Chapter Twenty-One #3
She reached for the hem of his shirt. "Off," she said, and he let her push it up until he had to finish the job himself.
The way she put both hands flat on his chest the second it was gone made him smile—she'd touched him plenty of times by now, but she still looked at him sometimes like she wanted a second look.
"You keep doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Looking at me like that."
"Get used to it." She dragged her palms down over his stomach, unhurried, to the waistband of his jeans, and whatever he'd been about to say went right out of his head.
He got her out of her blouse the way he liked—one button and then the next, his mouth following his hands down the line of her throat, because he knew by now that she'd tip her head back and go quiet if he took his time there.
She did. He knew, too, that if he set his teeth lightly against the tendon at the side of her neck, she'd make that low sound in the back of her throat, her fingers tightening in his hair.
She did that as well. That was the thing that still got him.
Not that he'd learned her, but that she’d let herself be learned.
They got the rest of it gone between them—there was no fumbling, none of the carefulness of that first night weeks ago, when neither of them had known where the other wanted to be touched, when every shift had been a question.
It wasn't a question now. He knew she liked his weight over her, liked his mouth at her breast and his hand moving slow between her thighs, and he gave her both because he knew exactly what it did to her.
"Blane." Her voice was unsteady.
"Right here."
"I know. That's—" Her breath broke as his fingers moved. "That's rather the problem."
He huffed a laugh against her skin. Even now, even here she found something to say—right up until she couldn't. He felt the moment it left her, felt her go tight and then come apart under his hand, her back arching off the bed and his name breaking open in her mouth.
What still caught him off guard was that she knew him too.
He'd spent most of his life being the one who watched—the one who noticed things about people that they didn't always notice about themselves, because understanding people had always been useful to him.
Bea watched him back, but she wasn't assessing him, wasn't trying to figure out what he might do next.
She paid attention because he mattered to her.
She proved it a moment later, when she'd gotten her breath back—her hand sliding down between them and closing around him, watching his face while she did it because she liked what it did to him as much as he'd liked undoing her.
She knew the grip he liked and the slow, deliberate drag of it, knew the exact second his control started to slip, and the small, satisfied sound she made when she felt it went through him worse than her hand did.
"See," she whispered. "I know things too."
"Yeah." His voice had gone to gravel. "You do. C'mere."
He moved over her and she opened for him, and when he pushed inside her they both went still for a beat at how good it was—familiar and new at once, her body taking him like it had learned the shape of him.
Then she hooked a leg over his and pulled him deeper, and whatever was left of thinking went with it.
He set the rhythm they both knew now, slow and deep, because he'd found out weeks ago that this was what took her apart fastest—not speed, this, the drawn-out certainty of it, his mouth at her ear and her nails dragging down his back.
She met him for all of it. That was the thing about knowing each other now: no holding back to see, no waiting to find out.
She told him what she wanted with her hips and her hands and the broken half-words against his jaw, and he gave it to her, and she gave it back.
"Blane—" She spoke his name again, half warning and half plea.
"I've got you." He worked a hand down between them, found her, and felt her jolt. "I've got you. Let go."
She did—clenching around him, her cry muffled against his shoulder—and the feel of it took him with her, harder than he was ready for, his face buried in her hair and her name lost somewhere in his throat.
Afterward they lay tangled under the sheet, Bea with one leg thrown over his and her head on his chest. The rain had gone soft beyond the French doors. He ran his hand slowly over her back and couldn't remember ever being this content doing absolutely nothing. Maybe he never had been.
She shifted closer and he tightened his arm around her without thinking about it. He didn't let his mind go near how long they had left.
For a while neither of them moved. Then the timer went off against the nightstand—face-down where he'd left it, and insistent about it.
Bea didn't lift her head. "That's the moussaka."
"I know what it is."
"You're going to let it burn?"
"Considering it."
She laughed, and the shake of it against his chest nearly made him mean it. He pressed his mouth to her hair and rolled out from under her before he could talk himself into ruining dinner.
"Stay there," he said, dragging his jeans on.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"I mean it." He pointed at her from the doorway. "Don't move. I'm not done with you."
Her smile was slow and pleased. "Then don't burn my moussaka."