"You're in a hurry," he says against my throat.
"You're not in enough of one."
He laughs, quiet and low against the hinge of my jaw, and pulls my sweater over my head with hands that don't waver. My bra follows. His gaze drops and his thumbs trace the undersides of my breasts with slow, deliberate pressure before his mouth replaces his hands, tongue circling one nipple while his thumb works the other, adjusting when my breath hitches and doing exactly that thing again. It's the first real evidence that Griff approaches this how he approaches a live device. Methodically. Thoroughly. With full commitment to locating every sensitive point before he proceeds.
My back hits the mattress and he follows me down, braced on his forearms. I hook my leg around his hip and pull, yielding ground never having been in my vocabulary, and the feeling ofhis weight settling against me is an argument for more, not less. He responds by pinning my hip with one hand, firm, holding me where he wants me, and the calm authority of that grip sends a pulse of heat low through my abdomen that has everything to do with the specific friction between a woman who controls everything and a man whose hands are steady enough to take that control apart.
I push back. He holds. The contest lasts long enough to establish terms, and then his mouth drops lower, tracing a line down my sternum, my stomach, the hollow of my hip, and his hands go to the waistband of my leggings with a patience that borders on cruelty.
"Holland."
"Bradshaw."
"Faster."
"No."
He strips the leggings and my underwear in one pull, which is efficient enough to suggest he heard me, hooks my knees over his shoulders, and settles between my thighs. He looks up at me once, face caught in the moonlight, expression focused and absent of humor, and then his mouth is on me.
The first stroke of his tongue is slow, broad, exploratory, mapping the terrain before committing to a path. My hips jerk and his hand presses flat against my stomach, holding me still while he works, and the counterpoint between his mouth and his restraining hand is the power dynamic made physical, him controlling the pace while I strain against it.
He finds the rhythm fast, working in tight, focused circles with the tip of his tongue, varying pressure in precise increments, tracing every catch in my breathing and every flex of my hips and adjusting in real time. When two fingers push inside me and curl forward, stroking in time with his mouth,the dual sensation pulls a sound from my throat that I don't authorize and can't retrieve.
My hands find his hair. My thighs clamp against the sides of his head. His flat hand on my stomach keeps me pinned while his tongue and his fingers build toward detonation, each stroke layering sensation on sensation until my nerve endings are burning and the only coherent thought left is the specific, devastating pressure of his mouth and the unhurried focus of a man who treats precision like a moral obligation.
"Right there." My voice is gone, scraped down past recognition. "Don't stop."
His tongue adds pressure. His fingers curl deeper. The orgasm detonates from the core outward, seizing every muscle in sequence, my spine bowing off the mattress, my fists twisting in his sheets, his name tearing from my throat raw and entirely too loud for a loft with concrete walls and open windows.
He stays through every pulse, easing off in degrees that match the aftershocks, and when he finally pulls back he presses his mouth to the inside of my thigh, open and warm and unhurried, and the tenderness of that gesture against the devastation of what his tongue just did is the kind of contrast that would undo me if I let it.
I don't let it. I sit up, grab his belt, and pull him down beside me. "My turn."
His breath fractures when I free him from the rest of his clothes, the length and heat of him heavy against my palm. I stroke once, slow, watching his face catalog the sensation, his jaw going tight, abdominal muscles contracting, hands settling on my shoulders and gripping without directing.
I can feel control passing between us.
I push him flat on his back and lower my mouth to him. My tongue traces the length of him first, base to tip, slow and deliberate, and his stomach muscles contract hard enough that Ican see them jump under his skin. I take the head in my mouth and his hips lift off the mattress before he catches himself, the discipline kicking in a second too late, and the lapse in control satisfies something greedy in my chest.
I take him deeper, working my tongue against the underside while my hand wraps around what my mouth can't reach, and the sound he makes is low and guttural, pulled from underneath every layer of composure he wears. He tastes clean, salt-skin and warmth, and I find the rhythm that undoes him, the specific combination of suction and tongue pressure that makes his thighs tense and his breathing turn ragged, his hips flexing involuntarily against the pace I set. My free hand presses flat against his stomach, holding him down the way he held me, and the reversal registers in the sound he makes when I take him deeper still. His fingers thread through my hair, not pushing, not guiding, just resting there.
The trust in that restraint is disarming in a way I can't parry; I know how to fight force, but gentleness leaves me without a counter. Every fractured exhale above me is data I'm collecting greedily, cataloging what takes this man's composure apart, and the answer is my tongue and my mouth and the specific pace that makes his fingers tighten in my hair while his hips stay controlled, ceding the rhythm to me, yielding what he never yields.
"Nox." His voice is scraped down to raw grain. "Come here. Now."
I release him slowly, deliberately, and he pulls me up and rolls us over in a single motion, settling between my thighs with his forearms framing my head. Moonlight from the bay catches the water outside and casts slow silver patterns across the ceiling, and I hate myself for noticing because noticing the light means this is becoming a memory I'll keep in specific, granular detail rather than a file I'll forget.
He positions himself against me, pauses, and watches my face with the absolute attention he gives everything that requires precision.
"Look at me," he says.
I do, and he pushes inside me, slow and full, and the stretch of him forces the air from my lungs in a sound I don't authorize. The fit is thick and tight, and the slow press of him filling me inch by inch is so specific, so exactly right in a way that defies the clinical framing I've been clinging to, that my nails dig into his back and I pull him closer. The remaining distance between us is intolerable. He holds still once he's fully seated, letting me adjust, watching my face.
"Move," I tell him.
He starts slow. Each stroke is a measured withdrawal and return that lets me feel every inch of him, friction building a spreading heat from where we're joined upward through my thighs, my spine. I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him deeper, changing the angle, and the shift makes us both groan. The depth is different now, hitting a place that blurs my vision.
"Faster."
