16. Damian
DAMIAN
By the time I realized my hand was still resting where her hair had been, stepping back had already stopped being a real option.
The loft was quiet the way it got after midnight, just the hum of the refrigerator and the faint tick of the radiator two floors down.
Mira stood close enough that I could feel the heat coming off her skin, and her eyes held mine with a steadiness that should have made me step back. Nine years of instinct told me to.
I didn't.
"You're staring," she said.
"I know."
"Usually you have a directive by now. Something about the schedule, or the guards downstairs, or how I shouldn't stand this close to the window."
"I don't have one."
Her mouth curved, small and real, not the polite thing she gave me across a conference table. "No rules tonight, Morozov?"
I let my hand fall from her hair to the curve of her jaw. Her breath caught, just slightly, and the sound of it undid something in my chest that had been locked for a long time.
"I'm done writing rules for this," I said. "I don't want it on paper anymore."
She went still. "What does that mean?"
"It means I don't want a wife who signs where I tell her and stays out of my way.
I don't want separate ends of this loft and a schedule for when we're seen together.
" My voice came out lower than I meant it to, rougher.
"I want this to be real. You and me. Not a contract I can point to when someone asks why you're here. "
Something shifted in her face, a kind of disbelief that had hope underneath it, and she didn't say anything for a moment. When she did, her voice wasn't steady either.
"Say that again."
"I don't want to pretend anymore."
"That's not what you said the first time."
"Close enough."
A short laugh escaped her, surprised out of her, and it broke whatever was left of the distance between us.
She reached up and put her palm flat against my chest, right over where my heart was going harder than it had any right to.
I covered her hand with mine, pressing it there, letting her feel exactly what she was doing to me.
I'd trained myself for years not to want anything I couldn't control, and here I was in my own kitchen with my heart hammering under a woman's palm, unraveled by nothing more than her hand and the sound of my own name in her voice.
"Damian." My name in her mouth was quiet and certain. "I'm not going anywhere. I haven't been going anywhere for weeks."
"I know."
"So why does this feel like you're asking permission?"
"Because I am."
Her eyes searched mine, and whatever she found there made the last of her hesitation dissolve. She rose on her toes and kissed me first, and that alone nearly brought me to my knees. I'd spent years keeping people at a distance, and she'd closed it in half a second, like it cost her nothing.
It cost me everything. I kissed her back slow, one hand sliding into her hair, the other flattening against the small of her back to pull her against me, and she came willingly, a soft sound leaving her throat that I felt more than heard.
She tasted faintly of the ketchup and onions from the coney dogs, of something warm and familiar, and it should have been a strange thing to notice in that moment, but it wasn't. It was her.
All of her, nothing held back, right here.
"Tell me if you want to stop," I said against her mouth. "Any point. I mean it."
"This is exactly where I want to be." Her fingers curled into my shirt. "I have wanted this since the second you fixed my hair."
That admission did something to me I wasn't prepared for, a heat that went beyond wanting her body, though God knew I wanted that too.
I walked her backward, giving her every chance to change her mind, until her shoulders met the wall beside the bedroom door.
I kissed the line of her jaw, her throat, felt her pulse jump under my mouth, and her hands found the hem of my shirt and pulled it up.
I let her take it off me. That alone was a surrender, standing there while she looked at what nine years of this life had left on my skin, old scars she'd asked about once and I'd never actually answered. Her fingers traced one along my ribs, light, questioning without words.
"Later," I said. "Not tonight."
"Okay." No argument. Just her palm flattening over the scar like she was memorizing it, and then over my chest, my stomach, learning the shape of me with an attention that made my breath go short.
I found the hem of her sweater and drew it up slow, giving her time to say no, watching her face the whole time for any flicker of hesitation.
There wasn't one. She lifted her arms to help me, and when the fabric cleared her head, her hair fell loose around her shoulders, and I stood there for a second just looking at her in the low light, the plain lace of her bra, the soft rise and fall of her breathing.
"Say something," she said, half laughing, half nervous.
"I'm trying to remember how to do this slow."
"Then don't try so hard."
I bent and kissed the curve of her shoulder, then the strap of her bra, then the softness just above it, and she threaded her fingers through my hair and made a small broken sound that traveled straight through me.
My hands found the clasp at her back and worked it loose, and I eased the straps down her arms and let the last of it fall away between us.
"You're shaking," she said.
"Yeah."
"Is that... is this hard for you?"
I lifted my head and met her eyes, because she deserved the truth even in pieces. "It's been a long time since I let anyone this close. My body's not used to it."
Her hand came up to cup my jaw, gentle enough that it nearly broke me faster than anything else that night had. "We can go as slow as you need."
"Slow's not really an option right now," I said. "That's the whole problem."
She kissed me again, softer this time, and drew me back with her toward the bedroom. The door swung shut behind us on its own weight, and the city lights through the window laid a pale grid across the floor, across the bed, across her skin as I lowered her onto it.
I stood at the edge of the mattress for a moment, just looking at her, and reached for the button of her jeans.
I worked it open slow, then the zipper, and drew the denim down her legs an inch at a time, my knuckles trailing along her skin as I went, feeling her shiver under the light contact.
When I got the jeans free, I set them aside and knelt on the mattress, hooking my fingers into the last scrap of lace at her hip.
"Damian?" Just my name, breathless, a question and a permission both.
"Right here," I said, and drew that last piece away too, slow enough that she could have stopped me at any point.
She didn't. She lay back against the pillows, hair loose and dark against the white cotton, bare now in the pale wash of city light, and there was no performance in her, no coyness, just a plain, open want that matched mine.
I came down over her, propped on my forearms, and just looked for a moment, at the rise and fall of her breathing, the goosebumps rising along her arms though the room wasn't cold, how her eyes never left my face.
"You keep looking at me like that," she said, "like you're memorizing something."
"I am."
I lowered my head and kissed the curve of her shoulder, then the slope of her collarbone, working my way down with more patience than I knew I still had in me.
My mouth found the swell of her breast and she arched under me with a soft gasp, her fingers sliding into my hair and tightening when I drew her nipple between my lips, teasing it with the flat of my tongue until her back bowed off the mattress.
I moved to the other side and gave it the same attention, slower this time, feeling every hitch of her breath as a kind of map, learning exactly where to linger, where the light graze of my teeth made her hips roll up against nothing.
"That," she breathed. "Right there."
I stayed there a while, until her hands were fisting in the sheets and her breath had gone thin and fast, and only then did I kiss my way lower, over the flat plane of her stomach, along the soft curve of her hip, feeling the muscles there jump under my mouth.
My hands smoothed down her thighs as I settled myself lower on the bed, between her legs, and felt her whole body go taut with anticipation.
"You don't have to," she started, and I lifted my eyes to hers.
"I want to."
I pressed a slow kiss to the inside of one thigh, then the other, drawing it out until she made a soft, frustrated sound and her hips shifted toward me. I looked up the length of her once more before I lowered my head, wanting to see her face in the low light, wanting her to know I was watching.
The first slow stroke of my tongue against her drew a sound out of her that I felt in my own chest like a struck match.
I kept it unhurried, relentless, learning the rhythm that made her thighs tremble against my shoulders, the exact pressure that made her hips lift to meet my mouth instead of pull away.
When I found the place that made her breath catch hardest, I circled there, light at first, then firmer, and her hand found my hair and held on.
"God, Damian." Her voice had gone thin and unsteady. "Don't you dare stop."
"Wasn't planning to."
I settled into a rhythm and kept it, unwilling to rush past anything that made her gasp.
Every time her hips tried to hurry me I slowed further, until she was making small helpless sounds above me and her thighs were shaking against my shoulders.
I slid one hand up along her stomach and she caught it, laced her fingers through mine, held on like I was the only steady thing in the room.
Her other hand fisted tighter in my hair, guiding without words, and I let her, matching what her body was telling me even as I kept my own pace beneath it.
"I'm right there," she said, barely above a whisper. "Please, I'm right there."