Page 76 of Dozer

"Okay," she says, muffled. "Okay. That's — okay."

"You set the pace."

"I—" She lifts her head. Blinks at me. "You're giving me the wheel."

"You've had the wheel all week."

"I have not⁠—"

"Kenzi." I run my hand up her spine, slow, until she shivers under it. "You've been driving since the rest stop. I've just been keeping the road clear."

Something goes soft in her face for a second. Then she rolls her hips and takes me apart with it, and I decide the sentimental part of the conversation can wait.

She's better at this than she has any business being. She finds her rhythm fast, hands braced on my shoulders, using me as leverage, and I let her do it. I let her set the depth and the speed and the cruel little grind at the top of every stroke because watching her take what she wants is better than anything I could have engineered myself. Her hair falls forward. I get a fistful of it and hold it back off her face because I want to see, and the small sound she makes at the pull tells me she likes it, so I keep it.

"You like that," I say.

"Shut up."

"That's not a no."

"It's not a no." She's breathless. Her forehead comes down against mine. "You've got a whole thing, don't you. Under the stoic thing. You've got a whole thing."

"Some."

"Show me."

So I do.

I get both hands on her hips and I stop letting her set the pace. She gasps, a real one, high and surprised and then her arms lock around my neck and her whole body goes pliant against me, giving it over, and Christ, that's the thing that nearly finishes me. Not the heat. Not the tight clutch of her. The fact that this woman, who can talk her way out of anything, who dismantles a man's story in four sentences flat, who has not stopped fighting for one hour of this entire week, lets go the second I take hold. She gives herself over to me fully and I’m glad to take charge. It’s where I excel.

"That's it," I tell her. "There you go."

"Dozer—"

"I've got you."

"I know." Her voice cracks on it. "I know, that's the — that's the whole problem, I know⁠—"

I lay her back down. Come down over her, one forearm braced beside her head, the other hand catching her knee and pushing it wide, and she takes me like she's been built for it, hands flat on my chest, then sliding up around my ribs, then dragging down my back hard enough to leave lines.

It stops being anything I could describe. There's no distance in it. It's sweat and the give of the mattress and the wet sound of our bodies coming together over and over and over again. It's her saying please again, and it's me making her say what for, and it's her doing it. It’s filthy and precise, and I'd have never guessed she had that in her except that of course she does, of course she'd be great even at this.

"You're going to have to give me a minute," I tell her, when I feel my orgasm starting to build. My voice comes out unrecognizable. "You keep moving like this and it’s over."

"Good."

"Kenzi—"

"No, I want—" She gets a hand in my hair and pulls my head down so she can say it against my ear, and it's not filthy this time. It's worse. It's soft. "I want you to come, it’s your turn. I need to know what’s between us is real."

Everything in me goes still. "It's real."

"Prove it."

I do.

I drive into her and she meets me and it's not slow anymore and sure as hell isn’t careful. It's just the two of us going at each other like people who have been counting hours until we could be together. My hand finds hers on the sheet and our fingers lock. Her heel digs into the small of my back. She's saying my name in this broken cadence, one syllable, over and over, and it stops sounding like a call sign and starts sounding like a name, which I think might be the first time in eleven years.