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She closed her eyes. She sensed him lower himself over her, his weight a thing she'd not known she was hungry for. His hand came up and cupped her face, his thumb at the corner of her mouth where it had been outside.

He didn't stay there.

His mouth moved down. Throat, collarbone. At Jovana's stars he lingered, a silent acknowledgement passing through his touch before he continued without comment, as if he'd decided they were hers and not a question for him. Sternum. The soft place beneath her ribs where her breath had already gone shallow. He took his time. He learned her the way he'd learned the marks on her spine, in order, slowly, as if there were a sequence to be respected.

She lifted onto her elbows to watch him.

He lifted his eyes to hers without lifting his head. His gaze went through her ribs the way it always did.

"Lysander."

"Mm."

"What are you —"

"Lie back."

She didn't lie back. Watching him was better.

He set his hand flat against her belly and pressed her gently down. She let him. The mattress was at her shoulder blades. The lamp burned at the edge of her vision, low, and gold.

He pressed his open mouth to the hollow of her hip. Then to the inside of her thigh. The metal hand rested above her knee, cool and certain, holding her open with a steadiness she couldn't have matched on her own. She understood what the two hands were telling her.

Her hand went into his hair without her deciding to put it there.

His hand slid up the inside of her other thigh slowly, watching her face. He stopped a hair's breadth from where she wanted him. He waited.

"Lysander —"

"I want to hear you."

"You will."

"Now."

"Please." The word escaped her lips completely unbidden. She hadn't said please to anyone in years.

He made a sound against her thigh that might have been a laugh and might have been something else and lowered his mouth to her.

The world went very quiet.

His hand replaced what his mouth had begun, and his mouth moved up, slow, deliberate, learning her shape by trial. He didn't rush. His patience was that of a man who'd decided this was the only thing in the world. The metal hand at her thigh didn't move. It didn't need to.

The sound she made didn't stay in. She let it go.

Her hand tightened in his hair. He answered the tightening with his mouth; found a rhythm she couldn't have asked for in words. She couldn't have spoken if he'd asked her to. She arched up to meet him. He met her back.

When she came, it came sudden, sharper than she expected, her whole spine going taut, the marks along it lighting in a sequence beneath her skin she couldn't see. Her own breath broke with his name on her lips.

He stayed where he was until she stopped trembling.

Then he lifted his head, and his hand came up and wiped his mouth with the back of it, and the look on his face was new. Something between satisfied and undone.

"Idonea."

"Don't."

"Don't what?"