49. Mira #2
He crossed the room and found the zipper at the back of my dress, drawing it down an inch at a time like he intended to remember every second of it, his mouth finding the curve of my shoulder as the fabric loosened, warm and open-mouthed against skin that had been waiting all night for exactly this.
The dress slid to the floor, and I stood there in what little I'd worn beneath it, watching him look at me with the same focused patience he gave the most complicated engines, like I was something worth understanding slowly instead of rushing through.
"Your turn," I said, tugging his shirt free from his waistband, and he let me work the buttons loose one by one, my fingers finding old scars I already knew by heart and a few I still hadn't asked about, his chest rising unsteady under my palms when I pressed a kiss just above his heart.
"Mira."
"I've got you too," I said, echoing him, and felt him go still for a second before a low sound left his throat that had nothing composed left in it at all.
"Say it again," I whispered, when his mouth found my throat.
"I choose you." His hands moved down my sides, careful, nothing rushed in how he touched me, like he finally had all the time in the world and knew it. "Tonight and every night after it."
He backed me toward the mattress we'd dragged up the loft stairs that afternoon, moving blankets soft beneath us, and laid me down like something he intended to worship rather than simply have.
His mouth traced a line from my jaw to my collarbone, unhurried, learning me over again as if months of marriage hadn't already taught him every place that made my breath catch.
When his hand slid up my thigh, I arched into the touch without meaning to, and he smiled against my skin like he'd won something.
"You're allowed to go faster," I said, breathless.
"I know." His mouth moved lower, tasting his way down my stomach, over the curve of my hip, until he settled between my thighs and looked up at me once, dark eyes asking a question he already knew the answer to. "I don't want to."
Patient and thorough, he took his time with me there, his mouth finding the most sensitive part of me with a focus that stripped away every last ounce of composure I still owned.
I fisted a hand in his hair, and he groaned against me, low, the sound traveling straight through, and I was shaking and saying his name like a plea long before he finally lifted his head, my whole body strung tight and aching for him.
Slowly, he came back up over me, kissing a path up my stomach, my ribs, the curve of my breast, until his mouth found mine again, and I reached down between us and felt him, hard and heavy against my palm.
He shuddered at the touch, forehead dropping to my shoulder for a second, like my hand alone had nearly undone him.
"Now," I breathed. "Please, now."
Then he settled his weight over me, bracing on his forearms, his eyes finding mine and holding there, dark and open, none of the guarded distance that used to live behind them.
"Look at me," he said, low. "I want to watch you."
I nodded, past words, and felt him position himself against me, the blunt, insistent pressure of him before he finally pushed inside, slow, giving my body time to open and take him, inch by inch, letting me feel every single second of it.
My back arched off the mattress at the first deep press of him, a soft cry breaking out of me, and he stilled halfway, jaw tight, waiting.
"You okay?"
"Don't stop." I pulled him deeper with my heels against the backs of his thighs, and he groaned low in his throat and gave me the rest of himself in one long, unbroken roll of his hips, until he was seated fully inside me, both of us gasping at how completely we fit.
He stilled there, forehead dropping to mine, both of us breathing hard just from that, before he finally began to move.
He rolled into a deep, steady rhythm that had me clutching at his back within a minute, and I lost the thread of every argument that had ever taught me control was safety.
There was nothing strategic left in either of us, nothing measured, no ledger being balanced, just his body moving over mine, steady and sure, my hips rising to meet him each time like my body had learned this rhythm before my mind caught up.
He read every gasp, every catch of my breath, and adjusted, angling deeper when I moaned, slowing when I needed a second to breathe, like he'd spent nine years learning precision for exactly this.
"Damian." His name kept leaving me, half plea, half prayer, and every time it did his rhythm stuttered like it undid something in him completely.
"Say it again," he rasped against my ear.
I did, again and again, until the pleasure built past anything I could hold quietly, until my whole body went tight and then broke apart underneath him, pulling him over the same edge a few thrusts later with my name on his lips like it was the only word he had left.
He came apart above me, unguarded, every wall he'd built over nine years gone slack for exactly as long as it took him to catch his breath.
He didn't move off me right away. He stayed there, still buried inside me, his thumb tracing my cheekbone like he was making sure I was real.
"Married," he said finally, wonder plain in his voice, like the word had only just become true.
"Married," I agreed. "For real this time."
He kissed me again, softer now, both of us in no hurry at all, and then gathered me in against his chest.
Afterward, I lay with my ear against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow, his fingers tracing lazy circles along my spine, and neither of us reached for anything to say.
We didn't need to. The silence between us had stopped being a countdown a long time ago.
It was just quiet now, the good kind, the kind two people build together on purpose.
Outside the high windows, the sky over the river started going gray at the edges, dawn taking its time the same as everything else about this night had. I felt myself drifting, safe in a way I'd never quite let myself feel before, and I gave in to it without a single argument prepared.
"Sleep," Damian murmured against my hair. "I've got you."
I did, finally, completely, my head on his chest as his wife in every way that mattered now, and he stayed awake a while longer just to watch me breathe, easy, steady, with nothing left in either of us to guard against.