth and his hand in a relentless, perfect rhythm.
The orgasm built not as a wave but as a sudden, critical pressure. She felt it in her toes, in the clench of her hands in his hair, in the gasp that stuck in her throat. “I’m gonna come… please…”
He drove her over the edge. His tongue flicked rapidly over her clit while his fingers pumped deep inside her. The release shattered through her, violent and sweet, her body bowing as a raw, ragged scream was ripped from her lungs. He held her through it, drinking from her, milking every last shudder with his wicked, knowing mouth.
When she slumped, boneless, against the window, he rose.His eyes were wild, his lips glistening. He unfastened his own pants, freeing his cock, which was thick and hard and straining. He lifted her effortlessly, her legs wrapping around his waist, her back pressed against the cold glass. He positioned himself at her entrance, still slick from his mouth and her climax.
“Look,” he commanded, his voice rough.She turned her head. Their reflection was ghostly in the dark glass—her flushed face, her breasts pressed against his shirt, his strong arms holding her aloft, the fierce concentration on his face.Two ghosts in a safe house, making something real.
He pushed into her in one deep, inexorable stroke. She was so open, so sensitive from her orgasm, that the fullness was almost too much.She gasped, her nails digging into his shoulders.
“That’s it,” he panted, his breath hot against her ear.“Take all of me. Every fucking part.”
He began to move, pulling out almost completely and then slamming back in. The force of it rocked her against the window, the cold glass a shocking contrast to the furnace of his body. He fucked her hard, each thrust a punctuation mark in a sentence he’d waited eleven years to say. There was no gentleness, only a driven, primal need to erase every ghost, every whisper, every shadow that had ever lain between them.
“You’re mine,” he grunted, his pace becoming frantic, sloppy with need.“Mine. Say it.”
“I’m yours,” she choked out, the words truer than any vow spoken in a church or a courthouse.
“Fuck yeah, you are.” He drove into her, his hips stuttering. With a final, deep thrust, he came, his release flooding her, hot and vital. A guttural sound escaped him, part groan, part sob, as he buried his face in her neck, holding himself inside her as he pulsed.
For a long minute, they stayed like that, pinned between the cold window and the heat of their joined bodies, breathing in ragged unison. Slowly, he softened and slipped from her. He lowered her gently until her feet found the floor, her legs trembling.He held her up, his arms a sturdy brace.
He turned her to face him, his gaze searching her face.He saw the tears she hadn’t felt falling. He wiped them away with his thumbs, his touch impossibly tender now.
“Tomorrow,” he said, his voice husky but clear, “you go to that set.You rewrite their scene. You show them how it’s fucking done.” He leaned in, kissing her softly, a slow melding of lips that tasted of her and him and salt. “But tonight,” he whispered against her mouth, “you rewrote mine. You rewrote everything.”
He led her to the shower, washing her with a care that felt like worship.He dressed her in one of his soft t-shirts. They ate the risotto, now cold and congealed, at the kitchen island, feeding each other forkfuls between shared smiles and longer, softer kisses.
Later, in the dark of their bed, with the mist turning back to rain against the skylight, she lay tracing the lines of his face with her fingertip.
“Pedro?”
“Hmm?”
“What happens when this job ends? When we have to be… us again, out there?” She gestured vaguely toward the window, toward the world.
He caught her hand, kissed her palm, and held it against his chest, over his heart.“We’ll already be us.Thomas and Elaine are just… a draft. A moment of transition that has slowly left as we became who we are. The final script is ours. We write it as we go.” He pulled her closer, his body a warm line against hers. “And we never, ever write a quiet room again.”
She nestled into him, listening to the steady beat of his heart under her ear. The quiet that surrounded them now wasn’t empty.It was full. It was the sound of a page turning, of a new scene beginning, of two characters finally stepping into the light, together, without a single line of pre-written dialogue. For the first time in her life, Cymra looked into the unwritten future and felt no fear, only a thrilling, wide-open blankness waiting for their story.