“No,” I said, and caught the front of his coat. “That was not a stop sound.”
His forehead pressed against mine.
“I am trying to be careful.”
“Stop trying.”
That made him smile.
Only for a second.
Long enough.
Then he kissed me again, and careful became something else.
His coat came off first because I made an impatient fist in the wrong button and he gave a low, startled laugh against my mouth.
“You dressed yourself poorly,” I said.
“I was distracted.”
“By what?”
“By waiting outside Quill’s office and imagining every way he might make you come out looking like…” He dropped off.
“Like what?”
His answer was his hand at my cheek again.
His thumb under my eye.
“Alone. Sad. Lost.”
Those words undid me more than anything else. I was those things. I had been most of my life.
I kissed him before he could see it.
Or because he already had.
The bed was close enough that he reached it in three cautious steps, giving me every chance to stop. I wanted the choice and resented having to feel myself make it.
At the edge of the bed, my knees touched the coverlet.
He drew back.
“Still your choice?” he asked.
His voice had gone rough.
I stared at him.
Then I understood.
Not permission once, given and forgotten.
This choice. This room. This body that had spent weeks being spoken over, measured, summoned, watched.
“Mine,” I said.
