"Happy birthday to me and you," I grin.
She laughs, and pulls me down and kisses me hard. She reaches between us, her hand sliding down my stomach, and I expect her to find me spent and soft. We both do, but when her fingers wrap around me, her eyes go wide.
"You're..." Her gaze drops between us, then snaps back to my face, disbelief written all over her.
"You just..."
"It's your fault," I groan and push into her hand. This has actually never happened before, but I am helpless in her hands.
She starts to grin, that dangerous, delighted grin that always precedes trouble.
"Not an old man after all," she teases.
I grunt at her. “I’ll show you old, you little Trouble."
I kiss her, meaning to keep it light, meaning to match her teasing with my own. But the moment my mouth touches hers the playfulness burns away and what's left is just us, just this, how she opens for me like I'm the only thing she's ever wanted.
"Inside me," she whispers against my lips. "Now. Please."
I sink into her slowly, watching her face, watching her eyes go unfocused. She takes all of me, her body clenched around me, and I hold still, forehead pressed to hers, letting us both feel it.
Then I move. Deep strokes that make her grip my shoulders, and say my name in pieces, broken apart between moans.
After that, the night is a whirlwind. Every time we finish, every time the breathing slows and the bodies cool and the apartment settles into quiet, one of us reaches for the other.
A hand on a hip. A mouth on a shoulder. A murmured, drowsy request that reignites everything.
She rides me in the dark and I let her set the pace, which is its own particular kind of torture. Her hands are braced on my stomach, her hair falling in curtains around us both, and she moves like she has all the time in the world. Slow rolls of her hips that drag me in and pull me out and leave me gripping the sheets so I don't flip her over and take control.
The small smile tells me she knows exactly what she's doing.
"Look at you," I say, rough. "So fucking proud of yourself."
She tilts her head, still moving, still slow.
"Am I wrong?"
She is not wrong. I slide my hands up her thighs, her waist, her ribs, just to touch her, just to have my hands on her skin.
She arches into it like a cat, her head tipping back, exposed, and the sight of her above me, taking what she wants, wearing nothing but the low dark and the satisfied look of a woman who knows she has all the power in the room.
I catalogue every detail. Light catching her collarbone. Her lip bitten when she finds the angle she wants. Her eyes finding mine and staying there, holding the look longer than is safe for either of us. She leans down, her mouth at my ear, her hips still rolling, lazy and overwhelming.
"Tell me you're mine," she whispers. A dare. A question. Something in between.
"I'm yours," I confess without hesitation.
She exhales against my neck, something unravelling in her. Her hips stutter, her rhythm breaking apart, and I holdher through it, my hands firm on her waist, anchoring her while she comes undone above me.
At one point she collapses against me, spent, and I roll her onto her back and she goes willingly, her eyes half-closed and glazed.
I kiss the corner of her mouth, the tip of her nose, the freckle on her cheekbone. She turns into each one like a flower following light.
I take her against the headboard, her back to my chest, my arm across her collarbones, my mouth on her neck. She reaches back and grips the back of my head and pulls me harder against her throat, and the trust in that gesture, the way she opens herself up to me completely, knocks the air out of me in the best possible way.
The sheets are ruined. The blankets are on the floor. The extra pillow she insists on sleeping with has migrated to the doorway through a series of events neither of us can reconstruct.
She's lying on her stomach, her face turned toward me, her back bare and beautiful in the dark. I trace the line of her spine with my finger and she hums. The closer we get to spring, the worse it gets. The more I touch her, the more I need to touch her.
