29. Grisha #2
She lifted her head at that, and whatever she saw in my face made something in her own shift, softening at the edges, the careful bracing she'd carried since the storage unit letting go all at once.
She kissed me before I'd finished deciding whether to close the distance myself, and it landed slow and certain in a way that had nothing urgent in it yet, just two people choosing each other after a night that could have gone a much colder way.
Somehow we ended up at the bed without either of us deciding to walk there, the trunk and the letter and the whole weight of two families' old fear left behind on the desk where the lamp still burned low, and every layer that came away between us felt less like need and more like relief, like putting down something we'd both been carrying separately for far too long.
She undid my shirt slower than she needed to, like she wanted the time it took, and I let her have it, my own hands finding her waist and pulling her closer with a patience that had nothing to do with restraint and everything to do with not wanting a single second of this to move faster than we could actually feel it.
"You're shaking," I said against her hair, quiet.
"So are you."
"I noticed."
"Good," she said, and kissed the words off my mouth before I could answer properly, and after that there wasn't much room left in either of us for talking.
I laid her back against the pillows and felt her hands find the last of what stood between us with the same unhurried care I was giving her, until there was nothing left in the room but lamplight and the quiet of two people who had finally stopped guarding anything from each other.
I took my time with her, more than I usually let myself, because tonight had already asked so much honesty out of both of us that rushing this part felt like a small betrayal of everything that had come before it.
I kissed the line of her throat, then lower, unhurried, learning the places that made her breath catch and returning to them again once I'd found them, and she arched under my mouth with a soft, helpless sound that undid something careful in my chest. Her hands moved restless through my hair, holding on rather than guiding, and when I finally settled my weight between her thighs she was already trembling in a way that had nothing to do with cold.
"Grisha." Just my name, rough, half a plea and half an order, and I understood exactly what she was asking for without needing the rest of the sentence.
I pushed into her slow, watching her face the whole way, and felt her whole body arch up to meet me, a broken sound escaping her that she pressed into my shoulder like she couldn't decide whether to hide it or let it out fully.
She was tight and slick and impossibly warm around me, and for a moment I had to stop entirely, forehead against hers, breathing through how much it undid me just to finally be inside her with nothing left unsaid between us.
"Move," she whispered against my mouth, not quite a question, and I did, slow at first, deliberate, savoring every inch of friction and give as I withdrew almost entirely and sank back into her again, watching the way her lashes fluttered shut each time I filled her fully.
Her hands found my back, nails dragging lightly down my spine, and the small sting of it only sharpened the pleasure already building low and insistent in me.
"Faster," she breathed, hips rising to meet mine, impatient now, and I obliged her, my pace climbing until the bed frame knocked softly against the wall and her breath came in short, punched-out gasps against my ear.
I hitched one of her knees higher against my hip, changing the angle, and the sound she made in response was raw enough that I felt it more than heard it, a vibration against my own chest where hers pressed flush to mine.
"There," she gasped, fingers digging into my shoulders hard enough to leave marks I'd feel tomorrow and welcome every one of them. "Right there, don't stop."
I didn't. I kept the rhythm steady and deep, watching her come undone beneath me one gasp at a time, her back arching off the mattress, her head tipping back to bare the long line of her throat, and I bent to press my mouth there too, tasting salt and warmth and her pulse hammering just under the skin.
Every sound she made, every catch of breath, every broken half word of my name, wound tighter around something low in me until holding back at all had become its own kind of ache.
"I'm close," she said, voice fraying at the edges, her whole body drawing tight around mine in a way that nearly finished me on the spot. "Grisha, I'm so close."
"I've got you," I said, low, my mouth at her ear, and slid my hand between us to where we were joined, finding the place that made her whole body go rigid and bright underneath me.
I felt her fall apart around me a moment later, her release rolling through her in long, shuddering waves, her cry muffled against my shoulder as she clenched tight around me, and the feel of her coming undone so completely, so trustingly, dragged me over with her almost before I'd braced for it.
It broke over both of us at once in the end, her nails raking down my back and my own name breaking apart somewhere against her throat, my hips stuttering hard and deep as release tore through me in a long, relentless pull.
It emptied out everything I'd been holding tight for eight years, and only now did I let myself admit how tired I was of the weight of it.
I collapsed over her, both of us shaking, my face buried in her hair while our hearts slammed against each other through nothing but damp, overheated skin.
Neither of us moved for a long while after.
Her hand found my back, tracing slow, aimless patterns over skin still oversensitive from her nails, and I pressed my mouth lazily to her shoulder, her collarbone, the corner of her jaw, unwilling to fully separate from her yet even as our breathing gradually eased back toward something ordinary.
When I finally rolled to the side, careful, unhurried, she came with me, tucking herself against my chest like she had no intention of putting distance between us again tonight.
"That was," she started, and then laughed, breathless and a little wrecked, giving up on finishing the sentence.
"I know," I said, and meant everything the two words weren't saying.
The lamp burned low, her fingers moving slow over my heart the way they always did once the urgency had passed, and I thought, not for the first time, that I had spent eight years certain I would never again feel this specific kind of stillness with anyone, and here it was anyway, stubborn and real under my own hand.
"I love you," she said into the dark, quiet enough that I felt it against my collarbone before I fully heard it. "I don't know when it happened. I just know it did."
Something in my chest went very still, the good kind, the kind I'd forgotten a man could still feel at my age with everything I'd carried into this house.
"I have known since the blanket," I said.
She went quiet for a second, and then she laughed, wet eyed, into my shoulder, the sound half disbelief and half something so much softer that I felt it more than heard it. "The blanket. Eight years, or however long it's actually been, and it was the blanket."
"It was always going to be the blanket." I pressed my mouth to the top of her head, unhurried, the kind of gesture that never needed translating between us anymore. "I just didn't have anywhere to put it yet."
"You have somewhere now."
"I know," I said, and held her closer, and let the rest of the night be exactly as quiet and as certain as it had finally, after eight years, earned the right to be.