She narrows her eyes. She doesn't believe me, and I can feel her decide not to push it, because she wants this more than she wants the truth right now. So do I.
I don't turn the flash over. I keep my eyes on her face, here, in the red light, flushed and alive, her lips bitten pink and wet. I put my thumb on her clit and press, then fuck my fingers into her harder, until she's riding my hand and saying my name. The flash goes back wherever it came from.
She comes with her forehead against mine and her nails in my shoulders, shaking all over, clenching down on my fingers so hard I can feel her pulse in them. It comes down the bond a heartbeat later, bright and separate and hers, the best thing I've ever felt that wasn't happening to me.
I don't stop. I keep my thumb moving, gentle, while she whimpers, grinding down onto my hand, and comes again, or keeps coming—I can't even tell, and I don't care.
"Felix." Breathing hard, she pushes my hand away and reaches for my jeans. "Now. Please. I want you inside me."
She gets the button open, then the zipper, then her hand inside my boxers, wrapping around my cock. I'm so hard it's kind of embarrassing. I hiss through my teeth, my head going back against the cabinet, and she smirks at me, breathless, and strokes me slow from root to tip. She does it again, watching my face the way I watched hers, and I can feel her deciding through the bond—the exact second she makes up her mind.
She lifts up on her knees, holds me steady, and sinks down onto me, slow, all the way, with her hands on my shoulders and her eyes on mine.
"Fuck," I breathe. "Fuck, Ev."
"That's the idea."
She's so hot and tight around my cock that I can't think. For a second she just sits there, full of me, her thighs trembling. Then she starts to move.
"You feel so fucking good." My voice cracks right down the middle. "You're squeezing me so tight, Ev. I'm not going to last."
"Don't you dare." She grinds down on me and watches me choke on it. "I didn't climb into your lap for a quickie."
She rides me on the kitchen floor and takes her time about it, rolling her hips and grinding down, watching me fall apart under her. Every time I try to look away—at the ceiling, at the stove, anywhere—she takes my chin in her fingers and turns my face back to hers.
So I look at her. I look at her tits bouncing, at the flannel falling off her arm, at her mouth open and her hair coming down out of its knot. I look at where my cock disappears into her, wet and shining, every time she sinks down.
My balls are drawn up tight and aching, and my thighs are shaking under her from holding off. Every time she bottoms out I feel it at the base of my spine, a hot pull that wants to take me right then, so I bite the inside of my cheek and think really hard about Brittany's lemon dish soap.
I grab her ass in both hands and pull her down harder. She makes a sound I'm going to hear for the rest of my life. When I get my thumb back on her clit, rubbing slow and firm, she says my name and keeps saying it, louder, until it's bouncing off the cabinets. I don't care who hears. I want them to. I want Atlas lying awake upstairs grinding his teeth.
"Louder," I tell her. "Come on. Let them hear what you sound like on my cock."
She slaps my chest, breathless. "You're the worst."
"I'm the worst," I agree, then thrust up into her hard, and she loses whatever she was going to say next.
I don't look at the futures, not a single one. For the first time since that hill I don't want to know what happens next, not in an hour or tomorrow or ever. I just want to be right here on the cold tile, with her riding me and the deck face down beside us.
She comes again, clenching around my cock until I see stars.
I feel it twice. My body gets her pussy squeezing me, her thighs shaking against my hips; the bond hands me the rest of it, bright and separate and all hers.
It takes me with her. "Fuck, Ev, I'm going to—" is as far as I get. I can't hold it, and I don't want to.
I come so hard my head slams back into the cabinet door.
We stay there on the kitchen floor with her in my lap and my cock still inside her, both of us breathing like we ran up the stairs from the Well. She's slumped against my chest, my arms around her back under the flannel, her skin damp and hot under my hands. My deck is face down on the tile next to us. Neither of us touches it.
The back of my head starts to throb.
"Ow."
She lifts her head. "What?"
"I think I put a dent in the cabinet. With my skull."
Reaching up, she feels the back of my head very gently, finds the lump, and starts to laugh, so hard she has to put her face in my neck, and I can feel it in her stomach against mine, and down the bond.