Chapter 27 INGA #2
My throat tightened. "We're going to be married," I whispered. "Soon."
He nodded, eyes turning molten. "If you still want me."
My voice was small and shy but certain. "I want you tonight, Gideon, and I'll want you tomorrow. And the day after that. And for as long as the world lets me keep you."
He sucked in a breath like the words physically hit him. "Inga…" he whispered.
I rose onto my toes, slid my hand around the back of his neck, and pulled him down into a kiss that shook both of us. Heat surged between us, warm and deep and infinite. His arms came around me, lifting me effortlessly, holding me as if I were something precious and beloved.
I buried my face in his neck and breathed him in. "Take me to bed," I whispered.
He froze only for a heartbeat before he carried me toward the bedroom, his forehead pressed to mine, his breath uneven.
"I'll be careful," he promised.
"I know," I whispered. "That's why I want you."
He set me down with care, so the bed frame barely creaked, and knelt to level his gaze with mine.
I tried to remember how to breathe. His hands, warm and broad, bracketed my face like I was something rare.
I wanted to make a joke, to laugh off the nervous quake in my legs, but I couldn't find any words.
Not that he gave me time to search. Gideon kissed me with something between prayer and hunger, soft, then firm, his mouth coaxing mine open, our breaths mingling until my lungs ached in a new, delicious way.
No one had ever touched me like this before, not even in dreams. Every caress was a new word in a language I'd never learned.
His fingers found my hair, traced the nape of my neck, and moved to unclasp the row of pearl buttons on my blouse. He fumbled the top one, cursed softly, and that small clumsiness made him suddenly, heartbreakingly real. My heart rattled in my chest, trying to beat free.
"It's okay," I whispered. "You don't have to be so careful." But I wanted him to be.
He shook his head with a little smile. "You deserve careful," he replied hoarsely.
Then he undressed me, one patient motion after another: my blouse, untucked and slid from my shoulders; the thin chemise, up over my head; the new skirt, unzipped and dropped.
He tipped his head, as if viewing a painting he'd studied and never entirely figured out.
His hands hovered at my hips, then rested there, gentle as feathers.
"You're perfect," he whispered, and I knew he believed it, even if I didn't.
He kissed me again, harder this time, and I arched into him, every nerve awake.
When his mouth wandered down, along my throat, and over the hinge of my shoulder, I shivered all over, a glitchy circuit of need I didn't know how to fix.
His breath was everywhere, in my hair, on my skin, and my entire body felt like it was listening for the next place he'd go.
He cupped my breast, his thumb moving in a soft, slow circle over the tip, and even that felt like a miracle, like something I wasn't allowed to want.
I gasped despite myself. He just grinned into my skin and mapped a line lower, over my ribs, tracing the sharp edge of hunger that war had left behind.
He kissed my belly, lingered above the scar nobody saw, and I almost wept from being seen.
"Inga," he murmured, drawing out the name like it was the answer to some riddle, "tell me what you want."
I thought I'd choke on the honesty. "You," I mumbled, "just you."
He nodded. "Then you have me." He moved down further, reaching the point where nobody had ever touched me before. He breathed in, as though he could commit my scent to memory, and then—oh, Mother of God—he pressed his mouth to the place between my legs and kissed me there, slow and reverent.
I startled, nearly closing my knees around his ears. "No—Gideon—" I gasped, because this was not something I recognized, not something any of the women in the block had whispered about, even when no one else was listening.
"It's okay, Inga," he murmured, in a voice thick with worship and promise, every edge of the words vibrating against my skin as if they were a spell. "I swear. Let me show you how beautiful this can be."
I couldn't see him at first, my eyes squeezed shut, my jaw set hard against the embarrassment of being so exposed, but then his breath washed over me, warm and steady, and I forced myself to look.
He knelt there as if in prayer, his broad shoulders bracketed between my thighs, hands splayed to either side, and for a wild, shattering moment, I understood why all those medieval paintings showed angels with swords and burning halos: there was something holy in the hunger of his gaze, something that demanded surrender.
And I gave it, helpless as a child, a little animal with no defenses left.
He didn't rush, didn't lunge or scrape or devour.
Instead, he studied me, as though memorizing every trembling line, and only when my nerves had spun themselves into a sharp, unbearable thread did he lower his mouth and kiss me, soft at first, a feathering of lips, almost chaste.
I didn't know what to do. My legs wanted to shut, to run, to fight, but his hands held me gently apart, just enough to say: Stay. Trust me. I won't let you fall.
The first time his tongue touched me, I made a sound—embarrassing, primal, nowhere close to a word. He went still, checking my face, searching. I met his eyes, and in the silence between heartbeats, I nodded. Please, I meant but couldn't say. Please keep going. Please don't stop.
He smiled, small and secret, then started kissing me here in earnest. Kissing and licking.
I'd never known pleasure like this could exist. Every slow, deliberate movement was a question; every answer I gave him, a permission.
He never hurried, never forced. Just mapped me with lips and tongue and breath, sometimes humming low in his chest, a sound that vibrated up through me, made the world only that frequency, that moment, that man.
And when his fingers joined, slipping inside with infinite caution, my whole body spasmed in shock.
I was so tight, so unprepared, I almost told him to stop.
Instead, he moved with me, waited, coaxed, teaching me how to want and how to be wanted.
All the while, his mouth never left me, and the pressure built and built until I thought I'd shatter from it.
I had no idea what to expect, what would happen.
But the sensations inside me kept building toward something.
Something big. I sensed it. I began to tense in anticipation of it, whatever it was.
My mind went blank, white heat and static, every muscle straining toward a pleasure I'd never thought belonged to me.
I heard myself whimper, then cry out, and then I was coming—my body seizing up, then unraveling, every atom unspooling in his arms. I didn't know if it lasted seconds or centuries.
All I knew was that I'd never felt anything so good, so pure, so much mine.
When it was over, he didn't leave. He pressed one last gentle kiss to my hipbone and then curled up beside me, his hand on my thigh, just resting there, as if to say: You're safe.
You're here. I'm not going anywhere. The tears started then, slow and silly and impossible to explain, and he just brushed them away with the back of his fingers, humming something tuneless and kind.
I blinked, dazed. "You… what was that?"
He grinned, smug and shy at once. "Your first?"
"Yes," I said, everything hot and wet and trembling. "I didn't know it could be—like that."
He brushed my cheek. "If you ever want to stop, you just say."
I shook my head: no, never.
He shucked his shirt, folding it neatly, and then his undershirt, his belt, every barrier, until I saw the full expanse of him.
He was beautiful, in a battered-soldier way: broad, muscled, covered in scars like a map tracing everywhere he'd been hurt and healed.
His man part rose from a dark nest of hair, thick and proud, and I didn't feel fear, just awe.
That he wanted me at all, that he wasn't ashamed to show it.
He kissed me again and, when I opened to him, he guided himself gently against me. I tensed. He paused, stroking my hair, kissing the tears from my cheeks before I even knew I was crying them.
"You're safe," he reminded me. "We go as slow as you need."
He pushed in, just the barest tip, and waited.
My body ached around him, tight and not quite ready, but I wanted this, wanted him to be the first and last and only.
He moved an inch at a time, coaxing my body open, kissing my jaw, my ear, every moan and whimper he made holy with his mouth.
It hurt, but it didn't matter. The pain was clean, a line drawn under the past and a new, fierce hunger scrawled on top of it.
The worst was over quickly, and when he was fully inside me, he just held me, breathing slowly, his hands rubbing circles between my shoulder blades.
"Inga," he whispered again, "look at me."
I did. His eyes were damp, almost shocked. "You're perfect," he breathed, and began to move, not hard, not fast, just a steady, rising tide that pulled waves of pleasure behind the pain.
I wrapped my arms around his back, my nails digging in, and for the first time in my life, I wasn't afraid of what I felt. Only that it would stop.
"Is it…" I shuddered, unsure of the question.
He finished it for me, moving his hips just so. "It's good. You're making me crazy."
He rocked me, deeper with every patient thrust, coaxing out sounds from my lips I didn't know I was capable of making.
The heat in my belly coiled hard, then tightened and braided itself into every other nerve in my body, until it hurt to hold it in, until I was certain I'd split right down the center from the wanting.
He covered my mouth with his, swallowing my broken moans, as if every sound I made was precious and he could never risk letting any of them escape.
His body was so much bigger than mine, strong and broad, thick through the chest and arms, all muscle and wiry scar, but he moved over me like something weightless, like a summer cloud.
He braced his hands around my head, careful not to crush me, but when I clawed at his shoulders, he let me.
There was nothing in the world but this, his skin against mine, the wild pulse of his heart, the smell of clean sweat and tobacco and sky, the taste of him, a little like salt and a lot like I'd never get enough.
The second wave crested before I was ready.
It took me off guard, so sharp and bright my legs kicked out wild, my hands flailed, desperate to hold on to something, anything, and I sobbed into the thick muscle of his shoulder.
My whole body shuddered, convulsing, and the pleasure was so sharp I almost thought it was pain, except how it washed away all the fear and left only a wide, clean ache afterward.
I felt myself tighten around him, squeezing him in, and that was when his own climax hit.
He groaned, a raw, helpless sound, and I felt him jerk inside me, his hips grinding deeper, and then he was shaking, shuddering, holding me so tight I could hardly breathe.
He didn't move for a long time, just pressed his face into my neck and held me like I was the last safe thing in the world.
I stroked his hair, tangling my fingers in the sweat-damp curls at the base of his skull, and neither of us talked at all; we just breathed, listening to the frantic percussion of our hearts, the soft creak of bedsprings, the hum of a city in blackout on the other side of the window.
He shifted after a while, slow and gentle, sliding us up together so we were both propped awkwardly against the headboard, still wrapped around each other.
I thought I'd feel shame, or maybe loss, but instead it was like a fever breaking, a heavy, honeyed exhaustion that made me want to sleep for a year.
He kissed my hair, my forehead, the tip of my nose, each one softer than the last, and when I finally dared to look up, he was watching me with a kind of reverence I'd never seen on any face before.
He brushed a thumb over my cheek, scooping up tears I hadn't realized were still falling. "You're all right?" he asked in a voice that sounded rough as gravel.
I nodded, not trusting myself to answer. My body was a tingle of aftershocks, my mind a liquid mess. I wanted to say something funny, to make the moment less terrifying, but nothing came to mind except his name.
"Gideon," I whispered.
He smiled, and it was a crooked, broken thing, but it made my heart flip in a whole new way. "That's me," he said.
We lay together in the oversized hotel bed, tangled up in sheets that smelled of fresh laundry and starch, and I allowed myself to believe that maybe there was a future, even if it was just tomorrow.
I closed my eyes and listened to his breathing until mine matched it, until the air between us was full of nothing but hope and the promise of morning.
We lay there a long time, warm against the cold, filled up with something new and bright. I never wanted to move again. He stroked my hair until he thought I was asleep, then whispered, "I love you, Inga. God help me, I love you."
I didn't answer. I pretended to sleep, but my heart was wide awake, certain that if I answered aloud, the world would break the spell. I pressed myself closer and let the warmth of him fill all the places the war had left empty.