Page 118 of Legacy Ascended

"You've stopped translating," I say.

"Yes."

"Why?"

He turns around. He doesn't reach for an excuse, doesn't reach for the rulebook, doesn't do a single one of the things he'd have done a year ago.

"Because you're sitting there," Jon says, "and I've read the same line six times, and I've run out of ways to pretend that's about the handwriting."

I stand up.

We look at each other across four feet of workroom, and then both of us move at once, and it isn't toward each other — it's toward the table, because we are who we are.

He squares the card scans and slides them into the folder. I get the copies into the cart and the cart against the wall. He puts the pen in his pocket. It takes about twenty seconds and neither of us says a word, and it's the least romantic thing I have ever participated in and my hands are shaking the entire time.

Then he crosses to the door and turns the latch.

"Booked till ten," he says. "Under both our names. The custodian went home at eight."

And then he's on me.

It is nothing like the first time. This is both his hands at my waist and my back against the table edge, and he is not apologizing for anything.

I get my arms around his neck and pull. When I bite his lower lip his fingers flex hard enough that I feel it in my bones.

"Up," I say against his mouth. "Put me on the table."

He lifts me onto the cleared edge with two hands at my waist and no strain in it at all, and sitting there my face is level with his.

"Better," he says, unsteady.

I hook my heels behind his thighs and pull him in, and then he's against me — hard, through his pants and my leggings.

"God," Jon says into my throat.

"Don't stop."

He doesn't stop. He gets one arm around my lower back and takes my weight, so I'm held against him rather than braced on my hands, and the other comes up under my shirt and spreads across my ribs, and he rolls his hips into me.

We are both entirely dressed. There's pressure exactly where I need it and he's found a rhythm and he isn't changing it.

His mouth goes down my neck. His hand goes up and finds my breast, his thumb dragging across the nipple through my bra, and my whole body arches into it.

"Look at me," he says.

His eyes are dark and staring right at me.

"Harder." I get my heel into the back of his thigh. "I'm close."

He isn't careful. He holds me tight against him and drives his hips into me in a hard, steady rhythm, his breathing completely gone against my ear.

"Jessica—"

He keeps going, and his forehead comes down against mine, and I can feel him shaking with the effort of holding on until I'm there.

I come like that, fully clothed, with my face turned into his shoulder to keep the sound down and his arm locked around my back.

He follows a moment after. He says my name — just my name, low and undone — and then he holds absolutely still with his forehead against mine while it goes through him.