21. Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-One
Rhazgar
For six months, I watched Julia Whitaker from a careful distance. I have documented the way she moves through a room, the quiet intensity of her attention when something interests her, the sound she makes when she’s surprised. I’ve carried all of it in my hands like something breakable.
She is not breakable.
The elevator doors close and I have her against the wall before I've made a decision to move.
She gasps against my mouth and opens for me immediately, her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer as though she has wanted this every bit as much as I have.
My tusks frame her face as I angle my head, and she tilts to meet me.
She has learned how to do this, how to fit herself to the geometry of my mouth, and something about that undoes me a little.
Her tongue slides against mine. A sound escapes me that I do not plan.
“Your condo,” she breathes when we break apart.
“Thirty seconds,” I tell her, and I’m already carrying her, her feet nowhere near the floor. Her ankle bears nothing. Her ribs bear nothing. I have her.
The elevator dings.
I carry her down the hallway in long strides, and she takes this as an invitation, her mouth finding my neck, then my ear. My response is involuntary, immediate, and entirely beyond my control.
I fumble with my keys, which is undignified and also unavoidable.
She does it again. Her tongue traces the pointed edge with the focused curiosity she brings to everything she decides to learn, and my hands shake badly enough that I nearly drop the keyring entirely.
When her teeth catch the tip, gently and precisely, I abandon the keys and lean us both against the wall instead, burying my face against her neck before I do something foolish.
“Julia,” I say. A warning.
“Rhazgar,” she says back, breathless and laughing and completely unintimidated.
I get the key in the lock. I’m not certain how.
Inside, the door shuts behind us, lock clicking into place. She stills.
The condo has been transformed. Candles glow across every surface, throwing warm amber light into every corner.
The air is thick with something headier than my usual cooking, incense carrying scents of home, rich and warm.
I lit them myself, this afternoon, not knowing whether I would need them tonight. Hoping.
“You did all this?” Her voice comes out unsteady.
“After you agreed to dinner with Elder Korgath.” My voice drops lower than I intend. “In case she gave her blessing.”
“She did.”
“Yes. She did.” I slide my hand to the small of her back and draw her closer. “Which means I don't have to hold back anymore.”
Heat moves through her expression, her breath catching. “Good,” she says. “Because I'm done waiting.”
I carry her through the living room and lower her onto the wide arm of the couch, her feet finding the floor, slow and careful. She is looking up at me with her cheeks flushed and her lips parted and her pupils so wide there is almost no color left.
I have imagined this, though I have tried not to.
Her dress comes off first. She reaches behind herself for the zipper with the focused efficiency of someone who has made a decision. She steps out of it, the fabric pooling at her feet, then looks at me and waits.
I shrug out of my own shirt and let it fall.
Her hands come to my chest immediately. Not tentative, purposeful.
She flattens her palms against the clan markings that spiral across my skin and I go still, watching her face as she traces them.
They are pressure-etched, raised beneath her fingers, the story of my lineage and my losses and the things I have managed to carry across an impossible distance.
She follows the pattern over my heart with her fingertips. She does not rush.
“I love these,” she murmurs. “I've wanted to touch them since the first time I saw you without a shirt.”
Something possessive curls hot in my gut. “When was that?”
“The community garden opening last spring.” Her fingers trace lower, following the markings down my abdomen. “You were helping dig the beds. Your shirt rode up.” She glances up at me briefly. “I couldn't stop staring.”
“I remember that day.” I catch her hand and bring it to my lips. “You dropped an entire flat of seedlings.”
Her cheeks go darker. “You noticed.”
“I notice everything about you.” I turn her hand and press my mouth to her wrist, where her heartbeat flutters beneath my lips.
“The way you bite your lip when you're concentrating. How you always smell like lavender and old books. The small sound you make when something surprises you.” I kiss her shoulder. Her collarbone. The swell of her breast above her bra. “I’ve been documenting you for months.”
She goes very still.
“The sketches,” she says.
“The sketches.” I reach behind her and unhook her bra. “Every time I saw you, I needed to capture it. To have even the smallest piece of you, even when I couldn't have all of you.”
Her bra joins the pile. I step back just enough to look at her: flushed skin, rapid breathing, her watching me watch her with an expression that is not shy and is not performing. She simply gazes back.
“You're staring,” she says.
“I'm memorizing.” I cup her breasts, my hands easily encompassing them, my thumbs brushing the stiff peaks. “I have imagined this. It’s not the same as having it.”
I lower my head and take her into my mouth, slowly, with intention.
My tongue finds the peak and flicks, light and quick, and her breath stutters in response.
I circle. I learn exactly what makes her fingers tighten in my hair and I return to it, again and again, until she stops trying to be quiet about it.
Then I switch and give the same attention to what I've neglected.
The sound she makes is entirely undignified and completely unguarded.
I take my time. This is what I have, what I have always had, the patience that my grandmother called a gift and my clanmates called maddening.
I learn her responses, and I return to what makes her gasp until she is arching into me and her fingers are tight in my hair and she has forgotten entirely that she ever intended to be composed about this.
“Rhazgar—”
“I know,” I say against her skin. “I know what you need.”
Her hands slide from my hair to my chest. Then lower, tracing the markings down my abdomen with slow curiosity. Her fingers find my belt, and she pauses. Not hesitating, I realize, but deciding. Then she looks up at me.
“Can I?”
“Yes.” The word comes out low and rough.
She works the buckle with the same careful concentration she brings to everything she wants to understand. The button. The zipper. Her breath catches when her hands find me. She makes no attempt to hide it.
Her touch is unhurried, almost unbearably light as her fingers follow every ridge from base to tip. I am going to disgrace myself before she reaches the top.
“The ridges,” I manage. “Run your thumb along the underside.”
She does. Exactly as I asked. My hips move toward her without permission, and I lock every muscle to keep from doing it again.
Her fingers wrap around the base, but her hand can’t fully encircle me. She looks up at me, fascinated and warm with something that is not only desire. There is no fear in her expression. Only curiosity and unmistakable want.
She lowers her head.
The sound I make when her mouth closes over me is not a sound I’ve ever made before. My hand goes to her hair, not directing, simply there, and I stand above her with every muscle locked against what she’s doing to me.
She’s thorough. She finds the ridges with her tongue and returns to them.
She reads what my body tells her, the way my breathing changes, the little hip thrusts I can’t control, the sounds I stop being able to suppress, and adjusts with the absorbed focus of a librarian handling something rare. And I am going to—
“Julia.” A warning. A plea.
She doesn't stop. She takes me deeper, and I feel my control splinter. I warn her with one rough sound, and then I am finishing with her mouth on me and my hand tight in her hair and every last thread of my control finally, finally, releasing.
She stays with me until I stop shaking.
When I can see properly again, she's looking up at me, satisfied and just smug enough to make me want her all over again.
I bring her back up, and when her feet find the floor again, I hook my fingers into her underwear and draw it down her legs. She steps out of it without being asked.
Then I lift her and carry her to the wall. I hitch her higher and position her thighs over my shoulders, supporting her entire weight, her ass in my hands. Her back presses against the wall. She gasps.
“Your ankle,” I tell her. “Your ribs. Tell me if anything hurts.”
“Nothing hurts.” Her hands grip my shoulders. “Rhazgar, this is… I've never…”
“I've got you.” I press my mouth to her inner thigh. I've been imagining her taste for months, and I intend to take my time with this too. “Now hold still and let me feast on you.”
The first taste of her hits my tongue and I groan against her. She’s exactly as I imagined, and nothing like I imagined. I stop thinking about anything except her sounds and her grip in my hair and the breathless way she says my name when she is losing her mind.
I work her thoroughly. I learn every response.
When I find what makes her sob my name, I return to it and stay there.
I hold her steady while she comes apart.
I don't let her down until the last tremor has quaked through her and she is breathing hard against my neck and saying my name like a question.
I lower her carefully, setting her back on her feet and pulling her against my chest so she doesn't have to hold herself up. She sways. I catch her.
For a moment, she simply breathes, her warm breath brushing my skin, her hands clutching my shoulders, her whole body still faintly trembling.
“Okay?” I ask.
She moves her head enough to look at me. Her eyes are glazed and her cheeks are flushed. Something deep in my chest aches with the tenderness of it.
“Rhazgar,” she says. “That was…” She stops. Starts again. “I didn't know anything could feel like that.”
I press my lips to her temple. She is loose and unguarded against me, all her usual sharpness gone soft.
I am not finished with her. Not close to it. But she has given everything she has for the moment, and I can be patient a little longer. I have gotten this far on patience alone; I can wait through one more course.
I lie back along the couch and draw her down with me, until she's settled chest to chest along the length of me instead of tangled in the cushions.
She goes without resistance, her breathing slowing by degrees.
Within a few minutes, she's asleep on top of me.
I lie very still so I don't wake her, already thinking about what I want to feed her next.