29. Cora #2
His mouth traced a line down my throat while his fingers worked the last button free, and every place his lips touched afterward felt deliberate, chosen, like he was rebuilding a map of me from memory and refusing to skip a single landmark.
My blouse slid off my shoulders and pooled somewhere near my elbows, forgotten, because I had stopped tracking anything that wasn't the drag of his mouth along my collarbone or the low sound he made against my skin when I arched into it.
I reached for the buttons of his shirt in return, slower than I wanted to go, forcing my hands to match the patient rhythm he'd set, and felt him shiver, just slightly, when my palms finally flattened against his bare chest.
"You're allowed to go faster," I said, breath already unsteady.
"I know." He caught my wrist and pressed a kiss to the inside of it instead, exactly where my pulse was giving me away. "I don't want to."
We moved to the bedroom without either of us announcing it, and there was no laughter tangled through it this time, no stumbling over shoes left in the wrong place, just his mouth finding mine again and again like he was relearning the shape of it, his hands moving over me with a reverence that had nothing performative in it at all.
He laid me back against the sheets and followed me down, his weight settling over me by degrees, and I felt every inch of him arrive, patient and sure, nothing withheld.
His mouth moved lower, tracing the curve of my breast, then my ribs, then the soft plane of my stomach, pausing there long enough that I threaded my fingers into his hair just to have something to hold onto.
The last of our clothes came off slowly, without urgency, each piece set aside instead of thrown, until only lamplight and the low hum of the city outside my window stood witness to any of it.
I felt his eyes move over me the way they might move over something he intended to remember in detail, patient and thorough, and instead of feeling exposed under it I felt chosen, which surprised me more than the heat gathering low in my stomach did.
My hands found him in return, tracing the line of his shoulder, the flat plane of his abdomen, lower still, and I felt him go rigid and still under my palm, his breath catching in a way that undid some of his own careful control.
"Cora." My name came out rough, half warning, half plea, mirroring the one I'd given him minutes earlier.
"I like knowing I can do that to you," I whispered, and did it again, slow, watching his jaw tighten and his eyes fall shut.
He caught my wrist eventually, breathless, and guided my hand away, kissing my palm before he moved over me again, lowering himself between my thighs with a purpose that made my whole body go tight with wanting.
When his fingers finally found their way lower, slow and deliberate, seeking exactly where I ached for him, I gasped his name into the quiet of the room, and he answered by doing it again, watching my face the entire time like my reaction was the only thing in the world worth studying.
"Dmitri." It came out half plea, half warning, my hips already lifting to meet his hand.
"Let me," he murmured against my hip bone, steady even now, even with me shaking under his palm. "I've spent two weeks apologizing badly. Let me do one thing properly tonight."
He drew it out until the waiting itself turned unbearable, his fingers finding a rhythm that built slow instead of fast, patient enough that my whole body went taut and straining under him, small broken sounds escaping me that I couldn't have stopped if I'd tried, until I was right at the edge and reaching for him, needing him closer instead of apart from me.
"Now," I said, pulling at his shoulders. "I need you now, not later."
He settled over me at last, his hips fitting into the cradle of mine, skin to skin, no distance left to close.
I felt the blunt, promising weight of him pressed exactly where I needed him, and he held there, unmoving, his eyes locked on mine, both of us trembling with how badly we wanted to stop waiting.
"I'm here," he said, quiet, like a vow instead of a fact. "All of me. No version of myself left standing in the next room, waiting to explain things later."
"I know. Now, Dmitri. Please."
He pushed into me by careful inches, giving my body all the time it needed to open around him, and that gradual, measured slide of him inside me tore a sound loose from somewhere low in my chest, wrecked and unfamiliar even to my own ears, my nails dragging down his back as he seated himself fully inside me and went still, letting us both feel the whole of it before he moved again.
When he finally did move, he kept the same patient pace, a long, dragging withdrawal followed by an equally careful return, every stroke measured enough that I felt each one build on the last instead of blurring together the way they usually did.
My legs locked around his waist, pulling him deeper, and he groaned low against my throat, some of that famous control finally fraying at the edges.
"You feel like you're trying to memorize this," I whispered, breath catching every time his hips met mine.
"I am." His voice had gone rough, stripped of its usual polish. "Every second of it."
The rhythm built gradually, patient but relentless, his mouth finding mine and swallowing every sound I made, his hand sliding beneath my hip to angle me exactly where he wanted, exactly where I needed.
I moved with him instead of racing ahead the way I sometimes did, both of us drawing it out on purpose, and I understood somewhere in the middle of it that this was its own kind of conversation, the one underneath the one we'd already had, both of us saying with our bodies what neither of us had fully managed with words.
I held his face in both hands, made him look at me through all of it, and he did, unflinching, more open than I had ever seen him allow himself to be.
There was no race to the end this time. We stayed there, in that measured, devastating rhythm, my whole body drawing tight around him, until neither of us could tell where the tenderness ended and the wanting began, until the feeling coiled tighter with every careful thrust and finally gave way all at once, quiet instead of violent, both of us shaking through it together.
He didn't move right away afterward, still buried inside me, braced carefully on his forearms, his mouth finding mine again in something softer than any kiss that had come before it.
When he finally eased away and gathered me against him, both of us still catching our breath, his hand found mine in the dark and laced our fingers together like he needed the anchor as much as I did.
Afterward we stayed tangled together in the hushed dark, my cheek pressed against his chest, his fingers moving slow through my hair, and for a long while neither of us reached for a single word.
"Thank you," I said eventually, "for not making me ask twice."
"You should never have had to ask once."
We were nearly asleep, warm and wrung out and finally, fully honest with each other for the first time in weeks, when the phone on the nightstand lit up, buzzing hard enough against the wood to rattle the lamp beside it.
I felt him go still before I even turned my head to look, his whole body locking into a stillness that had nothing peaceful in it, and I understood, in the half second before either of us moved, that whatever this call was, it was not going to let either of us stay in this room much longer.
Nik's name sat lit up on the screen. I watched Dmitri's whole body go still before he'd even answered it, and I knew, before a single word left his mouth, that it was Sean.