The whole world has rushed this woman. Rushed her into composure. Into silence. Into being good and quiet and small. So I do the opposite of rushing.
I undress her slowly, between kisses. Every time her hands come up to do something—to reach for me, to even the scales—I catch them and put them back down.
"No," I tell her softly against her throat. "Not tonight. Tonight you don't earn anything. Tonight you just take and give in to the feeling."
I feel the war in her body when I say it.
The flinch first. Then the slow unclenching.
The whole apparatus of her upbringing. Every lesson that taught her a woman's pleasure is a debt she'd better be ready to pay back. Fighting against the plain fact of my mouth moving down her.
"Njal—" My name comes out high and uncertain. "I should—you don't have to?—"
"I know I don't have to." I press my mouth to the soft of her belly and feel it jump under me. "I want to. There's a difference there too."
Then I show her.
I take her apart slowly. Patient. Not one second of hurry in it. And I don't let her hide from it.
When she turns her face into the pillow, I bring her back.
When her hands scrabble at the sheets, hunting for something to apologize to, I lace my fingers through hers and hold them down where she can feel that they're held.
"Eyes on me." She opens them, glassy and shocked and full. "There you go. Good girl."
The words land on her like a live wire.
I watch them hit. The flush races up her chest.
Her mouth falls open. Some lifelong locked door in her comes off its hinges at two plain words said like I mean them—because I do mean them.
"Again," she gasps.
I don't know if she means the words or the rest of it, so I give her both.
"Good girl. That's it. Let me." I feel her start to climb, feel her fight it out of pure reflex, the old terror of being caughtwanting something. "Don't you hold back from me. Not here. Here, you're allowed."
Here, you're allowed.
That's the one that does it. That's the one that breaks her open.
She comes apart under my mouth with my name in her throat and her hand crushing mine, shaking, undone, watching me the whole way through like I've shown her something she didn’t know existed.
I don't take it further than that.
I could. She'd let me, boneless and wrecked and open as she is, and there's a part of me that's been straining toward it since she came through my door.
But this is enough for tonight.
This is the first thing she's ever taken just because she wanted it.
I'm not crowding it with anything else. The rest comes when she's ready and certain, and not one minute before.
I gather her up against me instead.
She's quiet a while, tucked under my arm, her face against my chest.
I know this part too. I know what comes after, when the body's done and the brain wakes back up.