That’s all I need.
I ease closer, lining myself up with her body, careful and focused. The sight of me nudging against her, the contrast of my size and her slick, flushed opening, almost undoes me.
I push in slowly, forcing myself to go against every hardwired instinct to thrust and take. Inch by inch, I sink into her heat, giving her time to adjust, to breathe.
She gasps, the sound punched out of her, and goes tense under me. Her hands fist in the blanket, shoulders drawn tight.
I stop. Every muscle in my body screams at me to keep moving, but I hold still, jaw clenched.
“Tally,” I rasp, leaning over her, bracing one hand by her head, the other still firm on her hip. “Talk to me.”
For a second, all I hear is her breathing, harsh and uneven. Then she pushes back—just the smallest shift, but enough.
“I’m okay,” she says. “Just…full.”
Something in the way she says it—raw, startled, almost shocked—hits me where I live.
“Fuck,” I whisper, the realization slamming into me. “Tink…”
I knew she was inexperienced. The way she stiffened earlier when my hand slid under her sweater, the nervous jokes, the way she catalogued every sensation like she was building a reference file—none of that belonged to a woman who’d done this a hundred times.
Butthis?
My throat tightens. I drop my forehead to the back of her shoulder, breathe in the scent of her shampoo and skin.
“You should have told me,” I say, voice rough. “I would have gone slower. I—”
“Not anymore,” she cuts in, pushing her hips back against me again. “I’m not anything anymore. So you might as well stop talking and…move.”
Christ.
Every protective instinct I have wars with the greedy, possessive part of me that wants to do exactly that.
I ease out a fraction, then slide back in, testing. She’s tight, impossibly so, the grip of her body around me enough to make my vision go white at the edges.
She makes a broken little sound, half-pain, half-pleasure.
“We’ll take it easy,” I manage. “You tell me if it’s too much.”
“You’re already too much,” she mutters into the mattress, but the words don’t come with a flinch. They come with a shiver.
I withdraw, then sink in again, a little deeper this time. Slow, measured strokes. No snapping hips, no punishing pace. Just steady, deliberate movement, letting her stretch around me, letting her body learn mine.
Under my hands, the tension in her back gradually shifts. The stiff line of her spine softens; her breathing evens out, then hitches for different reasons.
“Bran,” she whispers, voice going high and thin.
“Yeah, baby,” I murmur, pressing a kiss between her shoulder blades. “You’re doing so good.”
The endearment slips out before I can stop it. We both feel the weight of it.
She takes another breath, a shaky one. “You keep calling me that,” she says, “and I’m going to think you like me or something.”
I huff a laugh against her skin. “Too late.”
She goes very still.
A beat passes.
