26. Kai #3
When she comes, it is with her heels digging into the bed and her pussy clenching hard around my fingers, a raw little cry tearing out of her that I feel all the way in my dick.
I stay with her through it, licking her through the aftershocks until she twitches and pushes weakly at my shoulder.
I stop and kiss my way up her body, over the lace, over her stomach, and take her mouth in the dark.
She tastes herself on my tongue and moans into it.
I shove the mask back down before I forget myself.
I roll on a condom with hands that are not as steady as I want them to be, hook her thigh over my hip, and push into her in one slow, claiming thrust.
“Fuck.”
The word leaves me before I can stop it.
She feels too good. Wet and hot, still pulsing from the orgasm I just gave her.
I stay buried to the hilt and breathe against the side of her neck until I can move without losing the voice I have to keep.
Then I fuck her. Deep. Controlled at first. Then harder when she lifts her hips to meet me and her nails scrape down the ink on my back.
The chair sits empty beside the bed. The lingerie is twisted.
Her hair is a mess across the pillow. Every broken, filthy, desperate piece of her is right here, choosing this, choosing me, and I drive into her like I can make that choice stick.
“Come for me, little ember. Now.” I tell her, low against her ear.
She does, tightening around my dick so hard I follow her over, forehead dropping to her shoulder, a rough sound tearing out of my throat behind the mask.
For a long time after, there is only breathing.
Later, when the lace has shifted enough that I know I am going to have to buy her another set, she asks the question I cannot answer.
“Will you ever let me see you?”
I slide my thumb across her cheek and let the silence stay. Eventually she exhales through her nose, irritated enough that I can almost hear the eye roll.
“Fine.” The word makes me smile despite myself.
She catches that too somehow. “You’re smiling.”
I say nothing.
“You are.”
I lean closer until the front of the balaclava nearly touches her forehead. “Careful.”
Her smile appears immediately. There is nothing careful about Julia tonight. That is the point.
“Stay again.” The words are barely audible.
They catch somewhere uncomfortable in my chest. I should say no. Instead, I touch her cheek and she interprets the silence correctly, a small smile reaching her mouth.
“Good.” She murmurs.
I pull her against me. The room eventually becomes still around us, Julia curling into my side with one leg thrown over mine while the sheet tangles somewhere around our hips.
I keep the mask on longer than I need to because she isn’t asleep yet, though the fabric has become warm and irritating enough that I am increasingly convinced this entire arrangement will eventually kill me through heatstroke rather than ethics.
Her fingers move lazily over the geometric tattoo on my forearm.
“You have a lot of these.”
I grunt softly.
She laughs beneath her breath. “Excellent conversation.”
I pinch lightly at her side. She jerks and slaps my hand away.
“Asshole.”
The affection in the insult makes my chest feel strange again. I look toward the ceiling. This is not supposed to feel domestic. Nothing involving a balaclava should feel domestic.
Julia’s breathing eventually deepens and every so often she shifts closer, still tracing absent shapes over my skin as sleep begins taking her, until her hand finally goes still against my ribs.
Only when I am sure she is asleep do I remove the balaclava and let the cooler air touch my face.
She is turned toward me this time. The darkness is deep enough that I can see little more than the pale outline of her face, but I already know every detail I cannot make out.
My thumb moves once across her cheek. She doesn’t wake.
The lingerie is still partly visible above the sheet, black lace against her skin, and the memory of her crawling across the floor returns with enough force that a tired smile reaches my mouth.
Fuck me if watching her drop to her knees the second I asked didn’t hit like a drug.
She shouldn’t obey that easily. She definitely shouldn’t look that fucking perfect doing it. Yet the part that matters more is that she doesn’t obey everything. She asks questions, she pushes back. She calls me an asshole when I deserve it. She asks me to stay because she wants me there.
I lie beside her listening to her breathe and realize I am already looking forward to Thursday, which is possibly the stupidest thought available to me after tonight.
Thursday means daylight, means glasses and a suit hiding the tattoos she has now touched twice.
It means sitting across from Julia while she decides whether she is going to tell her psychiatrist about the man currently sleeping beside her. The absurdity almost makes me laugh.
Instead, I settle deeper into the pillow and look at her until my eyes grow heavy.
For a few hours, I let Ghost have something Kai has no right to ask for — her warmth, the quiet weight of her body against mine.
And when sleep finally starts dragging at me too, there is only one thought left in my head.
She doesn’t need to be saved. She never did. She only needed enough space to decide what she wanted. Tonight, she chose me.