49. Cora #2
"I would let her. I would let her do considerably worse than that, for what today cost her in advance planning alone.
" He turned me gently to face him, his hands finding the small of my back, unhurried in the way that made the whole night stretch out slow and generous, like it had nowhere else to be.
"I keep waiting to feel like the version of myself who built walls for a living.
I do not. I feel like a man standing on a balcony with his wife. "
"Say that again."
"My wife." He said it slowly, testing the shape of it the way he tested most things that mattered, and something in his face went soft enough that I nearly forgot to breathe. "I have wanted very little in my life as plainly as I want this. You. Tonight. Whatever ordinary thing comes after it."
We did not stay on the balcony much longer after that, though he made me finish my drink first, taking his own sweet time about it, in the exact way I had come to trust more than almost anything else about him.
Later, in a room upstairs that Naomi had booked without telling either of us, the door had barely clicked shut behind him before his mouth found mine, slow and certain, the kind of kiss that made the entire chaotic day fold itself down into something small and quiet and completely ours.
The city lights came in low through the curtains, and by unspoken agreement, we left them exactly as they were.
"You have been extremely patient with me today," he said, his forehead resting against mine, his hands already working the zipper at my spine one careful inch at a time.
"Standing across a room from you in that dress for six hours, unable to touch you properly, counts as one of the more difficult assignments I have ever accepted. "
"You survived worse things."
"Nothing that required this much discipline.
" The zipper finished its slow descent, and the dress loosened, and his hands followed the newly bared skin of my back like he already knew every inch and still wanted to learn it again.
"I intend to make up for all six hours. Slowly.
You should prepare yourself accordingly. "
"That sounds like a threat."
"It is a promise. I only make the kind I intend to keep.
" He kissed the curve of my shoulder where the dress had slipped, in no hurry at all, his mouth tracing a slow path up the side of my throat that left me gripping his forearms just to stay upright, and when he finally reached my jaw and pulled back to look at me properly, whatever composure either of us had left standing dissolved completely.
I pushed his jacket from his shoulders, and he let me, watching me work the buttons of his shirt open one at a time with the same patient, focused attention he gave everything that mattered, as though nothing in the entire world existed outside the small circle of lamp light we were standing in.
His skin was warm under my palms, familiar in a way that still managed to feel new every single time, and when the last button gave way I flattened my hands against his chest and felt his heartbeat racing under them, fast and unguarded, nothing at all like the controlled, careful man the rest of the world thought it knew.
"You're not as calm as you're pretending to be," I murmured.
"I am not calm. I have simply gotten very good at holding still.
" His voice had gone rough at the edges, low enough that I felt it more than heard it, and when he finally lifted me against him and closed the short distance left between us and the bed, it was with the same unhurried certainty he brought to everything, like we had the whole rest of our lives to get this exactly right, because we did.
What followed was slow in the way he had promised, deliberate and thorough, taking every bit of the time he had said he wanted, his hands and mouth mapping every place that made my breath catch until I stopped being able to tell where patience ended and hunger began.
I said his name more than once, and every time he answered as though it were the only word left worth knowing in any language, murmuring my own name back against my skin between kisses that started soft and turned insistent, until neither of us had anything left resembling restraint.
The city stayed lit and indifferent outside the window, and none of it mattered, not the ceremony, not the reception, not the whole long performance of the day, only the weight of him over me and the patient, devastating attention he paid to every single place I had never let anyone linger before.
When we finally came together it was without hesitation, without the careful distance either of us used to keep between ourselves and anything that mattered this much, and afterward we stayed wrapped together in sheets gone warm and creased, breathing hard, both of us grinning like teenagers who had gotten away with something enormous.
I traced the line of his jaw, the same jaw I had once mistaken for a stranger's, and found nothing left in either of us worth holding back.
"Reckless," he said against my hair, like he was trying the word on for the first time in his life and finding it fit. "Best decision I ever made."
THE END