Chapter 4 #2
I sit back into the chair and draw her down onto my lap.
She settles against me with her knees on either side of my hips.
I take what I want. My mouth at the hinge of her jaw.
My teeth grazing the tendon along her throat.
My hands moving down her ribs, her waist, the curve of her hip, learning the geography of her body while my dulled senses fight to register what my hands are touching.
She makes a sound against my collar when my fingers find the soft skin at the inside of her thigh. I commit it to memory.
Her hips roll against mine, and the friction is enough to tighten my hold on her waist hard enough to stop her.
"Not yet," I tell her. "Not until I say."
The look she gives me is lucid, calculating, and entirely unafraid. I close the folder on the table and set it on the chair beyond her reach.
Then I lift her onto the cleared surface, and the plates rattle and the wine bottle rocks and I don't care. Her legs wrap around my waist, and the heat of her through our clothes reaches me faintly but unmistakably.
The clothes come off in stages. Hers first, because I want to see what I'm claiming. I pull the hem of her shirt up and over her head while she's still seated on the table edge. When she reaches to help, I catch her hands and press them flat against the wood on either side of her hips.
"Keep them there."
She obeys. Her jaw tightens, but her hands stay where I put them.
I take my time. The bra clasp is small and my fingers are cold and she shivers when the fabric falls away.
Her nipples tighten in the chilled air, and I trace one with my thumb until her stomach contracts. The texture of her skin reaches me as a muted fact. What arrives without any filter at all is the way her body reacts to what I'm doing.
That will have to be enough.
I lower my mouth to her breast and take the hardened peak between my teeth. She arches off the table. The sound she makes is involuntary and raw, and I memorize it the way a starving man memorizes the location of food.
"Eyes open," I tell her. "Watch me."
She does. Her gaze is dark, present, and slightly furious, as if she resents how much she's responding. Good. I want her angry and aroused in equal measure. I want her aware of every decision I make with her body.
My hand moves between her thighs. She's wet through the fabric, and the knowledge of it registers where sensation alone falls short.
I press my thumb against her clit through the cotton and her hips jerk.
"Still," I command. "Don't move until I tell you."
The effort of obeying costs her. I can see it in the tension of her neck, in the tremor running through her legs.
I strip the last of her clothing with unhurried, exacting care while she grips the table edge with white knuckles and holds herself still because I told her to.
When she's bare on the kitchen table with her chin raised and her shoulders back, I look at her and understand that I haven't wanted anything this badly since the night I refused to cross the Gate. The defiance in her posture makes the submission underneath it devastating.
"Beautiful," I say. "And mine. Tonight, in this kitchen, you belong to me. Tell me you understand."
"I understand."
"Tell me you want this."
"Shut up and fuck me, Severin."
A low sound escapes me, half laugh, half warning. "Foul language doesn't become you. Don't use it again."
"Or what?"
"Or I'll find a better use for that mouth."
She said my name. Wrapped it in profanity and defiance, but she said it, and her voice reaches me without the barrier that dulls everything else.
Not her heat. Not her skin. My name. For a moment the numbness tears open and I feel the syllables the way a living man would feel them, raw and close and devastating.
The moment passes. The barrier settles back into place. But it's thinner than it was.
I shed my own clothes. Her eyes track every movement with an attention that borders on clinical, and I let her look.
My body is whole, functional, and cold. When I step between her parted thighs, her hands come up toward my chest.
I pin both wrists behind her back in one hand. "I didn't give you permission to touch."
"I wasn't asking."
"You will." I tighten my grip until the chill registers against her pulse. "Before this is over, you will ask me for everything I give you."
I enter her slowly, reading her face as her body opens around me. The sensation arrives through the muted barrier, pressure and heat and the tight hold of her body around my cock. What I feel with absolute clarity is her response.
The way her breath shatters. The involuntary arch of her spine. The low, broken noise she makes when I'm fully inside her and I hold there, motionless, until she understands that I control the pace.
"Severin." Her voice is hoarse. "Please."
"Please what?"
"Move. Please move."
"No. Not until I decide."
"You're enjoying this." Her eyes narrow even through the desperation. "The control."
"Yes. And so are you. Say it."
"Yes." The word costs her, and the admission heats her skin more than anything my hands have done. "Yes, I am."
I hold the stillness for three more breaths.
Hers, ragged and desperate. Mine, steady and measured.
Then I begin to move, and the control I wield is absolute.
Slow, deep strokes that I calibrate by reading her face, her sounds, the flex of her hips against mine.
I learn what makes her gasp and what makes her whisper my name like a confession she didn't intend to make.
One hand grips her hip. The other finds her clit and works it with the same focused intensity I bring to everything else. She cries out, and I increase the pressure. Her fingers dig into my shoulders hard enough to leave marks of her own, reminding me she's capable of fighting.
"You said I had to ask," she says.
"Then ask."
"Harder."
"That isn't a request."
"Harder. Please."
I give her what she wants. I fuck her with full authority and without apology.
"Look at me," I tell her. "Don't close your eyes."
She obeys. Her eyes are wide, dark, and entirely present. She is here, aware of every decision I'm making with her body, and the look on her face says she chose this with her whole mind and would choose it again.
I see her build toward the edge. When she tries to retreat into silence, I stop moving and press my thumb harder against her clit until the sensation forces a sound from her she can't control.
"You're enjoying this," she manages.
"Yes."
"Arrogant bastard."
I drive deeper and hold. "Try again."
Her eyes flash even through the desperation. "Please you arrogant bastard."
I chuckle then give her what she asked for. I drive into her hard enough that her back arches off the table and the wine bottle finally topples, rolling unnoticed to the floor. Her legs lock around my waist. Her nails score my shoulders deep enough that a living man would bleed.
I feel her tighten around my cock, the clench building in waves that match the rhythm I'm setting. Her thighs tremble against my hips. Her head drops back, throat exposed, every muscle in her body drawn taut as a bowstring.
"Severin." My name comes out of her like something torn loose. "God. Severin."
She shatters around me, her pussy gripping me in hard, rhythmic contractions while her whole body shakes.
She comes with my name in her mouth, the name Fritz tried to erase, spoken as if it has always belonged to her.
I watch her face through every second of it, and the sight of Ashley Caldwell coming undone beneath me with my name on her lips reaches places the Veil has kept numb for centuries.
My own release hits like a fist. Muted, distant, arriving through the gauze that dulls everything the Veil gives me, but the force of it bows my spine and locks my hand on her hip hard enough to bruise.
Her name is in my mouth when it crests, bitten out against her throat, and that part I feel with perfect, devastating clarity. She watches my control break.
I let her.
"Sit up."
She does. I pull her shirt from the floor and settle it around her shoulders, then bring her into my lap in the chair with one hand anchored at her hip.
"The last thought I had before the cannonball," I tell her, "was that I would die without anyone knowing my real name."
Her hand finds mine on her hip. She laces her fingers through mine and holds on.
The windows begin to lighten. Dawn arrives the way it always does in Sleepy Hollow, indifferent and exact.
I know what is coming. I've known for centuries.
I brace against it. My body locks. The pull reaches for me the way it always does, violent and absolute, dragging me toward the absence that waits on the other side of sunrise.
But something holds. The pull stretches.
I grip the edge of the table. Ashley grips my hand.
The mechanism that has governed my existence since the cannonball at White Plains fails to collect me on schedule.
Seconds pass. I can feel each one in my bones, the pull clawing at me while the kitchen refuses to dissolve and Ashley's fingers stay locked around mine.
Then the Veil wins, and I'm ripped from the chair in the middle of holding a woman's hand. The last thing I register before the Void claims everything is that the pull came late, and the sunrise had to fight for me.