Page 18 of 13 Nights

"That doesn't mean touching you won't make it worse."

"Then if anything changes, you tell me. Immediately. You don't decide for me and you don't keep me ignorant to protect me."

"Done."

"Do you want me?" she asks.

"Yes."

"Then stop trying to make my decision for me."

I take her wrist. Not gently. My fingers close around the bones with enough pressure that she feels the cold in my grip, and I watch her face for the flinch that would end this.

She holds still. Her pulse hammers against my thumb.

"If you tell me to stop, I stop. That's the only word that ends this." My voice drops low enough that she has to hold her breath to hear it. "Everything else, you give me. When I ask a question, you answer. When I tell you to hold still, you hold still. If you can't do that, say so now."

"Agreed."

"Say it clearly."

"I agree to your terms."

"Good."

I pull her to her feet and she steps into me.

Her mouth is warm. I know this the way I know the pasta was warm: as a fact, registered but incomplete. The texture of her lower lip caught between my teeth.

I can feel the mechanics of the kiss without the full dimension of sensation, and the frustration of it sharpens my focus into something predatory. If I can't feel everything, I will catalog everything I can reach.

I sit back into the chair and draw her down onto my lap. She settles against me with her knees on either side of my hips. I take what I want. My mouth at the hinge of her jaw. My teeth grazing the tendon along her throat. My hands moving down her ribs, her waist, the curve of her hip, learning the geography of her body while my dulled senses fight to register what my hands are touching.

She makes a sound against my collar when my fingers find the soft skin at the inside of her thigh. I commit it to memory.

Her hips roll against mine, and the friction is enough to tighten my hold on her waist hard enough to stop her.

"Not yet," I tell her. "Not until I say."

The look she gives me is lucid, calculating, and entirely unafraid. I close the folder on the table and set it on the chair beyond her reach.

Then I lift her onto the cleared surface, and the plates rattle and the wine bottle rocks and I don't care. Her legs wrap around my waist, and the heat of her through our clothes reaches me faintly but unmistakably.

The clothes come off in stages. Hers first, because I want to see what I'm claiming. I pull the hem of her shirt up and over her head while she's still seated on the table edge. When she reaches to help, I catch her hands and press them flat against the wood on either side of her hips.

"Keep them there."

She obeys. Her jaw tightens, but her hands stay where I put them.

I take my time. The bra clasp is small and my fingers are cold and she shivers when the fabric falls away.

Her nipples tighten in the chilled air, and I trace one with my thumb until her stomach contracts. The texture of her skin reaches me as a muted fact. What arrives without any filter at all is the way her body reacts to what I'm doing.

That will have to be enough.

I lower my mouth to her breast and take the hardened peak between my teeth. She arches off the table. The sound she makes is involuntary and raw, and I memorize it the way a starving man memorizes the location of food.

"Eyes open," I tell her. "Watch me."