Chapter 13 - Wren #2
He slides the handle along my slit, working me slowly, and it's maddening — the hard unyielding shape of it, so completely different from a hand, alien and cold.
My hips move forward without my permission.
He lets them, adjusts his angle fractionally, and the sound I make becomes something I would be embarrassed about if I had any embarrassment left.
My hands find his jacket sleeve — not grabbing, just landing there, my palms against his forearm, the nearest solid thing, the gauze warm under my fingers — and I grip the fabric while my forehead drops toward his shoulder.
He keeps his left hand braced at my hip, fingers splayed, holding me steady — both to control my movement and to steady himself.
The control is total. He is guiding every part of this, but he doesn’t force.
He waits for my body to answer, then responds as though we are playing a game with rules only he knows, and I am losing spectacularly.
My forehead lands on his shoulder, the starched fabric of his shirt pressing into my skin, and I let myself ground there, my eyes squeezed shut.
There is a moment of stasis, a moment where it feels like maybe he will stop, maybe this will be where he lets me down, but then the handle presses against me and the cold shock of it sends my head back up.
My mouth opens, involuntary, and I bite down on my own tongue to stop the sound I want to make. I can taste blood.
He slides the handle inside me, inch by inch, and I begin to sob.
It's not just the sensation — it's the totality of it, the way he occupies every part of my awareness. My body so open, so vulnerable. He's holding all the cards. I'm letting him. I don't want him to stop.
My legs are trembling already, and I can feel the muscle quiver that says I am dangerously close to giving out, but I force myself to stay upright, to hold onto the fabric of his sleeve and not collapse.
He works the handle in slow, shallow thrusts, not enough to hurt but enough to fill, enough to make me aware of every nerve ending, every seam, every difference between this and anything that came before.
My vision goes white at the edges every time he pulls back and pushes in again.
I can feel slickness dripping down my thigh, and he must see it, because he lets out a small, animal sound at the back of his throat.
That’s the only sound he makes. Everything else is silent and tense, except for the wet rhythm of the handle and the noise I am making against his shoulder.
I get close — my thighs trembling, breath coming in ragged increments, the orgasm assembling itself in the base of my spine — and he slows.
A fraction. Enough. The pleasure crests and doesn't break, and I make a desperate sound against his shoulder that I feel him register in the slight tightening of the hand that holds the handle.
He brings me to the edge and leaves me there, thrumming and helpless, and I realize he is matching my rhythm to his own.
The way he holds the knife — so careful, so calculated — is how he holds himself.
The same control he showed last night, when he let the armor slip and showed me something soft and raw beneath.
Now he is the one in control, and I am the one stripped down to skin and trembling. There is a symmetry here. I don’t know if he planned it, or if this is just how he is, but I can feel it.
He brings me back from further away. Builds me again, slower this time, the angle changed — something deeper, something that coils the sensation inward — and I am shaking the way he was shaking last night.
He shook in his own apartment and I held still and said nothing.
Now I'm shaking against his shoulder and he is absolutely, precisely, deliberately doing this to me.
I get close again. He slows again.
"Please." The word comes out broken, barely a word, barely air.
He doesn't answer. He doesn't slow down this time, either.
The orgasm builds for the third time and I am so frayed and desperate that when he finally — finally — gives me the angle back, the pressure back, the exact friction my body has been screaming for, I shatter.
It crashes through me. My body doesn't wait for safety.
It just breaks open — completely, overwhelmingly, my whole body shuddering against his while I'm still terrified, while my pulse is still hammering its emergency signal against my throat, while the blade is still inches from my insides and I can’t rule out what he intends to do with it.
The pleasure and the fear move through me in the same wave. I can't find the seam between them. I am undone. The orgasm is still moving through me in aftershocks I feel in my hands, my knees, my teeth.
My legs stop working.
He catches me when I fall and, for a moment, holds me tight against his chest. Then he takes three strides and places me gently atop a dining chair.
I’m shattered, broken, one foot still trailing my jeans behind me, my t-shirt sweaty and sticky.
I must look terrible, but I can’t bring myself to care.
He steps back.
I hear it — small, metallic — the knife disappearing. Sheathed then placed on the dining table. Then there is no knife. Just him, standing in front of me in his dark suit with his face unreadable.
He looks at me for a long moment.
He reaches for my hand.
Not grabbing. Not commanding. A flat palm and slightly extended fingers and no instruction attached.
Asking without asking. In a way he never asks for anything.
I take his hand.
The gauze is smooth under my fingers.
“You okay?” he asks, voice low and quiet.
He's standing over me, a shadow backlit by the city glow slicing through the window.
His hand is still in mine, our fingers half-laced, the other hand hovering in the air as if uncertain whether to touch me or let the moment pass unmarked.
I can still feel the echo of the knife, the weird, inverted tenderness of it.
I shake my head, sharp-edged and honest:
“No.”
He smiles slightly at my answer. He knows he’s just broken me.
He lets go of my hand slowly, peeling away from me like he’s worried he’ll tear something delicate if he moves too fast. The air between us is charged, full of all the things that neither of us can say. He bends and picks up the knife from the table.
For a weird second I think he’s going to kneel down, maybe scoop me up, maybe say something that would reset the world. Instead he straightens and slips his hands into his pockets, standing there with every muscle pulled tight enough to snap.
He turns on his heel, heads for the elevator, his suit jacket settling back into its sharp, precise lines. I'm still half-falling out of the chair, jeans tangled at my ankle, the sweat cooling on my skin and the words buzzing in my head like wasps. He reaches the door and pauses, not looking back.
"Neither am I," he says, voice almost too soft to make it across the room. Then he steps through, and the door hisses shut behind him, and I am alone in the aftermath, the night humming around me like a live wire.