11. Out of the Dark #2
"I know." She says it like a thing she has proven, not a thing she hopes for. "That is the part that undid me tonight. Not the danger. The certainty."
The wanting comes up hard, and the dark tonight has honed it into something with edges.
A man holds a line easier when the line is theory.
Tonight the line is the only thing between my hand and the side of her face, and I know to the inch what I am holding back from, and the holding costs more than it ever has.
Boots on the tile. A tech rounds the corner with a clipboard, sees the shape of the two of us, and finds somewhere else to be.
The footsteps go the way they came. And the interruption that was going to spend the ninety seconds instead hands them back to us, doubled, and this time there is no third person coming.
She reads the empty corridor the same instant I do. There is a supply room four steps behind her with a door that locks, and neither of us says a word about it. Her hand closes in the front of my shirt. Mine finds the door.
For eleven weeks the distance between us has been the job. Tonight the job nearly ended in a room full of smoke with the comms dead, and what is left when a thing like that burns off is not a line a man can hold.
It is her back against the inside of a locked door, and my hands learning the thing they have wanted to learn since a courthouse corridor, and the wire on the far side of two inches of steel gone as quiet as the grave.
The door clicks shut and the rest of the world falls away. My hands find her waist and pull her in before either of us can think better of it. Mira meets me halfway, her fingers curling into my shirt like she needs the proof that I am still here.
The kiss is not careful. It is weeks of holding back and the smoke we both tasted tonight poured into one moment. She tastes like adrenaline and the faint salt of fear, and I drink it down.
I press her back against the door of the supply room.
One hand braces beside her head so I do not crush her with the full weight of eleven weeks of wanting.
My other hand slips under the hem of her shirt, palm flat against the warm, smooth skin of her back.
Mira arches into me instantly. A soft sound escapes her throat.
When my thumb traces the underside of her breast, her breath catches sharp. She feels so soft here, responsive in a way that makes my blood run hotter. I take my time.
I learn every curve I have forced myself to ignore through long nights of patrols and close calls. My fingers map her slowly and reverently. The dim, cramped space around us feels like the only sanctuary left on this wired-up base.
She does not wait. Her hands tug my shirt free from my waistband. Her palms slide up over my chest, tracing the lines of muscle and scar tissue like she is memorizing me right back. The heat of her touch pulls a low gasp from me.
Then her fingers dip lower, inside the front of my pants, bold and sure. I groan as she cups my balls and squeeze them gently and proceed to stroking me, with her thumb circling my wet head. I arch towards her in anticipation.
In seconds she unbuckles, unzips, and frees me with an efficiency that steals what little control I have left, as she bend down and gives me a careful bite and take my hardness as far as she could, and further, circling my head with her tongue. My groan is louder.
We shed clothes between deep, hungry kisses. Slow enough to savor the slide of fabric over skin, yet fast enough that the urgency never fades. Shirts drop. Her bra falls away. My pants and hers tangle around our ankles before we kick them aside.
The supply room is dim and crowded with shelves, but nothing has ever felt safer.
I lift her easily. Her legs wrap around my waist and lock tight.
The heat between us ignites fierce and immediate.
It comes straight from the razor edge we walked tonight.
Every brush of skin carries the charge of survival and the raw relief of still having her here, solid and alive and mine in this stolen pocket of time.
I hold her close as I sink into her, inch by slow inch. Her body welcomes me with slick heat that makes my vision blur. Mira's nails dig into my shoulders. Her forehead presses to mine. Our breaths mingle.
I rock into her with deep, deliberate strokes. I savor the tight glide and the way she clenches around me like she never wants to let go.
"Mira," I whisper roughly against the curve of her neck. I taste salt and her skin. It is the name I have wanted to breathe into her for weeks. She answers with the roll of her hips.
She meets every thrust. Her mouth finds mine again in a kiss that is equal parts tenderness and desperation. Her inner walls flutter and draw me deeper. I lose myself in the rhythm, steady and building. The slap of skin and our shared gasps fill the small space.
We move together like we were made for this. Her legs tighten. Her heels dig into my back. The restraint we have both carried for eleven long weeks cracks wide open. Pleasure coils tight in my gut.
Her soft cries push me closer to the edge. I slide a hand between us. My thumb circles the sensitive bundle of nerves at her apex until she trembles and breaks around me and my fingers. She pulses hot and perfect.
The feel of her coming undone drags me right over with her. I bury myself deep. I groan her name as release crashes through me in powerful waves. It leaves me shaking, spent, and more alive than I have felt in months.
Afterward, we stay locked together for long moments. Our hearts hammer against each other. Slowly, we ease apart and begin putting ourselves back together in the dark.
Neither of us is in a hurry to open the door on the wire again.
She smooths my collar where her fingers had wrecked it.
Her touch lingers. I fix hers in return.
I button her shirt with careful fingers and brush a stray lock of hair from her flushed cheek.
Small work, done close. It is the kind of tending that used to run only one direction and now flows both ways, quiet and sure.