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“You promised me filth.”
“I also promised to take my time.”
“You can do both.”
“My brilliant girl.”
“I missed you recognizing my intelligence.”
“I recognized it every time you found a loophole in our rules.”
Her laugh breaks when my mouth begins moving lower.
I kiss the center of her chest and every rib before reaching her stomach. There is no hesitation in her body. No hand comes down to cover the softness beneath my lips. Charm watches me move over her with the same open confidence I heard the night she stopped hiding from her own desire.
My mouth follows every curve.
I kiss the place she used to grip while tearing herself apart in front of a mirror, but I don’t turn the touch into reassurance or make tonight another battle against her reflection. I put my mouth there because I love the softness beneath it. I put my hands around her waist because I have missed how perfectly it fits between them.
“You’re staring,” she says.
“I’m looking.”
“At what?”
“The body I love.”
Her breathing changes.
“I’m not asking you to believe me,” I continue. “I’m telling you what belongs to me.”
Ryan before the letters would have demanded she see herself through my eyes. The man those letters built understands that her reflection belongs to her.
My desire belongs to me.
Charm doesn’t have to use it as evidence anymore. She only has to let me give it to her.
“I love your body,” I say against her stomach. “I loved it when I had no idea how hard you were fighting it. I loved it when photographs showed me what the illness nearly took. I love it now because you fought to remain inside it long enough to bring it back to me.”
Her fingers move into my hair. “Ryan.”
“No healing talk,” I remind her.
“That rule ended seven months ago.”
“It remains useful when you’re about to cry while I’m trying to make you come.”
A laugh breaks through the emotion in her face. “You’re terrible at romance.”
“I mailed you eleven pages containing Victorian poetry.”
“You also mailed me a picture of your cock fighting gray sweatpants.”
“Range is important.”
I kiss her stomach again before moving lower.
My release shines between her thighs.
