She's still in my lap.
Her eyes are on me, but hooded. She is so relaxed and glowing and beautiful. I can’t take my eyes off her, and the tingling in the base of my spine tells me I'm not done. Not even close.
I should be thinking about what just happened. The implications of it. The fact that I told my family I wouldn't do this, told myself I wouldn't do this, and then she sat in my chair and told me to stop deciding for her, and every reason I’d come up with in the last twenty-four hours to support that evaporated like morning mist in the sunshine.
Now I can’t stop thinking about the sound she made when she came. The way her head dropped back and her mouth opened, and her whole body pulled tight like a bowstring. I'm thinking about the fact that she'd never done this before. That she chose me. Not because I was convenient or because crisis made her careless, but because she looked at me and decided, with that same clear-eyed pragmatism that has been quietly taking me apart since yesterday, that she wanted this.
Wanted me.
Her breathing slows. She lifts her head. Her eyes are bright. Dazed. Her cheeks are flushed and her lips are swollen. Her hair is a disaster, and she is the most disarming thing I have ever seen.
"Hi," she says. Quiet. Almost shy, which is absurd given what she just did to me in my own chair.
"Hi."
She smiles. Then she shifts in my lap, and we both feel it. Me still inside her, both of us oversensitive. She makes a sound, a sharp little inhale, and I watch her eyes darken.
I watch her want more.
Something in me goes very still. The same stillness I recognize from operations. The moment before a decision. The moment when every variable has been assessed, and the only thing left is the action.
I put my hands on her waist and lift her off me. She gasps at the separation. I stand with her in my arms. She's light. I knew she'd be light, but the reality of it is different. The reality is her legs wrapping around me, her hands gripping my shoulders and her eyes wide, startled, trusting.
The oak reading table is against the far wall. Piled with books I've been meaning to sort for weeks.
I walk her to it and sweep the books off with one arm. They scatter to the floor in a mess of fluttering pages that I will deal with later. Right now I don't care about the books. Right now I care about the woman in my arms who just gave me something no one else has had, and who deserves more than what I just gave her. She deserves to understand what this is.
I set her down on the edge then step back.
She looks up at me. Bare. Flushed. Sitting on the edge of my reading table in lamplight with her hair falling across one shoulder and her lips parted, and I need a moment with that. I need a moment to look at her and let the image settle into a part of my memory that I know I'll return to on lonely nights.
"What are you doing?" she asks.
"Looking at you."
A flush climbs her throat. She starts to cross her arms over her chest but I catch them gently. Hold them at her sides.
"Don't hide," I say.
She swallows. Nods.
“Part your legs for me, Printsessa.”
She slowly does as I ask. I take my time looking at her. The lamplight traces the contour of her collarbone, the soft curve of her breasts, the dip of her waist. She's slight. Delicate in a way that makes me conscious of my own hands, how large they are against her skin. But she isn't fragile. Nothing about the woman who told me stop deciding for me is fragile.
I lower myself to my knees.
Her eyes go wide. "Iosif—"
"Shhh."
She goes quiet.
I put my hands on her knees and press them further apart. She tenses, then makes herself relax, and I track the effort of it. I track everything. The way her breathing changes. The way her fingers curl against the edge of the table. The way she bites her lip when my hands slide up the inside of her thighs.
I think about this morning. About Yury saying the answer is right in front of you. I think about how right he was and how wrong I was to fight it, and I press my mouth to the inside of her knee.
She whimpers.
