"Let me help you forget for a while," I said. Low. Into her hair.
She was still for a beat. Then she nodded against me. Small first. Then real.
I tipped her chin up with the side of my thumb. Her eyes were glassy with everything the last four hours had put in them. I kissed the side of her face first, near her temple, where my lips could feel her pulse stuttering against them. Then her jaw, where the muscle was still locked tight. Then the corner of her mouth, slow, until the lock began to give. Then her mouth. She opened for me on a small soft breath and her hand curled into the front of my shirt.
I did not rush her. I have done a great deal of rushing in my life. Tonight was not for that.
I undressed her myself. I worked the buttons of her coat down one at a time, and as the wool fell open I bent and put my mouth to the hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse beat hard against it. I slid the coat off her shoulders. My knuckles ghosted down the outside of her arms as it went, slow, and I felt the small involuntary shiver that ran through her with it. Good. Her body was beginning to come back to her.
I lifted the hem of her sweater. I took it up over her head the way you strip armor off a soldier who has been wearing it toolong. As it cleared her hair I caught a handful of the strands and pressed my mouth to the side of her neck, behind her ear, where she was warm. She made a small sound. The cardigan slid off her shoulders into a pool at her elbows, and I bent to the bare slope where her shoulder met her throat, then the freckle below it I have known by heart for months.
Her camisole came up over her ribs and over her head. The breath caught in her on the third button of the jeans, a small sharp catch, and I lifted my head and kissed her mouth slow until the catch eased. Then I unfastened the rest and crouched and drew the denim down her legs. As I came back up I set my lips to her hip where the waistband had pressed a soft pink line into her skin. I kissed the inside of her wrist. I kissed the bend of her elbow. Each piece of cloth that left her, I matched with my mouth on a place where she could feel me through the fog.
Her skin was cool when I started. By the time the last of it lay on the floor at our feet, she was warm under my hands, and the fog behind her eyes had begun to thin.
I came up to her mouth again. I laid my palm flat between her breasts, over her sternum, and held it there. Her heart was running fast under my hand. I waited. I kissed her slow. I waited some more. And then I felt it, the moment her pulse slowed under my palm and her hands, which had not stopped trembling since the shot in the SUV, went still against my back. She breathed out long. I breathed it in.
I laid her down across the bed. The covers were cool against her bare back. I stood at the edge a beat and let her look at me. The shock was still in her, but her eyes were on me now, and that was what I wanted. I unbuttoned my shirt slow under her gaze and pulled it off. Her eyes followed my hands the whole way. I worked my belt out of the loops and let it drop to the rug with a soft heavy sound. I stripped the rest off. My control was already fraying at the edges and she had not done a thing but watch.
I came down over her slow. Hip to hip. Chest to chest. I gave her my weight the way you give a frightened animal something solid to lean against. She made a small sound into my mouth and her arms came up around my back and pulled, hard, like she needed to feel more of me than there already was. I let her have it. I pressed her down into the mattress under me until there was no inch of her my body was not covering.
"I am here. I have you. Stay with me."
She made a small sound and her hands slid into the hair at the back of my neck.
"Yours," she breathed. "Only you."
My mouth moved against her temple. "Mine," I said. Low. Final. I said it the way you set a stone into mortar.
I worked my mouth down her throat slow. I returned to the hollow at the base of it, harder this time, until I knew she would wear a small mark in the morning. I traced the rise of her collarbone. I closed my mouth over the soft peak of one breast and felt her arch up off the bed to find me. I gave the other the same. Her breath broke into something thinner and higher. I tasted the space between her ribs. I tracked down her stomach. Her muscles fluttered where my breath ghosted across her skin, and her fingers slid into my hair and tightened.
I put my mouth on her.
I settled my shoulders between her thighs and let her feel the breadth of me there. One hand hooked under her thigh and lifted, opening her to me. The other lay open and flat across her stomach, fingers spread wide, holding her where I wanted her. When her hips tried to rise against my mouth I pressed her back down into the mattress with my palm and held her there. She whimpered. I worked her slow. The first soft "*oh*" was barely a sound. The second was a breath against the back of her own hand. By the third her hand had left her mouth and gone into myhair, and her thigh had started to tremble where it lay over my shoulder.
I went deeper with my tongue. I felt the small sounds she did not know she was making, sounds she had not made for any man before me, sounds I intend to be the only man who ever hears. Her heels slid against the sheet. Her fist tightened in my hair until it pulled. I did not stop. I did not slow. I gave her what she needed without negotiation.
"Daniil. Oh god. Oh god, please."
I held my mouth steady on her. Her thigh shook against the side of my face. Her whole body drew up as tight as a bowstring, every line of her held, and then she broke open for me with a sharp unguarded cry, half my name and half nothing at all. Her hand fisted in my hair. Her hips lifted under my palm and I let her have it this time, riding her through the long shake of it. The shock cracked off her with the cry. I felt it leave her body the way you feel a fever break. What was left under my hands was her. Just her. Warm and alive and mine.
I gentled her down through the aftershocks. Then I worked up the inside of her thigh slow, up her hip, up her stomach where my palm had pinned her, up between her breasts, up her throat, until I was at her mouth again. I kissed her with the taste of her still on me. She made a soft hungry sound and her arms wrapped around my neck and pulled me down into her, and I felt her open her legs under me to make room.
I reached between us and lined myself up and slid into her, slow, the whole way. She was hot and slick and ready and her breath caught hard in her throat as I filled her. I held there for a beat, foreheads touching, my whole body shaking with the effort of not moving yet, letting her feel me, letting her know exactly who was inside her tonight.
"Look at me."
Her eyes opened. They were wet now, but they were here. They were on mine.
I started to move. Slow at first. Long even strokes that took me all the way out and all the way back into her. I watched her face. Her lips parted. My palm slid up from her hip to her ribs and over her breast and her breath broke on it. Her hands found my shoulders and gripped. Her legs came up and locked around my hips, drawing me deeper, taking me at an angle that made her gasp. The slow heat between us built and built and would not stop building. I could feel my control sitting on a knife edge. I held it there. She had asked me, with that nod against my chest, to lead her back. I was leading her back.
"Whose are you?" Low. Against her mouth.
"Yours." Barely a breath. "Yours, Daniil."
I felt the word land somewhere in my chest I did not have a name for. I kissed her hard for it. I moved deeper for it.
When her breath went ragged and her nails bit into my shoulders I slid out of her slow. She made a small bereft sound that almost undid me. I turned her in my hands, gentle, until her back was to my chest, and drew her up onto her knees in front of me with my arm braced across her front, palm flat over her stomach. I bent to the curve of her shoulder and pressed my lips there once. Then I slid back into her from behind.
