Page 7

"Tell me to stop," I say.

"No way."

I pick her up and set her on the bench. Pots go over. Soil spills across the boards, dark and sweet, and a sprig of rosemary snaps under her hand and fills the air with it. I pull the cups of her bra down and take one nipple into my mouth, and she grabs my head and holds me there and moans loud enough to fog the glass.

Her jeans. I open them and drag them down her legs with her underwear, and she kicks off her boots to help me, and then she's naked on my potting bench with her thighs spread and soil on her palms and the last of the dusk turning her skin to copper.

I go to my knees on the soil-scattered boards.

"Eli," she says, high and startled. It's the first time she's ever said it, and it goes into me like a nail. I spread her open with my thumbs and look at her until she squirms, and then I put my mouth on her.

She tastes of salt and heat. I lick up through her slow and flat and feel her whole body jolt, and I do it again, and again, learning which way she likes it, reading every hitch in her breath the way I read her in the loft. Here she's loud. Here she doesn't hold anything back. I close my lips around her clit and suck, and her hands go to my head and her heels dig into my back and she comes on my tongue, shuddering, crying out, knocking a tray of seedlings clean off the bench.

I stand up with my mouth wet and open my belt.

She watches me the whole time. Her eyes go wide at my cock and her lips part, and she reaches for me with a soil-dark hand and wraps it around me and strokes, and I have to brace my arm against the glass.

"Let me," she says softly. "For once. Let me do something for you."

I let her. For four strokes, five, her grip firm and sure, watching my face like she's taking my pulse. Then I can't anymore. I take her wrist and pull it away and put her hand flat on my chest, over my heart, and hold it there.

"Count it," I tell her.

I step between her thighs and push into her.

She's tight and hot and slick, and I go slow, and she takes me by inches with her mouth open and her fingers pressed hard to my chest. When I'm all the way in I stop and hold. The greenhouse drips around us. Her heels lock behind me.

"What is it?" I ask. "My pulse."

"Too fast," she whispers. "Way too fast."

"You did that."

Her face breaks open, and I start to move.

Long strokes. Deep. I pull almost all the way out and watch her face while I sink back in, over and over, until her eyes lose focus and her mouth falls open and she stops trying to be quiet.

The bench rocks under us. The glass runs with water and the whole world smelling of rosemary and turned earth and her. She rolls her hips to meet me and holds on to my shoulders and tells me what she wants and I give her every one, until she's gasping and I'm gone.

"Mine," I say into her neck. "I've been watching you sleep for four nights, and you're mine."

"Yes."

"I'm going to keep you." My voice is coming apart. "Keep you fed. Keep you warm. Keep you full."

"Eli—"

"Going to plant something in you," I tell her, "and tend it. I’ll breed you and keep you mine. Forever."

She comes apart on that, clenching hard around me, her cry ringing off the glass, and I drive into her through it and follow her, holding deep while I spill into her with my forehead against hers and her hand still flat over my heart.

Afterwards I stay inside her and she doesn't let go of my chest. She's still counting. I can feel her lips moving.

"It’s slower," she says, and smiles for the first time since I've known her.

5

Sloane