I laid her back on the bed.
She watched me: clear, direct, not pretending she was doing something else. I stood at the foot of the bed and took her in and she let me, and I took my time with it. She'd spent two days being composed and professional and specifically not letting me see anything she didn't authorize. She was letting me see all of it now, and I wasn't going to be careless with that.
"You're worth looking at," I said.
She made a motion with her hand—impatient, a little wrecked. "Dutch."
"I know," I said. "Give me a minute."
I got the wedges off. The skirt. Her underwear. Then she was laid out in my lamplight and I stayed there for that minute, just because I could, and she held eye contact the whole time with the expression she got when she'd decided to stop managing something and let it be what it was.
I went to her.
I put my hands under her hips and my mouth on her pussy and I listened to what she did. The whole weekend I'd been watching her face when she didn't know it—at the dinner table, at the ceremony meadow, at the cocktail hour with her hand stalled on the lens mount—and now none of it was controlled. Every sound was real. I found the right place with my tongue and settled in and took it slow, because she was trying to move her hips and I had her and I wasn't in a hurry.
"Dutch." A breath. "You're very—I can't—"
"You don't have to," I said against her. "Stay with me."
She made a sound that had absolutely no professional register in it, and I kept going. I read her the way you read a horse—not by doing the same thing harder but by adjusting until you find what works and then committing to it. Her hand fisted in the sheet. Her thighs were tight against my shoulders and I held her through it. “Stay with me,” I said. Her hips pushed against my hold. I kept going—steady, paying attention, asking nothing from her except what she was already giving—and then the sound she was making changed, went higher and open, and she said my name like a question and I said yeah against her and kept going and then she came apart under my hands and against my mouth, hips lifting against my hold, and I kept her through every second of it and didn't stop until she put her hand on my head and pulled me up.
I moved alongside her. Her chest was heaving. She was staring at the ceiling.
"Dutch," she said, after a full count.
"I'm here."
She turned her head and looked at me. The dimples had arrived. I hadn’t made my peace with those yet.
"Your turn," she said.
"You don't have—"
"I know I don't have to." She sat up with the expression of someone who was not opening this to debate. "I want to."
I was in no position to argue with that. I got out of the rest of my clothes while she watched, and she made a small sound when she got a full view of me—a soft, involuntary sound that hit me harder than it had any right to—and then she ran her hand down my stomach and wrapped it around my cock, and everything I’d held in check all evening went at once.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," I managed.
She stroked her thumb over the head of my cock and I put my hand over hers briefly, not to stop her, just to have a point of contact, because my system was reconsidering its options at a rate I found interesting.
She leaned in and took me into her mouth.
My hand went to her hair.
I put my hand on her shoulder when I was close.
"Jules." Rough. "Come here."
She came up and I pulled her against me and kissed her, and then I laid her back and settled between her and pushed forward slow, watching her face.
She exhaled. Her hands went to my hips. I went slow, feeling her take me, and she adjusted and then pulled me in closer and I understood that adjusting was done.
"Good?" I said.
"Very good," she said. "Keep going."
