CHAPTER 24 #2
I bring my mouth back. I bring her up the same path but the body is different now — sensitized, already once-held, already once-denied.
She gets to the edge faster. I take her there at my pace.
I slide three fingers in this time and I find the same fixed coordinate and I curl and I press and I hold.
My tongue at her clit. Her hips rise once and I press the heel of my left hand against the un-injured side of her pelvis and I hold her down.
She is at the precipice again. The pulse at her throat has climbed again. The flush has climbed from her sternum to her clavicles. I feel her about to come around my fingers — the inner walls clench at me once, a question — and I stop.
I withdraw. I sit back. I breathe.
"This is the second hold. Give me the color."
"Please. " Her voice is shredded. Wet-eyed, she asks me to continue. The request is torn but unmistakable. "Please. Green. Gabriel, please."
"You will get what you have asked for. Wait for it. Give me one word that says you are here, Elena."
"I hold you."
"Give the need a name."
She has to think. I have asked her something her body is not ready to answer. "I need —" she says. "I need you to keep going. I am not at yellow. I am at green. Please."
"Then we continue. The third hold will be the last. After the third hold I will let you come. Say you have the structure."
"I hear you."
"What color, mia?"
"Green."
I bring my mouth back.
The third climb is the longest. I take her there on a route I have not used yet — I bring two fingers to her clit and my mouth to her opening and I use my tongue inside her in a way I have only thought about and never done, and the noise she makes is the noise I have been waiting for.
The slick of her on my mouth. The taste of her on the back of my tongue.
The heat. I keep going. I move three fingers up and into her pussy again because she has asked for them with her hips and I curl them and find the coordinate and her thighs shake against my shoulders and the pulse at her throat is beating hard and she is close, she is very close, she is at the precipice, she is —
"Hippocratic," she says. "Yellow."
I stop.
The stop is in my hands before it is in my brain. The mouth off her clit; the fingers out of her in one continuous slow motion; the hands flat on the bed on either side of her hips; both palms down. I have backed off her body by six inches without remembering deciding to.
My left hand comes up toward the silk at her wrist. She shakes her head once — small — and her right hand, the loose one, comes across her chest and rests over the silk where it crosses her left wrist.
"Don't untie me," she says. Her voice is wrecked but it is hers. "I don't need it untied. I need slower. And — speak Italian to me."
I have a hand flat on the bed beside each hip. I am breathing six in and eight out. I am the slowest man in the world tonight.
"Give the need a name."
"Slower. And — speak Italian to me."
"Sì. " The word is small. The word is the door. "Mia."
She closes her eyes for the length of one breath.
That word costs me every time I let it live outside my mouth. I have been saving it. I am building the four around the words I can spend and the words I must hold. I don't tell her this. The architecture is for me to know. The word is for her.
"Adagio. Slower. Yes. I am here. I am here. Ti tengo. " I hold you. "Sono qui. Ti tengo. Respiro con te. " I am here. I hold you. I breathe with you. "Ho aspettato quattro anni. " I have waited four years. "Resta con me. " Stay with me. "Adagio. Adagio."
The count is held. I will not spend mia again on this bed tonight. The other Italian I will say as long as she wants.
Her eyes are wet but she is not crying. The hazel-green is all green tonight under the brass-cone lamp.
She nods once. The breath she draws is four counts long and the breath she lets out is eight counts long.
She has learned that from me without my teaching her.
I have given her the breath. She has taken it.
"Color for me," I say.
"Green."
"Name the next color before I move."
"Green."
"Give me the word that keeps you here, Elena."
"Stay with my voice."
I bring my mouth back to her at half the pace I brought her up the first two times.
I speak Italian against her thigh. I speak it against her hip.
Adagio, adagio, sei perfetta, ti tengo, resta.
Slowly. Slowly. You are perfect. I hold you.
Stay. The Italian is older than this room.
The Italian is older than I am. I have inherited it. Tonight I am giving it.
She climbs. She climbs slowly because the architecture asked her to climb slowly.
The throat-beat holds. I have my three fingers in her again.
I have my tongue at her clit. I have my breath at her stomach.
I have my left thumb just below the silver line of her flank scar — the acknowledgement, the touch she knows is the load-bearing one.
She is climbing. She is at the precipice.
"See yourself now," I say.
She comes.
She comes hard. She comes around my fingers and into my mouth and against the heel of my left hand and the inside walls of her pussy grip me three times and her hips lift and her right hand fists into the sheet beside her and she makes a noise that is not a curse and not a please and not a name.
It is a sound from the bottom of the architecture.
I have built the room for it. The room holds it.
"There," I say. "There. Yes. Sei perfetta. There. Breathe. Breathe. Yes."
She breathes. The breath is uneven for ten seconds. Twelve. Fourteen. Then four in, eight out. She has come back to me on the breath I gave her. I sit back on my heels and I keep one palm flat on her stomach and I let her feel the weight of the hand. I don't move for thirty seconds.
"I am going to untie you now. Say the hearing back to me."
"I have heard. " The wreckage is the proof.
I lean forward. I pull the single end of the tugboat hitch and the silk releases under three pounds of force.
The line slides through the headboard hole.
I gather the silk into my left palm and sit back.
Her left wrist is unmarked — faint pink line at the inside, fading already; the silk was wide and the knot was loose.
I brush my left thumb over the pink line. The mark will be gone by morning.
"Bath," I say.
I gather her. I slide my left arm under her shoulder blades and my right arm under her knees and I lift her against my chest. She is one hundred and thirty-two pounds.
I lift her without effort. The old left rib scar pulls once because the cold weather has been working on it for three days; I do not name the pull.
She turns her face into my throat. I carry her to the bath.
The water has been at one hundred and nine since twenty-one hundred.
I lower her into the copper tub at the rate of a man lowering a chalice into a sacristy.
The copper is six hundred pounds of metal on lion's-paw feet; the rim is cool at her shoulder blades because the metal has been losing the air's chill to the room since the second reheat, but the metal warms quickly under her body — by the time her shoulder blades have rested against the back of the tub for ten seconds the copper is at the same temperature as her skin.
The water comes to her collarbones. The medallion floats.
The chain is silver under the water. The faint pink line on her left wrist disappears.
She closes her eyes. She lets out a breath that has nothing left in it.
I sit on the slate floor at the side of the tub. I have a teak bowl with unscented Castile soap on the floor between my knees and a folded white linen washcloth on the rim. I don't use lavender; I learned in the prison hospital not to use scent on healing skin.
I wash her one arm at a time. I begin with the left wrist — the one that wore the silk.
I run the washcloth around her wrist three times in a circle.
I lift her wrist out of the water and I hold the inside of it against my lips for one second and I lower it back.
I move to her forearm. Her elbow. Her shoulder. The other arm.
I move to her left flank. The silver ridge is just above the iliac crest. I rest the washcloth over it for four beats. I don't press. The acknowledgement. The architecture knows where she has been hit. The architecture has been built around it.
"Elena."
"Mm."
"Map the flank for me."
"It is fine. It is very fine. It did not pull."
"Give me any pain, anywhere, now."
She thinks. "My left wrist is warm. Not pain. Just warm. The flank did not pull. The thighs are loose. I am very —" Her tongue touches her lower lip. "I am very held."
"Good."