Page 132 of Power Play

“She used to sit out here,” he said, without any unkindness in it, reporting the score. “In the fall. When I came by. She sat right there.” He pointed with the fork at the end of the couch, the empty end, by the table where her book used to sit. “Now she goes in the little house.”

“She’s busy.”

“Sure,” Kasperi said, and went back to the game, and left it with me, because he’d seen it too. The youngest, least watchful human being on the roster had walked into my house on an off day and read in one visit what I’d been standing inside for weeks calling tidy.

She came to me that night, and I let it tell me everything was fine, which was the one thing it should never have told me.

I’d gone down early with a book open to a page I’d read over and over without a word of it landing, the house making its night sounds around me, and no light under the casita door when I’d gone by at ten. Iris had been out since seven-thirty. A little before eleven two knuckles came against the door, low, and she was inside before I had a word ready, in the long sleep shirt with her hair down and the hall light behind her. She pushed the door to until it sat where I kept it, the two inches for Iris in case she called out.

“Iris?”

“Down for the count. Hours ago.”

That was the asking, which was most of what it had ever taken between us. After a week of a house going quieter by the room, the mug carried over full, the laugh handed to everybody who wasn’t me, Kasperi reading it off the furniture in one visit, here she came across the cold floor to me on her own in the dark. The wrong in the daylight rooms hadn’t followed her in here. This was the one place she’d never once gone careful with me, and I reached for it as I’d reach for the one tool in the drawer I trusted not to slip.

She got a knee onto the mattress, and I brought her down over me with both hands at her hips, slow, so she’d feel herself being moved. My leg stayed where the brace kept it, out straight and locked at the hinge, the one part of me that had quit taking orders. There’d be no getting up on her tonight, no driving her into the mattress with my weight, none of how I ran it when my body did what it was told. The brace would keep me on my back and keep her over the top of me, and she’d do the work my leg wouldn’t let me. It would be both hands and a voice, then, and I’d run harder nights on less. I brought the hem of her shirt up and off her, slower than my habit, with the leg straight out and useless beside us, and she came down over me in the hall light with nothing on and let me have the looking, which she’d learned long ago I’d take for as long as I pleased. The color climbed her throat into her face in one pass. That had been hers since the first night, how fast she went red the second nothing was being asked of her.

Saying a thing out loud had never been mine. This I’d always said with my body, all season, with my weight and my hands and the drive of me, and she had always heard it. Tonight the body could say the half of it, and I’d have to put the rest in words, and that was fine. The saying was going to get said.

I brought a hand up to the back of her neck, not hard, enough that she came the last of the way down on my terms, and kissed her until the careful went out of her and her hips loosened over mine.

“You came over here for a reason,” I said against her mouth. “Tell me it’s a yes and I’ll run it. Every part. I can’t move tonight, so you’re going to do the moving, and you’re going to do it the way I say.”

“It’s a yes.” Her voice had already dropped out of the daylight into the register she kept for this, low and a half step slow. “God. Yes.”

“Then up here. Over me.” I brought her up by the hips to settle her astride my lap, slow, taking her weight onto me instead of putting mine on her, because the leg wouldn’t let me do it the other way around and we both knew it. I set her over the top of me and held her there, and the sound she made dropped low and came apart in the middle, the one sound of hers that had never left this house even while everything else of hers packed up and went down the side hall.

I settled back and looked up the length of her in the thin light, both hands spread on her thighs. “You want slow, you get slow. Anything you want stopped, it stops the second you say so. I need to hear you heard me.”

“I heard you.” Her hands came up to my ribs, hunting a job to do. “I don’t want it stopped.”

“Hands behind you. Flat on my thighs, and leave them there.” She reached back and set her palms where I told her, which arched her up and open over me and put all her weight down onto her own hands. “You hold yourself just like that. I can’t hold you up tonight, so you’re going to do it, and you’re going to do it because I said to.” I ran a hand up the middle of her, slow, stomach to throat, laying claim to the ground without hurry, and she pushed down into it. I brought her back to still with a palm flat on her stomach and kept the pace mine. “Slow. I’ve got the clock, even flat on my back. You get there when I take you there, not before.”

I brought her up the bed by the hips until she was above me and I could put my mouth on her, one breast and then the other, slow, working her with my tongue until the nipple drew up tight and she pulled a breath in through her teeth. Both hands were mine to use tonight and the leg was the thing taken instead, so I used the hands, one spread wide up her back to hold her down to my mouth and one at her hip to keep her moving the slow way I wanted. I stayed there longer than she wanted and pulled her back when she tried to lift away, made her wait, then gave it back, and she bowed over me and dropped her head and shook with the work of holding the pace I’d set. I had a mouth and two hands and a voice, and a leg that couldn’t rise to her, so I brought her down to me instead and made it enough. The rest of the house could go as quiet as it liked. Here she was loud for me. Here she hadn’t gone careful once. A man could stand a lot of clean counters if this one room stayed honest.

“Now sit up.” I brought her upright astride me, both my hands at her hips. “You’re doing the work. At the speed I give you.”

Her hands dropped flat on me and dug in, and that was its own tell, how fast she took an order the second it was handed to her. She reached between us and lined me up and sank down onto me slow, all the way, taking me at her own weight because the angle was hers to set now, nothing between us, the drawer across the room where it had stayed since Christmas, skin on skin, and the sound I made against the dark wasn’t a word. I brought both hands to her hips and set the pace off them, off the one point where I could still run this, and held her to it. The drive had to come from her tonight and the orders still came from me.

“Slow. I set it, not you.” Every time she tried to run out ahead of me I brought her back to the stroke I wanted with both hands at her hips, pressing her down into the rhythm and lifting her off it, and when my hands weren’t enough, which came sooner with my back pinned flat and my leg dead straight, I gave her the rest in my voice, all the control I couldn’t drive into her with my body handed over in words. “You don’t rush this. You go when I turn you loose and not a second before.”

“Iris,” she got out.

“Is down the hall. So you keep it quiet.” I brought her down over me by the back of the neck and put my mouth at her ear. “Bite down on me if you have to. You hold it until I say.”

She dropped her face into the side of my neck and held the sound in against my skin and took the pace I gave her, stroke by stroke, still working her own hips down onto me because that part was hers to do, until she trembled down the length of her and her hands had gone to fists against my shoulders.

“Eli, I can’t hold it. I can’t⁠—”

“You can. One more. Give me one more, and then you let go.” I brought one hand into her hair and set the other hard at her hip and drove her down onto me with both, the last of it coming off my arms since it couldn’t come off my legs. “Now. Let go for me. Now.”

She went over with her teeth shut against my shoulder and my name breaking up behind them, and she clenched down and shook, and I was a stroke back of her the entire way and followed her over, both hands spread wide at her back, holding all of her I could reach and telling myself it was all of her, every part down against me and none of it, I let myself think, held back.

She sank down slow, folded onto me, her heart hard against mine and her breath wet at my throat. I brought both arms around her and drew the sheet up over her back and kept her there, all her weight down on me, which was the one spot the leg didn’t argue with and the one I’d have picked anyway. I ran a hand up her spine and into her hair and left it there, and she grew heavier against me by the inch.

“Water?” I said.

“Don’t you dare get up.”