He touched her again. Her ribs. Her waist. The curve where her hip met her stomach. Every touch unhurried and Emily understood that this was who he was. Not performing patience.Living it. A man who had spent a lifetime learning the difference between taking and receiving and had chosen to be the kind of person who received.
She pulled him down to her.
The weight of him was a revelation. Not heavy. Grounding. The feeling of a body over hers that she'd asked for, that she wanted, that she'd chosen with every faculty she possessed. His mouth found the hollow of her throat and Emily arched into him and heard a sound come out of her that she didn't recognize, low and raw and uncontrolled, the kind of sound she'd never made because she'd never let herself be in a place where control wasn't the point.
"Don't hold back," Jake said against her skin. "Not tonight. Not with me."
She stopped holding back.
The rest of their clothes came off in a tangle of reaching and breath and increments where one of them laughed and the other caught the laughter with their mouth. Emily explored the terrain of him, the flat planes of his stomach, the scar on his left side she'd find the story for later, the muscles along his back that shifted under her fingers when he moved. He was mapped with history she hadn't read yet, and she wanted to read every page.
Jake's mouth traveled south. Her collarbone. The space between her breasts. The soft skin below her navel where his breath made her hips lift off the bed. He took his time. Devastating, patient, thorough time, and Emily's hands found the sheets and gripped and released and gripped again because her body was doing things her mind had no authority over and she was discovering that the loss of authority was the point.
When his mouth found her she stopped thinking entirely.
The world reduced to sensation and breath and the sound of her own voice saying his name in ways she'd never said anyone's name, and Jake Walsh took her apart with the same focused,unhurried precision he brought to everything, reading her responses like field intelligence, adjusting, attending, finding the frequency that made her back arch and her hands find his hair and hold on.
She came undone with his name on her lips and her hand pressed over her own mouth because the sound she was making was too loud for eleven o'clock on a Friday night in a building with shared walls, and Jake lifted his head and looked at her with an expression of such naked wonder that Emily felt tears burn behind her eyes.
"Come here," she said. "Come here, come here."
He did. Rising over her, settling between her thighs, one hand braced beside her head, the other tracing her jawline. Emily reached between them and guided him and felt the instant he entered her with a clarity that obliterated everything she'd ever believed about keeping herself separate from another person.
He stilled. Forehead against hers. Breathing her air.
"Hi," he whispered.
"Hi." She was laughing. Maybe crying. Maybe both at the same time, her hands on his face, the absurdity and perfection of the word colliding. Hi. As if they were meeting for the first time. As if this was the introduction and everything before had been preamble.
"You okay?"
"I'm so far past okay." She kissed him. Soft and wet and tasting like salt. "Move."
He moved.
Slow at first. Finding the rhythm that was theirs, not borrowed from anywhere, not performing, not approximating what intimacy was supposed to look like. This was two people who had been falling toward each other for two weeks finally discovering what it felt like to stop falling and land. Emily's legswrapped around him and pulled him deeper and felt the groan it drew from him vibrate through her sternum and into the fabric of who she was.
It was different than before. Before, it was competent, adequate, physically satisfying sex with men who checked the right boxes and held her at the distance she maintained and left her feeling afterward like she'd completed a task rather than shared something special. This was not that. This was Jake's hand in her hair and his mouth against her neck and the way he whispered her name like a prayer he'd been rehearsing in silence, and Emily understood with devastating finality that she had never been made love to before. Not once. Not ever. That everything preceding this moment had been a reasonable facsimile of connection executed by a woman who hadn't known what the real thing felt like.
The rhythm built. Emily stopped thinking in words. Her body moved with his, finding the places where they fit, the angles that made her breath catch, when his control slipped and she felt the full force of what he was holding in check and wanted more of it. She wanted all of it. Wanted the substance and the need and the raw unfiltered version of Jake Walsh that nobody had ever seen because nobody had ever been allowed this close.
"Let go," she said against his ear. "You told me not to hold back. I'm telling you the same thing."
Jake's rhythm changed. Harder. Deeper. His hand slid beneath her hips and tilted her and Emily's vision went white at the edges and she heard herself making sounds she'd never catalog and didn't want to, sounds that belonged to this room and this man and this version of herself she was meeting for the first time.
They came together. Not simultaneously, close enough that one crest fed the other, Emily first with a cry she buried in his shoulder, Jake seconds later with a sound that was both brokenand reverent, his face pressed against her neck, his whole body shuddering against hers.
Stillness.
The room came back in pieces. The white sheets tangled around them. The window throwing city light across the ceiling. Jake's weight, heavy now, settling over her. His breath ragged against her collarbone. Her fingers in his hair, moving without instruction.
He started to shift his weight off her. Emily's legs tightened.
"Don't."
"I'm crushing you."
"I don't care." Her voice sounded wrecked. Soft and hoarse and nothing like the voice she used in courtrooms or conference rooms or any of the rooms where she'd spent her life being the version of herself that performed competence instead of feeling joy. "Stay."
