18. Maxim #2
Only then did I finally rise over her, settling my weight between her thighs, and for a moment neither of us moved, both of us breathing hard, her hands finding my shoulders like she needed the anchor as much as I did.
"I've got you," I murmured against her ear, meaning it more than I meant most things I said out loud. "I've got you."
Her hands moved over my back, my shoulders, mapping me the same way I'd just spent long minutes mapping her, and by the time either of us spoke again the room had gone entirely quiet.
There was no urgency left in either of us by then, only the quiet, settled weight of two people who had already decided how the night was going to end and saw no reason to rush toward it.
"Maxim." My name again, wrecked this time, her hips lifting to meet me before I'd fully decided to move.
I settled at her entrance and held there a moment, watching her face for any flicker of hesitation I would have stopped for instantly.
There wasn't one. Her hips only tilted up to close the last of the distance herself, wordless and certain.
I pushed into her slow, giving her body time to open around mine instead of rushing what little patience I had left.
She gasped at the first inch, her nails biting into my shoulders, and I stilled there long enough to feel her adjust before easing in further.
I worked into her by degrees after that, deeper than restraint should have allowed a man like me, until there was no distance left between us at all. The sound she made against my throat when I was finally, fully seated inside her undid the last of the control I'd spent years perfecting.
Neither of us moved for a moment after that, both of us breathing hard, letting her body finish settling around mine before either of us asked for more.
"You feel like you were made for exactly this," I said against her ear, meaning every word of it more than I'd meant almost anything I'd said out loud in years.
She answered with my name and her nails against my back, and I began to move.
We moved together without hurry, deeper than our first night, quieter, every thrust measured instead of desperate, like we had all the time in the world instead of a war outside these walls that said otherwise.
I braced one hand by her head and gripped her hip with the other, holding on like she was the only steady thing left in the room, and every slow drag of my body against hers built something tight and bright low in my own chest that had no interest in waiting.
She rolled her hips to meet every stroke, finding a rhythm with me instead of beneath me, and the sound of her breath breaking apart against my ear was the best thing I'd heard in years.
"Faster," she said, her voice wrecked, her fingers digging into my shoulders.
"Not yet." I kept the pace deliberate, unhurried, watching what the restraint cost both of us in equal measure. "I want this to last."
I held that pace until she was shaking beneath me, until her breath came in short, broken pulls and my own control had worn down to almost nothing.
Only then did I let the rhythm build the way she'd been asking for all along.
The rhythm built patient and steady until neither of us could hold onto patience any longer, her body tightening around mine in a way that pulled a groan out of my chest I didn't try to muffle.
She broke apart beneath me with my name on her lips and her whole body drawing tight around mine, and I followed her under a few thrusts later, my face buried in her neck, her name the last coherent thing I managed to say.
Afterward we lay tangled together, my arm heavy across her waist, both of us breathing slow, and I did not move to leave the way some distant, disciplined part of me usually insisted on doing.
I stayed.
Sleeves still creased from a day I would have paid good money to forget, I lay there with her head on my chest and felt something in me settle that hadn't settled in years. Not since before my father died, broke and angry, certain the world owed him an apology it never gave.
"You're thinking too loud," she said, sleepy, her fingers tracing idle patterns against my ribs.
"I'm always thinking too loud. You've just gotten close enough to hear it."
"Lucky me."
I laughed, low, and pulled her in closer, and for a moment the war outside these walls felt like it belonged to a different version of my life entirely.
"I don't know what you're doing to me, Sofia," I said, quieter now, half asleep, the words arriving before I'd fully decided to let them. "I don't..."
I stopped there, because the rest of that sentence had a shape I wasn't ready to see in the light, let alone say out loud to the one person who could do the most damage with it.
She went very still against me, so still I almost asked her why, but sleep pulled at me harder than curiosity did, and I let the question go unfinished the same way I'd let the sentence go unfinished, telling myself there would be time later to say the rest of it properly.
She didn't ask me to finish it. She just stayed there, quiet, her hand resting flat over my heart like she could feel exactly how unguarded I'd let it get.
I fell asleep before I could decide whether that terrified me or not, and it was the first time in longer than I could remember that I hadn't needed to decide anything at all before letting the day finally end.
I didn't dream about Warren Tate or the burned warehouse or the twelve long years I'd spent building something out of what my father left behind. I didn't dream about Doyle, or the slow bleed of men who used to trust me finding new reasons not to.
I dreamed, if I dreamed anything at all, about the weight of her hand over my heart, steadier than anything else in my life had managed to be lately, and for the first night in longer than I could remember, I slept straight through until morning without once waking to check the locks.