Page 186 of Tracked and Taken

Her mouth at mine. Open. Hungry. Nine hours of being the architecture, spent. I kiss her back like I have been thinking about her mouth since 1100. I have. I take her hands off my collar. I put them on my chest. I walk her backwards to the bed.

“Tael.”

“Sweetheart.”

“You are doing the thing.”

“What thing?”

“The walking-me-backwards thing. The thing the male does when he has decided the female is, in the next sixty seconds, going to be on the bed.”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

In thirty seconds she is on the bed.

The uniform comes off her.

Not the way it came off her the first time, one piece at a time with my hands doing all the deciding and her not required to make a single one. She is not, tonight, a woman who needs the deciding taken off her. She kicks her own boots at the foot of the bed while I am still on the collar, and the collar is the only part I am unwilling to delegate, because the collar is where the mark is.

Second button. Then the rest. My mouth goes to the mark as the fabric opens and I suck until her hips come up off the mattress and her hands fist in my shirt.

The under-layer goes over her head and she throws it at the chair and misses the chair.

“Vosk.”

“Sweetheart.”

“The pants are not, in any minute you spend admiring them, going to remove themselves.”

“I am enjoying the interval.”

“Enjoy it faster.”

I enjoy it faster.

The pants. The cotton.

The cotton is wet.

I hold it up between two fingers. I look at her. She looks at the ceiling like the ceiling is going to save her.

“Nine hours,” I say.

“Do not start a report.”

“You sat at that desk like this.”

“Vosk.”

“For me.”

“For the day.”

“For me.” I put the cotton down with the rest. “Say it.”

A beat. Her throat works.

“For you.”