My lips part. “I want this entire night to be slow. No rushing,” I tell him.
He laughs, soft, and his hands keep working the tie. The silk slides loose. He lets it drop on the carpet between us. He starts on my shirt buttons.
I let him.
He's undressed me before, but not like this—not when we have all night and a door that locks and nowhere to be. I've undressed him; over the few months I've learned the orderof his clothes and the small habits of how he wears them. Left sock first. The watch on his wrist Margot gave him at eighteen. He prefers comfy clothes and items big enough that he can hide behind them.
He works one button at a time, careful, the way a person is careful when he's afraid he'll rush and ruin it. Each button gives. Each parting of fabric is a degree of skin he looks at like he’s been dying to. His knuckles brush my chest on the third button.
I feel it in my teeth.
He reaches the last button.
His hands rest flat against my chest. He looks up at me through his lashes, mouth a little parted, the bond between us pulled tight as a wire.
I take both his wrists. Bring them up between us. Press a slow open kiss to the inside of one, then the other, watching his face the whole time. His eyes close. His breath catches.
"On the bed, sweetheart."
"Atlas—"
"Now."
He gets on the bed.
I take my time, getting the shirt off, then the watch and the cufflinks Bane gave me a year ago for my birthday, setting them down on the nightstand together. I'm—I notice—performing some of this for him. Watching him watch me.
He's up on his elbows on top of the duvet still mostly dressed and his pupils are blown and he's biting his lower lip the way he does when he doesn't know what to do with his face.
I crawl up the bed to him.
I undress him the way he undressed me—shirt button by button, trousers sliding down past his hips. He lets me. He watches me. The bond is wide open between us and I can feelhim in it: quiet, steady, there in a way that hasn't been possible for him in his own body until very recently.
He's down to his briefs when I move down the bed.
I press a kiss to the bone of his hip. He makes a small sound.
"Atlas—"
"Mm?"
"What are you—"
I hook my thumbs under the elastic of his briefs and pull them down his thighs.
His cock springs up against his stomach. Hard. Leaking at the tip already.
Christ.
I press my mouth to the inside of his thigh. Slow. Then higher. He inhales sharp.
"Atlas—"
"Roll over for me, sweetheart."
"...wh—"
"On your stomach. Hands under your pillow."
