Chapter 13 #4
Her body arched on the desk, and the orgasm went through her in long waves.
Wren didn’t stop, didn’t pull back, just stayed with her through it, her mouth and her hands steady and present.
When her orgasm left her body limp, Cordelia was breathing hard, her heart battering against the inside of her ribs, and her hand was in Wren's hair. Wren was still kneeling between her legs with her fingers still inside her, and nothing had changed except everything. Cordelia didn’t have the mental clarity to see just how much of her world had shifted yet.
Wren pressed a kiss on the inside of Cordelia's thigh.
Soft, almost gentle. Then she looked up.
"Come back here," Cordelia said, equally softly.
She pulled Wren up by the collar of her oxford shirt and pulled her into a kiss.
She could taste herself on Wren's mouth and felt Wren's body against hers, the desk hard underneath her back.
She did not care about any of it except the weight of Wren on top of her and the way Wren was shaking now, her steadiness finally giving way.
"You've been waiting," Cordelia said.
"Yes."
"For how long?"
Wren kissed her jaw, her throat, the scar at her temple. "Longer than this week."
Cordelia reached down and pulled Wren's shirt free from her pants, found the buttons, and undid them with unsteady hands, then pushed the shirt off Wren's shoulders.
Wren's skin was warm and her shoulders were lean.
Her bra underneath was simple and black, functional, and Cordelia sat up enough to unclasp it and closed her mouth on Wren's breast, feeling Wren's whole body react against her.
"Cordelia—"
She bit gently, then harder, and Wren's hips pressed forward against the desk.
Wren's hand came down beside Cordelia's head to steady herself.
She could feel it in the way Wren responded to her every touch.
It went beyond just mere arousal and was more like recognition, her body's relief at being touched by the right person after the wrong amount of time.
She slid her hand down Wren's stomach, over the waistband of her pants.
Wren's breath caught and her hips tilted as Cordelia undid the button then the zipper and slipped her hand inside.
Wren was wet, completely soaked through her underwear, the cotton clinging to her.
And when Cordelia's fingers pressed against her through the fabric, Wren's forehead dropped to Cordelia's shoulder and she made a sound that was not composed but was the most honest sound Cordelia had heard all night.
"Please," Wren begged.
Cordelia pushed the underwear aside and slid her fingers into Wren, and Wren whispered a low, “Fuck,” against her shoulder.
The swear sounded different in Wren's mouth than it did in her own.
Wren said it easy, said it like breathing.
She fucked Wren on her desk with her hand between Wren's legs.
Wren's face was against her neck, and Wren's breath was hot and ragged on her skin.
She could feel Wren getting close, the way her thighs tightened around her and her breath shortened, the way her hips lost their rhythm and started chasing Cordelia's hand.
Cordelia turned her head and kissed Wren's temple. "I've got you."
She came with a sound that was almost a keening sob, her body curling forward on herself, her hand gripping the edge of the desk hard enough that Cordelia heard the wood creak.
Cordelia held her through it the way Wren had held her and watched as the waves of pleasure coursed through Wren’s small frame.
After Wren’s body slackened, they stayed like that for a moment.
Wren's weight on top of her, her face against Cordelia’s neck, Wren's breath slowing by degrees, finding their natural rhythm. Cordelia's hand was still between her legs, still inside her but not moving, and she slowly slipped her fingers out. They were coated in Wren’s juices, and she licked each finger in turn, savoring Wren’s taste.
Cordelia could feel the moment when Wren came back to herself—the slight shift in weight, the deep breath, the way her hand released the edge of the desk and her fingers found Cordelia's hip instead and rested there.
"Okay?" Wren said, still slightly winded.
"Yes." More than okay, she thought.
There was an expectant pause. Wren lifted her head and looked down at Cordelia. Wren’s hair was a mess, her shirt was gone, and her pants were undone. She looked utterly wrecked and beautiful and exactly like herself.
"This is going to happen again," Wren said.
It wasn’t framed as a question. Cordelia looked at her. At the gray-green eyes that missed nothing. At the mouth that had been on her, lapping up every drop. At the watch on the too-big leather strap, the face turned sideways now.
She thought of a million replies, all deflections, all designed to avoid having a real conversation with real emotions.
She thought about sitting up and straightening her pants, of having the same conversation they had had on Monday about how some boundaries just can’t be crossed.
Yet they had already had that conversation and they were still here.
She came back. And somewhere, deep down, Cordelia knew she would be back again.
She didn’t make a habit of outright lying to herself when she already knew the truth, and she wasn’t going to start now.
"Yes," Cordelia said, her voice softer than she had planned for it to come out. "This is going to happen again."
She knew this was more than a lapse of judgment. It was becoming a pattern, a choice—now a series of choices—she was making with full awareness of the hidden costs. And she didn’t think she had the strength to close that door again. Not yet, anyway.
Wren smiled a small, crooked smile, the kind of smile that knew what it was receiving. "Good," Wren said. She pressed her lips to the scar at Cordelia's temple, then pulled back and looked at her with an expression that was tender and amused and certain all at once.
Cordelia let her keep the look. Whatever Wren saw in her face just then seemed to be doing her good, and the rest of the truth was more than Cordelia could hand anyone tonight, herself least of all.
She had built a life on saying things out loud.
You named a problem and you closed it; you said the words in plain daylight, where you couldn't unsay them, and after that they were true and yours to manage.
It had never once failed her. Tonight, she had said the truest thing she felt, out loud, to Wren: this is going to happen again.
And nothing in her settled. If anything, it was worse now because she could not pretend later she hadn't heard herself say it aloud.
That was what frightened her. Not that she wanted Wren; she could survive wanting, and she had, more than once.
What she couldn't get past was how little of tonight had been hers to decide.
She had stood on the sidewalk with options, yet she came here instead anyway.
Her body had chosen it four blocks before her mind caught up.
And the exit she had spent months building, her careful way out of all of it, was in a drawer three feet from her head, and not once all night had she remembered it was there.
Wren watched her, loose-shouldered and easy, a woman who had waited a long time and finally gotten what she waited for.
She thought this was settled. Cordelia could see it on her, the softened mouth, the certainty of someone who believed a door had been opened for good.
Cordelia let her have it, because it cost her nothing to give that to Wren tonight and because Wren had earned one night of believing she was safe.
But Cordelia knew what she would be in the next couple of days.
She could feel that woman already, waiting just under her skin, waiting for the part of her that had walked four blocks in the dark to go quiet, as it always went quiet, so she could tell Wren one more time that this could not happen.
And she would mean it this time. She always meant it.
That was the trouble: she would mean it and it would be a truth and a lie, both at once, and she had never in thirty years learned to be only one thing at a time.
Her blouse draped open where Wren had unbuttoned it.
The small shell buttons she did up so precisely every morning, her one steady proof that she still ran some corner of her own life, were loose down the front of it now, and she left them that way.
Later, she would do them up again, one at a time in the mirror, and put herself back together.
She would rebuild the wall exactly as she had so many times before.
She knew it even now, even with Wren warm against her looking out at the city beyond.
And Wren, poor Wren, did not know it at all. It almost made her feel guilty.