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"That's it," she said against my ear. "Feel it. Don't fight it." She curled her fingers, and my knees buckled, and the arm across my mouth tightened to hold me upright. "I've got you. Stay up."

I tried. I made a sound into her hand that wasn't a word.

"I know." She held me there, relentless and unhurried at once. I could feel how wet I was, how easily she moved, and every time I clenched around her, she made a sound against my neck, low and undone, and all of it was for me.

She sped up.

Not all at once. She wasn't giving me everything. I could feel the control in it, the deliberate holding back. But it was enough that the heat spiked, and my whole body chased it.

Then she slowed.

I sobbed into her palm and tried to push back against her hand.

"Not yet." Her mouth was right at my ear, and her voice was perfectly even, which was the most unfair part of her. She was completely steady while she took me apart. "You're going to hold it for me."

I shook my head against her hand.

"You can," she said. "And you're going to be so good while you do."

She edged me twice.

The second time, I actually sobbed against her hand, my hips fighting her, my knuckles white on the counter, and she kept murmuring to me, low and steady and completely in command of every single second happening in my kitchen. That's it. Almost. You're doing so well. Hold it for me. I've got you. You're mine, and I've got you.

She lifted her hand off my mouth just long enough to let me speak.

"Please," I managed, barely coherent. "Please, Cam, I'll be good, I need to come, please, please..."

"Look at me," she said.

I turned my head as far as I could and found her eyes over my shoulder. She was flushed, and her pupils were blown, and she looked at me like I was the reason the sun had bothered to come up this morning. Every morning, even.

"Come for me," she said. "Right now."

She drove her fingers deep and curled them hard and ground the heel of her hand against my clit, and her palm came back over my mouth, and I came completely apart against my own kitchen counter with her arm the only support keeping me on my feet.

It rolled through me in long, overlapping waves that kept going past what I would've thought was possible. Her hand caught every sound I made. Her fingers kept moving until the last wave had passed and the shaking finally started to settle. When she took her hand from my mouth, I dragged in a breath like I'd been underwater.

"Say it," she said quietly against my ear.

I laughed, helpless and shaking. "You're kidding."

"I'm not."

I turned my face into her neck. "Thank you, Cam."

"Good girl." She pressed her mouth to my temple. That kiss was different from the rest. It wasn't heat. It was just care, just her checking that I was still there. "Still with me?"

"I have no bones left in my body. Did I ever have any?" I said. "I'm purely a conceptual entity at this point."

"Hands," she said. "You can let go of the counter now."

I let go. My fingers ached. She turned me in her arms and held me up while my legs remembered how to work, her chin resting on top of my head, her heartbeat steady against my cheek.

When I could finally stand on my own, I looked up at her.

Her eyes were dark and completely present. And under all of it, under the heat and the focus and the total control she'd had over every second of that, there was the same look that had been in her face when she kissed my temple. Care. Just care. Running under everything else like it was her first language, and the rest was just a translation.

"Cam," I said, smiling.