38. Damian
DAMIAN
I heard the elevator before I heard her key, and the pace of it told me everything before she'd even opened the door, too fast for midnight, too fast for a woman who normally took the last flight of stairs slow just to have another minute alone with her own thoughts.
I was on my feet before I'd decided to stand, some old instinct pulling me off the couch faster than my mind could catch up to the reason for it.
She came in still wearing her coat, keys clenched in her fist instead of dropped on the hook by the door where they usually landed, and one look at her face told me the night hadn't unfolded anything like she'd planned it.
"Hey." I kept my voice level, the register I'd learned worked better on her than urgency ever did. "Talk to me."
"I found something." Her voice came out steady, in the careful, even way that meant she was working hard to hold it together. "And then I very nearly got caught finding it."
I didn't reach for her yet. I'd learned that about her too, somewhere in the last several months, that she needed a minute to put the words in order before she could stand being touched, and rushing her past that only made the whole story come out sideways. "Sit. Tell me all of it."
She sat on the edge of the couch, coat still buttoned, and gave me the shape of it rather than the whole of it, the way she did when some part of her needed to say a thing once, fast, before she lost the nerve to say it at all.
The archive. The drawer. A wire authorization that finally matched Northgate down to the last digit.
And then, right at the end, the part that had actually put that look on her face.
"A janitor came around the corner at the wrong second. Close enough to hear Katya say a name neither of us could afford spoken out loud in an empty hallway."
"Did he know what he was hearing?"
"I don't know. He looked right at the open drawer before he kept walking.
" She finally lifted her eyes to mine. "And when we got outside, I looked up at the tower out of habit, and his light was on.
Two floors below where I'd just been. Standing in an office that should have been dark at that hour, and it wasn't."
Something old rose fast in my chest, the version of me that wanted six men on that building by morning and Mira nowhere near it again without an armed escort.
I let it rise. I let it pass through me instead of out of my mouth, because I'd spent enough of this marriage answering her fear with more control to know exactly where that road went, and I wasn't walking it again tonight.
Not with her sitting there already bracing for it.
"You're not going to yell at me." It wasn't quite a question.
"No."
"You want to."
"Every day of my life. That's not new information.
" I sat down beside her, close enough our knees touched, and took the keys out of her hand because she was still gripping them like she might need to run again.
"I'm not going to, because you already know every version of that lecture without me saying a word of it.
Hearing it from me won't make you safer.
It'll just teach you to stop telling me things, and I've had enough of that particular silence to last two lifetimes. "
She looked at me for a long moment, something loosening slowly behind her eyes. "You've changed. I keep noticing it and I still don't quite believe it."
"I'm allowed to change." I set the keys on the table and finally let myself reach for her, one hand finding the side of her face, my thumb tracing the line of her jaw.
"You scared me tonight without even being in the room.
I'm not going to pretend I wasn't scared.
I'd just rather feel it quietly than turn it into another set of rules for you to break the first chance you get. "
"I wasn't trying to be reckless."
"I know." My thumb moved along the iron ring on my left index finger before I caught myself doing it, the habit that gave me away every time I was holding something back.
I let my hand fall still. "You were trying to finish what you started, the same as always.
That's not a flaw in you. It's the exact thing that's going to end this.
I'm just done pretending I can control the timeline it happens on. "
"He might already know someone's looking. I keep thinking about that light."
"Then we plan around it. Tomorrow." I pulled her closer, until her forehead rested against my collarbone and I could feel the last of the shake finally working its way out of her shoulders. "Not tonight. Tonight I just want you here, breathing, in one piece."
She went quiet against me, and I felt something in her finally give way, the tight coil she'd been carrying since the elevator letting go by degrees.
Her hand found the front of my shirt and held on, not pulling, just holding, like she needed proof I was solid before she let herself feel anything else.
"I keep seeing his face," she said, muffled against my chest. "Not the janitor. Niko. The way he looked at me over a chessboard when I was eight, like I was the only thing in the room worth his patience. I don't know how to hold that memory next to tonight."
"You don't have to solve that tonight either."
"No." She lifted her head, and something had shifted in her expression, the fear still there but quieter now, making room for something else underneath it. "I don't want to think about him at all right now, actually. I want to think about literally anything else."
"I can help with that."
"Can you?" Her mouth curved, small and real for the first time since she'd walked in, and some of the weight in the room eased with it.
"I've been told I have a few relevant skills."
She laughed, short and surprised, and the sound of it undid something in me that had stayed tight since I'd heard the elevator.
I kissed her before she'd finished the laugh, catching the last of it against my mouth, and felt her hands fist immediately in my shirt like she'd been waiting all night for exactly this kind of permission to stop thinking.
It wasn't slow. There was nothing careful left in either of us tonight, no patience for the kind of measured, learning-each-other pace we'd found on other nights in this same room.
Her mouth was urgent against mine from the first second, open and hot, her tongue meeting mine like she needed something from the kiss instead of just wanting it.
Her fingers were already working the buttons of my shirt, impatient enough that one nearly tore free instead of coming undone, and I answered her with the same hunger, one hand sliding into her hair to angle her closer while the other found the hem of her coat and pushed it off her shoulders in one motion.
It hit the floor somewhere behind her and neither of us paused to notice.
"Damian." My name came out of her rough, half question and half demand.
"I'm right here." I kissed the corner of her mouth, her jaw, the fast pulse at her throat, tasting salt and the last of the cold night still clinging to her skin. "Not going anywhere."
"Then stop being so careful with the buttons."
I laughed against her skin and gave up on careful entirely, and she made a small, satisfied sound when the last button finally gave and her hands found bare skin instead of fabric, her palms flat against my chest like she needed my heartbeat under them to believe I was real.
She pushed the shirt off my shoulders and I felt her nails drag down my back a second later, sharp enough to make my breath catch, and I answered by pulling her onto my lap in one motion, her knees bracketing my hips, both of us fumbling now instead of patient, both of us done pretending either of us wanted slow tonight.
Her sweater came off next, tossed somewhere I didn't track, and I found the clasp of her bra with hands that weren't quite steady, undoing it faster than I meant to and hearing her breath catch when it fell away.
I filled my hands with her first, learning the weight and shape of her by touch before my mouth ever got there, and when I finally bent and dragged my tongue slow over one peaked nipple before closing my lips around it, she arched into me hard enough to knock the lamp on the side table, one hand fisting in my hair to hold me exactly where she wanted me.
I gave the other the same attention, patient in that one single place even while the rest of me was starving, and felt her hips grind down against mine in answer, seeking friction through two layers of fabric that both suddenly felt like far too much.
"I need you," she said, breathless, her hips already moving against mine, chasing a rhythm neither of us was going to wait much longer for. "Not gentle. Just you."
"You have me." I stood with her still wrapped around me, her legs locking tight around my waist, and carried her the short distance to the bedroom with my mouth still on hers the whole way, both of us too impatient to separate long enough to see where we were going.
We fell onto the bed together, tangled, her hands already working my belt while I peeled the rest of her clothes away between kisses, both of us clumsy with wanting instead of graceful about it.
I got her jeans and everything under them off in one long pull, and she laughed, breathless and a little wild, when I nearly lost my balance doing it, the sound cutting off into a gasp when I settled back over her and found her with my hand instead, already slick and wanting, and traced slow circles there until her laughter dissolved completely into something rougher.
"Damian." Not a question this time.