CHAPTER 12 #2
He rises. He stays low — kneeling up rather than standing — and he reaches for the buckle of my belt with his right hand.
His left palm stays at her thigh. His right hand goes only to the buckle.
He undoes the buckle. He undoes the button.
He undoes the zipper. He moves at the speed of a man who has stitched a vena cava and a man who has tied a four-throw knot in three seconds and a man who knows which one this moment is.
He lifts his eyes to mine.
I incline my head.
I lift my hips one inch under her — her body comes with mine; her weight is on my left thigh; I support her with the palm at her sternum — and Stefan works the fabric down to mid-thigh on me without removing me from beneath her.
His hand on the cotton, not on the skin.
He is precise. His gaze stays above my waist — on her thigh, on her face.
He is the surgeon and I am the body on the table and the body on the table is a structure to maintain.
He sits back on his heels, eyes on her.
"Are you with us, doll?"
"I'm with you."
"Spasibo."
He guides her — palm at her hip on each side; he moves her by a half-inch only — so that her body settles back against mine in the precise angle he wants. The entry stays held back. He sets the geometry first.
"Color for me, doll."
"Green."
"Color, Rossi. " Mine. At her ear.
"Green."
I keep my palm at her sternum. The medallion under it. The pulse hits hard.
"Give me yes."
"Yes. " Her breath at the top of the word.
Stefan's right hand on the base of me — his touch glancing, brief; he is positioning, not caressing — and her hips come down on me in one slow controlled lowering. The entry belongs to me. He sees her take it.
Her sound is the catch of a held breath at the top of her chest.
I make no sound at all. I close my eyes for one second because a man at the head of the table does close his eyes for one second when the first stitch of a long closure goes in well. I open them.
I am inside her.
Her pulse kicks harder. Her sternum lifts hard once under my palm and settles. Her back presses into my chest at every point where my chest is. Her head is tilted up to me by my left hand under her jaw.
"Stay with my eyes."
She looks.
"Look at how you take him. " Stefan. His hands stay where they are; he is holding her thighs open at the angle that is best for her. He kneels between her thighs at a measured remove. He is making room for me. He is here to be witness and to be the mouth that returns after. He has work to do still.
I stay where I am.
She is the one who moves. She moves by a quarter inch on me — testing — and her body answers her body and she breathes out through her mouth for the first time tonight.
The breath is small. She does it again. The second time she goes lower on me by a half inch and I feel the back of her thighs against the top of mine and my palm at her sternum lifts with her chest.
I let her find her rhythm. Mine waits behind hers.
The pulse is running hard now. Her breath catches high.
"There. " Stefan, low. "There. Just like that, doll."
She moves. She finds the slow long pace her body asks for, and I match her by lifting my hips a quarter inch under her on the down. We work together at a rhythm slow enough that the kettle does not lose another degree before she has come the first time.
Stefan stays outside the rhythm. He watches. He counts. His head is at the height of her thighs. He keeps his palms at the outsides of her legs to keep them open. His mouth waits.
She breathes out. She breathes in. Four. She breathes out. Four.
Stefan, from below, no louder than the lamp: "Easy, doll. Look at how you take him."
Her eyes find mine.
"Good."
I hold her sternum. I hold her jaw. My eyes stay locked to hers.
She comes the first time at sixteen minutes past twenty-one-thirty.
Her sternum lifts hard under my palm and her breath catches at the top and she stays silent because the body has stopped asking permission.
The come comes through her without her permission, as a thing she has trained for arrives.
Her cunt contracts around me — three pulses, long, deep — and I stay where I am; I let it; I keep my palm; I keep my jaw; I keep my eyes on her eyes.
"Good. Look at me."
She looks.
"Stay with me. Breathe."
She breathes. Four in. Six out.
Stefan rises. He bends. He puts his mouth back on her clit while I am still inside her — light, soft, the cool of his tongue against the swollen heat — and her sternum lifts again. He is asking the next question with his mouth that he asked with his eyes.
I incline my head. Yes.
He works her. Slow. The four-count. The second come builds in her differently than the first. She makes a sound this time — back of the throat; the long oh that lives below language. Her thighs tremble against Stefan's palms. I hold her sternum. I hold her jaw. My eyes stay on her.
"Color. " Mine. Even.
"Green. " Hers. Small.
"Are you with us, doll?" Stefan, lifting his head for a breath.
"I'm with you."
"Spasibo."
He goes back to her.
She comes the second time at twenty-one fifty-three. Her cunt closes around me in long deep pulses; her sternum lifts hard; her left hand finds my left wrist where it is at her jaw and grips. My wrist stays under her fingers. I let her hold. The grip is a checkpoint, not a panic. I am here.
I come the first time after her. The last time another man was in the room for it I was nineteen, and my eyes were shut.
Tonight my eyes stay on her eyes. Stefan and I keep our gazes apart by mutual code.
He watches her. He watches as she takes me.
He says, low, "Perfect, doll. Look at how you take him. "
He is the witness. The witness is the charge.
When I am done I stay where I am. I keep my palm at her sternum. I keep her jaw in my left hand. She breathes against me. Her eyes are wet now — wet with the body's release; the kind of wet that comes from being held inside a structure precisely as long as the structure was promised to hold.
I hold her another minute.
Stefan rises slowly. He sits back on his heels.
He looks at me — one second — and I look at him — one second.
The eye contact is the apex's quietest beat.
Fifteen years separate me from the last brother who stood this close to my own body.
The same gap lives in him. The look stays unnamed. It is held and let go.
I will remember the look.
He stands. He moves to the credenza. He pours the first of the two cups — Earl Grey, the kettle still warm enough to be honest. Her cup goes unsweetened; he stirs once with Vincent's spoon and brings it to her at the couch.
"Doll."
He sets the cup on the side table at her right elbow.
He goes to the office sink — six feet from the couch; the sink is small and clinical and Stefan has used it for years to wash a coffee cup and a coffee cup only — and he runs the warm tap. He wets the wash cloth I had set out at seventeen-ten. He wrings it. He brings it.
"If you would, doll. Lift one foot."
She lifts.
He washes her. He does it slowly. His four-count under his hands again.
He washes her thighs first — the inside, where he has been; the outside, where his palms held her — and he is unhurried.
He talks to her as he has been talking to her since she was a stranger to him and her pulse was an unknown number. "There. Yes. Beautiful, doll. There."
I lift her one inch with my palm at her sternum and the back of my left hand on her shoulder and I draw the cashmere blanket up from the floor across her thighs and her belly while Stefan works.
I move her without moving her; she does not have to move herself.
The blanket settles across her — heather gray, eight-ply, the weight of it across her shoulders when I lift it the last inch to cover her — and the wool catches the lamp the way wet stone catches light.
She tucks her chin a quarter inch into the wool.
"Spasibo. " Stefan, to her. Then to me, eyes up, no louder than the lamp: "Brother. You held her well."
"She holds herself well. " My voice is even. "We only watched."
He nods.
He wrings the cloth. He brings the second pass — her belly; her hips; he is gentle along the medallion's hairline crack at her sternum where it has come uncovered and his fingers stay clear of the chain; he washes around it; he leaves it on her. The men have learned. The medallion stays.
He sets the cloth on the rim of the sink. He returns. He kneels at the side table and reaches for the cup of tea and offers it at the level of her mouth.
She drinks.
She drinks once, slow. Twice. She stays quiet.
I drink nothing. I will drink later.