My breath punches out of me. A sound rips from my throat that I'd be humiliated by if I had any capacity left for humiliation, which I fucking don't, because this woman has systematically destroyed every defense mechanism I've spent a decade building and she's doing it while impaled on my cock.
"Good," she says softly. "That's good. Putting it back."
Click-click-click.
Safe.
"Again."
"Fuck—Bells, I can't?—"
"You can. You're already doing it."
She pulls.
Click-click-click.
This time the panic doesn't hit as hard. Still there. Still that ice-water rush of exposure and vulnerability that makes my hands clench and my vision tunnel.
But it's duller. Manageable.
She puts it back.
Pulls again.
My breathing is ragged and I can't even see clearly because my brain isn't getting enough oxygen anymore. I'm panting against her shoulder, my forehead pressed to the brick beside her head, my arm still banded around her waist while my free hand braces against the wall.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Each time, the terror recedes a fraction of an inch. Each time, my body's response dampens slightly, the adrenaline spike a little less sharp, the urge to bolt a little less overwhelming.
Because it's her.
Because her fingers are sure and steady and she's humming something under her breath—a melody I don't recognize, maybe even her own—and her thighs are warm around my waist and her heartbeat is steady against my chest.
"Last one," she says on what might be the tenth pull.
Or the fifteenth.
Twentieth, even.
I've lost count.
Click-click-click.
The mask comes away.
I hold still.
Not because the panic is gone. It isn't. It's coiled in my chest like a fist, tight and cold and waiting. But I hold still because mybody has finally accepted that the mask comes off and goes back on and nothing catastrophic happens in between.
"There you go," Bells whispers.
She puts it back.