Chapter 17 #3
Wren lowered her mouth instead of answering with words.
The first touch was slow. Wren's tongue, flat and warm, traced the length of her pussy, and Cordelia's whole body responded with a shudder that started in her hips and radiated outward, her fingers gripping the sheet, her head pressing back into the pillow.
Wren found the rhythm that Cordelia's body asked for without Cordelia choosing it, a slow circling that built and built, and Cordelia felt herself climbing toward something she could not control and the fear of it was enormous, the size of the sky, and she did not close her legs or push Wren away or redirect. She stayed open to her, and Wren kept her hands on Cordelia’s hips to steady them.
Cordelia came with Wren's mouth on her, and the orgasm moved through her in a long, rolling wave that she could not have stopped, even if she wanted to.
Her body arched and her breath broke. The sound that came from deep inside her throat was raw, almost formless, and she felt tears on her cheeks before she knew she was crying.
And in the moment, Cordelia didn't know what she was crying for, whether it was for Eleanor, for herself, for the fact that someone was holding her body and kissing her through her climax, not asking her to be anything other than wrecked. She didn’t think it really mattered why.
Wren did not pull away. She gentled the rhythm and slowed her tongue, letting Cordelia come down in stages.
The aftershocks moved through Cordelia's body in diminishing waves, each one leaving her more bare, more stripped, more unable to pretend she was anything other than a woman who had just been taken apart by someone else.
And then, because it was instinct for her to be the one in control and giving instead of receiving, Cordelia reached for Wren.
Her hands found Wren's shoulders and pulled, trying to draw her up to turn her and give back.
Her fingers slid down Wren's arms until she grasped her wrists to guide her lower. She had already shifted her weight to sit up so she could take Wren’s face in her hands, but Wren stopped her hands gently but firmly.
She laced her fingers through Cordelia's and pressed both of Cordelia's hands back against the pillow, one on each side of her head, and she held them there.
Wren didn’t speak, but she didn’t have to.
That was the beauty of such an exquisitely simple gesture.
Cordelia's chest heaved, and her eyes burned.
She could feel the tears still wet on her face, and she turned her head to the side, a reflex to seek privacy.
Wren let her turn but did not let go of her hands.
"I can't," Cordelia said, and she didn't know if she meant she couldn’t take more while just lying there without giving back or if she meant something else.
"You can," Wren said quietly. She released Cordelia's hands, and Cordelia didn’t move them from where Wren had pinned them against the pillow. She kept her palms up, open.
Wren lowered her head again. This time she was slower, if that was possible.
She used her fingers, pushing two inside Cordelia’s pussy, curling them up against the front wall where Cordelia was still sensitive and swollen from her first orgasm.
Wren’s tongue found the nub of Cordelia’s clit and stayed there.
The dual sensation was devastating—the fullness, the pressure, the warm and wet attention—and Cordelia's hips chased the rhythm that Wren had set.
She felt herself building again, faster than before, the second wave already forming before the first had fully receded.
She tried to hold it back, the familiar, old reflex: control, contain, and manage the experience.
And… she couldn't. Wren's fingers pumped inside her, hitting her G-spot in just the right place, and Wren's mouth was on her clit, and Cordelia was fully, devastatingly, in her body too much to observe herself from the outside.
She came again, and this time there was no sound at all, just her body lifting off the bed, her mouth open wide but silent, her hands twisted in the pillowcase.
The orgasm was deeper than the first, lasting longer and rolling through her in layers.
Wren held her through all of it, her mouth and hand steady.
She didn’t stop until Cordelia's body had given everything it had and gone limp against the sheets. Wren withdrew her fingers and mouth from Cordelia’s body slowly, all of it receding with a gentleness that made Cordelia want to weep all over again.
Wren lay down beside her. She pulled the comforter up over both of them, and the weight of it settled across Cordelia's body like a second skin.
Then Wren's arm came across Cordelia's chest, and her body curled against Cordelia's side.
Wren pressed her face into the curve of Cordelia's neck, and Cordelia could feel Wren's even breathing against her skin, could feel Wren's wrist resting above her heart.
Cordelia could feel the salt from tears drying on her cheekbones and the dampness in her hair.
She didn't wipe her face. She just lay with the weight of Wren’s arm around her body.
She could feel, through the place where Wren's chest pressed against her ribs, the steadiness of Wren's heartbeat. And beneath the steadiness, she knew what Wren was holding for herself. Cordelia wanted to press her mouth against Wren’s skin to let her know it was okay to let her in, that it was safe to tear down the walls Cordelia could sense. But she didn’t.
She knew Wren had given her this one gift, the experience of being cared for without needing to reciprocate, and the least she could do was honor it.
Cordelia lay still and let the minutes pass without counting them.
"I should have told you,” Cordelia whispered.
For a moment, Wren said nothing at all. Then she moved her hand off Cordelia's chest and found Cordelia's hand where it lay open on the sheet and put her own over it without lacing their fingers together. "Yeah, I know," she said, and her voice was not steady either.
Cordelia had been bracing for Wren’s reaction, for the questions Cordelia deserved and the ones she couldn’t have answered.
But none of them came. The lamp on the table next to the bed glowed softly while Cordelia watched the last of the harbor lights flicker out one after another across the water before she closed her eyes.