She rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know. I might be slow, but even I get it after twelve times."
"You are anything but slow, and it was thirteen. I just needed to reiterate so you won't forget."
Of course he did.
She positioned the pillow, rested her splinted hand on it, and then shifted on the bed until she was oriented in the reverse direction, her knees on either side of his chest, her left hand braced on the mattress beside his hip.
He might have wanted to take turns, but she was adamant about showing him the wonders of a sixty-nine.
"This is the part where you tell me if anything hurts," she said.
He chuckled. "I don't think pain is going to be the issue."
She lowered her head, and he made a sound that was worth every moment of waiting, every morning of frustrated showers, every night of careful restraint. It was a sound of surrender from a man who didn't know the meaning of surrender, and it was beautiful.
24
DIMITRI
The world narrowed to sensation.
Dimitri had spent his entire life inside his own head. Even as a child, that was where he'd lived, where he'd worked, where he'd retreated when the world pressed on him. His mind was his sanctuary and his weapon, the thing that had kept him going through the gulag, through the island, through every impossible situation that had tried to break him but failed because he could always think his way to the next step.
Right now, though, his analytical mind was nowhere to be found, and he had never been more grateful for a system malfunction.
Mattie's mouth was warm and unhurried, and the confidence with which she moved told him that either she was a natural or that whatever experience she claimed to lack in other areas, this was not one of them. She knew what she was doing, and what she was doing was dismantling his defenses piece by piece, one languid stroke at a time.
He put his hands on her hips, which were positioned on either side of his head in the inverted arrangement that he hadcalculated as optimal for her hand's safety but could not have calculated for its effect on his ability to form coherent thoughts. The theoretical understanding of the sixty-nine position and the reality of it were separated by a chasm so vast that all his meticulous planning now seemed laughably inadequate.
She was everywhere. The scent of her, intensified by his enhanced senses, was overwhelming. The weight of her, distributed across his chest and shoulders. The silk of her inner thighs against his jaw, and above him, the evidence that she wanted this as much as he did.
He had promised reciprocity, and Dimitri kept his promises.
He pulled her hips down and put his mouth on her. The sound she made around him nearly pushed him over the edge, nearly ended everything right there.
The instantaneous feedback loop was devastatingly effective.
Every movement of his tongue produced a response from her that he felt rather than heard, a vibration, a shift in pressure, a catch in her rhythm that cascaded back through him and amplified everything. It was like a chemical reaction with a positive feedback mechanism, each component accelerating the other, building toward a threshold that he could feel was fast approaching.
He had never experienced anything like this, and he didn't mean the pleasure, although it was extraordinary. It was the architecture of the act itself that was unlike anything in his experience. There was no giver and no receiver. No active party and no passive one. The roles were simultaneous and interchangeable, each person both the source and the subject of pleasure, and the result was an intimacy so complete that itdissolved the boundary between self and other in a way that was almost like the Eight's mind merge.
Two consciousnesses connecting through physical sensation, each one's experience shaped and amplified by the other's.
Now he understood why he had always shied away from the act with his previous lovers. Some part of him had always known that this should be reserved for his one and only. Giving and receiving simultaneously meant being vulnerable and powerful at the same time, and that paradox required a partner he could trust with both.
Mattie was that partner. The only one. The first and the last.
She shifted above him, adjusting her angle, and the change in position produced an effect that made his hips buck involuntarily. She responded by pressing down more firmly, her left hand bracing against the mattress beside his hip, and through the haze of sensation, a fragment of his analytical mind noted that her right hand was still on the pillow.
She was keeping her promise.
He refocused his attention, which required an effort of will that bordered on heroic. His tongue found the rhythm that had made her come apart earlier, and he felt the effect immediately. Her pace faltered, her thighs tightened against his jaw, and a muffled sound escaped her that he cataloged with satisfaction.
Coordination was a challenge.
His body wanted to surrender to what she was doing, to close his eyes and let the sensation carry him. It was a struggle to maintain the reciprocal arrangement that was the entire point ofthis exercise. He had to give and receive at the same time, and that demanded attention.
It was complex, but it was also an infinitely more rewarding multitasking problem than any he had ever attempted.
