Page 15

He reads my breathing — when it catches, when it goes shallow, when I stop being able to keep it quiet — and he adjusts based on what he finds with a precision that makes me think he has always applied this level of attention to whatever matters to him.

His thumb finds the specific point of pressure and the sound I make is not quiet.

He keeps his thumb exactly there, circling in a slow rhythm, and slides two fingers inside me without breaking pace, and the stretch of it and the combined pressure of both at once makes every muscle in my legs lock.

I hear myself in the room, broken sounds against my own effort to hold them back, and he keeps the rhythm even and controlled while I come completely apart against his hand, my whole body arching forward into him, his forearm the only thing keeping me from pitching off the table.

I come down slowly.

He gives me a breath.

Then he turns me.

One hand at my hip and one at my shoulder, not rough but directive, and I turn without resistance because I have entirely lost interest in pretending I don't want whatever he decides to do next.

His chest presses against my back, and the warmth of him, the weight, the full line of his body against mine makes me push back into him without thinking. He inhales sharply against my shoulder.

He gets a hand around my stomach and the other at my hip and pulls me back into him, and I feel him hard against me through the remaining fabric between us.

He makes a sound low in his throat and his grip tightens and grinds forward once, and I make a sound into the cool air above the table that echoes off the wood paneling on the far wall.

He gets his belt open, jeans pushed down, and then his hands are back, one flat on my stomach and one gripping the outer edge of my thigh, angling me, and when he presses into me from behind the entry is slow and my fingers scrabble against the table for something to hold.

He stops with his mouth at the back of my neck and waits for the tension to settle, and then he starts to move.

The first few thrusts are measured, his hips rolling forward in a controlled rhythm, his hand flat on the table beside mine, chest to my back, mouth tracking down my shoulder.

I can feel every individual breath he takes against my spine. He is quiet except for what escapes past that control, bitten sounds when his rhythm deepens, when I push back to meet him and the angle shifts.

The table creaks, and his hand grips my hip hard enough to leave a mark.

He is not fully restrained anymore and I can tell the difference. The evenness of his rhythm starts to break down, he corrects it, briefly, and then loses the correction again. His breathing is audible now, rough against my shoulder.

He mutters something against the back of my neck that I do not fully catch but feel the vibration of.

He pulls me upright against him without pulling out, arm crossing my waist from behind, my back flush against his chest and his mouth at my ear, and the new angle makes both of us stop for a second.

"Okay?" Low, pressed against my temple.

"Yes." The word barely makes it out.

He starts again from there, and from this angle it is slower and fuller and I feel every movement of it.

I turn my head to the side and he finds my mouth over my shoulder and the kiss is open and ungoverned and not coordinated with anything else, and neither of us cares.

His hand moves from my hip to the front of my thigh and then up between my legs and I choke on a sound when his fingers find me again while he is still moving inside me.

My knees buckle slightly and his arm tightens across my waist to hold me and he keeps his hand exactly where it is.

The second time builds faster and from deeper and I stop being able to do anything useful with my hands.

I grip his forearm with both of mine and hold on and he has gone past careful now, I can feel it in the force of his hips, the ragged edge of his breathing, the way his teeth press against my shoulder for a moment when I tighten around him.

When I come the second time it is sharper than the first and longer, and I feel it in my thighs and my spine and behind my eyes, and the sound of it comes out low and continuous.

He follows me into it within seconds, his rhythm breaking entirely, his arm clenched hard across my waist and his face against the side of my neck, and the sound he makes is rough and private and absolutely undone.

We stand there for a long moment, both breathing hard, his arm still around me, his face still at my neck.