24. Damian #2
I undressed her slowly under the wash of streetlight through the bedroom window, taking my time, wanting to feel every second of it land somewhere it would stay rather than rushing past it like I rushed most things that asked to be felt.
I found the hem of her shirt and drew it up and over her head, unhurried enough that she had time to lift her arms for me, patient enough that I could watch the fabric fall from her shoulders like the moment mattered, because it did.
When she reached for the buttons of my shirt I let her work them free one at a time instead of finishing the job myself, breaking an old habit of hurrying past my own exposure so it couldn't be looked at too closely.
Tonight I made myself stay still and let her look.
Her fingers found my hands first, before anything else, lacing through mine and turning them over in the dim light, tracing the old raised lines across my knuckles with a patience that felt less like curiosity now and more like reverence.
She'd touched them before without comment, but tonight she lifted one to her mouth and pressed her lips against the worst of the scarring, slow, deliberate, like she was telling some part of me it had been forgiven for something it had never confessed to.
"These," she said quietly, "are the only part of you that's never learned how to lie."
"They're just scars."
"They're the truest thing on you." She pressed her palm flat against mine, measuring the size of my hand against hers, feeling the roughness where the skin had healed uneven all those years ago. "I'm not scared of them. I never was."
I didn't have an answer for that, so I kissed her instead, and we moved toward the bed together without either of us rushing the last few steps.
I laid her back against the pillows and followed her down, bracing my weight on one forearm so the other hand stayed free to learn her, the line of her throat, the soft give of her waist, the warm skin along her hip that tightened under my palm like she'd been waiting all week for exactly this attention.
I kissed the corner of her mouth, then her jaw, then lower, patient, mapping a slow path down the side of her neck to the hollow of her collarbone, feeling her pulse jump against my lips every time I found somewhere new to stop.
She made a small sound low in her throat, not quite a word, and her fingers came up into my hair and stayed there, not pulling, just holding on.
"Damian?" she said, half a question, when my mouth found the soft skin below her ribs and lingered.
"I'm not in a hurry tonight," I said against her skin, and felt her breath catch at that alone, before I'd done anything else at all.
I kept going, slow, deliberate, learning what made her breath hitch and what made her go still and greedy for more, until I settled between her thighs and put my mouth to her properly, patient about it, reading her the way I read a room, watching for the smallest signal instead of guessing.
Her hands found my hair again, tighter this time, and her hips rose to meet me before she caught herself and made herself still, and I splayed one scarred hand flat over her stomach, steadying her, telling her without words that she didn't have to hold anything back from me tonight.
She said my name once, broken in the middle of it, and then again, closer to a plea, and when she finally came apart under my mouth it was with a long, unguarded sound she didn't try to muffle against the pillow, her thighs trembling under my hands, her whole body arching up off the mattress like she'd forgotten there was a ceiling to worry about.
I gave her a moment, kissing my way back up her body, taking my time, before she pulled me up the rest of the way herself, her hands framing my face, kissing me hard enough that I could taste her own want to close the last distance between us.
"Now," she said against my mouth, not a demand, just an honest thing, and I felt it land somewhere low and certain in my chest.
What happened after was slower than the first time had been, quieter, less about hunger and more about the long, unhurried work of two people learning exactly how much weight the other could bear.
I moved over her and into her without hurry, watching her face the whole time for anything that wasn't want, finding only want, her legs coming up around me like she meant to keep me there, her breath catching against my ear on a sound that undid something careful and load-bearing in my chest. I kept my hands where she could see them, resting against her ribs, cradling the back of her head, bracing beside her shoulder.
Every time they came to rest somewhere new she found a way to touch them, thread her fingers through mine, press her mouth briefly to a knuckle like she was collecting proof.
We found a rhythm slow enough to feel every inch of it, her hips rising to meet mine, her nails dragging light down my spine, both of us breathing harder now, the quiet of the room filling with the soft sounds of two people who had stopped performing anything for each other.
I kept my eyes on her instead of losing myself in her like I might have once, wanting to see what I was doing to her, wanting her to see what she was doing to me in return, the plain want in it, the plain need, nothing held at arm's length for the first time I could remember with anyone.
When her breathing turned ragged again, carrying her a second time toward the edge, I felt her tighten around me, and I let the pace climb with her, both of us chasing the same closing distance now, her name breaking twice more from my mouth against her ear before I could stop it.
When she finally arched under me and said my name like it was the only word she had left, I felt something in my chest crack open, something that had nothing to do with my body and everything to do with nine years finally, quietly, giving way.
I followed her over that edge a moment later, burying my face against her throat, her arms locking around my shoulders like she meant to hold every piece of me in place while it happened.
I let myself go with her without holding anything in reserve, without keeping a corner of myself braced for the moment it would end, and the release that took me afterward left me shaking, though less from my body than from how completely I'd stopped guarding it.
Afterward we lay tangled together in the dark, her head on my chest, her hand still resting over the scars on mine like she meant to keep it there all night.
I listened to her breathing slow, felt my own heartbeat settle under her palm, and thought, with a clarity that startled me more than anything we'd just done together, that I didn't want this to be a strategic marriage anymore, not in any part of me, not even the part that used to run every relationship in my life like a ledger.
I wanted this. Her. The weight of her against my side.
I wanted it to be the realest thing I had, not an arrangement I could point to when someone needed an explanation for why she was in my house.
"I don't want this to be temporary," I said into the dark, quiet, almost before I'd decided to say it at all.
Mira went still beside me, her breathing catching for half a second before it resumed, careful now, aware of itself in a way it hadn't been a moment before.
I didn't take it back.
I lay there with her hand still over mine, feeling her heartbeat find its rhythm again against my ribs, and let the words sit in the room exactly as I'd said them, undefended, unrehearsed, the truest thing I'd handed anyone in nine years.