Chapter 23 #8
Cordelia looked at her and pressed her hand a little firmer on Wren's chest and shook her head, once.
Wren went still. Something in her face cracked open, and her eyes went bright and wet.
Her mouth softened. Her hands released Cordelia's forearm and fell to the bed, palms up, and she lay there under Cordelia's hand with nothing shut and nothing held back, and she let it happen.
Cordelia bent her head. She kissed Wren's mouth, very softly, and then she moved down again, slowly, her hair dragging across Wren's skin, her mouth following the same path as before but slower now, with the patience of someone who intended to take her time and knew she was allowed to.
She put her mouth between Wren's legs that were already shaking.
She was quiet this time. The loudness was gone, and what replaced it was something more raw—small broken sounds, breaths that caught in her throat.
Cordelia kept her mouth on her and her tongue slow and her hands gentle on Wren's hips, and she felt Wren climb toward her orgasm, felt the shaking intensify, felt the muscles under her hands begin to tighten and coil.
"Stay with me," Wren whispered, and her voice broke on it.
Cordelia stayed, and Wren came apart under her mouth, a wave that rolled through her body and left her trembling and silent and gripping Cordelia's hair so tightly that it hurt. Cordelia didn’t pull away, and she rode it out with Wren and slowed her tongue with her.
When she finally lifted her head, Wren was crying.
Her eyes were open and wet, and the tears ran sideways into her hair, and she did not hide her face or turn away or wipe them.
She lay there and breathed and let them come, and her hands released Cordelia's hair and fell to the bed, and she was quiet.
Cordelia understood exactly what she was watching, a thing learned so early and so thoroughly that it had become essential.
Wren had never once let anyone take care of her.
Wren had made herself indispensable and useful, the one who gives, because giving was the price of staying.
And now she was the one who had been given to and taken care of yet she had not been gotten rid of, and that disrupted the pattern inside her.
Cordelia said nothing about it. She swiped her mouth with the back of her hand and crawled up the bed and lay beside Wren, pulling the sheet over both of them.
She put her hand on Wren's stomach, warm and still.
Wren turned her head. Her eyes were red and wet, and she looked at Cordelia with something that was a kind of raw, blinking bewilderment, as if she had just woken up in a place she did not know she was allowed to be.
"Hey, you here with me?" Cordelia asked.
"Yeah." Wren's voice was hoarse. She sniffed. "That was—"
"I know."
"I don't know what happened."
"You just let someone take care of you."
Wren laughed. It was a wet, broken sound, and Cordelia found herself laughing too, her forehead against Wren's shoulder.
"You're a mess," Cordelia said.
"Your fault."
"I'll accept that."
They settled. Wren turned on her side, her back to Cordelia's front, and Cordelia curved around her like a big spoon—her knees behind Wren's knees, her arm across Wren's waist, her face against the back of Wren's neck where her hair was damp from sweat and smelled like salt and the faintest trace of the wine she'd been drinking downstairs. Wren laced her fingers with Cordelia’s and held on.
They were quiet. The fog moved through the room.
The cold air touched their skin where the sheet had slipped, and neither of them pulled it up.
Wren's breathing was slow and even, and Cordelia could feel it under her arm, the rise and fall of Wren’s ribs, the steady knock of her heart.
Wren's thumb moved across Cordelia's knuckles, back and forth, a slow, absent stroking.
"I love you," Wren said.
Cordelia pressed her mouth against the back of Wren's neck.
She could feel the words in her own chest, in the place where she had kept them locked for months, behind the managed composure and the tailored suits.
She had carried them through the dark office and their first kiss and the guest room, and they had not gone anywhere.
They had just waited, the way Wren had waited downstairs with her wine and her stockinged feet, patient and not patient, sure and not sure, but staying all the while.
"I love you too," Cordelia said. "I've been—"
"I know."
"You didn't let me finish."
"You were going to say you've been trying not to, or you've been afraid to, or some version of that, weren’t you?"
Cordelia laughed. A real laugh, low and warm, and she felt it move through her body and into Wren's body through the places where they touched. Wren made a small sound that was almost a hum and pressed back against her.
“Yeah, you caught me,” Cordelia said.
The fog thickened, and the curtain shifted. Wren's thumb moved across Cordelia's knuckles, and Cordelia's mouth rested against Wren's neck. The cold air moved over them, and neither of them moved to close the window.