37. Elena #2
"You have no idea what you do to me," he murmured against my throat. "Standing here like this. Letting me look."
I reached for his shirt in turn, tugging it free of his waistband and sliding my palms up under the fabric, over the warm, hard planes of his stomach and chest. He made a low, appreciative sound and helped me pull the shirt over his head.
The rest of our clothes came off between us, unhurried, in no rush to reach the end of it. When we were both bare, he drew me down onto the mattress and covered me with his body, bracing his weight on his forearms so he could keep looking at my face.
"I want to take my time," he said. "I want to feel every part of you. Is that all right?"
"Yes." My voice came out softer than I expected. "Please."
He started at my mouth again, then moved to the hinge of my jaw, the side of my neck, the hollow at the base of my throat.
Each kiss was open and lingering. When he reached my breasts, he cupped them both, thumbs brushing over the nipples until they tightened.
Then he lowered his head and took one into his mouth, sucking gently at first, then with more intent. A soft moan slipped out of me.
"That's it," he said against my skin. "Don't hold anything back. I want to hear all of it."
He spent long minutes there, alternating between breasts, licking and sucking and occasionally grazing with his teeth until I was arching beneath him and my fingers were buried in his hair.
"Sergei… God…"
"I know." He brushed a slow kiss between my breasts. "I'm going to make this last. I want you shaking before I ever get inside you."
He moved lower still, mouth tracing a lazy path over my stomach, until he came to rest right where I needed him most, and simply breathed against me for a moment, hands stroking the soft insides of my legs.
"You're already so wet," he said, voice rough with wonder. "Just from my mouth on your breasts. Do you know how much that turns me on?"
His tongue finally found me there, and the first slow drag of it tore a startled moan out of me. He savored it, tasting me thoroughly, tracing around my clit without settling there, until my hips rose on their own and my fingers twisted into the sheets.
"Please," I whispered. "More."
"More of this?" He drew my clit between his lips, sucking in slow pulls while two fingers pressed inside me at once, and the combined pressure wrenched a louder cry out of me.
"Yes. Just like that. Don't stop."
He kept up a deliberate, steady rhythm, tongue and fingers moving together in perfect time, drawing the pleasure tighter with every pass. Whenever I got close, he backed off just enough to keep me hovering there, murmuring soft, filthy praise against my skin all the while.
"You taste incredible."
"Look how your body opens for my fingers."
"I could spend all night right here and still not have enough of you."
When he decided I'd had enough of that torment, he rose back over me. I closed my hand around his cock and stroked him once, slow and firm, feeling the length of him jump against my palm. He groaned, forehead dropping to mine.
"Careful," he said. "I've been hard for you since the moment you sat down on that couch."
He guided himself to my entrance and rubbed the head of his cock through my wetness, coating the tip, teasing both of us.
"Tell me you want this," he said, eyes locked on mine.
"I want you. I want every inch. Please."
He drove into me in one long, unbroken slide, and I felt every inch of him settle deep. The stretch pulled a shared, ragged moan out of both of us as he held still at the hilt, giving me a moment to adjust to the size of him.
"Fuck," he muttered against my throat. "You feel like heaven. So tight. So warm. I never want to leave."
He began to move, drawing almost fully out before driving deep again, easy at first. Each measured drag of his cock found places inside me I hadn't known were sensitive. I locked my legs around him and rocked to meet every stroke, my nails raking down the muscles of his back.
"Don't be gentle," I gasped. "I want to feel this for days."
He made a low, satisfied sound and changed the angle, sliding one hand beneath my hip to tilt me up into him, and the next thrust found a spot that whited out my thoughts entirely.
A sharp sound tore out of me, and he chased that same spot again, relentless, until I couldn't have told him to stop even if I'd wanted to.
"Right there?" His voice had gone rough. "Is that what's wrecking you?"
"Yes. Don't you dare stop. Right there, exactly there."
He didn't relent, driving deep and steady, the slick sound of our bodies the only thing louder than my own moaning. Every time he seated himself fully I made some helpless sound, and every time he'd murmur something low and reverent against my ear in answer.
"You're everything."
"The way you take me… Christ."
"I love watching you come undone for me."
The pressure that had been building for what felt like hours finally gave way all at once.
My whole body clenched tight around him, wave after wave of it crashing through me, and his name spilled out of me right along with it, loud in the quiet room.
The clench of me around him was what pushed him over the edge.
He drove in one last time, groaning my name against my throat, and I felt him come apart inside me, hips jerking as he emptied himself in slow, shuddering pulses.
Neither of us moved for a long while after, still joined, breathing hard against each other's skin.
When he finally slid free, he pulled me flush against him instead, his fingers finding my spine anyway, tracing slow, absent lines up and down it, like he wasn't ready yet to stop confirming I was really there.
Afterward he pulled me against his chest and I listened to his heartbeat slow, my palm still resting where he'd put it, over the steady, stubborn beat of him.
"I'm not sorry," I said into the dark, "that I never fixed the typo."
I felt him laugh, silent, just a shake of his chest under my cheek. "Good. Some things should stay uncorrected."
"Is that a metaphor?"
"It's a comma splice," he said. "Consistency is a red flag."
I laughed too, and it turned into something else halfway through, thick and stinging behind my eyes, and he must have felt it because his arms tightened around me without a single word, no reassurance offered because there was none honest enough to give.
We lay like that a long time, his thumb tracing slow circles against my palm again, over that same small scar, over and over, a fact he kept checking, a fact he kept finding true.
"Whatever happens," I said finally, because even without the word, I had to say something true before the night ran out, "I chose this. All of it. You. This. I'd choose it again."
"So would I," he said, and it didn't sound like resignation, and it didn't sound like blind hope either. It sounded like a man setting something down carefully because he meant to pick it back up. "I'd choose it every single time, Elena. Knowing exactly what it costs."
"Say that again."
"Every time," he said, and kissed the crown of my head, and I felt him choose it twice over, once in the words and once in the way his whole body settled around mine like a decision made and finished.
I don't remember falling asleep. I remember the window going from black to the deep blue that comes right before color returns to the world, and I remember thinking that I wanted to hold onto that blue forever, that strange suspended hour that belonged to no clock and no plan and no warehouse by the water.
Dawn came with an alarm neither of us wanted to hear, and for one long breath, neither of us moved to answer it.