CHAPTER 20 #2
She had cried sometime in the afternoon — once, briefly; the rim of one eye was a faint pink — and her face was dry now.
She had put on the camisole because it was the thing she had been wearing the first time he had taken her throat; she had put on the trousers because they were the thing she had been wearing the night she had walked into this cage and intended to leave it; she had put on both because she intended him to read the choice. He read it.
She walked to the desk.
"Take me upstairs," she said.
He stayed in the chair. "Tell me to."
"I'm telling you."
He stood.
He turned the green-shaded lamp down by a quarter-turn until the wick was a low coin of light against the wood.
He came around the desk. He kept his hands at his sides.
He walked her to the library door and out of the library and down the corridor and up the stair that ran along the spine of the penthouse to the master bedroom, and she walked half a step ahead of him the whole way because she had taken the lead and he had given it to her, and at the threshold of the bedroom she paused once and then she went in.
He closed the door behind them.
He stood with his back to the door for a moment because he wanted to be sure of his hands.
The brand pulsed cold against the inside of his left forearm, the way it always pulsed cold when he was about to do a thing he had not done in a hundred years.
He let the cold come up through the brand and down into his shoulder and out through the palm of his right hand against the cool brass of the doorknob.
He gave the cold to the door. He let the door take it. He turned.
She was at the foot of the bed.
He came to her. He raised both hands. He set the pads of his fingers under the strap of the camisole on her right shoulder and let the strap fall down the side of her arm. He set the pads of his fingers under the strap on her left and did the same. He took the hem of the silk in both hands.
He drew it up and over her head and arms in one motion and folded the camisole once and set it across the back of the bedside chair because he was a tidy man and the room was the room.
He went to her knees. He unfastened the wool trousers at the waist; he drew them down her thighs slowly; he steadied her at the hip with his left hand and lifted her right foot and then her left as she stepped out of them.
He folded the trousers once and set them across the camisole on the chair.
He came back up. The dark-gray cotton of her panties at her hip.
He took the elastic between his thumbs and drew the panties down and off the same way and folded them and set them on the chair.
She was naked at the foot of the bed in the firelight.
Her breasts in the heat had a faint flush across the sternum; the freckle at the corner of her jaw, the one he had wanted to put his mouth on the first morning he had ever known of her; the small bruise on the right side of her throat, four days fading, the carotid-line bruise from Friday night; the white surgical line on her right hip from a child's appendectomy; the dime-sized chemical burn on the inside of her left wrist that he touched without thinking and then took his hand back from because he was being careful, still, by habit, even tonight, and he had decided tonight care would not hold the room.
She put her hands at the line of his collar and worked the button at his throat.
She worked the next one. She unbuttoned his shirt to the hem and pulled it from the waistband of his trousers and pushed it off his shoulders.
He let it go. She set both her palms against his chest and held them there for a single beat — the cold of his skin against the warm of her palms, the small radiating cold that meant the brand was running — and then she dropped her hands to his belt.
She loosened the buckle. She undid the trouser button.
She let the trousers fall. He stepped out of them.
She left the turning to him. He did the turning for her.
He set his hand at the back of her shoulder and turned her so her hipbone was against his thigh and her face was at the firelight and her back was to him, and he set his right hand at the small of her back and pressed gently, and she went down onto the bed onto her knees and her elbows facing the fire.
He knelt behind her on the linens.
"Tell me what you need," he said.
"You."
"More than that."
"All of you. Don't be careful."
"I am not careful tonight."
"Don't be."
He put his right hand over the inside of her right wrist and drew it slowly behind her until it was crossed against the small of her back, and he put her left wrist over it and gathered both her wrists into the palm of his right hand and held them gentle.
His palm was large enough. His grip was warmth-on-cold, his cold settling into her wrists; he held her at the small of her back the way a man holds the reins of a horse that has chosen to be led.
He used the closing of his fingers, only that. She breathed out once and the line of her spine settled, and the small of her back lifted toward him an inch, and he understood that she had wanted to be held there.
He bent his head. He kissed the back of her neck, once, at the hairline. He kissed the right side of her throat below the ear, slow. He kissed the bruise on her carotid that he had made on Friday, slow. He did not bite.
He moved down. He kissed the line of her spine to the small of her back where his own hand was, and he ran his mouth along the inside of his own thumb where it crossed the bone, and he kissed the dimple at her sacrum.
He went further down. He set his free hand on the inside of her left thigh and parted her thighs by an inch.
He put his mouth on her cunt from behind for the count of fifteen — his tongue at her clit briefly, then deeper, then back — and she made a sound at the back of her throat, a sharp inhalation past speech, and he came up out of her before she could ride the sound to anywhere, because he had a longer route to take her on tonight than that.
He came back up the bed on his knees behind her.
She turned her face on the linen and looked back over her shoulder. "Let me."
He let her wrists go. He sat back on his heels. She turned on the bed and pushed him by the chest until he was kneeling more upright and she was off her elbows and her mouth was on him. He set one hand on the back of her head and let it rest there, open.
She worked him with her tongue and her hand braced at the base, brief — twenty seconds, maybe thirty; her mouth was warm; the angle was new to her and the pressure of her tongue against the underside was specific and very good — and she lifted off him before he could break, because she had also decided that the longer route was the route they were taking.
She turned. She went back down to her knees and elbows facing the fire. She set her wrists at the small of her back herself.
The gesture undid him in a small private way that he kept to himself.
He took her wrists. He held them gentle.
He moved up behind her. He set his left hand at her hip and steadied her.
He slid his right knee an inch wider. He pressed the head of his cock to her cunt; she was wet; she was wet through; she made a low sound at the contact, a sound past speech.
He pushed in. The angle was deep. He went to the hilt slowly. He stopped.
He let her take him there for a beat. He let her breathe around him. He bent his head and put his mouth at her ear.
"I am not careful tonight."
"Don't be."
He drew back and pushed forward. He set a rhythm that was deeper than the one he had used on Friday and a half-beat slower; he kept his hips heavy and slow; he drove with the weight of his thighs into hers; the linen at her sternum bunched under her chest with each forward stroke and she gave a small involuntary sound at each forward stroke that was the sound of a woman whose breath had been pushed out of her by a man's intentional weight.
The wood fire popped once in the grate. The cedar in the air. He fucked her at his rhythm. He kept her wrists.
He slid his left hand under her. He found the inside of her hipbone with his knuckles. He moved his hand along her belly to her mound. He put his middle finger against her clitoris. He pressed. He held.
She made the sharp inhalation.
He kept the pressure. He kept the rhythm.
He used the pad of his finger; he held it still; he let the rhythm of his cock inside her be the rhythm of the friction against the pressure of his finger, and the rhythm built into her shoulders and into the line of her spine and into the small of her back where his hand held her wrists; and at the seventh minute she came once, a long slow lift of the shoulder blades, a single low sound out of her throat that fell short of the word she would later use, the cunt around him tightening at the base in long even pulses, her wrists pulling once against his hand and then settling, the firelight against her shoulder blades, the brand on his forearm pulsing cold against the back of her wrist where his hand crossed her.
He kept her there. He held the rhythm steady. He kept the finger.
"Quinn."
"Don't stop."
"I will not stop."
"More. Don't be careful."
"I have you."