It Was on the Way to You #2
"Hands," I said against the mark I'd just made.
They went back down. She was shaking.
I bit her again, lower, at the curve where her throat met her shoulder, and she made a sound that went straight down my spine, and I sucked the skin there until I was satisfied and moved lower. Her collarbone. The swell of her breasts. I took my time with her like I owned her, which tonight I did.
"Petra—"
"Mm?"
"I need—"
"I know what you need." I dragged my teeth across her nipple and felt her entire body clench. "You'll get it when I decide."
The whimper she made was obscene and involuntary.
I worked my way down her body with my mouth, teeth and lips and tongue, leaving marks where I felt like leaving them—her ribs, the curve of her hip, the soft inside of her thigh—and she was gripping the headboard hard enough that her knuckles had gone white, hips barely moving, working so hard to hold still that I could see the effort in every muscle.
"You're being so good," I told her, against her inner thigh, not touching where she needed it. "You have any idea what that does to me?"
"Please," she said rawly, nothing left of composure. "Petra, please."
I lifted my head and looked up the length of her.
"Ask properly."
"Please, will you touch me?"
"Please, will you touch me what."
A pause that lasted exactly as long as it took her to decide she didn't care about dignity right now. "Please will you touch me. I need you. I'm—I'll do anything, I'm so—please."
"Good girl," I said, and put my mouth on her.
She came in under four minutes, which wasn't the plan but wasn't not the plan either, and I worked her through every second of it with two fingers curled inside her while she arched off the mattress and pulled her own hair and made sounds that I would be thinking about for the rest of my life.
When the last wave ebbed, she was gasping, eyes glazed, hands loose on the headboard at last.
I gave her approximately thirty seconds.
"Roll over," I said. "Hands and knees."
"Petra, I just—"
"I didn't hear parachute."
She moved. Unsteady, trembling, and moved.
I ran one hand slowly up her spine, feeling the shiver that followed it, and fisted my other hand in her hair—not yanking, just gathering, closing my grip until she felt the pull—and felt her whole body go still and electric beneath me.
"This okay?" I said, low, directly behind her ear.
"Yes. Yes, please, don't let go—"
I tightened my grip slightly and heard her exhale like something finally released.
"Good," I said. "Don't move."
I entered her slowly, feeling her adjust, watching her hands grip the sheets, her head pulled back slightly by my fist in her hair, her throat exposed in a line that made it very difficult to be patient.
I set a pace that was not slow. She dropped her forehead to the mattress and said my name, and I pulled her back up by her hair and said "stay up, I want to see you," and she made a sound I had no word for and stayed up.
"There." I pressed my mouth to the back of her neck. "That's exactly right."
I felt her knees start to shake. I put my free hand on her hip and held her there—held her still and open for me with my fist in her hair and my hand at her hip and my body driving into hers—and she was making sounds that were no longer words, just sounds, completely given over, absolutely nothing left held back.
"You're mine," I said against her shoulder blade.
"Yours—"
"Say it properly."
"I'm yours," she gasped. "I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm—"
"Come for me," I said, my grip tightening. "Right now."
She shattered. Completely. I worked her through all of it, every convulsion, every ragged breath, easing slowly as the waves passed, until she was limp in my hands and I was the only thing holding her up.
I set her down gently. Pressed a kiss between her shoulder blades.
She made a sound that might have been my name.
"Still with me?" I asked.
"Barely," she managed. "Barely with anyone."
I helped her turn over. She lay on her back and looked up at me with the expression of someone who had briefly left their body and was not in a hurry to return.
Hair tangled, lips swollen, four different marks on her throat and shoulder, and collarbone that she was going to notice tomorrow and that I was going to feel unreasonably pleased about.
I ran one hand up her side. "One more," I said.
She blinked. "Petra—"
"I know." I moved over her, settling my weight against her. "You have everything left. I know."
She looked at me for a long moment. Then something in her face went very still and very certain, and she reached up and covered my hand with hers and moved it—deliberately, watching my eyes the whole time—to her throat.
My hand curved around it. Firm. Present. Thumb against her jaw, fingers along the side, palm flat against her pulse. No pressure on the airway. Just the weight of it. Just mine.
Her eyes didn't leave mine.
"There," she breathed.
I kept my hand exactly where she'd put it and began to move again, slow and deep, watching her face. Watching every flicker of expression. The way she swallowed and felt my hand feel it. The way her eyes went unguarded and enormous and stayed there, fixed on mine, too far gone to look away.
"I've got you," I said.
"I know, baby. I know you do."
I kept my hand at her throat and my eyes on her face and worked her up one last time, slowly, building it from nothing, feeling her begin to tremble beneath me again.
Her hands found my forearm—not gripping, just resting, needing to feel the connection—and I pressed my thumb very lightly against her jaw and watched her eyes flutter.
"Stay with me," I said.
They opened. Found mine.
"Good." I pressed deeper. Felt her begin to crest. "You're perfect. You know that? You're so—"
She came with her eyes open and locked on mine, a wave that was quieter than the others and went deeper, a long full-body tremor that seemed to start somewhere in her chest and move outward, and she kept her eyes on mine through all of it, and I kept my hand at her throat and my gaze on her face, and when it finally passed, she exhaled slowly and completely.
I lifted my hand from her throat and brought it to her face instead, thumb tracing her cheekbone, and her eyes closed at last.
We stayed like that for a long moment.
"Vera," I said softly.
"Mm."
"Talk to me."
"I'm here." A long pause. "I'm—" Another pause, longer. "I want to say something, and I don't have words for it."
"Take your time."
She opened her eyes. Looked at me with something entirely open and entirely unashamed. "That's the most myself I've ever felt," she said. "Does that make sense? It's—you hold me that way and I feel like I'm exactly right. Like I'm—" She stopped. "I've never trusted anyone like I trust you."
"I know," I said, my voice almost cracking.
I unbuckled the harness, set it aside, lay back down, and she came immediately to my side, her head on my chest, her hand finding the phoenix on my ribs and resting there.
I held her and felt her settle and thought about all the roads that had led here, and felt, for the first time in longer than I could name, like I was somewhere I was supposed to be.
Her fingers traced the compass on my forearm. The hawk. The Rilke. Then they slowed, and settled, and the tip of one finger came to rest on the tattoo above my heart.
"This one," she said softly. Not a demand. Just: I'm here again.
My throat tightened.
"Vera—"
"You don't have to." Her hand pressed flat against it, warm and still and steady. "I've just wondered. You've explained all the others."
I looked at the ceiling. The candles were throwing soft, shifting light across the room. Outside, the desert was breathing slow and dark and patient.
Tonight it felt like getting permission from the universe.
I'd carried this for eight years. Through discharge and the VA and the first bad winters stateside and finding firefighting and building something that felt purposeful again.
I'd carried it through every late-night station conversation that turned honest and too real, and I'd still stopped short of the actual floor of it.
I'd told the outline of it, the version that explained the PTSD without explaining the specific wound underneath.
Not even Rodriguez. Not Jackson. Not anyone.
But here, in the dark, in Vera's bed, on her birthday, with the candles almost gone and her warm little hand flat against their initials—
"Lucas Johnson and Santiago Ramirez," I said. "My unit. Convoy partners. Best friends for two tours. The kind of friendships that only builds when you're surviving the same thing together, day after day, until you stop being able to imagine the world without the other people in it."
Her hand didn't move. Just stayed.
"Standard route. One we'd run dozens of times.
Someone had planted an IED. Johnson's vehicle hit it first." The words came slowly, then faster.
The way water moved when a dam finally found a crack it couldn't hold.
"Ramirez went to help, and I was supposed to provide cover fire, but I froze.
Three seconds. Maybe four. But there was a secondary device, and I wasn't—I hadn't—" I stopped.
My voice was betraying me in a way I wasn't going to be able to prevent.
"Johnson died instantly. Santi held on long enough for the medics to reach him, but he didn't make it.
I swear to god, Vera. A significant piece of my soul died with them that day. "
Vera was crying. Quietly, without drama, her tears wetting my chest.
"I've run every version of that story," I said.
"The version where I move faster. The version where I see the second device.
The version where I make one different choice, get one different outcome.
Just… just one." I pressed my hand over hers, over their initials.
"Eight years of versions, and I still freeze in the same place every time. "