in it. In him. And she forgot that she needed him to need her. And slipped into something more. Something deeper. This shared desire that wove a tapestry of sensation in her body. He pushed her higher, further, until she was gasping for pleasure. For release. He brought her to the edge. Over and over again, only to deny her.
This man.
This man who wanted her. Who craved her.
This man.
If she could just focus on what he gave her, on what they could give each other in moments like these. If she could just not want any more than this.
She hadn’t known. She hadn’t known that it could be like this. Not sex. She hadn’t thought enough about it to make assumptions, not ones that went this deep. She hadn’t known that connecting to another person could be like this. She hadn’t known that there were things in life like this. That were intense because they were terrifying and yet, filled with joy for the same reason. That were bright and bold, frightening and inevitable. That were good and sharp and painful all at once.
She had known pain. Bright, white-hot grief that had defined her. Who she was, and the way that people saw her. The way that she saw herself. But she hadn’t known that good could come with quite so much danger. She hadn’t known that the capacity for feeling existed inside a human body, not on this level. She just hadn’t known. She felt a fool, really. Small and silly. For thinking that she might have been able to control something like this. For thinking she might have been able to know. She didn’t know anything.
She didn’t know anything at all.
He still wouldn’t let her break. He wouldn’t let her break, and she was suspended, in a world of fantasy and desire, of pain.
But he just kept bringing her higher, his hands, his lips, everything working together to create an intense, unending need inside of her. It was magic. But it was a black magic.
Finally, he positioned himself at the entrance of her body, and when he thrust inside of her, she broke. Stars burst behind her eyes, the night sky shattering and falling around her, pieces of endless glass pleasure embedding themselves inside of her.
Sharp and sweet.
Nothing half so simple as pure sweetness.
But nothing was good when it was too sweet. That was the problem. There had to be something else with it. It had to have another side.
It was just the way of it. It was just the way. His claiming of his own desire was fierce, his fingers digging into her body as he chased his own release. The raw, guttural growl that he let out as he slammed into her one last time, as he spilled himself in her, created another ripple inside of her. A second release on the heels of one she would have said would have been it. All she could handle. All she could take.
And when it was over, he picked her up off the couch, carried her across the room, and to her bed. This was a new room, so she didn’t have a host of memories stored up in it, but she had brought her bed and bedding over, even though there had been one there already, which she had used a couple of times. Ultimately, she had preferred her own. And being with a man, on that familiar quilt... It was a whole strange thing.
He pushed the blankets back, guided her beneath them and lay down beside her. Then he wrapped her up in his arms.
They were going to sleep together.
They had done that at his place. But that had been... It had been so different. Spontaneous. And everything between them had been a storm. There had been a lot of anger. A lot of sadness. This had been different. She hadn’t felt those same barriers. That same sense of trauma. Where they had both been bleeding out some kind of darkness, trying to soothe the other.
She ignored the hitch in her chest that reminded her it wasn’t like she’d been without her own darkness tonight.
It wasn’t. It was true. But they were here now. And he wanted her.
She could... She could help him. He’d said so.
As he walked on this path trying to figure out being human again. And she would. She would be there for him. She would be exactly what he needed.
She let her mind go blank at that thought. Let herself take in