"There," he said, soft, like he had found it. "Right there."
He moved harder. The hand at my hip was a brand. The hand in my hair did not pull, only held, only reminded me whose grip I was inside of. Each thrust drove forward through my whole bodyand into the silk at my wrists where the give was just enough to let me brace and not enough to let me forget. My breath was going out of me in little broken sounds I could not stop.
"Mine," he said behind me.
"Yours."
"I have been wanting to do this for weeks."
I could not answer. I could only push back against him and feel his hand in my hair tighten a fraction in approval and feel his next thrust go deeper than the one before.
He let go of my hair and smoothed his palm down the line of my spine again, slow, like a man putting a kettle off the burner.
"Come here."
His voice was low and wrecked at the edge of it.
I came.
He sat back against the headboard with his hands at my waist and brought me with him. The room tipped soft around me. The wine red silk was somewhere in a pool on the blanket. The lamp glow was warm on his shoulder. I let him move me.
He pulled me astride him, both hands at my hips, his back against the headboard, his eyes on mine.
He lifted my bound wrists over his head and let them loop down behind his neck so I was anchored to him on every side. My forehead came to his. His mouth was right there. His hands at my hips set the rhythm, gave it to me, took it back when he saw my eyes start to roll. He bounced me slow in his lap and the angle of him deep up into me hit somewhere I did not have a word for. My bound arms tightened around the back of his neck. The intimacy of it almost undid me before the rest of it did.
"Look at me," he said.
I looked.
His gray-green eyes were almost black at the center and steady at the edges, and the look on his face was a look I hadnever had pointed at me before, from anyone, and I felt it land in my chest like a hand.
"Whose are you?"
"Yours, Daniil. God."
"Again."
"Yours."
He moved one hand off my hip and into my hair and brought my mouth down to his. He kissed me through the next thing that took me, deep and hard, and I came apart in his lap with my bound arms around his neck and my forehead pressed to his. His arms wrapped me, both of them, dragged me down hard into the next thrust and the one after, and I felt the line of his breath catch and break against my mouth. He went tight under me. A low rough sound broke out of him into my mouth that I was going to remember for the rest of my life. I felt him finish inside me in long slow pulses while my own aftershocks were still climbing, and I pressed my face into the side of his neck and breathed him in and did not move.
He did not let me go right away.
He held me there, both arms around me, his face in my hair, breath dragging. I could feel his heart through his chest where my chest was against his. I could feel the tie still soft at my wrists at the back of his neck.
After a long minute he lifted my hands off the back of his neck like they were something he had borrowed. He laid me down on my back on his pillow with a care that did not match what we had just done. He brought my wrists up between us and kissed the inside of one, slow, right where the silk had left a faint pink shadow, and then the other. Only then did he reach for the knot. He took his time on it, careful, watching my face, like he wanted to know the second any pressure eased. When the silk came away he kissed the small marks again, one and then the other, his mouth almost tender now.
"There," he said, soft.
He pulled the blanket up over both of us.
I rolled into him. My cheek went to the front of his shoulder where the bruise was not. His arm came around me and his hand settled at the back of my neck, fingers curled into my hair, thumb just behind my ear. The room was warm. Somewhere outside, the late autumn wind had picked up and was working at one of the windows. Inside, there was only the slow rise and fall of his chest under my cheek and the unhurried weight of his palm at my nape.
We did not talk for a minute. I did not want to.
"Chloe."
"Mm?"
