"Hold on," he says quietly.
I grip his shoulder with one hand as he finds me with his mouth and I stop thinking.
His mouth is devastation. He swirls and sucks completely without mercy. He takes his time learning what makes my breath hitch, and once he learns it he does it again, and again, and then he eases back just enough that I make a sound that is embarrassing and reaching and I don't care. My fingers curl into his hair. He lets me hold him there. He goes back to it like he has nowhere else to be, like this is the only thing, like he has decided I am going to fall apart under his hands and he is simply waiting for me to agree.
He edges me close and pulls back.
Edges me close and pulls back.
I let out a desperate whimper.
His name falling from my lips. A question and an answer and a desperate, undignified plea all at once.
He gives me what I'm asking for.
I come apart with my hand pressed over my mouth and his name caught behind my teeth, thighs shaking against his shoulders, fingers twisting in his wet hair. He holds me through it, one hand flat on my hip like an anchor, until the last of it rolls through me and I'm left barely standing against the tile.
He rises slowly, watching me. I am completely wrecked. Flushed and unsteady, and he takes that in with the same unnerving steadiness he takes in everything, except his chest is rising and falling harder than usual.
"I want more," I tell him. "I want you."
"All you ever have to do is ask."
He reaches past me and turns off the shower.
Then his hands find the backs of my thighs and he lifts me, and I'm not prepared—I grab his shoulders on instinct, legs wrapping around his waist, and he presses me back against the tile and the cool ceramic against my shoulders is a shock and then he is there, pressing into me slowly, giving me every inch to feel.
I gasp.
He stills.
His forehead drops to mine. Both of us breathing heavily, the shower dripping quiet around us, the world contracted down to this — the tile, his skin, the stretch and fullness of him, wet skin on wet skin.
"Are you okay?" he murmurs.
"I’m so far past okay," I breathe.
He starts to move.
Deep and slow. The same pace as everything else, like he has decided the only way this happens is all the way or not at all. His hand finds the space between our bodies, thumb circling slow, and I feel it everywhere, my body coating him in my arousal as he advances inside of me, deeper and deeper.
I muffle out words I barely recognize. A plea or praise, I’m not sure which.
"I've got you." His voice is low and rough at the edges now. His perfectly placed control finally fraying. I feel it in his grip, the way his fingers press harder into my thigh. "Come for me, Nattie."
I do.
The second time is slower, deeper, and pulls something out of me I didn't know was there. A sob or a sigh or something between them rips from my throat, hands gripping his shoulders, face pressed to his neck. He follows me, staying deep and still as he finishes, a rough exhale against my hair, his whole body going momentarily undone.
For a moment, neither of us moves.
I can feel his heartbeat.
Eventually he lowers my feet back to the floor with the same careful attention he has given everything else tonight, making sure I'm steady before he lets go. I'm not entirely sure I am. He checks my face anyway, like he can read it.
He reaches into the shower and turns the water back on. He rinses us both off without ceremony, practical and easy, like it's just washing now. And something about the ordinariness of it after all of that makes me laugh… helpless and a little shaky, surprises me by the sound of it.
He looks at me. His mouth curves.
