55. Surrender Control
His fingers find my thigh, absent, barely there, and at the same time I can feel his breathing slow against my chest.
I think he might actually be falling asleep.
Good.
Except now my brain, unhelpfully, is remembering everything we did the last time we lay in bed together.
I try to relax. Clear my mind. Think about nothing.
But the more I try, the more I start to remember how he touched me, how he looked at me, what he promised me, his words, his face...
Sleep. We both need to sle—
His thumb flexes against my thigh. My heartbeat picks up. Great.
He shifts, his hand pressing a little heavier into my thigh, and fuck... so much for inner peace. Now I'm hyper-aware of every single point where his body touches mine. His knee against my leg. The weight of his hand, still on my thigh. His head on my chest.
He doesn't press into me. Just rests there, his other arm braced against the mattress like he's holding his own weight back without even thinking about it.
Even half-asleep, so careful with me.
I let my fingers trail through his hair. Slowly. Just barely.
His arm tightens around my waist in response—immediately.
"You're supposed to be sleeping." His voice is rough. Low. Muffled against me. But there's no actual complaint in it.
Instead, he sounds pleased with himself.
"I almost was."
He lifts his head just enough to look at me, and the expression on his face—half-sleepy, half-amused, entirely too attractive—should not be legal.
"You," he says slowly, "are a terrible liar."
"And you are terrible at relaxing."
"I was almost asleep."
He doesn't even try to sound innocent, dropping his head back down.And then immediately wrapping his hand around my thigh, his thumb tracing slow circles on the inside.
I draw in a sharp breath.
"You are impossible."
"Hm?" He laughs.
His grip tightens for just a short second, and I can somehow feel it in my stomach.
"I'm not doing anything."
Liar.
His voice is all low, lazy innocence. "Just holding you."
My fingers are tightening in his hair, meanwhile I'm trying to actually unwind.
Sleep.
Just sleep.
I close my eyes.
Then open them again.
Fuck.
I'm thinking of everything other than sleep.
"Your heart is doing that thing again," he murmurs.
I try for innocent. "What thing?"
"The fast thing."
"That's called being alive. It's very normal. Completely unrelated to you."
His laugh is quiet. A low, rumbling thing that I feel more than hear, vibrating through my ribs, and something in my chest decides it never wants him to stop.
"Unrelated to me," he repeats, like he's daring me to say it again.
"Entirely."
"So if I did this—" His thumb traces a languid arc across my hip, just once, barely there. "—still unrelated?"
My breath catches.
"Completely," I breathe out, my eyes shutting as I lift up, pressing against him more.
"Mm-hm." He doesn't do it again, which is somehow worse, because now I'm just waiting and he knows it. I can tell by the way his breathing has changed—no longer sleepy. Alert. Entertained.
He is way too entertained by this.
And way too much in control.
He laughs again, as if he heard me thinking. And this time he presses his face into my neck, and the warmth of it spreads down my entire body. His hand travels up and he loosely wraps it around my throat—not pressing down, not squeezing, just holding it there.
"Go to sleep," he whispers. His lips brush my collarbone when he says it, dropping a light kiss on my neck. Then opening his mouth and starting to suck at my skin, making my whole body feel like it's on fire.
I open my mouth.
Close it.
Open it again.
Nothing.
He has rendered me completely speechless, and I can feel him smiling about it.
"That's a first," he murmurs.
I want to say shut up, but the words don't seem to leave my mouth.
His thumb against my throat is drawing soft, absent patterns into my skin, and it connects directly with an almost painful feeling in my chest and stomach.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, and whatever he sees on my face makes his expression shift—from smug to something warmer. Something dangerously tender.
"You know," he says, thumb still resting against my throat, "for someone who claims I'm completely unrelated to her heart rate—" He dips his head, presses his mouth just below my ear, and speaks the next words directly into my skin.
"—you're holding on to me like you're afraid I'll disappear. "
I look down. My hands have somehow found their way from his hair to his shirt. Both of them. White-knuckled and desperate, like some part of me decided, without my permission, that letting go was not an option.
Oh.
Well.
Shit.
He doesn't wait for me to come up with some clever deflection. He just moves slowly on top of me, his movements fluid and graceful, holding himself up on one arm, the other hand coming up to cradle my chin.
"Relax," he says again, but this time it's not teasing. It's an offering.