"Everything. The dead. The dying. The screaming. All of it. Just for one night."
I understand that need better than I can express. So I give her what she's asking for.
My mouth traces a path down her body, down her throat, collarbone, the curve of her breast. I take my time with her nipples, sucking and biting until she's writhing beneath me, until the only sounds she makes are desperate and wordless.
"More," she demands.
I give her more. My fingers work her pussy while my tongue circles her clit, tasting her, learning what makes her gasp and moan and curse my name. She's soaked, clenching around my fingers as I fuck her with them.
"Dutch, please."
"Please what? Tell me."
"I need your cock. Now. Stop teasing and fuck me."
I surge up her body and thrust inside her and we both go still. Hot and tight and perfect and I have to breathe through it for a second or this is going to be embarrassingly short. Then she rolls her hips and thinking becomes impossible.
We fuck like it's the end of the world. Because it might be. She meets every thrust, nails raking down my back hard enough to sting, legs locked around me pulling me deeper, and I give her everything I've got. The headboard hits the wall. She stops trying to muffle anything. I can feel every time I hit the right angle by the way she gasps and tightens around me, so I find it and stay there, grinding into her until she's shaking.
"That's it," I growl against her throat. "Take what you need. Use me."
"I'm going to come!"
"Come for me. Let go."
She shatters. Clenches around me so hard my vision blurs, her whole body arching off the bed, my name torn out of her throat. Her pussy grips me in waves and she shakes through every one of them, hands fisting in the sheets, thighs trembling against my hips.
I thrust through it twice more and then pull out and get my fist around my cock and stroke once, twice, and I'm gone. Come spills across her stomach in hard pulses, each one dragging up from the base of my spine, hips bucking forward with the force of it. A sound grinds out of my chest I've got no control over. It goes on longer than I expect. Takes more out of me than I expect.
She watches the whole time. Hands on my arms, fingers pressing in, feeling me shake through it. Doesn't look away once.
That nearly wrecks me more than the rest of it.
After, she drags her fingers through the mess on her skin without a word. Just looks at me. Something satisfied and dark in her eyes.
"Smart," she says.
"One of us has to be."
Her mouth moves. Almost a smile.
We lie tangled together in the wreckage of her sheets. I should leave in the morning. That was the deal.
Instead, I stay.
five
Avery
He'sstilltherewhenI wake up.
I didn't tell him to stay. Didn't tell him to go either, which amounts to the same thing. He's on his back with one arm behind his head, already awake, watching the ceiling like it owes him something. The gray light of early morning catches the lines of his face. The scar along his jaw. The tattoos on his shoulder that I traced last night without asking what they meant.
I should say something practical. I'm very good at practical.
"The council meets at seven," I say.
"I know."
