31. Nikolai #2
I did not stop. I kept her there, right at the edge, longer than either of us strictly needed, savoring the sound of my own name breaking apart in her throat every time I found that same place again, until she finally came apart with a broken, honest sound I intended to spend the rest of my life learning how to earn again.
I kissed my way back up her body, in no rush at all, giving her no time to fully recover before my mouth found hers again, and she reached for me with hands that had gone urgent despite everything, working the last of my clothes away with an impatience that pulled something close to a laugh out of me against her mouth.
I traced my mouth over her once more, attentive, memorizing the places that made her breath stutter and the places that made her fingers tighten in my hair, and she did the same to me in return, patient over every inch of scarring like she intended to spend the rest of her life proving it did not frighten her.
Her hands found the old ridge of scarring along my ribs and lingered there a moment before moving lower, wrapping around the length of me with a slow, deliberate confidence that nearly finished what six years of discipline had never once come close to threatening.
"Isla." Her name came out rougher than I intended, a warning and a plea in the same breath.
She only tightened her grip, working me without rushing, her thumb tracing slow circles that pulled a rough sound out of me before I could think to stop it, until my own restraint felt like something I was actively fighting to keep hold of.
Only when I caught her wrist, gentle, did she finally let go, a slow, satisfied smile spreading across her face like she had won something worth winning.
"That is cheating," I said, my voice rougher than I meant it to be.
"I have no idea what you mean." She did not sound the least bit sorry.
I moved over her then, settling my weight between her thighs, and she opened for me without being asked, her knees falling wider on either side of my hips like her body had already decided something her mouth had not caught up to yet.
One of her hands stayed flat against my chest, feeling the unsteady rhythm underneath it.
The other slid down between us, without hurry, reacquainting herself with exactly how badly she had undone me.
Her leg hooked behind my knee and pulled, drawing me down until there was almost nothing left between us but heat and the last thin inch of patience either of us had remaining.
I braced one forearm beside her head and let my hips settle lower, feeling her, slick and swollen, against me, and the small, helpless sound she made at just that much contact nearly stripped away what little control her hand had left me.
"Not yet," I said, low, more to myself than to her, and held there a moment longer, gathering myself before gathering her.
I reached down and dragged the head of myself slowly along her entrance instead of giving her what she wanted right away, teasing, watching the way her breath caught and her hips chased the sensation every time I nearly gave in and did not.
She was soaked and swollen and utterly undone beneath me, every slow pass drawing a fresh, helpless sound out of her that wrecked what little patience I had left standing.
"Nikolai." It was not quite a plea and not quite a warning, somewhere dangerously between the two.
"Patience," I said, though my own voice had gone rough enough to betray exactly how little of it I had left myself.
She reached down between us and closed her hand around the base of me, guiding me exactly where she wanted, and the sound that tore out of both of us at once when the head of me finally caught properly against her entrance was nothing either of us tried to hide.
I held there a moment longer, watching her face rather than anything else, reading every flicker of it as carefully as I read everything else about her that mattered.
She rocked up against me once, seeking more before I had given it, and the impatience in that single small motion broke the last of my own restraint.
"Look at me," she said, when I finally settled fully over her, and I did, holding her eyes instead of looking away like six years of habit still occasionally wanted.
"I am not going anywhere either," I said. "Whatever tonight becomes."
I entered her slow, giving her every second she needed, the head of me pressing into that first, tightest give of her before her body opened further to let me deeper.
She gasped, sharp and soft at once, her nails pressing crescents into my shoulder as I sank another slow inch into her, then another, giving her time to adjust around every new inch before I asked for the next one.
Her body yielded around me by careful, measured degrees, tight and slick and impossibly warm, drawing me in like it had been waiting for exactly this, until I was fully seated inside her and neither of us could manage a single word for the length of one long, shared breath.
She arched up to meet me with a low, unguarded sound that had nothing hurried left inside it, and I held still there a moment longer than either of us strictly needed, simply feeling her pulse around me, before I finally began to move.
We found a rhythm without urgency, her hands mapping my back, my mouth finding hers again and again like neither of us could stand too long without it.
Every roll of my hips was slow and deliberate, drawing a fresh, helpless sound out of her every time I sank fully into her, saying with my body every true thing I had spent the last hour finally learning to say out loud.
Her nails dragged slow down my spine, and I felt the answering shiver of it everywhere at once, my own control fraying at the edges the longer I refused to hurry either of us toward the end.
I shifted my angle once, testing, and the broken sound that pulled out of her told me I had found exactly what I was searching for.
I chased that sound, deliberate, every slow thrust aimed at drawing it out of her again and again until her whole body had gone taut beneath mine, her breath coming ragged against my throat, her hips rising to meet every single one of mine like she could not bear even a second of distance between us now.
"Faster," she breathed against my ear, her nails biting into my shoulder blades. "I am not made of glass, Nikolai."
I gave her what she asked for, the slow, deliberate rhythm giving way to something harder, faster, driven by six years of wanting finally allowed to want out loud, and the broken, urgent sound she made in answer was nothing short of a demand for more of exactly that.
She said my name twice, quiet both times, like she wanted to make sure it was real before she let herself believe it fully.
I held her through every slow, honest minute of it, no part of me standing guard by a door tonight, until she came apart beneath me with my name still caught in her throat, her whole body pulling tight and shuddering around mine, and the sound and the feel of her finally undoing me both at once dragged me over with her, spent and unguarded in a way that had nothing left to hide behind.
Afterward we lay tangled together in the dark, her head on my chest, my hand tracing slow circles along her spine, neither of us in any hurry to move.
"That was different," she said eventually, echoing words I remembered from another night not so long ago.
"Good different."
"The best kind."
I pressed my mouth to the top of her head and let myself believe, for one full quiet minute, that whatever came next might actually be survivable.
Her phone lit up on the nightstand, bright and sudden in the dark room, buzzing once against the wood.
She reached for it without much urgency, still half tangled in me, and I watched her expression shift the moment she read the screen.
"It is the hospital," she said, sitting up slightly. "An extension I do not recognize."
She answered it, and I listened to her side of the conversation, low and professional even at this hour, the particular calm she used for anything involving a patient.
"This is Isla." A pause. "I am sorry, who is asking for me specifically?"
Another pause, longer.
"He is asking by name? At this hour?"
I sat up beside her, some old instinct already reading the shape of the call before she had finished having it.
"Okay. Tell him I am on my way." She hung up and was already reaching for her clothes, moving with the fast, practiced efficiency of a woman who had done this a hundred times before under far worse circumstances.
"A patient is asking for me. He will not settle for anyone else on the floor, and the charge nurse cannot place the name he gave her."
"Which patient?"
"I do not know. She said he specifically asked for me by name, insisted on it twice before she agreed to even take the message." She was already pulling her shirt over her head, keys already in her other hand.
"I have to go. I will call you the second I know what this is."
She was out the door before either of us thought to ask the one question that should have stopped her cold.
There was no patient on that floor tonight who had any reason to know her name at all.