Chapter 20 #2
Her gaze drops to my chest, my scars, the places the military and time left their handwriting. She looks first. Then she sits up and presses her mouth to the scar near my ribs.
The contact is soft enough to ruin me.
I put a hand on the back of her head and hold there while she kisses the old damage once, then again, then looks up at me.
“I’m not going to ask,” she says.
“I know.”
“If you ever want to tell me, I’ll listen.”
My chest feels too small for the things inside it. “Okay.”
Then she drags me down to her, and the rest of the world narrows to skin.
Maren is warm under me. Warm hands, warm mouth, warm thighs parting around my hips when I settle between them. I kiss her slowly at first, then not slowly, because she arches into me and makes a sound that goes straight through every system I have. Her fingers find my belt.
We make a mess of it.
I like that. The practical, human effort of getting each other undressed in a small room while she mutters, “Your belt is hostile,” and I say, “It passed inspection,” and she says, “Barely.”
Her hands move over me, down my chest, over my stomach. The first touch of her fingers around my cock makes my whole body lock for half a second.
“Too much?” she asks.
“No.”
Her smile is soft and wicked at the same time. “Good.”
Then she strokes me with warm hands and no intention of letting me hide behind composure. She watches my face while she does it. Like data she wants because it matters. Because I matter enough to study.
I let her see.
She shifts beneath me, spreads her legs wider, and guides me closer. “Condom?”
“In the drawer.”
“Efficient.”
“Hopeful.”
Her laugh comes out surprised, then turns into a kiss when I reach for the drawer and she follows me up, mouth on my shoulder, teeth scraping lightly enough to make my hand stutter once before I get the packet.
I deal with the condom, and then I’m back over her, one hand braced beside her head, the other at her hip. She looks up at me, all undone hair and fierce eyes and body open beneath mine.
She touches my jaw.
I push into her slowly. The first inch takes the room away.
Maren goes still under me. Her hand locks on my shoulder, and her mouth opens on a sound she doesn’t release right away. I stop.
Her eyes snap to mine. “Don’t stop.” Her nails dig in. “If you make me fill out a satisfaction survey right now, I’ll bite you.”
“Noted.”
I give her more.
She takes me in with a slow, tight heat that burns through every calm thing I’ve ever claimed about myself. My forehead drops to hers. Her breath comes against my mouth, uneven now, and mine matches it because apparently I’m not immune to rhythm after all.
When I’m fully inside her, neither of us moves. For a few seconds, that’s enough.
The whole facility can keep its walls and alarms and ancient things in the dark. This is the only pressure I understand. Her body around mine. Her hand at my neck. My name still warm on her tongue.
Then she tilts her hips. Small movement. Clear order.
I move. Slow at first. Careful. Her legs wrap around me, heels pressing into my back, pulling me deeper.
The sound she makes this time isn’t small.
I catch it with my mouth because she kisses me at the same moment, and the two things become one.
Her hands are everywhere now, shoulders, back, jaw, chest. She touches like if she stops, I might become another thing the facility lied about.
I’m real. I make sure she knows it.
I set a rhythm that stays close, body to body, no space for performance.
She meets every thrust, sometimes soft, sometimes with a sharp little roll of her hips that strips the thought out of my head.
I can feel her trying not to lose control and losing it anyway in pieces, each one handed to me with a trust I don’t deserve.
So I stay inside it. That’s the only thing I know how to do with something this valuable.
“Dutch,” she says, and this time it breaks on the second half.
“I’m here.”
“I know.” Her eyes open, and there is wet shine in them that is not quite tears and not quite not. “That’s the problem.”
“No,” I say, moving inside her slow and deep enough to make her grip me harder. “That’s the point.”
She comes apart again with her face against my neck and her arms locked around me.
I hold on long enough to feel her through it, long enough to hear the way my name leaves her when the pleasure takes the last of her voice.
Then my control goes, clean and quiet, my hips driving deep before I can make myself be careful, her name locked behind my teeth and every part of me wrecked by the impossible fact of being wanted by Maren Vale.
For a while after, neither of us moves.
I’m still inside her. My weight is braced mostly on my arms, but she doesn’t seem interested in letting me go anywhere. Her fingers drift slowly over my back, over scars she doesn’t ask about, over muscle still tight from holding back.
Eventually I shift enough to keep from crushing her.
She makes a displeased sound.
I freeze. “Problem?”
“You moved.”
“Air is useful.”
“Debatable.” She turns her face into my shoulder and stays there while I deal with the condom, then comes back to me. We rearrange badly at first. My bed isn’t built for elegance. It’s built for one person. She steals half the pillow and most of the blanket within thirty seconds.
I let her.
She lies on her side facing me, hair wild, one knee between mine, her hand resting on my chest, keeping a small claim there. Her eyes are heavy but open.
“Your room is terrible,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Your bed is worse.”
“Yes.”
“I may have bruised my hip on something.”
“Probably the tactical flashlight.”
She stares at me. “Was that a joke?”
“No. It’s in the bed frame.”
For half a second, nothing happens. Then she laughs, full and warm and almost disbelieving, and it fills my room like something that should have been here long before tonight.
I watch her laugh and feel the perimeter of my life move again.
When it settles, she’s closer. She presses her mouth to my chest, just once, and keeps her hand over my heart.
Outside this room, the facility is compromised. Unknown organisms are in the walls. Kevin is learning the door. The ocean is patient. The glass holds for now.
Maren’s breath evens slowly against my skin.
I stare at the ceiling and keep one arm around her.
After a while, she murmurs, “Say something, Dutch.”
I think about that.
Then I say, “You’re still a security issue.”
Her laugh returns, quieter this time, sleepy and alive.
“Good,” she says.
It is.