My left hand moves over her breast.
I cup the weight of it in my palm and feel the contact—skin on skin, the warmth, the softness, no ring between my finger and her body.
She shivers.
"Lee." My name in her mouth like a prayer.
Like something she's been holding and can finally say without the caveat.
"I'm here." Against her sternum. My lips on the skin between her breasts, feeling her heart pound. "I'm right here."
I move down her body.
Not with urgency—with attention.
Kissing the underside of her breast, the curve of her ribs, the soft skin below her navel.
I hook my thumbs in her underwear and slide them down and she lifts her hips to help and the ease of it—the wordless collaboration, the way our bodies have learned each other's choreography—tightens something in my chest that isn't desire.
It's gratitude. The staggering, bone-deep gratitude of a man who thought he'd never have this again.
I kiss the inside of her thigh and she trembles.
Her hand finds my hair—threading through it, holding without pulling, letting me set the pace.
I press my mouth to the crease where her thigh meets her hip and breathe her in and the sound she makes—a low, aching moan—is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.
I taste her. Slow.
My tongue tracing her folds, finding the rhythm that makes her hips lift off the bed, that makes her grip in my hair tighten.
She's wet—slick and hot against my mouth—and I take my time because this morning is not about urgency.
This morning is about presence, about feeling every single thing without armor.
I work her with my mouth until her breathing fractures.
Until her thighs are shaking around my head and her hand is gripping the sheet and she's saying my name in that broken, beautiful way— "Lee, Lee, God, please"—and I slide two fingers inside her and curl them and she comes apart.
Not an explosion—an unraveling.
A slow, full-body shudder that rolls through her in waves, her back arching, her mouth open, her eyes closed.
I feel every pulse of it against my tongue and around my fingers and I hold her through it, steady, present, my bare left hand spread across her hip with the tan line pressed against her skin like a brand that means something new.
I rise over her before the aftershocks have stopped.
She reaches for me—pulls my shirt over my head, pushes at my waistband with hands that are shaking but sure.
I help her strip everything off.
And then it's just us—bare, both of us, skin against skin from chest to knee, the full warm length of her body pressed against mine.
She wraps her hand around me.
The calluses of her palm against my cock—rough, warm, the grip of a woman who isn't tentative about anything she does.
I groan into her neck.
