“Mmm.” She’s still half-asleep, voice a soft, low rumble. Her hand comes up, fingers curling into my hair, with small, involuntary tugs when my tongue does something right. “What’re you…?”
I answer by sliding my fingers deeper, curling them in just the way I know she likes. I can feel her clench around me, the lazy pulse of her arousal quickening, mounting by the second. She tastes like surrender—like a person who’s finally let herself stop running for just one goddamn hour.
I suck her clit, gently at first, then harder. She gasps awake, hips bucking into my mouth.
“Oh fuck… Nico?”
“Good morning,” I say, lips moving against her.
I lift my eyes just enough to catch the look on her face as the words vibrate into her skin—confusion at first, the slow spark of pleasure, then a kind of wonder, like she’s never been woken up this way before.
I show her exactly how good the morning can be by rolling her clit between my lips while my fingers rhythmically fuck her, slow and even. She makes a strangled little noise, then laughs as the sensation blooms through her.
“Jesus. What time is it?” she manages, voice hoarse.
“Six AM.”
I don’t stop working as I answer. The discipline it takes to keep my tongue steady, my control absolute, is a new kind of challenge. I’m used to breaking myself against the world, not holding myself to a slow burn for someone else’s pleasure.
She props herself up on her elbows, blinking sleep out of her eyes. Her hair is a halo of tangles and gold against the pillow. Her mouth is swollen from sleep and last night’s kisses, and there’s a red crescent where I bit her jawline hours ago. She’s never looked more real than she does right now.
“Since when do you skip your pull-ups?” she asks, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“I’m not skipping.” I pause only long enough to answer, then go right back to her. “Just delaying. Four hundred can wait an hour.”
The laugh she lets out is half-giggle, half-moan. It reverberates through the bed, makes my cock ache with the need to be inside her. All the rules I’ve lived by—discipline, ritual, the belief that pleasure comes after pain or not at all—collapse under the weight of wanting her. I’d give up every last habit for a morning like this.
I watch her face as she gives herself over to it, the way her eyelids flutter shut at the crest of sensation, the way she tilts her hips to chase my tongue, the way she says my name in a voice that means she trusts me. I’ve seen her like this only a handful of times, and each time has made me want to destroy the world for the privilege of seeing it again.
“You’re being so gentle,” she gasps, as if the softness itself is foreign.
Maybe it is, for both of us. She’s used to chaos: men who take what they want and leave, partners who treat her like a proving ground for their own failures. I’m used to war, to violence, to the idea that every good thing comes with a cost—usually in blood, often my own.
But with her, I could do this forever. Just slow, careful work, watching her unravel because I said so. Because she asked me to stay, and I do what she asks now. I give her everything.
She grins, lazy and wide, the kind of smile that makes her eyes crinkle at the corners. “You’re not supposed to be this good at that. It’s unfair.”
“Don’t complain,” I say, nipping her clit. “You’ll hurt my feelings.”
She gasps, and I remind myself to be gentle. I don’t want to think. I want to freeze this morning and live in it until my body can’t take it anymore.
But that’s not how I’m built. I’m not a gentle man, not really. The version of myself I show her—the patient, careful lover—is new, an experiment, a borrowed skin. Underneath, I am still the man who wants to break her apart. I am still the monster she tamed.
The monster in me wants to flip her over, fuck her face-down into the mattress until she's screaming. Wants to grip her throat while I pound into her, wants to make her take everything, wants to claim her so thoroughly she'll feel me for days.
But that was last night. This morning, I want something different. Want to show her I can be more than hunger and dominance. Want to worship her the way she deserves.
"Is that okay?" I ask, genuinely uncertain. I've never done gentle. Never wanted to. Gentleness was weakness, and soft things break.
"More than okay," she breathes, her pussy clenching around my fingers. "Don't stop. Please don't stop."
I don't. I take my time learning every response, noting what makes her moan, what makes her writhe, what makes her fingers tighten in my hair. My cock is leaking steadily against the sheets, desperate for friction, but all my focus is on her.
When she comes, it's with my name broken into syllables. "Ni…co… oh God." Her pussy pulses around my fingers in waves. I work her through it gently, not pushing for another immediately like last night, just letting her ride the pleasure.
"Get up here," she demands when she can speak, tugging at my hair.
I crawl up her body, my cock dragging against her skin, leaving a trail of precum along her leg. She reaches between us immediately, wrapping her hand around my shaft, and I groan at the contact.
