I put my knee on the bed beside his hip.
His hands come to my waist, steadying, and he looks up at me—the slight remaining angle between us, me above him now, his face tipped up. “Is this—” he starts.
“Yes,” I say. “This is exactly what I want.”
His hands spread firm across my hips, and I move forward over him. At the first press of contact, we both go still. I watch his face while it happens. I have been on the receiving end of his attention since the first visit. From up here, I can give it back.
“You,” he says, low. “You have no idea.”
“Tell me.”
“How many times I’ve—” He stops. Starts differently. “Since the first time you handed me something across a workbench. Since before I understood what was happening to me.” His thumb traces a slow circle at my hip, on the scar, as if it belongs to him. “I kept thinking about this. About you here. Like this.”
I lean down and kiss him and feel the careful angle he holds for me—the slight turn of his head so his tusks don’t scrape—and I bring my hand up and trace one with my thumb, slow, feeling the smooth curve of it, and feel him go completely still beneath me.
“Honey,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “I’ve got you.”
He looks at me and what’s on his face is not the performer’s ease, and not the patient, careful look from before. Just him. All the way through.
When I sit back up, his hands find my breasts and his thumbs find my nipples and I let my head fall back.
“Look at me,” he says.
I bring my head back up and meet his eyes. He does it again, deliberate, watching my face, and the sensation moves through me so sharply I have to breathe through it. There is nothing accidental about it. He learned me the first time. Hasn’t forgotten a single thing.
“You already know,” I say. Not a complaint. Just the truth of it.
“Yes.” His thumbs move again. “I know.”
I reach between us, wanting to watch his face when I touch him, so I do. His entire body goes still. The sound he makes is low and unguarded, more honest than anything I’ve heard from him with a room full of people watching. His hands go still on me. His eyes close for just a moment.
I understand now what he must have felt the first time. The erotic intimacy of watching someone receive you.
“Honey.” My name in his mouth in that register does things I will not recover from quickly.
I rise up over him. He guides me, and the first press of him makes my breath catch—the stretch of it, the fullness, the slow overwhelming slide of being filled by someone built like he is. I hold his gaze and lower myself, taking my time, watching his face while I do.
I’m halfway down and my thighs are already trembling. He’s thick and hard and my body is deciding whether to resist or surrender and choosing surrender, inch by inch, and I can feel every bit of it—the stretch that walks the edge of too much, the slick heat where we’re joined, the way my nipples graze his chest when I lean forward to breathe through it and his sharp intake of breath tells me he felt that too.
Beneath my palms his chest hums—that deep, involuntary vibration, not quite sound, that I felt the first time and have thought about since. He’s not doing it deliberately. That’s the part that undoes me—the involuntary truth of it, his body responding to me without his permission.
I’m wetter than I’ve ever been in my life, and it still takes time. That’s okay. I want every second of the getting there.
His hands are at my hips, steadying, not directing. Letting me set every aspect of it.
“Okay?” he asks when I’m halfway there.
“More than okay.” I keep going. “Don’t stop looking at me.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says.
I believe him. That’s the thing. I believe him completely, without the part of my brain that usually audits statements like that for accuracy and finds them wanting. He says it, and it lands without resistance. I sit with what that means for a moment, the weight of it, the specific feeling of trusting something all the way down.
The word for this has been sitting at the back of my mind for weeks. I’ve been leaving it there because once I say it, even just to myself, it becomes something that can be taken away.
I look at his face.