Chapter 11 #2
Each one deliberate, unhurried, my fingers working down her spine while she stood with her back to me and her hair swept over one shoulder, and I could feel the tension in her, not fear exactly, something more like the particular aliveness of a person standing at the edge of something they've decided to walk into.
When the last button gave way I spread the dress open with both hands and ran my palms slowly up her back, feeling her skin warm under my touch, and she made a sound that was barely audible and I decided that hearing that sound as many times as possible tonight was my primary objective.
The dress pooled on the floor and she turned to face me and let me look at her, which took a courage I recognized and intended to honor. The lamplight was warm and generous and she was more beautiful than I had words for, so I didn't reach for words. I reached for her instead.
She came to me easily, her hands at my tie and then my buttons, her fingers more certain than I'd expected, and I helped her with my shirt and walked her back toward the bed with my mouth on her jaw, the curve of her neck, the soft place below her ear that made her head tip back and her breath catch in a way that went straight through me.
"Constantine." My name in her mouth like that, half breath, made everything else in the world completely irrelevant.
I laid her back against the pillows and looked at her properly, all of her, in the warm light, and the way she looked back at me was completely open in a way I understood had cost her something.
This woman had spent twenty-two years keeping herself carefully defended, had crossed an ocean alone and built walls around every soft thing inside her because soft things got used in the world she'd come from, and she was choosing right now, deliberately and with full awareness, to put all of it down.
That undid me more than anything else could have.
I brought my mouth to her collarbone, her shoulder, the swell of her breast, and felt her fingers thread into my hair when I took her nipple between my lips and heard the sound she made, low and unguarded, entirely genuine.
I worked my way down her body slowly, tasting her skin, learning what made her breathe harder and what made her say my name and what made her grip the sheets with both hands and arch into me.
When I settled between her thighs she made a sound that was different from the others, something smaller and more uncertain, and I looked up at her and found her watching me with an expression that was still open but had something new in it, something that looked very much like the particular vulnerability of someone about to say something they weren't sure how to say.
"Con." Her voice was quiet.
"Yeah."
She pressed her lips together briefly. "I haven't done this before." She held my gaze steadily when she said it, which was exactly like her, refusing to look away from the thing that made her most exposed. "I wanted you to know."
I stayed where I was and looked at her for a moment, at this woman who had just handed me something she couldn't take back, and felt the full weight of what she'd given me settle somewhere permanent.
"Thank you for telling me," I said, because it was the right thing and because I meant it completely.
I moved back up her body and took her face in my hands and kissed her slowly, with all the patience I had, and felt her hands come up to my chest and relax there, and I pulled back and looked at her and said, "I've got you. The whole night. There's no hurry."
Something in her face changed, a loosening around the eyes, the expression of someone who had been braced for something and found it wasn't necessary. "Okay," she said softly.
I kissed her again and worked my way back down her body with more deliberateness than before, taking longer at every place that made her breath catch, building her up with unhurried patience until she stopped thinking about what came next and started existing only in what was happening right now, which was exactly where I wanted her.
When I put my mouth on her she gasped and her hands flew into my hair and I held her steady and took my time with her, learning her, until she was trembling and saying things that weren't quite words and then saying my name very clearly and falling apart under my hands with a completeness that told me she had given up every last defense she had.
I moved up her body while she was still shaking and she pulled me down to her mouth and kissed me with a hunger that surprised us both and I thought that there was the woman underneath the careful composure, and she was extraordinary.
"Please," she said against my mouth. "Con, please."
I looked at her, at her dark eyes blown wide and her hair wild on the pillow and her mouth swollen from mine, and thought I had never wanted anything more in my life.
I pressed into her slowly, watching her face the whole time, giving her every opportunity to breathe through it, and she held my gaze without looking away even when her brow furrowed and a small broken sound escaped her.
I went completely still and brought my mouth to her temple, her cheek, the corner of her jaw, and whispered against her skin that she was perfect and I had her and we had all the time there was.
She breathed out slowly, a long deliberate exhale, and her body softened around me, and then she tilted her hips in a way that was unmistakably an answer, and I moved carefully and she moved with me, and whatever I'd expected from this night it wasn't this -- this feeling of something finding its place, this woman who matched me in ways I was only beginning to understand, who made sounds that were going to ruin me for anything else, who dug her fingers into my shoulders and said my name like it was the only word she had left.
I took her apart slowly, learning what she liked, building her up with deliberate patience until she was shaking under me, and when she finally came it was with her whole body, long and shuddering, and I held her through every moment of it and felt something shift in my chest that I wasn't ready to put a name to yet.
She pulled me back down to her mouth afterward, her hands in my hair, her body still trembling slightly, and kissed me with a tenderness that was different from the hunger of before, something quieter and more deliberate, and I kissed her back that way and let myself feel it fully rather than managing it from a safe distance.
"Again," she said softly, and looked up at me with dark eyes and a smile that was new, something entirely for me, private and certain and warm.
I laughed against her mouth. "Give me thirty seconds."
She laughed too, and the sound of it in the warm dark room was the best thing I'd heard all night, which was saying something.
The second time was slower and deeper and she rose to meet every movement with a responsiveness that told me she had stopped thinking entirely, which felt like a gift from a woman who was always thinking.
She wrapped her legs around me and pulled me closer and said things against my neck that I felt more than heard, and I buried my face in her hair and let go of the last careful distance between what I felt and what I showed.
When she came the second time she said my name once, clearly, like an anchor, and I followed her with her name in my mouth and my arms holding her as close as I could get her and thought that my father had told me to be worthy of her and that I intended to spend a very long time trying.
Afterward we lay tangled in the warm dark and her head was on my chest and her breathing slowed into something easier and I ran my hand through her hair and looked at the ceiling and felt, for the first time in longer than I could remember, completely still.
"Con," she said quietly, her voice already soft with the edge of sleep.
"Yeah."
Her hand pressed flat against my chest over my heart. "Thank you."
I covered her hand with mine. "Don't thank me yet," I said. "I'm not done with you tonight."
She laughed, low and warm against my ribs, and I thought I was going to hear that laugh for the rest of my life and that I was entirely at peace with that.
Outside Chicago was dark and cold and neither of us were thinking about any of it at all.