Page 43 of Kavan

She freezes. "Kavan⁠—"

"Let me." My voice is gravel. "Please."

She lets go of the buttons. Her hands fall to her sides, and I take my time.

The shirt comes off slowly. I use one hand and teeth and a patience I didn't know I possessed until this moment. Each button is a deliberate act of undoing, the last defense coming down, piece by piece. When I push the fabric off her shoulders, I see the marks of these fifteen days on her body. Bruises on her hips from the gutter, a scrape along her collarbone from the bridge, the lean muscle built by carrying Ferreira through a tomb. She isn't soft. She isn't unmarked. She's a survivor.

"Look at you," I say.

"Don't—"

"Look at you." I pull her forward, drag my mouth across the scrape on her collarbone. "All of you. Every mark. You have chosen to stay so many times, Sophie. You have chosen to carry. And you don't see it, not the way I do."

Her breath comes ragged.

"Tell me," she says.

"Tell you what?"

"Tell me what you see."

I set my palm flat over her sternum, where her pulse is running hard and fast under the skin. "I see a woman who spent a fortnight reading a civilization back to life. I see the one person alive who has made me believe that I'm allowed to stand down." I press my lips to the same place, and feel that frantic rhythm against my mouth. "And I see someone I am not willing to die without telling that I love her one more time."

She makes feral, raw sound, and then she's on me, her mouth claiming mine, her hands in my hair, her body pressing against the ruined mess of my chest. I can feel the heat of her through the thin fabric of her trousers, the desperate clench of her thighs around my hips, and I'm hard against her before I can think to control it.

"Sophie." My voice is a command I can't execute. "You need to⁠—"

"I need to feel you." She drags her mouth across my jaw, down my throat, and I tilt my head back against the transparent wall. "I need to remember this. If I die in this room, I need to remember what it felt like to have you inside me."

It isn't a request.

My hand finds the button of her trousers and works it free. The zipper is next, and she pushes the fabric down her hips, kicks it away. She's kneeling over me with nothing between us but the last layer of mine, and she doesn't wait for me to remove it.

She reaches for me.

My breath leaves in a rush. Her fingers are shaking, fumbling with the fastening, and I watch her work, her brow furrowed, her lip caught between her teeth, the absolute concentration of one who has been reading dead languages for fifteen days and is now trying to read me.

"Sophie." I find her wrist. "Let me."

"I've got it⁠—"

"Let me."

She stops. I finish the job one-handed, working the fabric down my hips, and the cold air of the blister finds me and I don't care about any of it. I haven't cared about anything except her hands on me since she said my name on the observatory terrace.

"Kavan." Her voice is barely a whisper. "You're⁠—"

"On the fourth day," I say. "I told you. I've known since the fourth day."

She wraps her hand around me.

The whole world narrows to one point of heat. Her grip is tight and untutored and desperate, and it undoes me. She strokes once, twice, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from finishing right there like a boy.

"Look at me," she says, and it's my own line coming back at me, and she knows it.

I open my eyes with an effort. Her gaze is on mine, her pupils blown, her chest heaving.

"I want to watch you," she says, "when I sink down onto you. I want to see what it does to your face."