“That he wants me to think about funerals.”
“Yours?”
“Possibly.”
Her face tightens. “Mine?”
I don’t answer quickly enough.
Her expression changes. She understands.
That night, she comes to me in bed without saying anything.
She climbs onto my lap while I’m still reading reports, takes the file from my hand, and sets it aside. Her hair is loose. She wears one of my shirts again, though she has more dresses now than she can wear in a month.
I prefer the shirt.
She knows.
“You’re brooding,” she says.
“I’m working.”
“You’re brooding with paper.”
I lean back against the headboard. “Do you intend to distract me?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Her mouth curves, and then she kisses me.
With Anya, kissing is never only kissing anymore. It turns quickly. Her hands slide into my hair. Her thighs tighten around my hips. She makes those small sounds she still tries to swallow, and I have learned every one of them.
The one when I bite her neck.
The one when I cup her tit and drag my thumb over her nipple.
The one when my hand slips between her legs and I find her already wet.
That night, I take my time with her.
I push the shirt open and kiss down her chest, over the marks I left the night before, then lower. She grips the sheets when I put my mouth on her pussy, and by now she knows better than to pretend she doesn’t want it. Her thighs open for me, her hips lifting into my mouth as I lick her clit slowly, then harder when she starts breathing my name.
She comes with one hand in my hair and the other pressed to her own mouth.
I pull her hand away. “No hiding.”
Her eyes open, dazed and furious. “The guards are outside.”
“They’re paid enough to survive hearing things.”
She laughs, breathless and embarrassed, and that laugh becomes a moan when I slide two fingers into her and work her through the last of it.
Later, when she’s still trembling, she reaches for my cock with a confidence she didn’t have before. Not polished, not practiced, but eager. Honest. She watches my face while she strokes me, learning what makes my jaw lock, what makes my breath change, what makes my hand close around her wrist before she pushes me too far.
“You like this,” she whispers.
