Page 52 of The Sun He Buried

I should feel weird about this. I keep waiting to. I don’t.

Baldr watches my face.

“I want this,” I tell him.

“Slowly.”

“At first.”

His mouth curves. “At first.”

He guides himself into me.

Slowly, because he promised. I hold his shoulders and breathe while my body stretches around him. He stops before I ask.

“All right?”

“Yes.” I move my hips. “More.”

He gives me another inch.

I reconsider several decisions.

“Still all right?”

“Yes.”

“Certain?”

“Baldr.”

“Yes?”

“If you ask again, I’m going to push you off.”

He looks down at the distance between me and the floor. “Dangerous.”

I start laughing.

He kisses me through it and presses the rest of the way inside.

The laugh ends on a gasp.

We stay still for a few breaths. His arms shake beside me. Baldr, who can carry me across a yard with one arm, is holding himself back hard enough to shake.

I touch his face. “You can move.”

He draws out and comes back slowly.

That works.

I tell him.

The next stroke is deeper. My nails drag down his back. He lowers himself onto one elbow, slides the other hand beneath my hip, and finds a rhythm that keeps striking the place his fingers found earlier.

I can’t think of anything useful.

Fortunately, he doesn’t need instructions anymore.