EMBRY - Part Two

EMbrY - PART TWO

Hot seconds ticked by. Mateo was shirtless now too, hair damp from the shower, fiery gaze a devastating mix of desire and worry. A frustrating mix. I was beyond lucky to have the love of a man who cared as much as he did, but Mother of Christ, I was sick of him gazing at me as if I'd die at any given second.

That's not fair. You've died on him at least twice.

Something he'd never talked about with actual words, but I saw in his face every time he looked at me. How sad was it that I couldn't remember a time when he hadn't? That the years we'd spent together as friends, platonically sharing every moment we could, were so distant they seemed to belong to someone else.

You want to go back to that? Without Liliana? And to the version of yourself that was so scared of intimacy you couldn't kiss Mateo without punching him in the face?

Fuck. No. I didn't even mind the fresh scars on my belly. I just wanted my husband to look at me and see nothing but a bloke he wanted to fuck on the living room floor.

"Mateo."

He blinked. "What?"

His lips were an inch away, thicker than usual dark scruff covering his jaw. He slept the least out of everyone I knew, bar Alexei, and it never seemed to affect him, but the last few months marred his face all the same. Worry lines. Shadows. Had saving my life shaved years off his?

Okay. Maybe it wasn't just him that couldn't get past the heavy, and that was the thing about how Mateo loved me. The best thing. He saw me better than anyone else ever had, and he'd taught me to see myself. To know myself. "Are you scared of fucking me?"

Mateo's amber eyes widened. "That's where your mind's at right now?"

"You're half naked."

"So are you."

"And sex hasn't crossed your mind?"

A pause stretched out while Mateo's brain did something complicated. He had the same hang ups as Nash about being stupid—" thick as two short planks, mate "—but it was so far from the truth it would've been laughable if it wasn't so sad.

He finally touched me, rough, warm fingers brushing my scruffy hair out of my face. "You need a haircut."

"So get a pair of scissors and answer the question."

He laughed—or groaned, I couldn't tell—and buried his face in his arms, muffling his words.

I waited...

And waited some more, impatiently patient.

Mateo raised his head. "Sex crosses my mind all the time. I just...fuck, it always seems to be at the wrong moment. Like, remember when Harry got you to do those core stretches and you puked?"

"Uh. Yeah?"

"Right before that, I was watching your body move, and it felt like how it used to be. I forgot you'd had surgery a month ago and I just wanted to tug that reaper shirt off you and lick your fucking skin."

"And that's...bad?"

"Course it's fucking bad. You needed me to be better than that."

After weeks and weeks of reticence, it was a lot to take in at once. That, and the memory of passing out on a hay bale because I could barely move without my body feeling like it was coming apart at the seams.

You don't feel like that anymore.

I didn't. The space in time leading up to my second surgery had hurt so much I couldn't think about it without black spots dancing in my vision. But whatever the surgeons had done to my insides since then had worked. I wasn't fully healed yet, but I felt good. I felt whole . For the first time in two years I felt fucking human, and apparently I'd forgotten to catch Mateo up. "I need you in every capacity. Just because I wasn't feeling fuckable that day doesn't mean I wouldn't have got off on you respectfully disagreeing."

"There wasn't anything respectful about how much I disagreed with you that day."

Now we were getting somewhere. "I'm not going to break if you touch me."

"I know that."

"Then why don't you put your hands on me right now?"

Mateo took a shallow breath. "Because I'm scared you'll break if I touch you."

A big part of me wanted to shake him. To rage against the contradictory nonsense spilling from his mouth. But it wasn't nonsense. It was months and years of trauma that had hurt him as much as it had hurt me, and I could've stabbed myself all over again for not considering that it could manifest in Mateo like this. "I'm not going to break."

"I know."

More contradictions. I narrowed a harder stare on him, taking note that for all the fraught conversation I was forcing on him, his muscles were relaxed, jaw not ticking, gaze calm, if fire was ever truly tranquil. "I think you should fucking kiss me."

Mateo expelled a short bark of laughter. "Then what?"

"There is no then . Just do it and see what happens."

"I know what happens."

"Enlighten me."

"I kiss you..." Mateo lifted his head away from the barrier of his folded arms. "...and it won't matter if you break, cos I won't be able to fucking stop regardless."

"Bullshit."

"Is it?"

"You always stopped. For years, you stopped."

"That was before."

"Before what?"

"Before, I knew what it was like to be with you like that." Mateo eyed me steadily. "These days, I know for sure what I'm pulling away from, and I'm telling you, cielito, I ain't that strong right now."

The idea of Mateo not being strong was hilarious. But I didn't laugh. I reached for him, taking his left hand in my left hand, lifting them, so our unique as fuck wedding rings gleamed in the late sunshine streaming through the window. "What if I told you, that after all those years of running a mile from it, not being intimate with you is more likely to kill me than anything else? Would you believe me?"

"You're not a liar."

"No, but when you picture me and death, you see something more vivid than most people."

"Em, I see something real."

I knew that. That's why we'd tiled the bathroom three times. Because, just like his old bedroom at the club, he kept punching the wall. Only this time, it wasn't despairing rage burning through him, it was grief for all the time we'd lost, and the pain we'd watched each other endure. "I still want you to kiss me."

Mateo made a low sound, deep in his throat. "Right here? On the carpet?"

I eased onto my back, giving him space to figure it out, accepting the possibility that he might not. I missed him. And I wanted him. But I loved him more.

Mateo shifted. I shut my eyes as he loomed over me.

He nudged my chin, coaxing me to open them again, his face closer than ever. "You know I love you, don't you?"

Of all the things he'd said that made no sense to me, this was the worst.

I sat up, ignoring his instinctive wince and helping hand. My stomach muscles were dubious, but getting stronger every day. Every hour. Every minute. "I know you love me. You married me." My sudden movement had driven him away, but our hands were still clasped, and I tugged until he was where I wanted him again. "Is that really a thing that you worry about?"

"Nah. I'm just shit at pillow talk."

Pillow talk.

Sex talk.

I stared at him.

He stared right back, and I felt the microsecond it clicked for him. Shifted, like the quicksand we'd been living in for so long gave way to something solid. Something he trusted enough to shove his anxiety aside.

Mateo was bigger than me—taller, wider. He pressed a palm to my chest and tipped me onto my back, moving us fluidly until I was prone on the rug, and he covered me with his body, keeping his weight from my abdomen, wedging a knee between my legs.

His mouth brushed mine, hot, sweet, and barely there. "Tell me what you want."

Anything. Everything . But most of all, to know that seeing me at my weakest moments hadn't diminished the inferno we'd stoked between us all these years. To know that even if we weren't ready to take the pin from that grenade again any time soon, the explosives were still fucking live.

"Em." Mateo's rough voice scraped against my lips. "You can stop now. You've done enough thinking for both of us."

Doubted that. Despite everything Mateo often said about himself, his mind was as vast as anyone's. Mother of Christ, he'd dug a tunnel under a mansion to visit his baby daughter. He'd bought her a horse under the nose of her cartel king pin grandfather and got away with it. Tell me again that this was a man who couldn't think for himself.

Or kiss me to shut my fucking brain up.

Mateo heard me. He claimed my mouth with more force, his warm hand wrapped around my jaw, sliding lower to my throat, his grip loose, but firm enough that jolts of heat blasted my nerves.

I loved it when he handled me, and his kiss was fire. A groan escaped me, and I wrestled with my battered body to feel more of him, my dick already at the party sinking pints at the bar.

In a hot second, I reached a point where I'd never been so hard in my life, blood brewing a fucking swelter. Mateo moved to ease back, but I held him against me.

Stay .

He kissed me again, thickening against my leg, bewitching me into a mess of breath and limbs. "Tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"What you want." Mateo skated a hand down my torso, skipping the broken parts, searing what remained. "What you need."

I needed to come.

I needed to watch him come. See him shudder and shake. Lose myself in his slack jaw and wild eyes. "I need you inside me."

Mateo's gaze widened. "Are you fucking sure?—"

"Don't." I slapped a hand over his mouth. "I need to feel human. I miss it. I miss you, and it's driving me motherfucking crazy."

Mateo wrenched free of my hand. " Hey —it's all good. You don't have to flay yourself open to make your case. Just don't expect me to pound you into the basement, okay? Cos I ain't fucking doing you like that."

My pulse thrummed in my ears; a dubstep beat of desire-fuelled anticipation. "How are you going to do me?"

Mateo got up without answering and shut the blinds. He came back and stripped me of the few clothes I wore, nudging my legs wider, hooking one over his arm. "Cielito, I'm going to fuck you like I love you, and however that plays out, you're gonna let me. Can you do that?"

His mouth was on my cock before I could respond, teeth scraping as he descended, slowly, letting me hit the back of his throat.

Fuck .

Another groan wrenched from my lungs.

Deeper.

Darker.

Fuck, yes. I'd missed everything about the intimacy I'd lost over the past few months, but this...

This .

Mateo was so good at it, and better than that, he loved it. More than me blowing him. More than him fucking me. If we could do one thing for the rest of our lives, I knew he'd choose this.

I settled in for the ride, letting it relax and ruin me in equal measure. I couldn't discount the painful clench in my healing abdomen, but Mateo had his ways of distracting me from just about anything, and maybe I'd missed that too. The consuming bliss and frenzied need that quieted every thought except more .

Mateo swallowed around me. The pleasured burn in my nerves jumped another level, contracting my belly, a hairsbreadth away from the kind of cramp that sent me to my knees for all the wrong reasons.

"Fuck." I said it aloud this time, but it was a whisper, as if we were fumbling in the dark, caging our breath, stifling every sound. Trying to be quiet for no fucking reason whatsoever—we never fucked around other people. "You're going to make me come."

Mateo slowed his mouth and tongue, gazing up at me, his lean, inked biceps bunching with the effort of holding himself up.

Was he daring me to detonate in his mouth? Did he want me to? So he didn't have to?—

He pulled off and ascended my body, shucking his sweats on the way. "No thinking, cielito. You know it's bad sex juju."

"We've never had bad sex."

Mateo dropped a palm either side of my head. Naked. His cock nudging mine. "We ain't having it now either."

Our coffee table, inspired by Rubi's, had drawers, most of them filled with pencils, charcoal crayons, and hair ties. The hidden one beneath the thick, French oak top contained everything we needed for a good time. I didn't think of Saint and sex in the same breath very often, but as Mateo reached over me to grab lube and a soft cloth, I had to wonder if he'd had this in mind when he'd built the table for us as a wedding present.

Mateo came upright, gifting me the mouth-drying view of his cock as he slicked it with lube.

A breath caught in my throat. He was big. Sometimes, when I saw him, it was hard to imagine that we were a perfect fit.

But we were a perfect fit. And he'd never hurt me. I felt no fear as he slipped a sofa cushion beneath me, slotted us together, and pushed inside me. Only eye-rolling pleasure, heightened by the sudden tension in his limbs, the tremble in his breath. The groan that rumbled through his body and into mine.

He bottomed out, breathing hard.

I flexed my hips.

He restrained me. "Fucking slow . I'll die if I hurt you."

My entire body throbbed for more, but the plea in his words steadied me more than his hands.

I relaxed, letting the fucking rug take me as Mateo drew his knees in, gripping my legs, his dick sinking in deeper.

Mother of Christ. He'd pushed me to the edge already, but the tightness. The pressure. It unfurled that bitter coil inside me, setting me free, piece by aching piece, those heady, rolling waves of pleasure taking me under, one by one, as Mateo began to move.

True to his word, his rhythm was careful. Deliberate. But he didn't need to go hard to take me apart. He knew my body. He knew his own. He knew every twist and flex that would shatter us.

Didn't stop him watching me, though. His gaze trained on my face, hyper-alert for any sign of pain.

There was none, but I wasn't so far gone that I didn't realise that agonising ecstasy could be mistaken for something else.

I tugged him over me, wrapping my legs around his waist. "It doesn't fucking hurt. Look ."

His gaze broke from mine. He dropped it lower, and his eyelids fluttered, overcome as he always was, by how hard I got when he fucked me.

How hard he got as he stared at my dick.

Unbidden, his hips thrust a little faster. More heat gathered and he kissed me, breaking only to snatch a breath—a moan, his lip curling as the heavier pace hit him.

Intensity built. Back arched, he buried his face in the crook of my neck. Fucking me.

Fucking me.

A shaking sensation rattled my bones. "I need to see you."

Mateo jerked up, eyes half-closed, sweat making his Spanish skin shine. He drew his knees in again, resetting the angle, the thump of our bodies colliding louder.

A guttural noise spilled from me, tearing through my lungs.

Mateo tensed, but the good kind, those heavy-lidded eyes rolling around the world and back. "You make me crazy, chaparrito."

I wrapped my fist around my cock, my only regret in all of this that I couldn't come with his weight pinning me down, my dick trapped between his abs and mine. My hips rose to meet him. Another wicked groan breached me.

Mateo cursed, trembling. "Fuck, Em."

I stole a staggered breath, taking a second to fixate on our immediate reality. We were married and fucking on the living room floor of a house we owned. He was inside me, his glorious body curved over mine, his laboured breaths growing thicker with each steady thrust of his pelvis.

Orgasm balled in my gut. Not yet . But I was powerless to it, and sweet tension invaded every atom of my body as Mateo drove ever deeper inside me, those harsh breaths husking into rougher sounds.

Tortured sounds that I clung to as my head lolled back and my spine arched—it hurt , but I couldn't control it. Only Mateo had that kind of power over me right now.

And fuck me, he wielded it, bracing me as hypnotic friction destroyed me, and I shook, pleasure mounting, blistering heat barrelling through my veins. My hand tightened around my cock. Squeezing. Fisting. Clinging on for dear life as I nearly blacked out, cum spurting from me, a hoarse shout searing my throat. "Fuck?—"

Mateo's crazed grunt cut me off. He collapsed a little more, bracing his forearm to the rug, fucking me through it while chasing his own climax, and I felt it—that wet heat, as he surged inside me and came. I felt it everywhere from my curled toes to my tingling scalp.

"Fuck." Mateo shuddered. " Fuck ."

Fuck, indeed. I held my breath as Mateo eased from me, but as he tried to reclaim every scrap of his weight, I resisted.

Stay .

He stayed, compromising by rolling to one side, but leaving his head on my chest and his leg tossed over my thighs.

His muscles twitched, coming down, our shared heat fading to a sated simmer. I combed shaky fingers through his sweat-damp hair, and he expelled a slow sigh. "Sorry I kept you waiting."

"Sorry I didn't articulate it better."

A lazy chuckle rippled through Mateo's strong frame. "Not your fault I'm dense. Maybe next time just tell me you're horny."

That there'd be a next time was a gift I didn't take for granted as the best kind of exhaustion began to pull me under, tempered only by the three words I hadn't yet said.

I kissed Mateo's temple. "I love you."

He sighed. "I know, Em. I always fucking know. But I need you to prove it."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah." Mateo forced the word out through a fast-descending nap of his own. "Lili called Mr Fitzgibbons an incel and Mrs Evans knows it's my fault, so next time she comes for me, I need you to take that fucking call."