Page 86 of Shatter

Neither of us moves.

I can feel her pulse, and I can feel her everywhere.

Then she starts to rock.

Small at first, testing, her hands braced on my chest and her hips rolling slowly, and every time she moves, the sheet in my fists creaks.

"Put your hands on me." She says it on a gasp. "Please."

I let go of the sheet.

My palms go to her hips and stay there.

I don't guide her or push.

I hold on.

She finds a rhythm, deeper, slower, and her head drops forward so her hair falls around both of us like a curtain.

"Fuck." It tears out of me. "Anni. Fuck."

She bends down until her mouth is at my ear.

"Espen." A whisper, hot and wet. "Espen."

My name.

My real name, in her mouth, with her body wrapped around me.

Twenty years of sanding my accent flat, and it cracks and goes in a second.

"Du er så vakker." It pours out of me before I know I'm saying it. "Du er så vakker, Annika."

She lifts her head.

She doesn't know the words.

I watch her understand them anyway, watch it hit her eyes, and she makes a sound I've never heard a person make and grinds down on me hard.

My hands tighten on her hips.

I don't pull her.

I hold on while she rides me faster, chasing it, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps, her thighs trembling against my ribs.

"I'm close." Her nails dig into my chest. "Espen, I'm..."

"Take it." My voice is wrecked. "Take it, sweetheart. I've got you."

She comes apart on top of me.

Her back arches, and she clenches down around my cock so hard I see white.

She cries out, raw and loud, my name in pieces, and she keeps moving through it, jerky and desperate.

I last maybe four more seconds.

It rips through me from the base of my spine, and my hips come up off the mattress into her.