This is how Joel tells her - on his knees, with her jeans shoved down around her ankles, and two fingers buried up to the knuckle in her tight, wet heat as he tongues her clit until she comes hard and shuddering around him.
He knows it's not an appropriate way to tell her, given their bond, their shared history together, as deep as the blood that runs through their veins. But what's appropriate between them was thrown out the window ages ago, the first time he pressed his lips to the salt of her skin and felt her clench and shake and fucking melt under him.
It's wrong, they know it, but they haven't given a fuck in a long, long time.
And he does love her, that's what hurts him; he loves her above him and around him and falling apart to his mouth and hands. She is so strong all the time, granite and ice and cold steel, hardened by necessity and trauma, and her strength is what fuels him. But in the privacy of his apartment, when she softens enough to whimper and gasp, to press long, calloused fingers over her mouth to stifle any louder sounds… he loves her the most, loves her soft, delicate edges, loves the fact that he is the only one allowed to see her like this.
He pushes in a third finger, fucks them deep and crooked to press against the spot inside her that makes her groan, gush slick against his soaked hand and hungry mouth. The noises she makes are so needy, so desperate and wanting, and her cry when he grazes teeth feather-light across her clit makes him so hard he aches.
Tess comes to the broad of his tongue lapping at where she's swollen and sensitive, to his fingers curled deep against soft, slick places inside her. He relies on her to scratch his itch, to fill him until he no longer feels empty and hollow, to reach the ache deep inside him that only she can soothe.
When she looks down at him and strokes the back of her finger down his bristly cheek - slick under her touch, shiny and slippery with her - her expression is so soft, so open, and Joel knows that she knows, and he feels that ache burn ever brighter.