I keep it there. Keep it exactly there. My arms tremble from the effort of holding back, from the weight of wanting to give 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 a trophy.
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 reaches up and grabs me by the back of the neck, pulling my lips to hers. Urgent, desperate, she kisses me, filling my mouth with the taste of her — desperate and loving and everything I don't deserve. Everything I’m going to lose.
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 in a way that has nothing to do withanatomy and everything to do with surrender. Everything I don’t deserve.
"Evan." My name in her mouth sounds different now. Wanted. Loved. At home.
"I'm here," I say, and I mean it more than I've ever meant anything. I wish I could say these words forever. Wish they didn’t have a timer. Wish they weren’t a lie.
She pulls me deeper, and I go willingly, burying my face in the curve of her neck where her pulse hammers against my lips. The rhythm we've found is something I didn't know existed — unhurried, devastating, each movement a conversation neither of us has the courage to have out loud.
I feel her building again beneath me. It's in the way her breathing changes, becomes shorter, sharper, the pauses between inhales growing longer, like she's trying to hold on to something slippery. Her body tightens around me in increments, muscles clenching and releasing, and I adjust — just barely, angling my hips the way she responded to before — and she rewards me with a whisper of a moan, swallowed before it fully forms.
I slow down even more, which shouldn't be possible, and she makes a frustrated noise against my shoulder. "Evan, I swear to God."
"I've got you," I say again, and this time she doesn't tell me not to say things like that. She just digs her nails into my back and holds on.
I feel her crest. It's different from before, this time; it’s quieter, deeper, rolling through her like an earthquake that starts miles underground. Her whole body locks against mine, spine arching, breath seizing. Then she breaks apart in my arms with her mouth open against my neck, soundless, shaking so hard I have to hold her through it. I press my lips to her temple and keep moving, gentle now, carrying her through until thetremors ease and she goes boneless beneath me, chest heaving, eyes shut.
"Hey," I whisper. “I’m here.”
Her eyes open. They're wet. Not crying — just full.
"You’re a real bastard, you know that?" she says, but her voice is ruined, all the sharp edges sanded down to something raw and tender.
I smile against her cheek. "Yeah, I know."
"Good." Her hand finds the side of my face, thumb brushing my cheekbone. "Now fuck me like you mean it.”
Something inside me snaps — not violently, but completely. I bury my face in her hair and let go, let my body take over, let the rhythm build from that aching slowness into something urgent and honest and raw. Something I want and need. Something that knows that this may be one of the last times I’m with Molly, and that I want her with an urgency that has nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with the fact that I'm already grieving her. She meets me thrust for thrust, her hips rising to mine, her fingers clawing at my shoulders.
I feel everything. The heat of her skin against mine. The dig of her heels in my lower back. The way her breath breaks apart against my ear in ragged little pieces. The pressure builds at the base of my spine like a fist closing, and I know I'm close, know I'm right there at the edge where thought dissolves.
"Molly," I say her name as if it's the only word I know. The only word that matters.
"I'm here," she says, and her voice cracks on it.
I come apart inside her with a sound wrenched from my chest like a confession. My body locks, every muscle seizing, and for three or four heartbeats the world goes white and silent and still. There's nothing — no Midnight, no June, no timer, no lies. Just her. Just the heat of her wrapped around me and the impossible softness of her hand on the back of my neck.
I collapse against her, and she takes my weight without complaint, her arms wrapping around my back, her cheek pressed to my temple. We lie there, breathing together, our heartbeats slowly untangling from the frenzy into something that resembles calm.
Neither of us speaks. For a long time, there's just the sound of breathing and the distant hum of traffic through the walls. I don't move, and she doesn't push me off. I press my lips to the hollow of her throat. Her pulse is slowing beneath my mouth, settling from a sprint into a walk.
"Can I stay?" she whispers.
"Stay," I say. “Please.”
She shifts, draping herself across my chest, cheek on my shoulder, breathing soft, content, open. Her fingers trace lazy shapes on my skin as if she’s claiming something without admitting it.
When her eyes meet mine, I see everything she's been trying not to show me, and feel reflected every one of the crimes I'm committing against her.
“Your bar looked insane today,” I say lightly, trying to pull us back to the surface.
Molly makes a sound that’s half a groan, half a laugh. “Don’t talk about work.”
