The lamp was on low on the nightstand. The sheets were the ones I had washed two days ago, the soft gray ones. He set medown on the edge of the bed and then he laid me back on it, the towel falling open under me, his weight coming down over me slow, on his elbows, careful of me.
He kissed me a long time. He kissed me until my hand found his ribs again the way it had on his bed the morning I had brought him the soup, that flat splay of fingers along the bone, and he made the small low sound he made when I did that, and I felt the restraint in him crack a little along its edge.
"Are you with me?"
"Yes."
"Tell me if anything is too much."
"I will."
He took his time with such patience I almost laughed because the man was a wall of held breath, and I told him so, low, into his neck, and he laughed against my collarbone, the two notes of it.
"You will not rush me on this," he said. "Not this. Not the first."
When he finally moved to be over me properly, he braced on one forearm and used the other hand to push my damp hair back off my face and look at me. The look was the look. The one he had given me across the seafood restaurant table. The one that had no jokes in it.
"Tell me yes one more time."
"Yes."
He went slow. So slow I felt every inch of him going into me, every part of my body learning what to do with him. The slow stretch. The small ache of the new and the strange right of him both at once. He paused. He let me adjust. He watched my face the whole time, and when I let out the breath I had been holding and gave him a small nod he moved a little further, and paused again, and the muscle in his jaw worked, and I knew what it was costing him to keep this pace.
"Daniil."
"I have you. Fuck, you feel..."
"I know."
When he was all the way in he stayed still. His forehead came down to mine. He breathed. I breathed. He said my name like it was the first word in a language he was learning. Chloe. Chloe. Then lower, under his breath, almost not for me: "So tight. Fuck, baby. So tight." His arms shook a little where they held him up over me.
"Move," I said.
He moved.
Slow first. So slow. Then a little less slow, finding the rhythm, finding the place where my breath caught and going back to it, learning me on this too, the way he had learned me in the shower. The restraint in him was visible. It lived along the line of his shoulders, in the set of his teeth, in the white knuckles of the hand braced beside my head. He was holding back because he had promised he would. "You feel like nothing else," he said into the side of my throat, voice gone low and wrecked. "Nothing else, Chloe." His other hand came down to my hip and gripped there, possessive, taking what he was allowed to take.
I lifted up to meet him. I put my mouth on the underside of his jaw. I let him hear the sound I was not bothering to keep down anymore. "More," I said into his neck. "Don't be careful with me." The line of him broke, just a little, in the rhythm. He let out a breath that was nearly a word.
"My girl. Mine."
"Yours."
"Say it."
"I'm yours."
He said something low in Russian I did not have. He picked the pace up. The slow steady drive of him hit somewhere deep enough that the edges of the lamp light went white. He brought me to the edge and held me there, his forehead to mine. "Comefor me, baby," he said, voice gone rough. "Come for me. Let me feel it." That tipped me. I went over hard, my back arching up off the bed, my nails dragging down the muscle of his back, and I called his name the way a person calls a name when there is no other word left in the mouth. My hand found his ribs the same way it had on his bed the morning of the soup, the same flat splay of fingers along the same bone, and his rhythm broke and he followed me a few thrusts later, his hips snapping forward one last hard time, his face going into the curve of my neck, his weight coming down on me in the good way, and the sound he made was low and not quite contained, and it was for me.
The room was dark. The lamp had gone out, I did not remember when. Our breath was loud in the dark. He kept me in his arms, on our sides, my back along his chest, his arm heavy and warm under my breasts. He kissed the top of my shoulder once. I did not want to be anywhere else in the world. I told him so. He made the low approving sound into my hair.
Some unmeasurable time later I was on a small stool on the bath mat in nothing but his shirt, the soft white one with the sleeves I had pushed up to my elbows. He was behind me in his boxer briefs, hair still damp at the ends, the hairdryer in one hand. He was working it through my hair in long slow passes, his other hand smoothing the section he had just dried. The mirror was fogged in the corners. The dryer hummed. The bathroom smelled like him, like the cedar of his soap and the warm of his skin and steam.
"Are you regretting it?"
"From the sound I made earlier, no."
He laughed. The two low notes of it. He bent and kissed the crown of my head, and went back to the slow work of drying my hair.
