Page 33 of Honeyfires

"For the—" She swallowed. "Yes. Please."

I brought my free hand up.

I set it against her throat the way she'd asked for: palm curved to the shape of her neck, thumb resting against her jaw, fingers loose along the other side. No pressure. Nothing close to pressure. Just the weight of my hand and the warmth of it and the simple, undeniable fact of it being there.

She stopped breathing for one second.

Then she exhaled, long and shaking, and her whole body went soft under me like it hadn't before, all the held tension releasing at once, like she'd been carrying something monumentally heavy she'd finally been allowed to put down.

"Okay?" I murmured.

"Yes." Her voice had gone somewhere lower, somewhere quieter. "Don't—don't stop."

"I've got you," I said. "I'm not going to stop."

I began to move my fingers inside her.

She arched immediately, a needy roll of her hips, her hands finding my forearm. Not gripping, just resting there, the lightest possible contact, like she needed to feel that it was connected to me. I started slow, deep and curling, finding the spot that made her breath fracture, and when I felt her clench around me, I pressed into it.

"Oh—" Her head pressed back into the pillow. "Petra—"

"Stay with me," I said. "Eyes open."

She opened them.

Dark and blown and wet at the corners. Looking directly at me with an expression that had nothing held back, just Vera stripped down to something essential and true, and the sight of it made me drip with desire.

"Good," I said. "Just like that."

I kept my hand exactly where it was—steady, light, present—and worked her with my fingers, reading her body the way I'd been learning to read it all afternoon: the hitch in her breath when I crooked just right, the way her thighs trembled when I found the angle she needed, the small desperate sounds climbing higher in her throat that I could feel vibrating faintly against my palm.

She swallowed. I felt it under my hand.

She made a sound at the sensation and her fingers tightened on my forearm.

"I can feel your pulse," I said quietly.

"I know." She was barely breathing. "I can feel you feeling it."

I pressed my thumb gently against her jaw, the smallest possible increase of contact, and watched her eyes flutter.

"Don't close them."

They opened again. Found my gaze. Held.

I curled my fingers and pressed and her hips surged up and she made a sound that was almost a word and almost my name and entirely neither. I kept that exact angle, that exact pressure, and felt her start to build—the clench and release around my fingers, her thighs beginning to shake, her breath coming in fragments that were losing their shape.

"Petra. God, I'm going to—"

"I know."

"Don't stop—please—don't stop—"

"I've got you," I said, and meant it in all the ways it could mean. "I'm right here. Come for me, baby."

She came with her eyes open and locked on mine, my hand at her throat and my fingers inside her, a wave that rolled through her whole body from her chest down, her back arching off the bed, her thighs clamping around my wrist, my name leaving her lips in a long, shaking exhale that emptied her completely.

I worked her through every second. Slower, gentler, following her down as carefully as I'd taken her up, until the shaking subsided and her hips stilled and her hands went soft on my arm.