Air saws in and out of my lungs. My eyes water. Not from regret. Not even exactly from pain. From the shock of it. From how much I can feel. The stretch, the sting, the unbearable fullness of just that little bit.
“Breathe,” he murmurs.
I try.
He kisses the corner of my mouth. My cheek. Waits while I drag in one breath and then another.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, though I’m not sure whether I’m telling him or myself.
The tendons in his neck go taught. “Nat?—”
“I want this.” My voice wobbles. “Please.”
His eyes squeeze shut. When they open, the brown is almost gone, swallowed by his pupils.
He pushes in a little farther.
The burn flashes sharper this time and I make a helpless sound into his shoulder, but I don’t tell him to stop. One of his hands grips the sheets beside my head. The other stays on my hip, steady and warm, like he’s holding me together through it.
He stops again.
We stay like that for a few seconds that feel much longer. My body clenched around him. My breath unsteady. His nose brushes mine.
Then his hand slides between us. His thumb finds my clit and my whole body jolts around him. He doesn’t thrust. Doesn’t move his hips at all. Just slow, steady circles while I’m pinned there, full of him, until the sting starts to blur into something else.
The ache changes. Little by little, the first sharp edge eases, leaving behind a heavy, pulsing fullness.
“There you go,” he says, so quietly I barely hear it.
I let out a shaky breath that almost turns into a laugh. “Don’t be smug.”
The corner of his mouth twitches.
Then he moves again, careful and slow, and when he finally settles fully inside me, I go still from the sheer overwhelming reality of it.
He’s everywhere.
Pressure crowds low in my belly, strange and intimate and almost too much. I cling to him and breathe against his neck and let myself feel it—the ache, the heat, the closeness of his body covering mine.
He holds still. Every muscle in him locked tight, waiting.
“Don’t move yet,” I whisper.
He lets out a breath that sounds half wrecked, half relieved. “Jesus Christ.”
I would smile if I had enough control over my face to manage it.
He waits.
That matters too. More than I know how to say.
When the pressure starts to soften into something heavier and warmer, I shift under him, just enough to test what happens. The friction sends a pulse through me—sharp, pooling heat, almost startling in how good it is after the ache.
My breath catches.
His eyes open and lock on mine. “Nat?”
I do it again, a tiny movement of my hips.
