Page 78 of Presumed Dead

“No exit. I heard you.”

Something in her shoulders came down half an inch, the bracing she'd been doing without showing it, and she picked her fork back up, and the rain ran down the window, and for a while they just ate, and it was the most ordinary thing in the world, and it undid him more thoroughly than the wind ever could.

She washed the dishes, and he dried, because she handed him a towel without asking and he took it without being asked, and they stood at the sink hip to hip with the storm leaning on the house, and the not-touching had turned charged, every brush of her arm against his a small deliberate accident neither of them corrected.

She handed him the last plate. He set it in the rack. When he turned back, she hadn't moved away, and the few inches she'd refused to close on the dock the week before were right there again, the same few inches, and this time she looked up at him and didn't step back.

“I stepped back on the pier,” she said, like she'd read it off him. “That day with the board. You let me, and you didn't take it personally, and that's the day I knew I was in trouble.”

“Why trouble?”

“Because a man who lets you step back is a man you can't talk yourself out of.” She put her hand flat on the front of his shirt, the same place she'd put it on the boat, and he felt the heat of her palm come through the cotton. “I'm not stepping back tonight. I want you to know I'm the one who's not stepping back. Whatever this costs later, I walked across the kitchen. Me.”

He brought his hand up and covered hers against his chest, and held it there, and looked at her, and let her see that he'd heard exactly what she'd said and what she'd taken on by saying it.

“Then don't step back,” he said, and closed the inches himself.

He kissed her slowly, the way the boat had ended and never gotten to finish, one hand still over hers on his chest and the other coming up to the side of her jaw, his thumb at the hinge of it, tipping her face up. She made a low sound against his mouth, her free hand fisted in his shirt and pulled, and the slow lasted about as long as restraint usually lasted, which was until the other person stopped wanting it slow.

She backed him into the counter, and he let her, the edge of it against his spine, and she came up onto her toes and kissed him hard, and he got both hands into her damp hair and held her head and kissed her back until she had to break for air, her forehead dropping against his collarbone, her breath going ragged at his throat.

“Bedroom's the door on the left,” she said into his shirt. “I'm telling you now so I don't have to think of words later.”

He laughed, low, and felt her smile against his neck at the sound of it. Then he got an arm behind her back and another behind her knees and lifted her, and she made a startled noise and grabbed his shoulders, then he carried her out of the kitchen with the storm going hard against the windows.

He set her down at the foot of the bed and she pulled the gray shirt over her head and dropped it, and he stopped breathing for a second at the sight of her in the low light coming through the door, then he stopped thinking about breathing at all.

She reached for the hem of his shirt and he let her take it off him, and she put both hands flat on his chest, on bare skin this time, and ran them up over his shoulders, and the scar on his ribs she found with her thumb and didn't ask about, just pressed it once, gently, a question she was choosing not to make him answer tonight, and the not-asking went through him harder than any touch had.

He got his hands on her waist and turned them and brought her down onto the bed under him, settling between her thighs with his weight on his forearms, and kissed her again, deeper now, and worked his mouth down the line of her throat to her collarbone while she arched up into him and pushed her hips against his and made it very clear she had no patience left for slow.

“Ethan.”

“I've got you.”

“I know you do. That's not—” Her breath caught when his hand moved between them, found her, started a slow pressure with the heel of his palm that pulled a sound out of her she clearly hadn't planned to make. “That's not what I'm asking for.”

“Tell me what you're asking for.”

“You. Now. Stop being careful with me. You're the only one who's still being careful and I want it gone.”

So he stopped. He stripped the rest of what was between them and came back to her, and she reached down and guided him and they both went still at the first press of it, that held breath, her hand gripping his shoulder and his forehead dropped to hers, and then he pushed into her slowly and felt her open around him and heard the sound she made low in her throat and answered it with his own.

He moved. She met him. They found the rhythm fast because they'd been finding rhythms together across a basin all evening, and her hands were on his back and then in his hair and then gripping the back of his neck, pulling him down to her mouth, and he braced one forearm by her head and got his other hand under her hip and changed the angle and she said his name again, sharper this time, her heels pressing into the backs of his thighs.

“There,” she said. “Right—don't stop.”

He didn't stop. He watched her face in the low light, the way her brow drew together and her mouth came open, and he held the pace she needed even when it cost him to hold it, even when his own want was a hard insistent thing pushing him forward faster, because watching her get there was worth more to him than getting there himself, and that was its own admission he'd think about later.

She came with her back arched off the bed and her nails biting into his neck and a broken sound that wasn't a word, and he felt her tighten around him and let go of the holding, finally, and followed her over a few hard strokes later with his face pressed into the curve of her shoulder and her name caught somewhere in his chest that he didn't say out loud, because the saying of it would have meant more than even this did, and he wasn't ready to spend that yet.

They lay tangled and breathing while the storm went on outside, and he didn't move off her right away, and she didn't ask him to. Her hand came up and traced the back of his neck where her nails had been, soft now, an apology that didn't need making.

Later, they lay on their sides facing each other in the dark, the rain steady on the roof now, the worst of the front still hours from its peak.

He'd pulled the sheet up over them, and she had one hand resting on his chest, over the place she'd put it twice now through his shirt, and she was tracing slow idle circles with her thumb like she was confirming he was still there.

“I'm not going to ask you anything,” she said into the dark. “About the mission. About the piece you're holding. I want you to know I'm not going to, so you can stop bracing for it. Whatever it is, it'll come when you said it'll come, and tonight isn't that.”