CHAPTER 10 #2
She breathes through her nose. The first sound she makes is not a word. It is a small note in the back of her throat, and it falls into the radiator's release at the same beat; she does not know she has matched the room.
"Are you with me, doll?"
"I'm with you."
I bend my mouth to her sternum. I am not at the medallion; I am beside it, on the freckled rise just above the third rib, where her pulse is quick and still climbing.
I keep my left palm planted against the bed beside her head and my right hand on her clit, two fingers inside, the angle as I have read it on the slow want of her hips.
She gives me the breath. She gives me the small note.
She gives me a sound that is closer to a word.
"Please. " Then, lower: "Please."
I take her there. I do not hurry. I find the four-count in her hips and match it; I match her breath to the radiator; I track her pulse in my own throat at the place where my heart is older than my chest. Her wet runs onto the side of my hand.
When she comes the first time it is on my fingers, with her hand inside mine — her right palm pressed against the scar in my right palm, my fingers closed around the back of her hand, the cord at my wrist against the soft skin at the inside of her wrist — and she does not make a loud sound.
The sound stays small; she lets a long breath out through her teeth; her thighs grip my hips at the apex of the four-count; the medallion lifts an eighth of an inch off her sternum on the upstroke of the inhale and lands again on the down; I keep counting.
One. Two. Three. Four.
The fourth beat is the one I am listening for. There it is.
"Beautiful, doll."
I lay my head on her sternum to hear her. I hear her. The pulse eases under my ear, a little at a time. I listen until the fourth beat answers. The radiator releases. Ssssssh. Twelve-fifty-nine; cycle nineteen; the loop holds.
— — —
The second time I bring her up I do not enter her yet. I keep the pad of my thumb on her clit and the two fingers in her and take the long climb at her pace. The room is warmer now. She has flushed a rose-pink the warm tube makes lovely.
I touch the cord at my wrist with my free thumb.
Second of the three: the bath of her by my palm, her hand inside mine.
She has both her palms against mine now — the left against my left, the right against the right scar — and the cord lies across the heel of her hand.
The leather is the warmth of the man it was made for sitting between her hand and mine for the duration.
"Color, doll."
"Green."
I take her up. I am unhurried. The heart gives its answer without needing the number.
She comes the second time inside of four minutes. She presses her right palm hard against my right palm at the apex and the medallion lifts and falls; the small note in her throat opens out into the word.
"Stefan."
"Doll. " I match the radiator. "I'm right here."
She gathers her breath. I take the wet of my fingers and draw a small spiral on the inside of her right thigh, the way one draws a spiral over an injection site for a small child to follow, and she laughs at the back of her throat — a sound so light I almost miss it — and I lower myself.
"I am going to enter you. If you would. Let me hear yes."
"Yes."
I keep my eyes open. I keep my palms open. I take my cock in my right hand once, only to seat the angle, and bring myself to her, and push, slow; the first inch is the breath both of us hold; the second inch is the breath she lets out; the third is the four-count.
One. Two. Three. Four.
I am all the way inside her. I do not move. I let her find the geometry around me. Her right hand is on the bed beside her head. I take it. I lay her hand inside the open span of my right palm with the scar in the center between her palm and mine. The cord is at her wrist.
"Are you with me, doll?"
"I'm with you."
"Color."
"Green."
I move. Slow. I keep her thighs around my hips with the heels of her feet at the small of my back, and the bed makes the small squeak the on-call bed has made since I learned the sound of every on-call bed in the city.
I take her at the pace of the radiator, which is the pace of the man who taught me to count.
I do not lengthen my strokes; I lengthen the time between them.
She holds her right palm against mine. She presses. She matches my count without my asking. Her breath finds the loop. Ssssssh — one-oh-three by the wall clock; the loop holds — and the room is warm in the only way the room knows how to be warm.
"There, doll. " The word comes out of me again. "Perfect."
I bring her up the third time. This one is mine to keep at the same time as hers.
I do not last on purpose; I last because the rhythm is not built for hurry.
She comes around me with her right palm pressed to my right palm and the cord at her wrist and the chain at her sternum and her breath on a long four — one breath out across four cycles of the loop — and when she comes the fourth beat takes me with her.
I come inside her. I come with her name in my throat, and my forehead at her sternum, and the medallion catches the warm tube light for a half-second before I lift my head.
She is breathing at one-oh-six. I am at one-twelve. The radiator releases. Ssssssh. One-oh-four. Twenty-two cycles. The loop has held the entire scene.
I lift myself off her without letting go of her hand.
I lay her hand against her own sternum so that the medallion is held under the heel of her palm, and I rise to the basin.
I run the water until it is warm and not hot.
I wet the folded washcloth I set on the basin's edge at twelve-twenty-five.
I bring it back to her. I wash her, slow, between her thighs, where the wet is mine and hers and the come is mine.
I wash her in long careful strokes, as I was taught to wash a post-op patient when I was twenty-three. I rinse the cloth at the sink and come back and wash her once more, and then I drape the cloth at the foot of the bed.
I cross to the shelf and take the heavy ceramic mug. I fill it at the sink — the water runs cool now — and bring it to her. I sit beside her on the bed and lift her head against my forearm and bring the lip of the mug to her mouth.
"Drink, doll."