I pull her in without hesitating, one hand at her waist and one still against her face.
The kiss deepens before either of us chooses it to. The way it does when two people have been holding something back long enough that restraint stops being an option.
She makes a small sound against my mouth that undoes something in me completely.
I walk her back slowly until her shoulders meet the kitchen wall. Not urgent, not rushed, just deliberate, taking my time with it the way I've wanted to since long before I had the right to. She goes with it, her hands finding the front of my shirt curling into the fabric like she needs something to hold onto while the ground shifts under everything she thought she knew.
I pull back just far enough to look at her, to make sure we're in the same place.
What I find on her face is not uncertainty or hesitation but something open and unguarded that she doesn't show easily and has never shown me until right now.
"Jace," she says, just my name, but the way she says it carries everything.
"I've got you," I answer, and I mean every layer of it, tonight and tomorrow and whatever comes after, all of it. The whole weight of everything around us.
I take her hand and lead her down the hall, past Hadley's closed door where the quiet of her sleep holds steady. We walk into my room. When the door closes behind us the house settles into a different kind of quiet, the kind that happens when something that has been unresolved for too long finally finds its answer.
She turns to face me in the low light, her eyes clear and certain, and reaches for the hem of my shirt.
I let her as she pulls it over my head. No buttons bothered with.
I take my time with her.
That was always going to be how this went, because Riley Grant is not a woman you rush. Not a woman you treat like something to get through to the other side. I have wanted this long enough that hurrying feels like a waste of something I intend to remember clearly.
I find the hem of her shirt, she lifts her arms without being asked, and I take it slow, My hands are trailing up her sides as the fabric goes, feeling the way she reacts to the contact, the small catch in her breathing that she doesn't try to hide the way she would have a week ago. She is naked underneath the long sleep shirt.
She's not hiding anything tonight. She is ready and wet. She wants this.
That might be the thing that gets me most. Suddenly I'm hard and rubbing against her, she takes my breath away. My clothes piled on the floor.
I lay her back against the pillows and take my time working my way down. My mouth finding the curve of her throat, the line of her collarbone, the rise of her chest as I move over her nipples, now hard as she arches when I take it into my mouth.
I keep moving lower, learning the geography of her with the patience of someone who has been given something worth paying attention to, and she lets me. Her fingers threading into my hair, her body arching into the contact in a way that tells me everything I need to know about what she wants without her having to say a word.
Though she does say words, quiet ones, my name and please and a soft broken sound when my mouth finds all the places that makes her forget about being composed. I file every single one of them away like they're something I'm going to need to find my way back to.
I work my way down with my mouth. Stopping at her breasts again as I kiss and tease the nipples with my tongue one by one. I move down further this time.
Spread her legs gently. I can see just how wet she is. I insert two fingers, my thumb on her clit making small rotations.
She lets out a moan, squirms and arches into it. "Jace" she says softly. I watch her with her eyes closed. Her breathing is getting faster, she is unguarded and walls have come down. I can see the pleasure on her face. "I'm going to..." she trails off. I tell her to let it go.
Her body convulses with pleasure. I hold her arms to help her through it. Her body finally relaxes.
I slowly move over her, kissing and touching all the way back up. Her nipples still extremely hard. She's ready again. She's pulling me in.
When I finally settle over her and she pulls me down. Her legs wrap around me. The breath that leaves her is the most honest sound I've ever heard from her, open and unguarded and entirely without the careful distance she keeps between herself and anything that could reach her.
I move slowly at first, watching her face while I move in and out. I stay in contact with her eyes when she lets me. What I find there makes my chest tighten in a way that has nothing to do with want. It has everything to do with the understanding that this is not just bodies finding each other in the dark.
This is two people who have been circling something true, finally deciding to stand still inside it.
She pulls me closer as I release. The orgasm falling over me like a wave. For a long time after that neither of us says anything at all. There isn't anything left that needs saying. We just try to get our breathing back to normal as we lay tangled in each other. Her head on my chest, her dark hair messy but spread across me.
Afterward the house holds us in the kind of quiet that doesn't ask anything of you. Riley tucked against my side with her breathing slow and even now. Her hand resting flat against my chest like she fell asleep measuring my heartbeat and didn't notice when she stopped counting.
I should sleep. I just can’t. My thoughts won’t let me.
