I reach down between us and work my jeans open. She helps — impatient even now, even when she asked for slow — and together we get them off without too much graceless struggling. When there's nothing left between us, she goes still beneath me, and I feel the weight of the moment settle over both of us like a held breath.
Her eyes are open. Watching. Waiting. Not hiding.
I've never seen her this unguarded, and the sight of it — Molly Rogers, stripped of every barricade, every sarcastic deflection, every wall she's ever built — hits me harder than any fist ever could. I feel something crack inside my chest, some last defense I didn't know was there.
“I love you,” I murmur.
“I love you, too,” she says, open, shaking.
Neither of us moves.
Then I lower myself, bringing my lips to the junction of her thigh. I want to taste her, please her, worship her before I fuck her.
My mouth finds her, and the sound she makes — a raw, startled gasp that breaks into something desperate — is the most honest thing I've ever heard from her. Her fingers thread into my hair, grip tight, and I feel the war in her body: the instinctto close, to guard, to pull away, fighting against the part of her that's already falling open.
I go slow. The way she asked. I use my tongue like I'm learning her, mapping the terrain of what makes her breath hitch, what makes her hips roll, what makes her fingers tighten until it stings. She tastes like salt and heat and something underneath that's purely Molly — fierce, alive, impossible to forget.
"Fuck," she breathes, and the word is torn from somewhere deep, somewhere she rarely lets anyone hear. Her thighs tremble against my jaw. I press my palm flat against her stomach, feeling the muscles jump beneath my hand, and I keep going — steady, deliberate, relentless in a way that isn't about power but about proving something I can't say with words.
That she's worth the patience. That someone can hold still for her without wanting something in return.
Except I do want something. I want everything. And the guilt of that wanting sits like a stone in my chest even as my tongue traces circles that make her spine arch off the mattress.
Her hips lift into me, and I slide my hands beneath her, cradling her, pulling her closer. She makes a sound that's half laugh, half sob — the noise that comes out when you've been holding your breath for years and someone finally tells you it's okay to exhale. I press deeper, and her whole body goes taut, a bowstring drawn to the breaking point.
"Don't stop," she says, and it's not a command. It's a confession. "Please don't — "
I don't stop.
I feel the moment she lets go. It rolls through her like a wave — her thighs clamping hard against my ears, her back bowing, her fingers pulling my hair so hard my eyes water. The sound she makes is low and guttural and beautiful, and it goes on for longer than she expects, because I don't ease up, I keep her there,riding it out, giving her every second of it until she's gasping and pushing at my shoulders.
"Come here," she pants, voice wrecked. "Get up here. Now."
I climb up the length of her body, kissing as I go — her hip, her navel, the scar, the soft underside of her breast, her collarbone. By the time I reach her mouth, she's already pulling me down, kissing me with the taste of herself still on my lips and not caring, not flinching. Her legs wrap around me, heels pressing into the backs of my thighs, and the heat of her against me is unbearable.
I position myself and pause, forehead to forehead, our breathing ragged and mingled. She's looking up at me with those green eyes that hold nothing back — not the fear, not the want, not the terrifying, naked trust that I know I haven't earned.
"Hey," she whispers, and her hand comes up to trace the line of my brow, my cheekbone, the corner of my mouth. Like she's memorizing me. Like she's afraid I'll disappear.
"Hey," I say back, and my voice is barely there.
I press into her — slowly, the way she asked — and the world narrows to a single point of contact, a single breath, a single sound that comes from both of us at once. She's warm and tight, and her eyes don't close. She watches me the whole time, jaw clenched, lips parted, and I watch her back because I owe her that. I owe her the honesty of not looking away.
Her hand finds the back of my neck and holds on.
I move slowly. Each stroke is deliberate, measured, like I'm trying to say something my mouth can't form. Her breath hitches on the first one, steadies on the second, and by the third she's meeting me — not rushing, not fighting, just matching. Finding the rhythm between us as if it was always there, waiting.
"There," she breathes. "Like that."
I keep it there. Keep it exactly there. My arms are trembling from the effort of holding back, from the weight of wanting togive her everything at once when she asked for it piece by piece. The headboard doesn't move. The bed barely shifts. It's just us — skin on skin, breath on breath, her fingers pressing five small bruises into the back of my neck that I'll carry like medals.
She makes a sound — quiet, surprised, like she didn't expect it to feel like this. Like she expected rough and got something she doesn't have a name for. Her eyes go glassy, and for a horrible, beautiful second I think she might cry.
She doesn't.
Instead, she pulls me down and kisses me, slow and open, her tongue tracing mine like she's trying to learn the shape of every lie and truth living in my mouth. I kiss her back and pour everything into it — the guilt, the love, the terror, the impossible math of wanting two people safe in a world that only lets you save one.
My hips roll into hers, and she gasps into my mouth. Her legs tighten around me, heels digging into the small of my back, and I feel her body open up to me in a way that has nothing to do with anatomy and everything to do with surrender. Not the weak kind. The brave kind. The kind that saysI'm choosing this even though it could destroy me.
