CHAPTER FOUR #4
"Then I'll go slow with you," she said, and there was a laugh under it and a tenderness under the laugh, and he had to drop his forehead to her shoulder for a second and just breathe her in, salt and warm skin and the faint green of the marsh still in both their clothes on the floor.
He went down her body. He wanted his mouth on her and he told her so, plain, no charm, just I want to taste you, let me, and she put her hand in his hair and said yes and opened for him, and he licked into the wet heat of her, slow, learning what made her hips chase him and what made her go quiet and what made the quiet break.
She was slick and sweet on his tongue and the taste of her went straight to the base of his spine.
He took his time even though seven years were screaming at him not to, because he wanted to learn her, wanted the map of what made her hips lift and what made her go quiet and what made the quiet break open into sound.
His tongue dragged up the length of her and she swore, soft and shocked, like she hadn't planned to.
He circled her clit and she went taut all over, holding, and then he closed his lips around it and worked two fingers up into her — gentle, the bandaged hand, the hand he was most afraid of, curling slow inside her — and she said his name.
His real one. Darius. The one almost nobody used.
"That's it," he said against her, rough. "Let me hear you. Seven years I wondered what you'd sound like. Don't you dare be quiet on me now."
She wasn't quiet. He felt her start to tighten around his fingers, felt her thighs begin to shake against his ears, and he stayed with her, with it, all the way through, and she came apart saying oh and there and don't stop and then just sounds, no words at all, her heels digging into the mattress and her back bowing up off the bed and her hand fisting and unfisting in his hair like she needed something to hold the world still with.
His hands were still shaking. He didn't care anymore.
He came back up her and she pulled him down and kissed her own taste off his mouth without a flicker of shyness, and then she did the thing that undid the last of him.
She put both hands flat on his chest and pushed — and he let her, this man who let no one move him, went over onto his back under the press of her palms like it was the easiest thing in the world — and she came up over him and straddled his hips, sitting up tall, the lamplight pouring gold down the front of her, the spotted mirror behind her throwing back the long line of her spine and the heavy fall of her locs and the place where their bodies were about to meet.
He had a fistful of the sheet in each hand to keep from grabbing her, to let her have it, and the holding-back cost him and he paid it gladly.
She looked down at him from up there like a woman who had decided something a long time ago and was only now, finally, getting to do it.
"My choice, remember," she said, and reached between them and took him in her hand and held him there, just there, at the edge of her.
"I said it downstairs and I meant it. I'm not anybody's tonight.
" She lifted up onto her knees, and reached between them, and guided him to her, and held him there at the slick edge of her with her eyes on his — making him feel every second of the choice she was making, in case he'd somehow still missed that it was hers.
Then she sank down an inch and they both lost their breath.
"Except—" another inch, her head tipping back, her hand finding his on her hip "—maybe—" and then she took all of him, slow, until she was flush against him and they were as close as two people could be, and she looked down at him with her eyes wet and bright and certain, "—maybe yours. If you want to be somebody's too."
"Yes." It came out of him cracked. His hands gripped her hips and didn't push, just held, let her set it, the man who controlled everything handing the whole thing over to her and finding it was the only place he'd ever wanted to put it down.
"God, yes. Yours. Take it. Take whatever you want, I've got nothing left to keep from you. "