CHAPTER 7 #2
"There's a wall," he says, reading me the way I read cloth, finding the bias where I'd tear, "right behind that dress form, and I have thought about you against a wall more than is decent. Tell me to stop and I stop, malyshka. Any second. The whole way through. Color?"
"Green. " It's out of me before I've decided to say it, before pride or sense or the thimble can weigh in, a single green word, and the saying of it undoes something. "Green. God. Green."
He doesn't whoop. I half expected the whoop.
He goes still instead, the way the dangerous ones go still, and his green eyes go dark, and he crosses the last of the gold floor to me and sets one scarred hand to the side of my face like I'm the good nap under his palm, like I'd change in the light if he stroked me wrong, and kisses me once, slow, soft, a question with the answer already in it.
Then he walks me backward two steps until my shoulders meet the cool brick beside the headless form, its giant shadow swallowing us both up the wall, and he kisses me like he has all the time anyone has ever been given, and his hands go to the buttons of my blouse.
"Look at this," he murmurs against my mouth, working them, unhurried, filthy and reverent both.
"Look at all this you've been hiding under good tailoring.
That's a crime, trouble. I want it entered into the record.
" The blouse comes open. He pushes it off my shoulders and makes that low sound again, the same one he made at the worktable, the it-does-a-thing-when-you-touch-it-right sound, and his eyes travel me — the soft full heft of my breasts in the plain bra, the round of my belly, the wide give of my hips — and there's nothing in his face but hunger, clean and total, no measuring, no math, no flinch.
"Christ," he says. "Look at you. You're the good stuff.
" He bends and sets his mouth to the swell of my breast above the bra, and then he drops, smooth, controlled, all the way down to his knees in front of me on the worn wood floor of my own atelier, and looks up the whole soft length of me with the giant shadow of us thrown up the brick wall, his head bowed at my hips. "Best view in this city."
"Gael —"
"Skirt. " His hands are already at my waistband, asking with his fingers, his eyes coming up to mine for the yes.
I give it, my hips moving toward him, an unmistakable pull, and he takes the skirt down over the give of me and presses his open mouth to the soft slope of my belly, just below the navel, reverent, and I feel it go through me like a current grounding out.
"Soft," he says against my skin, like scripture, like a man reading the only book he believes in.
"God, you're soft. Everywhere. You know what soft is, malyshka?
Soft is what survived. Hard things break.
" He kisses lower, the swell of my belly, the crease of my hip, the inside of one thick thigh where it meets the other, and his hands come up the backs of my legs and take the full heft of my ass in both palms and hold me like he's holding something he'd been told all his life he wasn't allowed.
"These thighs. I have lost sleep over these thighs.
Spread them for me. There she is. There she is. "
He hooks my underwear down and off one ankle, and he presses my thigh wider with his scarred palm, and he looks — just looks, his face an inch off me, my back to the cold brick and my knees already not entirely trustworthy — and what he says then he says low, into the warm dark between my legs, like a confession at an altar.
"Color, malyshka?"
"Green," I breathe. "Green, please —"
And he puts his mouth on me.
I have been touched before, plenty of times, but this is the first time I have ever been worshipped, and the difference, I understand with my spine against the brick and the needle-chattering on through the wall, is the difference between a man taking something and a man giving it.
His tongue finds my clit and stays there, broad and slow and merciless-patient, and he makes a sound against me, a satisfied filthy hum like he's been hungry for years and finally got fed, and one thick finger slides into me where I'm already slick for him and curls, and he doesn't rush, he doesn't perform, he doesn't watch the door of his own pleasure — he stays down there on his knees on my floor like he has nowhere he'd rather die.
"That's it," he says, pulling off just enough to talk, his breath on my wet skin, his green eyes flicking up the soft road of my body to my face.
"That's it, trouble. Soak my fingers. Good girl.
You taste like the best thing I ever stole and I didn't even steal you, you gave me this, you hear me?
You gave it. " Back to his mouth, two fingers now, that broad slow tongue, and the heel of his other hand pressing into the soft of my belly like he wants contact with all of me at once, like one point of me isn't enough.
My hands find his auburn hair. I'd meant to hold something.
I hold him. The huge shadow of us climbs the brick, his bowed head at my hips, my fingers in his hair, two giants thrown up the wall over the patient faceless forms, and somewhere in the gold-going-amber light I stop bracing, stop armoring, quit the lifelong reflex of getting ready for the splinter, and let myself simply be wanted.
Be soft on purpose. Be the altar instead of the offering.
"I can feel you giving up the fight," he murmurs, savage and tender, his fingers curling deep and his thumb taking over at my clit so he can look at me.
"Stop guarding it. Nobody's coming to take it back.
This is yours. Take it, malyshka. Come on my mouth and let me watch you do it.
I want to see what your face does when you stop being the bargain. "