Chapter 27 #3
I went deeper with my tongue. I felt the small sounds she did not know she was making, sounds she had not made for any man before me, sounds I intend to be the only man who ever hears.
Her heels slid against the sheet. Her fist tightened in my hair until it pulled.
I did not stop. I did not slow. I gave her what she needed without negotiation.
"Daniil. Oh god. Oh god, please."
I held my mouth steady on her. Her thigh shook against the side of my face.
Her whole body drew up as tight as a bowstring, every line of her held, and then she broke open for me with a sharp unguarded cry, half my name and half nothing at all.
Her hand fisted in my hair. Her hips lifted under my palm and I let her have it this time, riding her through the long shake of it.
The shock cracked off her with the cry. I felt it leave her body the way you feel a fever break.
What was left under my hands was her. Just her. Warm and alive and mine.
I gentled her down through the aftershocks.
Then I worked up the inside of her thigh slow, up her hip, up her stomach where my palm had pinned her, up between her breasts, up her throat, until I was at her mouth again.
I kissed her with the taste of her still on me.
She made a soft hungry sound and her arms wrapped around my neck and pulled me down into her, and I felt her open her legs under me to make room.
I reached between us and lined myself up and slid into her, slow, the whole way.
She was hot and slick and ready and her breath caught hard in her throat as I filled her.
I held there for a beat, foreheads touching, my whole body shaking with the effort of not moving yet, letting her feel me, letting her know exactly who was inside her tonight.
"Look at me."
Her eyes opened. They were wet now, but they were here. They were on mine.
I started to move. Slow at first. Long even strokes that took me all the way out and all the way back into her.
I watched her face. Her lips parted. My palm slid up from her hip to her ribs and over her breast and her breath broke on it.
Her hands found my shoulders and gripped.
Her legs came up and locked around my hips, drawing me deeper, taking me at an angle that made her gasp.
The slow heat between us built and built and would not stop building.
I could feel my control sitting on a knife edge.
I held it there. She had asked me, with that nod against my chest, to lead her back. I was leading her back.
"Whose are you?" Low. Against her mouth.
"Yours." Barely a breath. "Yours, Daniil."
I felt the word land somewhere in my chest I did not have a name for. I kissed her hard for it. I moved deeper for it.
When her breath went ragged and her nails bit into my shoulders I slid out of her slow.
She made a small bereft sound that almost undid me.
I turned her in my hands, gentle, until her back was to my chest, and drew her up onto her knees in front of me with my arm braced across her front, palm flat over her stomach.
I bent to the curve of her shoulder and pressed my lips there once. Then I slid back into her from behind.
The angle put me deeper. She felt it. Her spine arched against my chest and a sound left her I had not heard from her before, low and broken in the middle.
My arm tightened across her stomach and pinned her back against me, every inch of her bare skin against mine.
My other hand came up under her jaw, gentle, and turned her mouth back to mine over her shoulder.
I took her like that. Crooked and deep and hungry. I started to move.
She came apart for me at this angle in a way she had not before.
Louder. Less guarded. The dam was full down now.
Every sound she made hit me at the base of the spine and pushed my control closer to the edge.
I held it. Just. Her hand came up and gripped the back of my neck and held on as if she would fall without it.
"Stay with me," I said into her hair. "I am here. I will not let go."
"I am here," she breathed back. "I am here, I am here, please, don't stop."
I did not stop. My palm slid up from her stomach and lay flat between her breasts, over her heart, the way I had done before her body broke for me the first time.
It hammered against my hand. Her own hand came up and pressed mine down harder against her.
That was the thing that broke me. That small fierce gesture of hers, claiming the hand that was claiming her.
I put my hands on her hips. I let her find her own pace.
She rose up on her knees, slow, and slid back down onto me, and her eyes closed and her head tipped back and her mouth fell open into something that was no longer thinking.
I let her ride. My hands stayed open and steady at her hips, the anchor when she needed it.
Her rhythm broke against me. She cried out and her head fell back against my shoulder and I felt her come around me, the long tight clench of her body taking me with her.
My arm wrapped tighter across her front.
My other hand fisted in her hair at the nape.
I drove up into her hard and deep and felt my own control finally go.
I spilled inside her with my face buried at her shoulder and both arms wound tight around her, holding her against me so there was no edge between us. "Mine," I said into her skin. Rough. Wrecked. "Mine."
It took a long time for my heart to come down out of my throat. She sagged back against me and I held her, both of us breathing too hard, my mouth still at her shoulder. I felt her breath slow against my arm. I felt mine slow with it.
I slid out of her slow and turned her in my arms to face me. She came willing. Her cheek went to my collarbone. I lowered us down onto the mattress on our sides, her tucked into the curve of my body, my arm under her head, my other hand smoothing up the length of her spine and back down.
I kissed her temple. I kissed the soft spot under her ear where my mouth had been. I pulled back just enough to see her face. Her cheeks were flushed. Her hair was damp at the hairline. Her eyes were soft and tired and clear. The shock was gone. She was here with me. All of her.
"Thank you for that," she said. Her voice was small and a little rough. "You really have your own way of comforting a girl."
My mouth almost moved into a smile. Not quite. I tucked a strand of her hair back behind her ear with the side of my thumb.
"You did what had to be done today. You saved my life. There is no other side of that ledger." I held her eyes. "And you do not carry this alone."
She nodded against my chest. Slow. Real. She breathed out into my collarbone and did not pull the breath back in fast. The tremor that had lived in her hands since the shot on the parkway was gone. Her fingers lay quiet and warm against my ribs.
I had spent my adult life believing the way to take care of a woman was to keep her clear of the dark places, to stand between her and the road and let nothing past me.
Tonight I had learned a harder thing. The road had found her anyway.
She had stood in it and done what had to be done, and what she needed from me afterward was not a wall.
It was a hand reaching into the dark place beside her, and a body to lead her back out.
I tightened my arm around her and held her against me, and for the first time in a long while I did not feel like I was guarding a door. I felt like I was home behind one.