Page 60 of Torment Me Knot
His eyes are steady on mine, holding me there. “Espie. You don't have to say that. I know what was done to you. You don't have to give me that.”
“You are.” My voice cracks. “Everything before was something that happened to my body while I wasn't there. None of it counts, Aubrey. You're the first one I chose. The only one.”
He's quiet for a long moment. His hand stays on my cheek. His thumb keeps moving, slow, catching tears as they come.
“Then I'm the first.” His voice is low. “And I’m honored.”
He eases out of me slowly, carefully. I feel the loss of him in real time. The slow drag of him leaving. The cooling air rushing in to fill the space he's vacated. The strange emptiness behind my hipbones where his weight pushed. I unwrap my legs from his waist and find my footing on the slick tile, my thighs trembling, my whole body loose and heavy with satisfaction.
He reaches past me to turn off the water. The sudden silence rings in my ears, broken only by the drip of the showerhead and our ragged breathing. The chill arrives the moment the spray stops. Steam still rises from the warm tile in slow drifting columns. Water beads at the ends of my hair and slides cold down my shoulder blades. Through the open bathroom door, condensation gathers in droplets on the bedroom mirror beyond.
“That was...” He trails off, shakes his head. A disbelieving laugh escapes him, barely more than a breath. “I don't have words for how perfect you are.”
He pulls me against his chest, wraps his arms around me, and we stand there in the cooling air, skin to skin, heartbeat toheartbeat. I press my ear to his sternum and listen to the steady thump beneath his ribs. Steady. Whole. Still here.
After a long moment. “We should dry off before we freeze.”
He wraps me in a towel first, rubbing the terry cloth over my arms and back, gentle and thorough. He works it down my back, over my arms, around my hips. The terry cloth scratches faintly against skin still hyper-sensitive from his touch. He works around the bite on my throat, careful not to catch the tender edges. Then he bends his head and presses his lips to his bond mark.
A thrill races down my spine. White-hot. Instant. Slick floods between my thighs, and I make a sound I don't recognize. Something between a gasp and a whimper.
Aubrey groans against my throat, and I feel his answering response slam through the bond like an echo. He felt it too. He felt me feel it.
“I don’t know I’m going to achieve anything else in the day other than making love to you.”
He stays there a moment longer, his lips warm over the throbbing mark, his breath uneven. Then he eases back and grabs another towel for himself. We pad out of the bathroom together. Our nest in the corner is a mess of blankets and pillows, the duvet trailing onto the floor.
“Has it really only been a few hours? Since we woke up in there?”
Aubrey's hand finds the small of my back. He studies the nest with me, his head tilted.
“Yeah.”
“That can't be right.”
“I know. It feels like longer.” His thumb moves once against my spine. “I don't feel like the same person who was in that nest this morning.”
“Me neither.” I lean back into his hand. “I'm not. I'm not the same.”
“No.”
We move toward the dresser. There are clothes folded in the drawers. Soft fabrics in muted colors. Cream and gray and the palest sage. I lift out a sweater. Linen. Faint, clean, sitting in the wool.
“Ezra.” I set it on top of the dresser.
Aubrey takes out a pair of sweatpants. He brushes his thumb over the fabric.
“Lex helped fold these. Kev too.”
I pick out leggings. A long sweater. Aubrey watches me. I feel his eyes on me as I pull the sweater over my head, as it settles soft against my skin.
He's pulling on the gray sweatpants. They sit low on his hips. He shrugs into the Henley, and the dark fabric pulls tight across his shoulders, his chest, the long lean line of his torso.
A small sound escapes me. I don't mean it to. He looks up. Catches it. The corner of his lips quirk.
He's thinner than he should be. I see the shape of his ribs through the cotton, the sharp line of his collarbone above the neckline. There's a healing bruise on his forearm. Yellow at the edges, fading. The faint shadow of where they kept the IV at the OHC. But the Henley fits him in a way that makes my stomach clench, the long sleeves clinging to his forearms, the buttons left half-undone at his throat where my bite mark sits red and fresh on his skin. The mark I left. Mine. The shape of my teeth in his skin.
He's older than me. A decade, give or take. There's silver threading through his hair at the temples, faint lines at the corners of his eyes that I want to map with my fingers. He's beautiful in the line of his neck. In the long hands hanging loose at his sides. In the careful way he stands.
