"Please—" Her hips bucked against my arm. "Milo, please, I can't?—"
"You can."
I slid two fingers inside her. Curled them. Found the spot that made her spine arch like a bow, and I stroked it while my mouth worked her clit in slow, devastating circles.
The orgasm tore through her in waves, her pussy clenching around my fingers, her voice cracking on my name, calling for me in the darkness behind her eyes like she was lost and I was the only thing that could find her.
I held her through it. Worked her through every aftershock. Kissed the inside of her thigh while her body came down, her legs shaking, her breathing ragged.
Then I crawled up her body and she reached for me, her hands fumbling with my belt, my zipper. I let her undress me this time. Let her pull my shirt over my head and run her palms across my chest, her fingers tracing the pattern of hair and muscle.
I settled between her legs, the head of my cock pressing against her entrance, slick with how wet she was, and, oh god, ever so slowly, I pushed inside. One inch. Then two. Watching her face to see every expression. Needing to commit to memory the way her lips parted and her brow creased and her chin tilted up like she was reaching for something only I could give her.
When I was all the way inside her, I stopped.
Held still.
And tried to breathe.
Her walls fluttered around me, tight and hot, adjusting to the stretch. Her hands found my face, cupping my jaw, her thumbs tracing my cheekbones.
"I can feel your heartbeat," she whispered. "Inside me."
My throat closed around a moan.
Pressing my forehead to hers, I started to move.
Slow. Deep. Every stroke deliberate, pulling almost all the way out before sinking back in to the hilt. The kind of pace that let her feel everything. The ridge of my cock dragging against her walls, the weight of me pressing her into the mattress, the way my breathing fell apart a little more with each thrust.
This wasn't fucking. Every other time had been fucking. Desperate, brutal, possessive. Just two bodies ripping into each other while the world burned.
No, this was something else. This was a man trying to pour everything he'd never said into the body of the woman he loved because words weren't big enough and time wasn't long enough and the only language he'd ever been fluent in was touch.
"Look at me," I said. Which was stupid and impossible and I didn't care.
She tilted her face up. Her blind eyes found mine—not seeing, but finding nonetheless—and the expression on her face split me open.
It was trust. Total, absolute trust. The face of a woman who had handed her safety to a monster and believed he'd keep her whole.
I thrust deeper. She gasped, her nails biting into my shoulders.
"Right there," she breathed. "God, right there?—"
I held the angle. Drove into her with a rhythm that made the bed frame creak against the wall, slow and steady, a cadence that felt like a heartbeat. Her legs climbed higher around my waist. Her heels dug into my lower back, pulling me closer, deeper.
"You're mine," I said. Not a growl. Not a command. Just the truth, spoken against her mouth while I moved inside her.
"Yes."
"Say it."
"I'm yours." Her voice was breaking. Not from the sex, but from whatever she was feeling underneath it. "I'm yours, Milo."
My vision blurred. I blinked hard and kept moving.
I dropped my mouth to her ear. "You're the only real thing I've ever had."
Her breath hitched and a sound caught in her throat—half gasp, half sob—and then her arms were around my neck, pulling me down, pulling me closer, like she was trying to fold me into herself.
