11. Sabine #3
He kisses me silently. His mouth swallows the rest of the sentence and his hand slides up from my stomach to my ribs to the underside of my breast, and his thumb traces the curve there with a slowness that makes me want to scream.
I arch into his palm and his fingers close, gentle but encompassing, and the scale of his grip makes me feel delicate in a way that should trigger every feminist alarm in my arsenal but instead lights a fuse somewhere south of my navel that burns fast and bright.
The rest of our clothes come off in stages.
My skirt. His boots, which take an unreasonable amount of time because of the lacing.
My practical cotton underwear, which he removes with such theatrical delicacy that I half expect him to fold them.
His pants, which require me to stop looking at his face and look down, and when I do the breath leaves my body in a rush that I hope sounds less panicked than it feels because the proportional math is immediately, viscerally concerning.
He sees my expression and the gold in his eyes softens with something that might be humor if it weren't so tender. "We don't have to."
"We absolutely have to. I just need a moment to... recalibrate."
"Take all the time you need." He settles beside me on his side, propped on one elbow, and his free hand traces a lazy path from my collarbone to my navel and back, featherlight, mapping me like he's memorizing topography.
The bed is technically a queen, which means he takes up approximately two-thirds of it.
His hand drifts lower. Past my navel. Over the curve of my hip.
His fingers find the inside of my thigh and I part for him without thinking, without deciding, my body making choices my brain hasn't approved, and when he touches me the sound I make is embarrassingly close to a whimper.
He's careful. Devastatingly, maddeningly careful, his thick fingers moving with a precision that suggests either extensive experience or an intuitive understanding of anatomy that would make my college biology professor weep, and I'm slick and swollen and so responsive that the first slow stroke of his finger through my folds makes my hips buck against his hand.
"There," he murmurs against my temple. His lips brush my hairline as he speaks. "Right there?"
"Yes. God. Yes, right..."
He does it again. Slower. With purpose. His fingertip circles and presses and retreats in a rhythm that builds heat in concentric waves, and I grip his forearm with both hands, feeling the thick muscles flex under my fingers as he works, and when he slides one finger inside me the stretch is immediate and significant and so exactly what I need that my head falls back against the pillow and my eyes slam shut.
"Look at me. Sabine. Open your eyes."
I open them. His face is inches from mine, amber eyes burning gold. He crooks his finger inside me and my mouth falls open. He adds a second finger and the stretch borders on overwhelming and I grip his forearm harder and he stills instantly.
"Too much?"
"No." I roll my hips against his hand, taking him deeper, and his pupils blow wide. "Don't stop. Don't you dare stop."
He doesn't stop. He builds me with the patient, methodical attention of someone who understands that good work takes time, and when I come it's sudden and devastating, a white-hot clench that starts where his fingers press inside me and radiates outward through my entire body until I'm shaking against him with his name on my lips and his arm curled around me like a barricade against the rest of the world.
He holds me through it. Waits for the tremors to subside.
Presses his mouth to my forehead, my temple, the bridge of my nose.
And then, when I can breathe again, I push against him and he rolls onto his back and I climb on top of him and the scale difference becomes almost absurd, my knees barely spanning his hips, my hands braced on the hard plates of his pectorals like I'm leaning on a warm brick wall.
His hands settle on my hips. His fingers wrap nearly all the way around me.
It’s obvious he thinks the violence of his life has disqualified him from this kind of softness.
That he is lying beneath me convinced he is a danger to me even now, even here, even after carrying me home in the rain and touching me like I was made of blown glass.
I lean down and press my forehead to his. "Stay with me."
His grip on my hips tightens.
I reach between us and guide him into me, and the initial pressure is enough to stall my breath.
I lower myself slowly, incrementally, giving my body time to adjust, and the stretch is consuming, a fullness that pushes at the edges of what I thought I could take and then keeps going.
His hands on my hips are iron, holding me steady, controlling the pace even from below, and his jaw is locked shut and every rune on his body is blazing gold like festival lights.
"Breathe." He says it like a prayer. Like he's saying it to both of us.
I breathe. I sink lower. The last inch steals every coherent thought I have and replaces it with pure sensation, a fullness so complete that I can feel my own heartbeat where our bodies meet.
I sit there for a moment, motionless, adjusting, and his hands slide from my hips up my sides and over my ribs in long, soothing strokes that leave trails of warmth on my skin.
When I move, his head drops back against the pillow and the sound he makes is something ancient and guttural and not in English.
His hands fly back to my hips, guiding me, not controlling, letting me set the rhythm while providing the stability my trembling thighs can't quite achieve on their own.
I roll against him and the friction is extraordinary, nerve endings I didn't know I had lighting up in sequence, and I brace my hands on his torso and find a pace that builds the heat steadily, inexorably, like a formula resolving toward an inevitable answer.
He sits up without warning. One fluid motion, core strength that defies physics, and suddenly he's upright with me in his lap, his arms wrapped around me, my legs around his waist, face to face.
The angle changes everything. He's deeper like this, pressing against something inside me that makes sparks cascade behind my eyes, and his mouth finds mine in a kiss that tastes like desperation.
His hips move beneath me in slow, devastating rolls that drive him into that spot with each thrust, and I cling to his shoulders and bite his lower lip and feel the vibration of his groan against my teeth.
"Close," I gasp against his mouth. "I'm close, I'm..."