“Yeah?” he asked.
“Yeah. Stage two.”
He got the bottle out of the kit one-handed, came back to me, and settled between my legs like he was planning to stay the rest of his life.
“Knees up.”
I pulled my knees up.
The first finger went in slowly, and he watched my face the whole time the way he always does, reading me. “Easy,” he said, when my breath caught. “There you go.”
“I’m fine. Keep going.”
“I know you’re fine.” A second finger, and his mouth at the inside of my knee. “I’m not in a hurry.”
“You’re a menace.”
“Mm.” He crooked his fingers and found the spot on the first pass. My spine arched. “There he is.”
“Rook—“
“Look at you.” He said it quietly, almost to himself, working me open. His voice ruined me, the one nobody else ever heard. “Ten days. I get to look all I want. I’m making up for lost time.” The third finger entered, and I whimpered into my forearm.
“Look from closer.”
“I’m getting there.” He kissed my knee again. “You’ll keep.”
“I will not keep. I’m thirty. The decline could start any minute.”
“I’ll risk it,” he said, and took his time until I was rocking down onto his hand and swearing at him in both English and Hungarian. Only then did he pull back and slick himself up, one hand braced beside my head.
“Luki.” His eyes were on mine. “Still like this?”
“Like this? Do belugas—damn, where’d that—“
He pushed inside slowly, one long press that took the rest of my words with it.
He went still and dropped his forehead to mine. Neither of us moved. His heart was pounding hard where my hand was caught between us.
“All okay?”
“Move,” I said.
His hips rocked, slow and deep, and I wrapped my legs around him. He found the angle on the third thrust. He said my name, low against my ear, again and again with the rhythm—“Luki, Luki”—and the sound started building in my chest.
I reached up, found his left hand, and brought it down over my mouth before it got out. I pressed his palm there and held it, my hand over the back of his.
He continued—deeper and a little ragged. His control was gone. The headboard knocked against the wall. He dropped to his forearm, his weight coming down on me solid, and he pushed his other hand between us.
The palm left my mouth, so I kept my hand there, while he stroked me in time with his hips. I came shouting into my hand, every muscle in my body locking up, eyes open, staring into his, the whole way through. He watched me the entire time. He always watches.
Watching me finish wrecked him. A dozen thrusts, rougher, his rhythm falling apart, and then he drove deep and came hard, groaning my name into my neck. His body shook while I held him through it, heels in the backs of his thighs.
He cleaned us up afterwards with a warm washcloth, matter-of-factly kissed my hipbone, and came back to bed.
The television murmured across the room, local news at a low volume. A man in front of a weather map promised six inches of snow by morning. School closings crawling along the bottom for towns named Cheektowaga and Lackawanna.
“Cheektowaga,” I said to the ceiling.
