Chapter 20 #2
"Look at you," he said again, low and slow, like the words cost him something to release. "I am going to keep you in this bed for hours."
My thighs pressed together on the blanket without my permission. He saw it. The corner of his mouth moved.
He came down over me.
The second kiss was deeper than the first. His weight settled over me slow, his forearm braced beside my head, his other hand mapping me through the silk.
Hip. Ribs. The underside of my breast through the lace.
His mouth went from mine to the line of my jaw to the soft place under my ear, and then lower, the slow drag of his open mouth down the column of my throat making me shiver under him.
He found a ribbon at my shoulder with his teeth and pulled.
The bralette gave on that side. He kissed the skin he had uncovered like it was the only piece of skin in the world he had been allowed to find.
I could not get my hands down to him. The silk held. I tried anyway, tugged once on instinct, felt the soft pull on the inside of my wrists, and the helpless little spark of it went straight down. My breath caught around the sound of my own name in his mouth.
"Mine," he said against my collarbone. Once. Quiet. Not a question.
"Yes."
He pulled the other ribbon free with his fingers.
The lace fell away. His mouth went to one breast, then the other, learning, his tongue working a circle that arched my back off the mattress before I knew I was moving.
He talked to me between kisses, not much, just enough to keep me on the edge of his voice.
You are beautiful. You are mine. Say it again.
I said it again. Each time I said it his hand tightened on my hip and his mouth went a little slower, and the heat in me built low and steady until I could feel it behind my knees.
He undid the ribbon ties at my hips one at a time.
He took the panties with his teeth, a slow drag of wine silk down my legs, the brush of his knuckles on the outside of my thigh making me twitch.
He kissed the inside of my knee. Higher next, slower, deliberate, his mouth a hot patient suggestion against the crease of my hip while I tried to remember how breath worked.
He hooked his shoulders between my thighs and settled in like a man who was not going anywhere, and when he finally put his mouth on me the world above the bed went small.
My hands tried to come down. They could not.
The tie held. The soft burn of it sang against my pulse and I arched into him instead, into the slow patient pressure of his mouth that knew exactly what it was doing.
My hips lifted. He pushed them back down with one forearm across my belly, broad and warm and immovable, and the press of him there sent another bright shock through me.
His other hand stayed wrapped lightly around the silk above my head, the way you hold a leash you are not pulling on yet.
He let me know he had me. He was not letting go.
I could feel the heat building low under his mouth.
Tight, tighter, a knot pulling in on itself the way a string winds before it snaps.
My breath went in shallow and did not come back out clean.
My thighs started to shake on either side of his head and he made a low sound against me, approving, like he had been waiting for exactly that.
"Daniil."
It came out broken. I heard it break.
"I have you."
He slowed. On purpose. The build went from a hum to a shake to a long bright unraveling that started behind my belly and went all the way to the soles of my feet, and when it took me I said his name into the ceiling and my bound wrists pulled hard against the silk above my head and he held my hips down with his palm and did not lift his mouth until I was finished shaking.
He worked me through every aftershock, gentle now, until even my toes had let go.
He came back up over me with his mouth wet and his eyes black.
"Beautiful," he said. "Again."
He undid his shirt one handed. The other hand stayed on my wrists.
I watched the line of his chest come out of the cotton, the bruises along his side already going yellow at the edges, the hard plane of him, the scar on his left index knuckle catching the lamp.
His belt went next, a slow drag of leather, the soft clink of the buckle, his eyes on mine the whole time.
He was making me wait. I had stopped being patient halfway through the first kiss and he knew it.
When he came back down he braced over me on one forearm, looked at my face, and said, low, "Tell me."
"Please."
"Tell me what you are."
"Yours."
He pushed in.
The first slide of him took my breath. I felt the whole length of him settle into me, careful, every inch a stretch I had to give him room for, and then he was all the way in and he stopped.
His forehead came to rest against mine. His eyes did not leave my face.
His breath shook out across my cheek, uneven, controlled, the breath of a man holding himself on a leash for me.
"Look at me," he said, low. "Do not close your eyes."
I did not close them. I looked at him through it. He moved once, slow, just enough to drag the breath out of me, and stayed deep.
"Whose is this?" he said.
"Yours."
"Say it again."
"Yours, Daniil. Only you."
"Chloe."
"I'm here?"
He started slow. His eyes stayed on my face.
One hand stayed pinned flat over my bound wrists above my head, the silk a soft band between his palm and my skin, the other under the small of my back, lifting me up into the rhythm of him.
His mouth went to my throat, open, hot, finding the spot under my jaw and staying.
He went slow until slow was not slow anymore.
Harder, then. The bed shifted under us. I felt the hand on my back tighten, his teeth at my pulse, the build climb and climb until slow was a word I did not have anymore.
He said my name against my throat, rough, almost a warning, and pulled back enough to look at me. His pupils were blown black. The control in his jaw was a thing I could see now.
He pulled out, only long enough to turn me.
He guided me up onto my hands and knees in one steady motion, bound wrists resting in front of me on the mattress, the silk pale against the dark blanket.
He came up behind me. He took a second. I felt his hand smooth down the line of my back, hip to shoulder and back, like a man steadying a thing he loved before he used it the way he wanted to.
One hand settled at my hip and stayed there, fingers spread, thumb at the small of my back.
The other wound careful into my hair and gathered, gentle, controlling, until my chin lifted and the line of my throat opened.
He held me like that. He pushed back in and the angle hit somewhere new, somewhere deep, and I made a sound I did not know I had in me.
"There," he said, soft, like he had found it. "Right there."
He moved harder. The hand at my hip was a brand.
The hand in my hair did not pull, only held, only reminded me whose grip I was inside of.
Each thrust drove forward through my whole body and into the silk at my wrists where the give was just enough to let me brace and not enough to let me forget.
My breath was going out of me in little broken sounds I could not stop.
"Mine," he said behind me.
"Yours."
"I have been wanting to do this for weeks."
I could not answer. I could only push back against him and feel his hand in my hair tighten a fraction in approval and feel his next thrust go deeper than the one before.
He let go of my hair and smoothed his palm down the line of my spine again, slow, like a man putting a kettle off the burner.
"Come here."
His voice was low and wrecked at the edge of it.
I came.
He sat back against the headboard with his hands at my waist and brought me with him. The room tipped soft around me. The wine red silk was somewhere in a pool on the blanket. The lamp glow was warm on his shoulder. I let him move me.
He pulled me astride him, both hands at my hips, his back against the headboard, his eyes on mine.
He lifted my bound wrists over his head and let them loop down behind his neck so I was anchored to him on every side.
My forehead came to his. His mouth was right there.
His hands at my hips set the rhythm, gave it to me, took it back when he saw my eyes start to roll.
He bounced me slow in his lap and the angle of him deep up into me hit somewhere I did not have a word for.
My bound arms tightened around the back of his neck.
The intimacy of it almost undid me before the rest of it did.
"Look at me," he said.
I looked.
His gray-green eyes were almost black at the center and steady at the edges, and the look on his face was a look I had never had pointed at me before, from anyone, and I felt it land in my chest like a hand.
"Whose are you?"
"Yours, Daniil. God."
"Again."
"Yours."
He moved one hand off my hip and into my hair and brought my mouth down to his.
He kissed me through the next thing that took me, deep and hard, and I came apart in his lap with my bound arms around his neck and my forehead pressed to his.
His arms wrapped me, both of them, dragged me down hard into the next thrust and the one after, and I felt the line of his breath catch and break against my mouth.
He went tight under me. A low rough sound broke out of him into my mouth that I was going to remember for the rest of my life.
I felt him finish inside me in long slow pulses while my own aftershocks were still climbing, and I pressed my face into the side of his neck and breathed him in and did not move.
He did not let me go right away.
He held me there, both arms around me, his face in my hair, breath dragging. I could feel his heart through his chest where my chest was against his. I could feel the tie still soft at my wrists at the back of his neck.
After a long minute he lifted my hands off the back of his neck like they were something he had borrowed.
He laid me down on my back on his pillow with a care that did not match what we had just done.
He brought my wrists up between us and kissed the inside of one, slow, right where the silk had left a faint pink shadow, and then the other.
Only then did he reach for the knot. He took his time on it, careful, watching my face, like he wanted to know the second any pressure eased.
When the silk came away he kissed the small marks again, one and then the other, his mouth almost tender now.
"There," he said, soft.
He pulled the blanket up over both of us.
I rolled into him. My cheek went to the front of his shoulder where the bruise was not.
His arm came around me and his hand settled at the back of my neck, fingers curled into my hair, thumb just behind my ear.
The room was warm. Somewhere outside, the late autumn wind had picked up and was working at one of the windows.
Inside, there was only the slow rise and fall of his chest under my cheek and the unhurried weight of his palm at my nape.
We did not talk for a minute. I did not want to.
"Chloe."
"Mm?"
"Be my girlfriend."
It came out the way he said serious things, low and flat and certain, like a man stating a fact he had already lived with for a while.
"I want you mine alone."
I smiled into his shoulder.
"I'm already yours," I said. "You know that."
He went quiet. He did not answer with words. He turned his head and kissed my temple, slow, and stayed there with his mouth against my skin for one extra second the way he did when something was hitting him harder than he wanted to show.
"I want to hear you say it," he said, into my hair. "As long as you will let me."
I tipped my face up. His mouth was right there. The lamp glow caught the small scar at his temple and the gray-green of his eyes that were not black anymore, only soft.
"Then you better get used to it," I said. "I am yours, Daniil Sorokin. Officially. On the record. In writing if you want."
He laughed. Quiet. Surprised. His chest moved against mine.
"In writing."
"I will sign it."
"I will frame it."
I felt his fingers find the inside of my wrist under the blanket and trace, light, along the faint pink line the silk had left. He went up and back, slow, like he was reading something. His thumb stopped at the small bone. He pressed there once and let go.
Then he pulled the blanket higher over my shoulder, tucked it under my chin, and put his hand back at the base of my neck like he was making sure I was still attached to him.
I had been called a lot of things in my life.
Daughter. Sister. Friend. Nanny. Honey, by people who did not know my name.
Trouble, by people who did. But no one in any of those rooms, in any of those years, had ever made the word mine sound like a promise the way the man under my cheek had just made it sound.
I closed my eyes against his shoulder and let myself believe him.