“Okay.”
He holds my gaze.
“Lie back.”
He undresses me slowly. He undresses me like he's unwrapping something he doesn't want to damage. Shirt up and off. Hands sliding along my ribs, not tickling, not rushing, learning. He pauses at a bruise on my side I didn't know I had, from nothing, from my body doing stupid things today. Kisses it. Moves on.
Pants. Boxers. Done.
I'm naked and he's still fully dressed, which means he's thought about the order of this, and the thought makes me shiver.
He stands. He strips out of his own clothes without performance, without show. Fast and plain. Shirt. Jeans.Everything else. His body is the same body I've had three times now, and still I look at him and my mouth goes soft.
He comes down over me.
Slow.
So slow.
His mouth on my collarbone. On my sternum. On my stomach. Lower. He takes me in his mouth and it's not the urgent suck he's given me before. It's patient, it's thorough, it's a man making sure his person is held. I cover my eyes with my forearm because the tenderness of it is harder to take than anything rough he's done.
He brings me to the edge and stops. Moves back up. Kisses the inside of my wrist until I move my arm off my face.
“Look at me.”
I look.
“I need you to stay with me. The whole time.”
“Okay.”
He reaches for the nightstand.
He preps me like he has the other times, patient, thorough, but different tonight. Not building me into a frenzy. Building me into calm. Finger. Another. Another. When he pushes into me, it's slow enough that I feel every inch, and I'm looking at him the whole time, and he's looking at me.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
His forehead finds mine. Stays.
He sets a rhythm I've never gotten from him before. Not a fuck. A rock. Deep, slow, his forehead on mine, his breath in my mouth. My legs wrap around him. My hands are on his back, on his shoulders, on his face. I keep touching his face because I can't stop needing to confirm he's here. His stubble rasps under my fingertips. A pulse ticks under the hinge of his jaw. His eyes are wide open on mine, closer than faces are supposed to be, and heholds them there. He's not hiding any of himself tonight. He's letting me see the whole thing. It is the most exposed I have ever seen another person be, and the fact that he's doing it for me, the fact that he can't do it for anybody else and he's doing it for me, cracks something open in my chest that I didn't know had a lid.
“This,” he says against my mouth. “This is mine. You. This. Us.”
“Yes.”
His hand slides up to cup my jaw.
“Say it.”
“I'm yours. This is yours.”
“Mine.”
My eyes well up and don't spill.
“Yours.”
