"Jesslyn." Her name in my mouth sounds like a warning.
"Mm." She doesn't stop. She tightens her grip and works me until my hips are moving against her hand and my jaw is clenched and I've got a fist in the sheets beside her head.
I pull her hand away and pin her wrist above her head, and the sound she makes — surprised, pleased, a little breathless — does nothing good for my self-control. I settle between her thighs and drag the head of my cock through her, feel how wet she already is, and her whole body arches up toward me.
"Judge."
"Not yet." I do it again. Slowly. Watching her face while I work her with just enough contact to make her want more. Herfree hand grabs my hip, fingers digging in, trying to pull me where she wants me.
"Tell me what you want," I demand.
"You know what I want."
"Say it anyway."
Her eyes meet mine in the dark, direct and unguarded, all the careful composure gone. "I want you inside me," she says. "Now."
I push inside her in one slow stroke and we both go completely still.
Just breathing. Just the weight of it. Her eyes are open and on mine, and there is no performance in what I'm looking at. Just a woman feeling something she didn't plan to feel, with a man she didn't plan to want.
I understand that completely.
I start to move. She rises to meet me immediately, her hips rolling up in counterpoint, and the patience I had a minute ago burns off entirely. Her nails drag down my back hard enough to sting, and I drive into her harder in answer. She makes a sound against my shoulder that I feel in my spine.
I get my hand between us and find her with my thumb, work her in tight circles while I move inside her, and she breaks rhythm immediately, her whole body stuttering, her breath going ragged.
"Don't stop," she says. "Please don’t stop."
I don't stop. I work her until she's shaking under me, until her thighs are clamped around my hips, her hands are fisted in my hair, and she's saying my name over and over in pieces, broken apart by her breath.
She comes with her back arched off the bed and her whole body clenching around me, and the feeling of it — the sounds she makes, the way she grips me — pulls me over with her. I burymyself deep and groan her name against her throat and come until there's nothing left.
Afterward we lie in the dark with the ceiling fan turning overhead, her hand resting flat on my chest, and both of us just breathing.
The compound is quiet. Through the window, the perimeter lights make a low amber glow. The fan turns. Neither of us speaks for a long time.
"That was a bad idea," she says.
"Probably."
She turns her head and looks at me in the dark, direct, no coyness anywhere in it. "Don't apologize."
"I'm not going to apologize."
"Good."
She sits up, reaches for her shirt on the floor, and pulls it over her head. I watch her and don't say anything, because there's nothing to say that wouldn't be either too much or not enough.
She finds the rest of her things in the dark with the easy efficiency of a woman practiced at moving through unfamiliar spaces and looks at me from the doorway.
"Go to sleep, Judge," she says.
She leaves. The door closes quietly behind her.
I lie in the dark and stare at the ceiling. I can smell her on the pillow beside me, and I think about the figure in the bayou frame. The man standing just far enough back to see the whole operation, positioned to watch Delacroix the way a handler watches an asset. Layers. Whatever Delacroix is, he's not the top of it.
I think about that.
