Chapter 24 #3
I get both hands on her hips and I stop letting her set the pace.
She gasps, a real one, high and surprised and then her arms lock around my neck and her whole body goes pliant against me, giving it over, and Christ, that's the thing that nearly finishes me. Not the heat. Not the tight clutch of her. The fact that this woman, who can talk her way out of anything, who dismantles a man's story in four sentences flat, who has not stopped fighting for one hour of this entire week, lets go the second I take hold. She gives herself over to me fully and I’m glad to take charge. It’s where I excel.
"That's it," I tell her. "There you go."
"Dozer—"
"I've got you."
"I know." Her voice cracks on it. "I know, that's the — that's the whole problem, I know—"
I lay her back down. Come down over her, one forearm braced beside her head, the other hand catching her knee and pushing it wide, and she takes me like she's been built for it, hands flat on my chest, then sliding up around my ribs, then dragging down my back hard enough to leave lines.
It stops being anything I could describe.
There's no distance in it. It's sweat and the give of the mattress and the wet sound of our bodies coming together over and over and over again.
It's her saying please again, and it's me making her say what for, and it's her doing it. It’s filthy and precise, and I'd have never guessed she had that in her except that of course she does, of course she'd be great even at this.
"You're going to have to give me a minute," I tell her, when I feel my orgasm starting to build. My voice comes out unrecognizable. "You keep moving like this and it’s over."
"Good."
"Kenzi—"
"No, I want—" She gets a hand in my hair and pulls my head down so she can say it against my ear, and it's not filthy this time. It's worse. It's soft. "I want you to come, it’s your turn. I need to know what’s between us is real."
Everything in me goes still. "It's real."
"Prove it."
I do.
I drive into her and she meets me and it's not slow anymore and sure as hell isn’t careful.
It's just the two of us going at each other like people who have been counting hours until we could be together.
My hand finds hers on the sheet and our fingers lock.
Her heel digs into the small of my back.
She's saying my name in this broken cadence, one syllable, over and over, and it stops sounding like a call sign and starts sounding like a name, which I think might be the first time in eleven years.
"Kenzi." I can barely get it out. "Look at me."
Her eyes open. Blown wide, wet at the corners, and completely present.
"There you are," I say.
And she says, "Here."
I break. It hits me from the base of my spine outward, and I bury myself in her and hold, shaking, forehead pressed hard to her collarbone, and she's coming with me.
I feel it, feel her clamp and pulse and cry out into my hair and for one long suspended stretch of time there is not one single thing in the world that's trying to kill either of us.
It goes quiet after.
Not immediately. First there's heavy breathing and the pounding of blood in my head, and her hand moving in slow circles between my shoulder blades like she's gentling a horse. My arm's shaking where it's holding my weight off her. I don't trust it much longer.
"Down," she says, tugging.
"I'll crush you."
"Down, Dozer." I pretend it doesn’t sound like she’s giving orders to a dog.
I lower myself onto my elbow instead, half over her, and she makes an irritated sound and hauls me the rest of the way until my head is on her shoulder and her arms are around me. My side aches. I don't care.
Neither of us says anything for a while. She's tracing the line of my shoulder blade with two fingers, over and over, and I let my eyes close.
"You're bleeding," she says eventually.
"Some."
"You said you weren't."
"I lied."
"You lied."
"Yeah."
Her fingers stop. Then start again. "Well. Okay. Under the circumstances, I suppose I can forgive you."
I turn my head, press my mouth to the notch of her collarbone. "It's fine. I'll redo the bandage."
"I'll redo it."
"You'll redo it." I agree. I know better than to argue with her.
"That's right." She's quiet for a second. "You have really terrible priorities."
"Best I've had in years."
That gets me a laugh. Small. She goes still under me a second later and I feel her chest hitch once and I don't say anything about it. I just get my arm around her ribs and hold on while she does it, because I know that hitch. She’s crying.
"Sorry," she says thickly.
"Don't."
"I'm not sad. Or — I am. It's not just that." She wipes her face with the back of her wrist, quick, businesslike. "It's this whole week.”
"It’s okay to cry."
"Is it?"
"Any time you need to."
She thinks about that. "Thank you, luckily I don’t cry very often."
"It's honest, I’ll never fault you for crying."
Her hand comes up into my hair and stays there. "Are you going to be weird about this in the morning?"
I lift my head to look at her. She's got a blotch of red high on one cheek and her hair's a disaster and she's watching me with her chin set like she's already braced for it, and I understand suddenly that she has been waiting the entire time for me to become the kind of man who does this and then goes cold, that walks away.
"No," I say.
"Because you're allowed to need a minute, or whatever, I know you're not exactly—"
I wrap my arm back around her because letting go isn't something I'm interested in tonight, tomorrow, or possibly ever again. After tonight she is mine.
"I told you earlier that I don't rush things that matter. You matter, Kenzi. I’m not going anywhere. You’re mine and we will figure out how to do this moving forward. We don’t have to figure it out tonight, but we will figure it out.”
“That’s the most words you’ve ever said to me,” she says and laughs, low and sleepy, pressing a kiss to my chest right over the steady beat of my heart, and I lie there in the dark holding the one thing in this entire operation I never planned on finding and have absolutely no intention of losing.