He notices the hesitation. I can tell by the way his grip tightens, the way he pulls me flush against him like proximity is an argument he's already won.
We don't talk about it.
We move to the bed instead, and I let myself stop thinking.
He's good at this. I don't know why that still catches me off guard every time. He takes his time in a way that feels almost unfair, like he has all night, like he already knows exactly where to put his hands and is just waiting to see if I'll ask for more. His mouth finds my throat, and my eyes close. And I stop caring about anything except the specific warmth of him and the way he seems to know what I want before I do.
I pull him closer.
His mouth drags down my throat, my collarbone, lower, and I arch into him. I can't help it; my body has completely stopped consulting my brain about these things. He takes his time there, too, until I'm breathing too fast, my fingers tight in his hair, and I'm saying his name in a way that doesn't sound like me.
"Beck." It comes out broken at the edges.
He looks up at me, and the eye contact alone does something to my chest that I'm not ready to acknowledge. I reach for him, and he comes back up my body, his weight settling over me, and I pull him down because the distance between us feels unbearable.
When he finally pushes inside me, my breath cuts off completely. I press my face into his neck and hold on.
He's slow about it. Achingly, deliberately slow — like he wants me to feel every inch, like he's in absolutely no rush, even though my nails are already digging into his back and my hips are already rolling up trying to take more of him. He pulls back and does it again, just as slowly, and I make a sound I don't entirely recognize as mine.
It’s slow enough to make me lose my mind. Deep and unhurried and devastatingly precise, like he's taking me apart one careful inch at a time and enjoying every second of watching it happen. I roll my hips, trying to rush him, and he makes a low sound against my ear that I feel in my spine.
I wrap my legs around him and pull him deeper, and his breath stutters against my throat, and I feel a rush of something almost like power — that I can do that to him, that he's not as composed as he pretends to be, that underneath all that careful control, he wants this just as badly as I do.
I moan, “Please.”
"Please, what?" His voice is low against my ear, rough at the edges in a way that tells me the control is costing him something.
"More," I breathe. "Stop being so—" Another slow stroke and my thoughts scatter. "Stop."
He doesn't stop. He does the same thing again, and I feel it everywhere — in my thighs, my stomach, the base of my spine —this unbearable, building tension that he's winding tighter and tighter with every measured movement.
His mouth finds my jaw, my throat, the soft skin below my ear. "I've got you," he murmurs.
I believe him. Right now, in this moment, I believe every single thing about him without question, which should probably terrify me.
His hand slides between our bodies and finds where I need him most, and I gasp as my whole body jolts. He keeps moving inside me, deep and slow, while his fingers work a completely different rhythm, and the combination is devastating. I can feel myself coming apart at the seams, everything tightening low in my stomach, my thighs trembling on either side of him.
"Right there," I manage. "Don't stop. Don't—"
He doesn't.
He picks up the pace, finally, and the relief of it pulls a moan out of me that I don't bother swallowing. His hips meet mine with a force that makes the headboard shift, and I rake my nails down his back and feel him shudder against me, his rhythm stuttering for just a second before he finds it again.
I orgasm with my face pressed to his shoulder and his name on my lips, my whole body clenching around him, wave after wave of it rolling through me. At the same time, he keeps moving,drawing it out, not letting me come down until I'm shaking and oversensitive and clinging to him like he's the only solid thing in the room.
He follows me seconds later — his forehead dropping to mine, a low groan against my mouth, his hips stuttering deep, and his whole body going taut before he lets go. I feel it. I feel all of it. And something about that — the intimacy of it, the specific vulnerability of that moment — does more damage to me than any of the rest of it.
We stay like that for a moment. Both of us are breathing hard. His weight on me, which I don't mind. His face is on my neck.
Then he rolls to the side and pulls me with him, and his hand finds my hair, and his breathing starts to slow.
Mine doesn't.
This is the part I don't know how to manage — the after. When the warmth of him is still everywhere, and my brain slowly comes back and starts asking questions I don't want to answer.
Like, why does he never stay past a certain hour unless he accidentally falls asleep?
Like why he'll pull me closer the moment I seem uncertain, but goes quiet every time I try to say something that matters.
