Chapter Text
Sex is fun. She hadn’t realized how fun it could be.
That’s all Beth could think the night before as Rio railed into her from behind in her bedroom, one hand wrapped in her hair and the other clasped around her hip hard enough to leave a bruise.
That wasn’t the first position of the night and it wasn’t the last. He didn’t stop until she was curled up into a ball on her bed, a shivering, shaking, overstimulated mess.
She loves those nights where they take their time and he draws it out and she loses count of how many times she’s come. She loves discovering new things she’s into—like how vocal he is, uttering the filthiest things to her. She loves the giddiness on his face when she talks back and the way he looks when he’s all sweaty and fucked out, full lower lip hanging as he pants.
The sex is good. Like good. Great. Mind-blowing. All the adjectives. It was never like this before—with Dean. Her body lights up every time Rio touches her. Every time she touches him. It’s overwhelming—her desire for him. Seemingly limitless.
She hadn’t seen him in awhile. Fifteen days to be exact. And it wasn’t like she was counting, per say, but, okay, maybe she was a little.
Maybe she missed him. And not just the sex.
They were falling behind on their movie nights! He still hasn’t seen Forrest Gump or Rocky or Training Day! He’s not even sure he’s ever seen Denzel Washington in a movie! How is that even possible?
He’d been out of town for the last eight days. “A new business opportunity” was the reason he’d given her for his trip to Canada. Whatever that even means. He’d been vague as always.
And, sure, they’re partners in business at the dealership and they’re something in their kinda-maybe-relationship thing, but she isn’t privy to every detail of his business dealings. She’s honestly pretty sure she doesn’t want to be.
And it’s not like she didn’t have anything else going on while he was away. She had her kids, and a business to run, and—right, she’d also gotten officially divorced like a week ago.
All Beth should have felt was immense relief and joy to have finally fully rooted herself out of a marriage that no longer served her to a man who never really knew her, but she was on edge all week.
Rio had texted periodically and she knew it was his way of letting her know he was okay, like he could read her mind across international borders somehow. Every text a band-aid on the festering wound of her anxiety.
But her mind would inevitably wander. What if he wasn’t okay? What if something went wrong? What if—god, why was she always so worried about him now?
Beth wasn’t sure when she stopped being terrified of what he might do and when her stomach started being in knots at even the thought of him being hurt. Or worse than hurt.
But she couldn’t think about that.
She couldn’t think about Rio never getting to see Denzel Washington act or not getting to see Marcus grow up. She definitely couldn’t think about what it means that she’s not sure she could recover from it.
And, yes, she’s strong and a “boss bitch” and she can take a lot—has taken a lot. She’s not delicate.
But that—if he—she couldn’t think about that.
As much as she knows he thinks he’s doing it to protect them both, his vagueness generates a gnawing feeling of dread in her gut.
Beth has always been one to want everything in its place. She has a bit of a thing with control. Annie would call it being a “control freak with a stick up her ass made of obsidian,” but Beth thinks that’s an exaggeration. Besides, obsidian isn’t even that hard of a rock.
She just likes to know what’s going on and to be in control of every situation she finds herself in.
Maybe part of it’s because Beth spent so much of her childhood with a mother who seemed like a shell of a person. She was there, but her spirit wasn’t.
And current Beth knows why. She knows that her mother had long periods of deep depression and that it wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t present.
But the Beth then didn’t know why. All she knew was that her mother stopped going to work and spent more days in bed than not. All she knew was that her mother wouldn’t get up to go to the family Christmas party, despite Annie wailing and begging and banging on their mother’s bedroom door before collapsing in a heap of tears, leaving Beth to comfort her.
All she knew was that her father started snapping more at Annie over every little mistake and they started cutting more coupons and eating more boxed mac and cheese for dinner. All she knew was the terror she felt when she heard the sirens of the ambulance that rushed her mother to the hospital after she took too many of what her father called her “happy pills.”
All she knew was that by the time things were a little bit better, her dad had cut and run and Annie was her’s.
Her childhood was like being in a constant thunderstorm without knowing what was causing the loud sounds and bright flashes. She knew something was wrong, but she didn’t know exactly what it was or why it was happening. Her mother wasn’t okay and Beth couldn’t do anything to fix it.
So, yeah. Beth likes control and wants to know what’s going on.
But Rio—Rio makes her feel out of control. And sometimes it’s in the worst way like he’s jumped into the pile of just-raked leaves that is her life, leaving her scrambling around trying to pick up the mess.
But sometimes, or really a lot of the time now, he makes her feel out of control in a good way. The best way.
He brings out this gloriously, deliriously euphoric feeling of letting go—of letting someone unravel you, take a look, and want you.
After a lifetime balancing act of maintaining everyone’s needs and expectations like the halftime show performer balancing plates on her head while riding a unicycle, it’s like Rio bumped into her and some of the plates fell and broke.
Her pristine PTA image.
Her decaying marriage.
But then, in the wreckage, she realized that maybe that’s okay. Maybe she doesn’t need to balance them all at once.
Maybe she never liked some of the plates.
And so, when Rio wakes her up the morning after a night of making her lose control with lazy kisses on her neck and he starts to push up her shirt—well, his shirt—her mind is occupied with how relieved she is that he’s here. She doesn’t need to worry about him because she can feel him wrapping himself around her like the ivy on her childhood home.
And she can feel it. That he’d been thinking about her too.
He wanted to see her as soon as he got back even though it was late and she wasn’t expecting him until the next day.
She can feel that he’s as desperate for her as she is for him in every touch. Like he’s trying to tell her in the way he spreads his hand over her thigh, grasping as much of her skin as he can.
She can feel it when he kisses over the marks he left on her breasts the night before, the scratch of his stubble further reddening her chest.
She can hear it in the way he lets out a guttural moan when he lowers himself on top of her and slips inside her cunt.
She can see it in his half-lidded eyes when he pauses, letting her adjust and allowing them a moment to luxuriate in the feeling of their bodies being intertwined again.
She’s already shaking and breathless and he hasn’t even moved yet.
“Shit, Elizabeth,” he grunts when she clenches around him, his eyebrows pinching together as his head falls into the crook of her neck.
“Hmm—I love the way you fill me up,” she whines, drawing a groan out of him .
When he still hasn’t moved after a moment, she gets desperate.
“Please,” she breathes out, needing him to move, needing all of him.
And when he kisses her as he starts to slowly move inside of her, she clutches onto his shoulders and whimpers into his mouth, needing him as close as possible.
And he’s clinging onto her lips and her body like the cover of a book. Like he’d spent two weeks missing this.
Missing her.
It’s different than the night before, but just as urgent. Dirty talk swapped out for choked-off moans. Every movement is deliberate and tender and so affectionate it’s almost—it’s almost romantic.
He’s fucking into her slow and deep and it feels so good she could die.
And she’s so sore from the night before. Every muscle aches. But she doesn’t care. She wants more. So she lifts her aching hips in rhythm with his as he pants into her neck. Whimpering every time his cock hits that spot deep inside her, she feels the tension building and building in her lower belly.
Lifting one of his hands up, he takes hers, and laces their fingers together. They fit perfectly.
Everything feels perfect. The slide of his cock, how it stretches her. The feel of his prickly hair underneath her fingertips. The circle of his fingers around her clit. The way he knows just how to touch her to make her toes curl into the sheets.
“Oh my god...so fucking wet,” Rio breathes out in a voice she’s never heard from him.
“Mmmm uh—I’m close...don’t stop,” she barely manages to sob out as the nail of his thumb scrapes over her clit, causing her eyes to roll back.
When he lifts his head out of her neck and looks into her eyes, he looks so wrecked and the thought of her doing that to him—of her unraveling him the way he unravels her, of her bringing him that same euphoric feeling of letting go—she almost comes right then.
He’s looking at her with such reverence that this feels like some sort of worship. This feels like something more than fucking. Like something has shifted. And maybe something has.
Beth knows that despite her own flippancy towards her divorce, it bothered Rio that to the people outside this bed, she was attached to someone else. He’d always hated Dean—even before this thing between them. And Rio has a possessive streak no matter how much he denies it.
So maybe that’s it. Maybe he’s looking at her differently because for the first time, it feels like she’s fully his.
And—god, he’s so beautiful. He always is. But especially now bathed in the golden glow of the morning light—in the quiet peacefulness where nothing else can distract her from his perfect cheekbones and his ears that stick out and his lust-clouded brown eyes and his wide-open and panting mouth and his lips. God, his lips.
He lowers them to hers as he continues fucking into her, moaning into each other’s mouths and consuming each other’s pleasure.
“Oh god...uuh—fuuuck,” Beth whines out as feels herself approaching the edge, her whole body ablaze.
“Fuck, you feel so good, baby,” Rio chokes out as his hips stutter.
It isn’t much longer, a few more flicks of her clit before all the tension that’s built up snaps and she comes hard.
Wrapping her legs around his hips, she holds onto the back of his neck with one hand as the other grips into the sheets, her whole body shaking with the intensity. She throws her head back and her vision blacks out as she’s hit with wave after wave of pleasure. She has no control over what’s coming out of her mouth.
She vaguely registers that he’s coming too when she feels him collapse on top of her and his cum spilling into her cunt. Thinks she hears him cry out her name into her ear, but she can’t distinguish between her moans and his.
She’s never heard him this loud.
As she touches back to earth and regains some semblance of control, she feels his chest heaving against hers as he pants into her neck. She’s not in any better shape—can feel the sweat on her forehead and the flush on her cheeks and neck and chest.
“Fuuuuuck,” he breathes out before chuckling a little.
“Hmm,” she agrees and giggles in return.
Sex is fun.
She kinda gets it now—why people lose their minds and ruin their lives over this.
Reveling in the goosebumps that rise up at her touch, Beth runs her fingers up and down his back. Rio lifts his weight from her and slowly kisses all over her face, as he’s taken to doing recently. And she starts to giggle again because, god, he can be such a dork sometimes.
The giggling abruptly stops when he sucks her lower lip into his mouth, moaning like her lips are his favorite taste.
Rio slips out of her and immediately wraps his arms back around her, pulling her back to him like she’s his to keep.
She feels him breathe in her scent before pausing as if he’s holding back saying something.
Seeming to settle on what to say, he purrs out, “You smell good.”
“Thank you,” she responds quietly, grabbing hold of his hand like it might hold the secrets to the words he’s not saying.
After staying in bed a little while longer, they get up to clean up and start their days. Beth is in the kitchen waiting for the coffee to finish brewing when she feels two arms wrap around her from behind as she looks out the window into her backyard.
Stroking her fingers on his forearms, she leans back into Rio’s chest as he places a kiss on her shoulder before pressing his face into her bare neck exposed by the messy bun she’s pulled her hair into. Reaching back one hand, she starts to scratch her nails over his head and he purrs in response.
She knows that their communication is an issue. A big one. And everything between them is still so tentative and unspoken and they’ll have to communicate all these feelings at some point if they ever want this thing between them to solidify into something real. And she’s not sure what something real would even look like with them. Maybe she’s kidding herself to think that this could ever actually work.
But then—their communication has gotten better over time as they’ve built a modicum of trust. God, Rio had been the one to take the first step and say he wanted to be exclusive.
But she also knows that this chronic dread isn’t going to go away. It’ll probably only get worse. And she’s not sure she’s ready to add that plate of constant worry to her balancing act.
She knows that the danger Rio puts himself in could catch up to him. And she’s known it since she was a kid with her mom that she doesn’t like when she can’t do anything when something is wrong with someone she lov—oh.
Oh.
Part of her thinks it's ridiculous and she’s reading too much into all of this—what just happened in her bedroom. He was just horny after not fucking her for two weeks. They both were.
And maybe you could use that to explain away why he came right over when he got back the night before. But he’d stayed afterward. She wanted him here. And, god, when had it become a given that Rio would sleep over?
There wasn’t even a question the night before. He was staying.
She sleeps better when he’s here.
Beth turns her head slightly toward him. Maybe it’s the early morning bubble they’re still in when the day doesn’t feel quite real yet and they could just be any two normal people beginning their days together that gets her to ask him, “How’d you sleep?”
“Mmm, real good, baby. The best,” he hums out with an emphasis on best as he tightens his arms around her waist—like maybe he’s not just talking about the sleep—and places a couple gentle kisses to her neck.
“The best?” she asks as she feels a smile creeping on her face.
“Always sleep better with you,” he responds so casually like that wasn’t everything.
Her breath catches as she looks at him.
And she knows now. She knows why she was so worried about him. She knows why he came over last night. She knows why he was looking at her like that.
She knows that she’s his person to come home to.
That’s she’s his person.
And he’s hers.