"You don't have to do that," he starts.
"I know I don't have to." I'm already working his belt. "That's the point. I want to." I look up at him. "Is that okay?"
His throat moves. "Yes." His voice has gone rough. "Yes, that's, yes."
He's let me lead before. He's good at following instruction, good at checking in, good at making sure I have what I need. But this is different. This is me asking nothing of him except to receive. I watch his face as I free him, watch the careful control he always carries flicker and strain.
He's already hard. Thick and heavy in my hand when I wrap my fingers around him. I've had him inside me a dozen times now and I still feel a pull low in my stomach just looking at him. Long, flushed dark at the tip, a bead of moisture already gathering there. I run my thumb through it and he makes a sound like I've knocked the air out of him.
"You've never?" I start.
"No." One word. Clipped tight.
"Tell me if you want me to stop."
"I won't."
I chuckle.
I start slow. I press a kiss to the inside of his thigh and feel the muscle jump beneath my mouth. Then higher, his hip, the soft skin below his navel. Building toward him without touching him,and he's breathing hard already, hands white-knuckled on the mattress edge.
When I finally wrap my lips around the head of his cock he makes a sound I've never heard from him. Something stripped raw and helpless. I take him deeper.
He tastes clean and warm, faintly salt, and I take my time learning him the way he's learned me— unhurried, thorough, paying attention to every catch of breath. I work my hand around the base of him and use my mouth on the rest, tongue tracing the ridge, finding the spots that make his jaw clench. I hollow my cheeks and suck and he groans, low and involuntary, like he couldn't hold it back.
That's the thing about Finn and control. He has so much of it, all the time, over everything. Watching it slip is devastating in the best possible way.
"Kate." My name, jagged at the edges.
I hum against him in answer and his hips jerk forward like a reflex, like his body is operating without permission. He swears under his breath and I feel the effort it's costing him to hold still. Every muscle in his thighs is rigid under my hands.
I pull back just enough to speak. "You can move," I tell him. "I've got you."
The silence stretches for a beat while he processes that. Then his hand comes up and settles into my hair. Not pushing. Not guiding. Just holding, like he needs something to anchor him.
I take him deep.
"Fuck," The word splits open. His grip tightens in my hair and he rocks forward, just barely, just enough, like the control finally cost more than he had left. I take everything he gives. I keep my palms flat on his thighs and feel them shaking.
I work him with my hand and my mouth together, finding the rhythm that makes his breathing go ragged, that makes him say my name again. I look up at him and find him already lookingat me, his dark eyes blown wide and completely unguarded, and that eye contact breaks something loose in both of us. I take him deeper still, and his whole body shudders.
He comes apart so quietly. That's the thing about Finn, even undone, he's precise. Just his breath fracturing, my name once more, and then his body drawn bowstring-tight for one suspended moment before he comes, his hand curled in my hair, shuddering through it in long slow waves while I stay with him and take everything. I swallow every drop, hot and salty.
I stay with him until it passes.
When I look up, he's staring at me like I've just presented him with a finding he doesn't have a category for.
"Come here," he says, and his voice is wrecked.
I climb up beside him and he pulls me close, my head against his chest, and holds on with the particular grip that means he's feeling something too large to say. His heart is going fast under my ear.
"Finn."
"Give me a moment."
I give him the moment. Outside, the settlement settles into its nighttime sounds. In here it's just his breathing slowing and his arms around me and the specific warmth of someone who's just let themselves be completely vulnerable with you for the first time.
He tilts my chin up and kisses me, deep and slow and grateful, and then rolls me beneath him, and spends the next hour making absolutely sure I'm in no doubt about how he feels about what just happened.
