I am interested in both.
He says my name against my throat.Jesslyn. Like the name itself means something to him beyond what it refers to, like he's been holding it in his mouth all evening and is only now letting it out.
I memorize the sound of it.
He rolls me onto my back and props himself above me and looks at me again — the same deliberate taking-in — and I reach up and put my hand back against his jaw.
"I'm here," I say, because I know that's what the look is asking.
Something in his face opens up. Just enough.
He kisses me deeper this time, his mouth opening over mine, and his hand moves down my body slowly, learning the shape of me like it matters that he knows it exactly. I arch into his hands and he uses what that tells him, adjusting, reading, the way he reads everything.
His mouth moves to my breast. His tongue drags over my nipple and I pull in a sharp breath. He stays there, working, unhurried, and I grip his hair and hold on because him being patient is exactly what I want right now.
His hand slides between my thighs. He finds me warm and wanting and makes a low sound against my breast that travels straight to my spine. His fingers move slowly at first. Pressing and circling, learning the specific rhythm that makes my hips move toward him, reading every response and adjusting to it.
I stop being quiet almost immediately. The compound is asleep and I don't care.
He takes his time. He draws it out until my thighs are shaking and my hands are in his hair and I'm saying his name in pieces. Then he keeps going past that, not letting me rush it, keeping the pace deliberate even when I try to move it forward, and the orgasm when it finally breaks is enormous.
It rolls through me in long slow waves while he works me through every second of it. His mouth at my throat saying my name, Jesslyn, Jesslyn, like a deliberate practice of it.
I'm still shaking when he pushes two fingers inside me and curls them. His thumb finds me and he starts again.
"Judge," I gasp.
"I know," he says, against my jaw. He doesn't stop.
The second one comes faster and harder, my whole body clenching around his hand, my voice not quiet at all now. His name comes out of my mouth in a way that has nothing managed about it. He works me through that one too, patient as he's been all night, his mouth at my throat saying my name between every breath, not stopping until I'm gripping his wrist with both hands and my hips are moving against him involuntarily. Only then does he pull me up against him and push inside me.
He goes slow. Deliberately slow, the way he's done everything tonight. He pushes all the way inside and stays there for a moment while I adjust to him, while I feel the full weight of it, while we both breathe. His forehead is against mine.
I look at him in the low light, and he looks at me, and there's nothing in his face that's being held back right now, no door between me and whatever's there. Just him. Just this.
"Jesslyn," he says. Again. Against my jaw, my throat, the curve of my shoulder. Like he's been waiting all night to say it this many times, like there's no version of this that doesn't include it.
He moves slowly and I move with him, both of us still unhurried, building rather than chasing. His hands are on me constantly — learning, present, as if he wants to know exactly how I'm put together before the morning comes and changes everything.
I drag my nails down his back and feel him shudder and drive deeper in answer. I do it again because the sound he makes is the most honest thing I've heard from him yet.
He rolls us so I'm above him and looks up at me with his hands on my hips, holding but not directing, giving me the motion if I want it, waiting to see what I choose. I choose it.
I move the way I want to move. He watches my face and adjusts his grip to match me, his jaw tight, his eyes dark. His thumb finds me again and starts working in slow circles while I move above him. I can feel every point of contact between us and I let myself feel it, all of it, instead of managing it.
I come with my hands flat on his chest and his name in my mouth, the orgasm rolling through me in long deliberate waves, and he watches all of it with the same full attention he's had on me all night. Not looking away, not closing his eyes, just watching me come apart on top of him.
I keep moving. He grips my hips and drives up into me, and the rhythm breaks into something harder. I want that too. I want all of it; his hands everywhere and my voice loud in the dark and the compound asleep and neither of us caring.
He follows me over with his forehead pressed against my shoulder, my name on his lips full and deliberate even now, even at the end — Jesslyn — the way you say something you intend to keep saying.
We stay tangled together a long time after. His heartbeat under my palm. The dark. The compound's nighttime sounds working their way through the window.
He doesn't say anything for a while and neither do I. There's nothing that needs saying. We both know what tomorrow is, and we both know it isn't in this room with us tonight.
At some point he pulls me against his chest and his hand settles in my hair.
"Jesslyn," he says. One more time. Quietly. Against my hair.
