Alexandra smiled. The smile was slow and deliberate and it changed her face the way sunrise changed a landscape: gradually, then all at once. She walked toward the bed, and the towel shifted with each step, and Erin watched the movement of her body beneath the white cotton and the warmth that had been building in her chest all day, the steady, quiet warmth of relief and gratitude and love, began to spread lower, becoming something hotter and more specific.
"Do you remember the first time?" Alexandra said. She stopped at the edge of the bed. One hand held the towel. The other rested on the mattress beside Erin's hip, and Erin could see the pulse beating in her wrist, quick and visible beneath the pale skin.
“On the window seat.” Erin knew exactly what she was talking about.
“I’d dragged you round Soho in disguise with no back up. And flirted with you all night.”
“Then I had to punch that homophobic guy.”
“Then we ran away and kissed in that doorway.”
“Then you took me home and wouldn’t stop seducing me till I went down on you on the window seat!”
Alex laughed. The sound was warm and bright and private, a laugh that existed only in this room, between these walls, forthis audience of one. She leaned down and her hair fell forward, damp and cool against Erin's face, and her lips brushed Erin's ear. "I might have."
Then she dropped the towel.
It fell in a soft heap at her feet and she stood there in the lamplight, and Erin's breath left her body. Not because she hadn't seen Alexandra naked a thousand times, she had, in every light, in every mood, in every stage of their lives together. But because tonight the sight of her carried the weight of everything they'd survived in the last eight days. Every hour of fear, every moment of distance, every whispered promise in the dark. Alexandra's body was familiar and beloved and mapped in Erin's memory like a country she'd explored for two decades, and the sight of it now, offered freely, the towel dropped like a wall coming down, made Erin's pulse hammer against her ribs.
"Come here," Erin said. Her voice was low. Quiet. The voice she used when the wanting was too big for volume.
Alexandra climbed onto the bed. She straddled Erin's hips, her knees on either side of Erin's waist, her hands on Erin's shoulders, her body warm from the shower and smelling of the soap she'd used, the jasmine and cedar soap that had been in their bathroom since the first year of their marriage, the smell that was, for Erin, the smell of home. She looked down at Erin with those blue eyes and her hair fell around them like a curtain and the world contracted to the space between their bodies.
Erin sat up. Her hands found Alexandra's waist, the curve of her hips, the warmth radiating from her shower-flushed skin. She pulled Alexandra closer until their chests pressed together, breasts against breasts, the contact sending a jolt of heat through Erin's body that pooled low in her belly and demanded more. She kissed her. Not gently. Not carefully. She kissed her the way she'd wanted to kiss her for eight days: deeply, thoroughly, with her hand in Alexandra's hair and her tongue against Alexandra'stongue and the taste of her filling Erin's mouth like water after drought.
Alexandra made a sound against her lips. Low. Involuntary. The sound she made when she stopped thinking and started feeling, and it went through Erin like electricity, a current that ran down her spine and settled between her hips.
Erin turned them, one hand on Alexandra's waist, one on the small of her back, pivoting their bodies until Alexandra was beneath her and Erin was above, her weight braced on her forearms, her dark hair falling around Alexandra's face. She looked down at her wife in the lamplight and the vulnerability of her — the bare skin, the damp hair, the blue eyes that were wide and dark and wanting — made something savage and tender rise in Erin's chest simultaneously.
"I want to take my time with you," Erin said. "I want to remember every part of this. I want—" Her voice broke. The emotion was there, pressing up from beneath the desire, the two things braided together so tightly that she couldn't separate them. "I need you to know that I'm here. That I'm not going anywhere. That the woman who shut you out this week is not who I am."
"I know who you are." Alexandra's hand came up to Erin's face, her palm against her cheek, her fingers brushing the line of her jaw. "You're the woman who kicked down a door to find our daughter. You're the woman who carried her through the dark. You're mine."
"Yours."
Erin kissed her jaw. The sharp edge of bone beneath soft skin, the place where Alexandra's perfume lingered even after a shower. Her throat, where the pulse beat fast and visible, and Alexandra tipped her head back and the sound she made was a breath, not a word, just the involuntary exhale of a woman who had surrendered control. The hollow beneath her ear, where theskin was warm and thin and sensitive, and Alexandra's fingers tightened in Erin's hair when her lips found it.
She kissed lower. The ridge of Alexandra's collarbone, the dip at its centre where a droplet of water still clung from the shower. The swell of her breast, the soft weight of it against Erin's mouth, and she took Alexandra's nipple between her lips and sucked, her tongue working the hardened peak in slow circles. Alexandra's back arched off the mattress and her fingers twisted in Erin's hair, pulling her closer, and the sound she made was guttural and raw.
"God, Erin?—"
Erin moved to the other breast, giving it the same attention — tongue circling, teeth grazing, sucking until Alexandra was writhing beneath her, her hips seeking friction against Erin's thigh. Erin pressed her leg between Alexandra's and felt the wet heat of her against her skin, and the evidence of Alexandra's need made Erin's own arousal spike so hard she had to close her eyes and steady herself.
She kissed as she moved down Alexandra's stomach. The soft curve of her belly, the dip of her navel. Each kiss an act of presence, each touch a statement:I am here. I am not behind a wall anymore.Her bandaged hand traced the line of Alexandra's hip, the roughness of gauze against smooth skin a contrast that made Alexandra's breath catch. The crease of her hip where the skin was silky and sensitive. The inside of Alexandra's thigh, and her body jerked, a full-body shudder that made the bed shift, and the sound she made was Erin's name, broken into two syllables, the second one dissolving into breath.
"Spread your legs for me," Erin murmured against the sensitive skin. Her voice was low and commanding, the voice she'd learned over years that Alexandra responded to in this context — not the Queen giving orders but the Queen surrendering them.
Alexandra obeyed.
Erin settled between her thighs and looked up the length of her wife's body — the beautiful swell of her breasts, the flushed skin, her eyes staring down at her, dark and desperate — and lowered her mouth.
The first stroke of her tongue was slow. Reverent. She licked through the slick folds, tasting the sharp, familiar tang of Alexandra's arousal, and the moan that came from above her was so deep it vibrated through Erin's jaw. She explored with devastating patience, circling Alexandra's clit without quite giving enough pressure to push her over, building the tension in steady, maddening increments. The map she'd drawn of this body over the years, and she still loved tracing every line of it.
"Erin—" Alexandra's voice was wrecked. Her hands were fisted in the sheets, knuckles white. "Please. I need?—"
Erin gave her more. Her tongue increased its pressure, circling Alexandra's clit with tight, focused strokes, and she slid two fingers inside her. The muscles clenched around them immediately, the tight heat of her drawing Erin deeper. She curled her fingers, finding the place she knew would undo her wife completely, and stroked in time with her mouth.
Alexandra shattered. Her body arched off the bed, her thighs clamping around Erin's head, her muscles clenching rhythmically around Erin's fingers as the orgasm tore through her. The sound she made was not quite a word and not quite a scream but something between the two, the raw, unfiltered expression of a woman being taken apart by someone she trusted completely. Her nails scraped Erin's scalp, her body clenching and releasing in waves that Erin rode with her, her mouth never stopping, her fingers still stroking, extending the peak until Alexandra was gasping and shaking and the tension in her body finally broke and she went boneless beneath Erin's weight.
