I pull back and drive in again. She gasps. I find the angle that made her lose sentences last time and I use it. Deliberately. Repeatedly. She stops trying to be quiet.
She says my name. Andmore.Andplease.I give her more. I give herplease.I keep the pace where I want it, not where she's pulling me. My hands on her hips, holding the rhythm steady while she tries to break it.
"Not yet," I say.
"Declan—"
"Not yet."
She makes a sound that is pure frustration and pulls my hair harder and I nearly lose everything in one go. Not the plan. So I do what works: slow all the way down. Long. Deep. Deliberate.
She makes a different sound. This one almost hurt.
"You're doing that on purpose."
"Yes."
"I hate you."
"No you don't."
She laughs. One short breathless sound, surprised out of her, and I feel it move through her body into mine and I go completely still.
That laugh. In the middle of this, while I'm buried inside her. I was not prepared for it. I have no answer for it. For one full second I am not a man who knows what he's doing. I'm just a man who is finished.
I press my forehead to hers. Breathing.
"Declan—"
"I know." I pull back and drive into her hard. "Hold on."
She stops laughing.
Her hands are back in my hair. The silver at my temples, both hands, gripping. I watch her face when it changes. The moment the last of her composure goes. She has been managing herself this entire time, and then she can't anymore. I see the exact second it happens.
She says my name. Not Declan-in-a-sentence. Just my name. One syllable. Stripped of everything.
My rhythm breaks.
Involuntary. She's taken me apart and she knows it. I see her know it, the flash of satisfaction on her wrecked face. She pulls me deeper and arches up and that's it. That's all of it. Nothing left.
I bury myself to the hilt and hold there and she comes. Clenching hard around me. Pulsing. Her whole body pulling tight. I feel every second of it, feel her pulling me with her, and I go.
Not quietly. Not controlled. My face pressed to her throat. Both hands gripping her hips. The sound I make is not planned. Low. Rough. Wrenched out of somewhere that has nothing to do with composure. Everything I've been holding since I pulled out of my driveway releases at once.
Her hands are still in my hair.
I stay there. Breathing. Not moving yet. Her body still trembling faintly around mine.
Her breathing slowing. My hand on her stomach, rising and falling with it.
Ronan's face again. The kitchen table. Thirty years. I let it sit. I don't move.
"You stayed for that," she says eventually.
"I stayed."
She is quiet. Outside, the street. The lamp on her nightstand. Her freckles in the light.
