Page 56 of Dominion's Guard
"You're a bastard," she manages, but the word has no teeth. It comes out breathy and wrecked and she's clenching aroundme tight enough that maintaining the slow pace is costing me everything I have.
"You've mentioned that. Hold onto me."
I shift the angle, bracing on one forearm and sliding my free hand under her lower back, tilting her hips up to meet mine. The new position changes the depth and the pressure and the first stroke at this angle drags a sound from her that she doesn't try to swallow, a full-voiced cry that vibrates through her chest into mine.
"There," she gasps. "Right there, don't you dare move."
"Wasn't planning on it."
I find a rhythm at this angle, steady and deep, and the wet sounds of our bodies moving together fill the room alongside her breathing and mine and the creak of the mattress under my knees. Her skin is slick with sweat where our bodies press together. I can taste the salt of it when I lower my mouth to her throat, and the combination of her taste and the feel of her around me and the sound of my name in her mouth is eroding my control faster than anything I've felt in years.
She's close again. I can feel it in the way her body tightens around me, the muscles in her thighs tensing, her breathing going shallow and fast. Her fingers press into my shoulders hard enough to leave marks, and the bite of her nails in my skin sharpens everything, the pleasure and the pressure and the need that has been building between us since I first watched her pour a drink and memorized every move she made.
"Come for me," I tell her. "Let me feel it."
She does. Her body locks around mine and the orgasm pulls through her in contractions I can feel gripping my cock in rhythmic pulses, and the intensity of it, the sound she makes and the way her body bows against mine and the absolute absence of performance in any part of it, pushes me to the edge and holds me there.
And then her breathing catches on something that isn't pleasure.
The shift is fast. One second she's riding the aftershocks, her body loose and trembling, and the next her breathing has gone shallow and erratic and her eyes are wide open and fixed on the ceiling. Her fingers dig into my shoulders, and the grip isn't desire anymore. It's anchor. It's drowning.
"Renata." I stop moving. I lower my full weight onto her, covering her, containing her in the press of my body against hers. My hand comes to her face, turning her toward me. "Look at me. Right here."
"I'm..." Her voice fractures. "I don't... it's too..."
"Tell me your color."
The question cuts through the spiral. Her eyes find mine, and the panic in them is the specific kind that comes from feeling too much rather than too little, the overwhelming exposure of letting every wall down at once and discovering that the space behind them is vast and uncharted and she has no map.
"Yellow," she whispers. "I'm yellow. I don't want to stop. I just... I can't..."
"You don't have to do anything." I hold her gaze and let my breathing slow, let the rhythm of my chest against hers give her something to match. My thumb traces her cheekbone, slow and even, a point of contact she can track. "Stay with me. Breathe with me. You're safe and I'm here and this doesn't go any further until you're ready."
She breathes. The shallow gasps catch and stutter and gradually, in increments I can feel against my ribs, deepen into something that approximates her normal rhythm. Her grip on my shoulders loosens. The blankness in her eyes clears, and what replaces it is the raw, unguarded expression of someone who just learned that vulnerability doesn't have to mean free fall, that someone can catch her before she hits the ground.
"Okay," she says. "Green."
"You're sure."
"I'm sure. Stay."
I begin to move again, slower now, gentler, and the gentleness isn't a retreat from the dynamic. It's the other side of it, the side that exists because the dominance earned the trust and the trust earned this. My mouth finds hers, and the kiss is soft and thorough and carries the weight of everything I can't say while I'm inside her and she's shaking under me and the walls between us are rubble on the floor.
Her body responds to the shift. The tension in her thighs loosens. Her hands slide from my shoulders into my hair, and the touch is different than before, less desperate and more purposeful, her fingers tracing the shape of my skull with a tenderness that tightens my throat.
"Stay with me," I say again, and this time it's as much for me as for her, because the way she's looking at me, open and present and stripped of every defense, is reaching into a place I've kept locked for years and turning the handle.
She pulls me down against her and we move together slow and deep and unhurried. Her mouth finds the spot below my ear and the warmth of her breath against my neck sends shivers down my spine that I feel in my cock, and when she whispers my name against my skin the tenderness in it breaks open a place I didn't know was still sealed.
Her next orgasm builds slowly, for both of us. I feel it in the gradual tightening of her body around mine, the way her breathing quickens and her hips begin to roll to meet me stroke for stroke. Mine gathers at the base of my spine, heavy and inevitable, and I hold it back because I want to feel hers first, want to feel the moment she lets go and the woman who spent years performing surrender discovers what the real thing feels like when it isn't wrenched from her but offered freely.
She comes quietly this time. Her face turns into my neck and her fingers thread through my hair and her body tightens around me in slow, deep waves, and the sound she makes is a whisper that contains my name and nothing else. The intimacy of it, the smallness and the trust, is more devastating than the louder one that came before.
I follow her over. The orgasm empties me with a force that drives the air from my lungs and buries me against her, my face in her hair and my hips pressed tight against hers and every muscle in my body shaking with the release. I can feel her pulse against my ribs, fast and even, and mine hammering back against it, and for a few seconds the only thing in the world is the heat between our bodies and the sound of both of us trying to breathe.
I don't move off her immediately. I hold my weight on my forearms, keeping the pressure of my body against hers because the grounding contact matters more right now than space. Her breathing is steady but her hands haven't let go of my hair, and the trembling running through her is the deep, structural kind, trembling that runs through a person when the last wall comes down and the open space behind it is vast and terrifying and full of air she hasn't breathed in years.
I ease out of her slowly, and she makes a small sound at the loss that I catch with my mouth, pressing a kiss against her jaw, the corner of her lips, the bridge of her nose. I pull her against my side before the loss of contact can register as absence.
