Still Waters

by Infernalitae

In the beginning Whitney Miller had been just one more screaming, frightened human doomed to die. Had it not been for her resemblance to a dead woman, she, too, would have joined the faceless masses in a forest of bones. She was not his mother, yet still he stayed his hand until all resemblance faded and luck became something else entirely. *Eventual romance/mature content.

24. Heavy in Your Arms

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CHAPTER 24
Heavy in Your Arms

~/13/~

Jason lay like a corpse.

If not for the continued rise and fall of his chest she might have thought he was one – that she had expelled the life from him with just her hands. But no, he was simply recovering, coming down from the high. A high powerful enough to necessitate recovery of the completely motionless variety. She wasn't sure he could have gotten up even if they'd been in gripping and immediate danger, and she could not honestly think of a higher compliment than that.

Whitney rubbed her cheek against the uppermost curve of his bicep, pleased and a little amused.

What a thing it must be, for physical pleasure to be so new and novel. She didn't think she could even remember her first orgasm. Just that she would have been in her early teens and it would have been half by accident. Much like his, ironically. Only without help from another person. Chasing sensation much in the same manner as picking at a scab: thinking that maybe it wasn't a good idea but doing it anyway, and then somehow surprised when it resulted in bleeding. Though pleasant, she vaguely remembered being too shocked and alarmed to maintain much of the pleasure at the time.

Sighing contentedly she scooted up and over a few inches in order to roll onto her stomach, cushioning her head upon folded arms. Wanting to keep contact, she scooted back until her hip was resting lightly against the back of his forearm. She felt a bit restless, like there was a faint itch buried somewhere under her skin though she couldn't quite pinpoint where. Certain it would settle, she ignored it in favor of studying Jason's masked profile.

The right side was facing her: skull a bit enlarged, a little misshapen, neck muscle a little twisted down where it became shoulder, a slight warping to the shell of the ear. She didn't notice it like she used to, though she wasn't sure she could remember exactly at what point that had happened, and when she did notice it wasn't with the pity she'd once had. Empathy she had in spades. Empathy that he'd had to suffer at the hands of others, but not that he had been born as he had. It had been a silly thing to pity, all things considered.

At the back of her mind she realized that both times she had engaged him intimately – specifically where the head and neck were concerned – she had done so with his left side. It hadn't been premeditated. She reflexively leaned to the right when she kissed and it had just happened that way.

Had he noticed? Stupid question: he would have noticed. He had proved just how hyper-sensitive he was where his supposed deformity was concerned, and he would have been nothing but aware of the exact places she had chosen to put her mouth. It didn't seem to have bothered him…at least not outwardly. She wasn't sure whether that was because he had been too consumed by the fact that she was kissing him to give a damn about that in particular, or because he had expected as much.

She worried at the inside of her cheek, intensely bothered by that possibility.

She wasn't really worried that he would ever resent her for it. He seemed uniquely comfortable with the way he had come to see himself, and if she did avoid that side of him it would never make him love her less. But she wasn't avoiding it, because it genuinely didn't bother her, and she did not want him believing anything different. The next time she went for his neck or jaw or ear, she was going to make that crystal clear. And she was going to make sure he heard just how much she enjoyed it while she did.

For now, she was content to simply lie there with him, lazy and happy. It felt nice like this, just being with him. It had felt nice before, too – between waking and deciding to rid herself of her clothes, when she had been nestled there against him, allowed to simply rest and feel. She found she was quite looking forward to more of that aspect of this unconventional relationship.

The thick muscle in his arm bunched as he shifted beside her, turning onto his side and propping himself up on the elbow. His eyes were lit with a little bit of wonder as he gazed down at her. It made her smile.

Part of her wanted to speak. Wanted to ask how he was, as if she didn't know perfectly well. Ask if he'd enjoyed it. Again, as if she hadn't been able to tell – she didn't think she'd ever seen someone come that hard. Another part desperately wanted to apologize for having run off last time, to explain why, but she had a feeling he might already know. And really…there was nothing else that needed saying just now.

Extending a hand, he brushed the back of it across her brow, sweeping her hair away and over her shoulder. Fingers uncurled, palm molding softly to her shape as he followed the line of her back from nape to buttocks, noting the slight twitch when he skimmed the dip over where her kidneys would be. She carried much of her tension there – of the emotional sort, not the physical. Whether he knew of this as a concept was unclear, but he was aware of the response and lightened his touch before passing over the place and his hand curved with the shape of her ass, nearly engulfing the entire half of it.

She closed her eyes and tried to relax. He was just being affectionate, exploring her, but she was realizing with the more he touched her that she had been simmering at a low level of arousal for a while now and she was having a hard time not squirming around.

The insides of her thighs slid together – far more smoothly than they normally would have – and it was purely because of that not-entirely-satisfied state, the liquid slick and slightly sticky across her skin like blood, or tears. The pain and frustration of going untouched. But he had touched her, and extremely thoroughly. So why was she still so damn restless?

She felt rather than saw him lean, heard the less than pleased groan of the box spring as he shifted. Then she felt the faint rasp of nicked fiberglass against her back, smoothing once, then stilling, simply resting there.

Never once had he showed any indication that he might be bothered by the barrier his mask made. She'd assumed he had completely enfolded himself into the shield, that it had essentially become his face. But now, as he moved as though to mimic rubbing his cheek against her skin, as if he wished to do just that…

It broke her heart to realize that he might have wanted to for a while now, but that he clearly did not feel safe. It might have been easier before, when she was just some random girl. But now? Now that there were emotions involved – emotions and intense physical bonding – he might never feel safe enough to remove that barrier. He feared losing her too much, and no amount of reassurance was going to ease that fear.

His breath fanned hot across the small of her back and she shivered. Another rasp of fiberglass across her skin – an edge this time, as if he'd lifted his head at her tiny movement and caught her with the chin.

The bed dipped, the weight and warmth next to her rising, moving away. His knee grazed the side of her calf and her eyes fluttered open just as she felt his hands curl around her shoulders. The pressure was light. A question – a request – coaxing her to sit up.

Straightening her elbows she shifted, careful when she slid her shins an inch or so forward. He was kneeling behind her, framing her own legs with his and she didn't want to kick him. His arms circled her: one sliding across her shoulders, the other across her middle and another tiny shiver shook her body, chasing the path of his touch. At first he was simply holding her. Then he was pressing her gently, steadily backward as if to obey some unspoken need to eliminate the empty space between them. Pressing until she felt the rigid length of him against the small of her back.

He had softened at least somewhat – she had felt it. Evidently not for very long. Stamina, she thought with another feather-light shiver, or perhaps simply a result of such intense and prolonged sexual tension.

At first she thought he was going to ignore it as he had last time, focus instead on cuddling and nesting behavior. Though if he'd been going to do that she wasn't sure why he wouldn't have just grabbed her around the waist and spooned her or something of the…

His hand had left her upper arm, trailing first down and then across to palm her breast. She came nowhere close to filling his hand, but he cupped the weight as if she did – with the reverent wonder of a man thoroughly engrossed in what he was doing. He ran the pad of his thumb over her nipple, and for all that her brain promptly stopped all function aside from processing of sensation she didn't miss the deliberate intent behind it. A brief graze followed by a slow, teasing circular motion that had her arching into him and caused the already tight point to tighten further. And ache.

Oh, this was deliberate all right, and not in the way of cuddling turned accidentally amorous. He'd intended it from the second he'd sat up and she didn't think her surprise at this was unwarranted. Given his pattern of shyness and consistent need of direction she had assumed it would take much longer before it occurred to him to initiate things for himself – or before he felt comfortable doing so. It seemed that he took her at her word where it concerned not needing permission, as well as a promise to redirect anything unwanted, and deemed it all the coaxing he needed. There was not a single thought of complaint from her. It was another hint of the same assertion he'd shown when dragging her across the bed to him: not forcing, but stating in the most straightforward way he could what he wanted of her.

To have him at her back this way was like being held against a literal wall, albeit one made of flesh. It reminded her of that night in the kitchen, when he'd unwittingly pinned her against the sink and her world had been reduced to the sense of being utterly and deliciously overpowered. She liked it, as she had liked it then. Way more than she should have.

She hadn't been as aware of it then – distracted as she had been by the earth-shaking nature of the revelations made – but she was now, mainly because it wasn't the first time she was catching herself delighting in the thought of being physically at his mercy.

She had always been there. The first contact they'd ever had was his slinging her over a shoulder like a bag of rice and carrying her away, and she was starting to wonder if this weird fixation she seemed to have was a direct correlation and whether that was an indicator of something not quite right. But…no, she didn't actually want him to dominate her. At least not like that. The thought left her cold and far from eager. She was just still adjusting to being so into someone she normally would have dismissed purely on size alone for the fear she wouldn't be able to extricate herself forcibly if she ever needed to. This was more being giddy about him being able to pick her up and toss her around in a nice way (someday, maybe) not some deep, dark, unstable desire for him to hurt her. Because it wasn't just a feeling of being overpowered, but sheltered, protected.

Or, hell, maybe she was a bit unhinged. Right now she didn't give a damn.

Jason's hand shifted against her, cupping more firmly and giving the gentlest squeeze. Pleasure curled, catching in her veins like a spark to dry grass as the muscles between her legs gave an empty, clawing pang of wanting.

She supposed her own restlessness should have been enough to warn her, but this was…intense. Even after having experienced a bone-meltingly good orgasm she had been agitated, fidgety, downright uncomfortable. She had put it down to the sense of emptiness; the purely biology-based lack of quite literal fulfillment that often accompanied pleasure accomplished via surface-level contact. Something all the more nagging when she had a partner more than capable of providing it so close within reach. But this was more than just that. She was trembling and needy and tipping into pleasure as if she was chasing another climax.

Usually she couldn't stand that kind of stimulation again for at least an hour, not a mere fifteen to twenty minutes. And yet here she was, tipping her hips back into him in wordless plea that he would touch her again with those broad, clever fingers, anticipation welling fresh between her legs. So much of it that she was faintly surprised she wasn't actively dripping.

Was this an age thing? She'd never really had problems before, but then again her brain and her body had never quite seemed to be on the same page where sex was concerned. The rate at which she was producing lubricant was pretty much proof positive that something was different, be it age or her own ability to focus, or the prospective partner and the insane level of physical and emotional connection they seemed to share. Maybe it was the result of those weeks spent secretly pining – first in shame and then in resigned self-pity. Maybe this was what sex should have been all along and she just hadn't known. Did it even matter?

Being able to see him, feel him in her hand, had made her body want him that much more. Feeling him now, hot and heavy against her back, turned want to something desperate.

Whether his intent all along or no, Jason's other hand began to slip down over the slope of her belly. Yes, she wanted to cry. All she could manage was a breathy sound she hoped he could recognize as encouragement. She reached up and blindly back, groping for his neck and gripping there as if for dear life, nails biting into the slab of muscle connecting it to his shoulder.

His fingers curved with the shape of her, soft, almost possessive. Her thighs flexed in answer, her lungs shuddering with the unbidden whimper.

Despite having discovered it – and what it could do – he didn't go directly for the knot of nerves, choosing instead to skim across and reach past it to slide deft fingertips through her folds as if to take measure of her wetness. If he were any other man she might accuse him of bragging, stoking his own ego with just how much of a needy mess he'd made of her. Not that it would have been entirely unearned, per say. But he wasn't any other man. This was purely tactile enjoyment of his partner; relishing her for her own sake.

Could he tell that her flesh was slightly swollen? It wouldn't have surprised her if he had, nor that he had picked up on the likelihood that it was a good strategy to ease her into direct contact. Normally, that would be right, and what she wanted. Not right now. Nor did she want to be simply petted and teased into convulsions. It wasn't enough.

She wanted more.

Her right hand shook as she settled it across the back of his wrist – a tremor that surged like electricity when he didn't automatically retreat at her touch. Pressing her shoulders into his ribs she used his body as leverage in order to widen the space between her knees and let her hand curve around his, remembering the time she had watched him oiling the blade of the machete and fantasized about those big, graceful hands.

At her coaxing the tip of his middle finger grazed her vaginal opening and it took everything she had not to collapse.

"One finger," she breathed, "here. Inside."

She had never been very vocal. Well, vocal, but not talkative; the usual things, yes and no and good, the answer to a question. But she had never given explicit instructions on what she wanted. Embarrassed, she thought. Maybe ashamed. But she was neither of those things here. It was so easy with Jason, knowing that while he would more than likely figure it out in due time, she could urge him along a little quicker and they would both be all the more grateful for it.

While she had expected him to be careful, after all it was new and a bit…well, more than anything else had been. She had also expected him to be tentative.

Tentative he was not.

Smoothly, gently, he followed her words and the guiding touch of her hand to slip his finger up and into her. It was painfully slow, and not just because he was being cautious. Even as aroused as she was, she was so damn tight. The delicate muscles lining her channel were gripping at him, eager to the point of ferocity, but she almost couldn't care because the sensation of it was nothing short of ecstasy.

She held him there for a moment, steadying herself with a breath before encouraging him to retreat. At no urging of hers he curled the rest of his fingers in toward his palm, removing the hindrance to his range of motion on what must have been pure instinct, for he didn't seem to realize she was going to guide him back until she was pressing gently. This time when he slid inside it was to reach much deeper, and her entire body jerked with a spasm of delight.

Unlike with her suggestion to communicate with his hand in her hair, he seemed to have no problem understanding what she wanted from him. Without any further assistance he withdrew, almost completely, before pushing smoothly back.

"Yes…"

It was a full on fucking moan, praising his intuition as much as reveling in the shivering clench of pleasure in her belly – and it had been loud, low and seven kinds of vulgar. She could tell precisely how much the sound had affected him by the way the hand at her breast dropped by a few inches to splay across ribs and crushed her backward against his body. Feeling just how heavy his breathing had become. How goddamn hard he was, unmistakably. Bold.

He had sat back a bit on his heels to lessen some of their height disparity: curling himself around her, head bending, shoulders folding inward as much to be as physically close to her as possible as to better the angle of his arm. With the increase in ease of movement his thrusts became deeper, surer, but still just a little too gentle.

She squirmed, pressing encouragingly at his forearm to coax him to move a bit more firmly, a gentle reminder not to focus overmuch on not hurting her. Simultaneously she let her hips move, rocking slightly to set a faster pace and gasping when he followed her lead as smoothly as if he had performed this same act a thousand times before.

"Now—" she began, her thoughts and words derailed by the slide of his hand across her torso to fill his palm with the soft flesh of her other breast as though he had somehow known how it ached.

He didn't simply hold and softly tease her this time, either. He took the stiff point of her nipple, rolling it between his fingertips, playing with her in a way that elicited a sharp, sweet throb of pleasure and had the muscles between her legs clenching at the intrusion of his other hand. He slowed his pace slightly, feeling the correlation between one touch to the other. In perfect synch with his next thrust he gave the tight little bud a soft, careful pinch, and she had to work to string together anything more substantial than an appreciative whine at the bleeding sparks of sensation.

"Now add…another finger—uhhn…"

No sooner had the word left her lips he had moved to comply, and with the addition of his index finger her head fell back against his chest with a high, breathless moan. He had thick fingers, but she was so damn wet that even the slight discomfort of being stretched wasn't even fully a discomfort as she would have recognized it. She simply felt fulfilled, the way she had been craving all this time.

Letting her hand fall heavily from his arm, she found the slope of his thigh. She ran her hand up the length of it to his flank and held him there, fingers curling into powerful flesh while she arched her hips into the steady motion of his hand. She felt the grunt against her back at her touch the split second before the heel of his palm pressed into the crest of her cunt to create lightning – and whether it was intentional or not the wrenching throb along her nerves had her eyes near to rolling back in her skull.

Her head lolled, her cheek meeting skin flushed hot and streaked with sweat. The scent of him was thick in her nose and mouth – earth and leather and musk – and she wanted to drink it down, absorb it, until she could taste nothing else. And he was rocking with her, grinding almost unthinkingly against the point where her back transitioned into her ass.

Jesus fuck she was hot for this man.

The pulsing rhythmic clenching of her pelvic muscles was starting to spiral and unravel, and for all that she probably should have had him use a third before anything else, the animal lust in her was not content to settle for just his fingers – wonderful as they were. She wanted him on top of her. Not just above, as he had been minutes ago, but enveloping her, bearing her down into the bed with his sheer mass.

She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything. And she was going to have it.

~/~

The concept of happiness had been somewhat elusive for a long time: a thing reduced to a comparison made to memories that were unreliable at best.

He remembered the day Whitney had asked him whether killing made him happy. It had been a question meant to ascertain something of his character, he'd surmised, and he knew now that if he had answered with a yes that they would not be here right now. If he had said yes, it would have secured him as a villain in her eyes, deserving of all the fear and loathing she had once had for him. He had answered with the truth; and it had been in part because he would very much rather spend his time doing anything other than killing, but in part because he had been unable to remember what it was to be happy when the word had ceased to have real meaning.

As he'd lain there, his body singing, her chin tucked over his shoulder, he had remembered – with absolute clarity – what happiness was. It wasn't the pleasure, though that was nothing short of incredible, or that the beautiful woman next to him was naked and warm and satisfied (equally incredible), it wasn't even necessarily the closeness for its own sake. It was the sense of togetherness, of being wanted. For the first time, since some indeterminate point in his youth, he felt like a person. Whole, not withered and scored and damaged. Worthy of the care and affection said beautiful woman had showed him. For the first time he didn't find himself second-guessing what on earth she was doing there with him. He only felt love. And loved.

Whitney sighed quietly, a light, dreamily contented sound that seemed to encompass precisely what he felt.

He angled his head toward her, though with the limitations his mask placed on his peripheral vision he could see only the lower half of her as she rolled onto her stomach, presenting the long, sleek line of her back.

Though he knew he was grown, there were still times when he felt very much like a boy. He understood that what had passed between them – what they now were to one another – resided very solidly in the realm of what was adult, and that simply due to the quite…unconventional nature of his having grown up, there were things about it that he had missed. Things lost that he would never get back. Which a small part of him might have resented if he hadn't thought it a waste of time.

And that was the biggest thing he had lost, he realized. Time. The time for the boy he had been, still shy and overwhelmed by the attention of a pretty girl and having no clue why, to shift naturally into the man that recognized and understood that attention What it meant and what to do with it. Much of what he knew was garnered from half-forgotten fragments seen through the lens of a child and long-since rusted over, or else from nature around him. The latter being the more helpful of the two did not strike him as very strange. Humans were little more than slightly more complex beasts, after all. He no longer felt that the lack of human social conditioning rendered him automatically inferior, but he could understand that the tiny, spit-second reflex he had to look away from her naked form – to blush and fidget and probably fall on his face if he tried to do anything else – was a direct result of the crevice his loss had created.

It wasn't that he was undeserving. That she was there at all was proof enough of the opposite. It was simply that he was still catching up on twenty-odd years of learning and acclimating and settling into his own skin that he hadn't done for lack of opportunity, or desire.

The light was warming as the sun rose in earnest, pouring in through the open window to set a golden cast to her skin. He shifted to his side to look at her, catching the hint of her smile when he did.

It was half hidden behind her hair, tumbling around her shoulders and veiling her mouth until he reached to smooth it gently away. His knuckles grazed the nape of her neck, and he spread his fingers, laying his hand against her smooth, sun-warm skin and letting it slide softly, reverently down the length of her back.

She gave the faintest of flinches when he reached a point at the middle of her back – a tiny bunching of muscle below the skin – and he eased the pressure of his touch automatically. A knot perhaps, like the kind he occasionally found pinching in his shoulders? He hadn't felt anything there, so perhaps not. Maybe simply a sensitive spot, ticklish, or the site of an old injury.

In contrast to the boyish nerves, the quite grown beastly parts of him were not driven to blush and shy away from her. Quite the contrary. There was a comfort there, a certainty to the soft warmth he felt when he looked at her, the ownership that was not ownership at all…but perhaps that of being owned? Possession derived from belonging. Ferocity derived from the knowledge that to see her anything but well and whole and happy was to see himself wounded. Confidence derived from the knowledge that she'd had her freedom, and yet decided that freedom to her looked like coming back here to be with him.

"My life is here now, with you."

What he knew of human…pairing could have fit inside a matchbox, evident by the way he had no name for it. He knew what he suspected to be surface-level details, thin slivers pared from a whole forever beyond his ability to ever fully grasp, unavoidably skewed from the perspective of a child without model or experience to build from that half-forgotten foundation. But none of this prevented him from understanding the significance of her having said it, nor of the way she had kissed him after. As with many other things, the exactness might have been outside his knowledge, but the importance was not.

He wasn't a fool, he knew full well she didn't love him the way he loved her. But that was all right. It was enough that she wanted to be with him.

On impulse he bent, lowering his head to the smooth span of her back where it dipped at the waist until the side of his mask gently grazed her skin. The ferocity with which he wished he could feel her against his face was so much that it wrenched inside him, a biting pain in his heart. He wanted to press his cheek against her and feel her warmth there. He wanted to feel her softness against his lips.

His hand tightened where it rested against the rounded flesh of her backside at the fantasy forming in his head of setting his mouth to her skin the way she had done to him, following the path of the pulse in her throat, licking at a small, pretty ear, tracing the shape of her breasts with his tongue.

The flesh between his legs twitched, enthralled by the image, the coil of tension spreading out from where it was building low in his abdomen and deep in his thighs. He was hard for her again, hungry for her. What was the etiquette here? She wasn't asleep, merely resting. Serene. But maybe she would rather he not touch her just now. Maybe it was too soon? He didn't want to risk driving her from the bed…but then she had said she would tell him if she didn't like something. Surely she had meant that in reference to things beyond that single moment.

With a steadying breath he straightened, shifting up onto his knees and moving so that he bracketed her long, slender legs between them.

Looking down on her like this allowed him perfect view of the gentle hourglass shape of her body – the narrowness of her waist only emphasized by arms folded to pillow her head and inviting his eyes to follow the curve down. She was utterly bewitching. Alluring and lovely.

Leaning slightly forward he grasped her shoulders, his fingers curving over the delicate conjunction of bones and tendons to urge her up. It was meant to be an invitation: one she could absolutely ignore or decline if she chose to. He had absolutely no desire to force her, and she did seem comfortable where she was…yet she was shifting before he could second-guess himself, unfolding her arms and sliding her knees forward and underneath her to sit up as he was. It was a uniquely graceful movement: a sinuous arc of spine, shoulders rolling back under his hands, and he found himself drawn straight into it, his arms folding around her to pull her gently back.

She was lush and soft and silky smooth, the shape of her molding to him as if she belonged there. As if she had never belonged anywhere else. The slope of her lower back met his front, pushing against the hardness of…whatever it was called. The shaft-shaped organ which ached at the contact in the most delicious way. He indulged himself by angling his hips forward, pressing his groin into the curving shape of her and sucking in a breath at the hot, urgent pang which followed.

His hand left her arm, sliding to her breast. It was different touching her this way, the distribution of that soft, perfect flesh having changed with gravity to fill the cup of his palm – though his hands dwarfed her simply by virtue of his being so much larger than she was. The weight was light and yet strangely substantial. Heavy, somehow, without actually being heavy at all. He traced his thumb over the tip, wondering if she felt what he had when she'd touched him in his mirror of this place – those bright, bleeding sparks of pleasure.

She had been relaxed against him, yet as the little bead of flesh grew stiff at the graze of his finger her back was curving with strain, arching into his touch and her chin tipping up on a musical gasp. Her hips angled back, rocking the curve of her bottom into him and eliciting a delicious throb of sensation – begging again for her slim little fingers to curl around him.

The combination of that sound, that movement…it was as if she had never wanted anything more than his hands on her. The culmination of her skin – flushed and hot like fever – and the scent of her, suddenly overwhelming, pressing up into his hand at her breast. He was greedy for it. Greedy for her. For the slickness he would find between her thighs as his other hand slipped down over the base of her pelvic bone.

He felt her hand curving around the side of his neck, her thumb digging into the notch of his collarbone while her other fingers dug into the base of his scarred shoulder. Gripping him as if for support, or for balance. Her thighs were trembling, yet the subtle forward tilt of her hips was clearly encouragement, eagerness, the sound unraveling from her tongue one of wordless pleading. Though he still had no name for the potent, vicious satisfaction he derived from it, he could only assume it was something to do with the possessiveness he felt toward her. If she was pleading, it meant that she wanted him with a desperation that echoed his own. If she wanted him, it was because he pleased her. And pleasing her was paramount to any- and everything else short of keeping her safe.

The rasping texture of dark curls gave way to unimaginable softness. His fingers slid easily through folds made slippery with that fascinating wetness. The intriguing pink place would be glistening with it. An image which brought a tight coil of desire deep in his belly. Some part of him knew to be pleased by this, just as with the faintly swollen state of her, understanding it to be the female mirror of his own swollen flesh. It was another sign that she was pleased with him, which automatically resulted in a pleasure all his own – both of the flesh and of the mind.

Her voice was airy, breathless. A tiny, needy sound that tugged at him. Once again he felt that strong internal pull telling him to do something that he couldn't piece together. It hovered like a word on the tip of the tongue, just at the edge of his mind. But he didn't know it. This was instinct trying to present itself but he didn't have the knowledge to lean into it. It would be something she knew, something other men had known to give her, and that he didn't was incredibly frustrating.

How did he ask her? He couldn't even pose the tone of a question, let alone the form of one. He couldn't ask her what she wanted, or what he was supposed to do. He couldn't even tell her to show him…

Her hand was light where she touched the back of his. Her back arched slightly, her shoulders leaning heavily into him and her thighs spreading wider, until her toes brushed the insides of his calves. And it was as if she had read the agitation through his body. She was guiding his hand, shaping it, pressing his fingers upward until the folds gave beneath the pressure.

"One finger here," she instructed. The words barely above a heavy whisper, but he heard them all the way down to his marrow. "Inside."

Something about the word nagged at him. It was important. Vitally so. But before he could think on it further his middle finger was sinking into her – a tight, narrow channel, slick and molten hot. He barely had time to register this new interesting thing before she was coaxing him away, fine, strong internal muscles gripping at him, pulling as though reluctant to let him go. The edge of his smallest finger grazed the inside of her thigh and reflexively his other fingers curled inward as she paused just at the brink of removing him. Then she pressed him back in again, his finger sinking deep, down to base. She stiffened, gasping.

Sparks lit in the back of his brain. Bright and urgent. He had just tapped into something crucial, and he barely needed her feedback to know it. This it seemed to be screeching at him. Do this.

Now.

Not waiting for verbal verification, he repeated the movements she'd shown him; withdrawing the intrusion of the finger before gliding back with a single, smooth push of his hand.

Her body shuddered. He felt it in her shoulder pressed against his ribs and her hand at his wrist, that fascinating internal channel that gripped almost greedily around him. In the same instant she let out a low, throaty moan that wove down the length of his spine to settle in his abdomen.

"Yes…"

The length of swollen flesh between his legs pulsed. Hard.

He needed no further urging than that.

Curving inward around her, he spread his knees a bit wider and sank back on his haunches, dragging her back until he had her pressed flush to the front of his body. He could reach her better this way, angle his hand so that it was easier to repeat the smooth thrusting motion that seemed at once strange and yet intensely enthralling. Something about the movement itself in conjunction with this part of her, this sleek, tight interior place, the impossible heat of her. Something about a part of him being inside of her…

She was pressing down on his forearm, causing his next entry into her to be a little harder than previously. In the same moment she arced her hips forward to meet him. At first he was blind to anything but the heady twinge of desire sharp as a knife in his gut, only belatedly realizing it was her encouragement to move faster. He obeyed the unspoken request, deeply, savagely pleased when she kept moving her hips that way, rocking into his hand the way she had done on her back with her neck arched and face strained with pleasure.

His other hand turned at the wrist, moving over the sleek skin below her breasts to curve with the shape of her, the tight pink tip pressing up into his skin as if pleading for touch. Though perhaps that was merely his own craving to do so. He worried it between gentle fingertips, delighting in the sensation of, the contrast to the soft weight of her in his hand. It was done purely selfishly, yet to his surprise, the grip of her body around the finger sliding smoothly inside her clenched sharply in what appeared to be a direct correlation with his touch to her breast.

Taking the little bud of flesh between two fingers he squeezed, ever so slightly, timed with his next thrust.

His reward was a trembling, desperate sound, a rush of heat sliding over his knuckles. And that overwhelming surge of primal power rippling through his blood like wildfire.

He didn't know the word for it, but the sound, what he had done to produce it, was lusciously erotic. He wanted to hear her make that sound again. He wanted her to shudder and arch and come apart the way she had before. Just like this, pressed up against him, so he could feel every inch of her as she did.

"Now add…" she was saying, her breath leaving her in something closer to heaving pants than plain words. "…another finger—"

Yes.

Almost without having to think it his index finger uncurled, joining the middle to sink deep inside her as she moaned and shivered, and let her head fall back against his chest.

Her hand slipped from where it had grasped his forearm, brushing the outside of his leg – the muscle twitching, overly responsive to the feather-light touch. She flattened her palm against him, tracing an almost greedy line up the length of his thigh to stop just below the hip, slender fingers curling to his flesh. The hot, shuddering streak of pleasure in the pit of his belly struck him like a fist. It was like she was pulling him up against her, urging him to press his hips into hers, and he was helpless to do anything else.

This was lust. As old as life and just as persistent. Demanding and pleading and near to frantic, climbing up his spine and pooling deep in his thighs.

He followed the rhythmic back and forth roll of her body, dragging himself against the lush curve of her bottom, relishing the sweet pain it brought him. He could feel her cheek against his skin, her breath hard and half gasping with each exhale, her skin slick, her hair a teasing graze against his ribs, the grip of her tight and sleek about his fingers.

Even this…this blissful synchronicity was not enough. There could be not a single hint of space between them and he would still want to be somehow closer. He wanted to be. Needed to be. Needed to…he didn't know what, but he wanted it and with a sharp, gnawing ferocity that he didn't know how to answer.

Her hand slid up the side of his neck, the edge of her smallest finger pressing into the back corner of his jaw. A place purely hers, he thought, forever marked by her first real expression of wanting him. The place she had first kissed him.

"Stop—"

It was a weak, breathy murmur, almost too soft for him to hear over the mindless roar in his ears. He thought he had imagined it until she repeated it, her lungs heaving as if to speak was an agony.

"Stop…"

He did. Immediately. Though it took him near to herculean effort to will himself to stillness, more still to remove his hand from her, he did, resting it flat upon the upper slope of her thigh. There had been nothing in her voice to suggest it, nor had there been any physical sign of it, yet he felt a cold shard of worry slip into his stomach, suddenly wondering if he had done something wrong. Why else would she stop him completely rather than redirecting him the way she had done before?

She twisted within the loose circle of his arms, and whatever concerns might have been creeping to life inside him were instantly silenced when he saw the look on her face. Lips parted, reddened as though stained by eating something luscious and sweet like the juice of a strawberry that he might have tasted were he to kiss her. They were glossy as if she had wet them. He could almost see her little pink tongue tracing the curve of her own mouth – felt the yearning throb in his belly hitch at the conjured image – and her eyes were burning, wanting…

Her hand wound around the back of his neck, using it as leverage to reach him as she arched up and pressed her lips to the underside of his chin – a lingering, open-mouthed kiss that turned into two, and then three, before she pulled back.

"Wait—wait here," she told him, sliding out of reach and from the bed, tottering a bit unsteadily on her feet for a moment before she regained her balance. "I'll be right back."

He peered up at her, more puzzled than concerned. She took a few steps back toward the door, but she was moving slowly, her eyes heavy and sliding along his form. His mind took gratified note of the look, the way her eyes lingered on certain parts of him – his arms and chest, the length of flesh stiff and flushed with need. Obviously she found him desirable, otherwise none of this would have happened. Still, some part of his brain was geared to take the signal of that look telling him so and react with a swell of pride.

Holding her palms out to him in a staying gesture, she ordered: "don't move," and disappeared out into the hall.

It was excruciating difficult to ignore the compulsion to get up and follow her, the purely animal part of him wanting dearly to sling her over a shoulder and toss her back down on the bed and hold her still while he slid his fingers back into the slick heat between her legs. What if he were to use his thumb at the same time, stroke at the sensitive little bead nestled at the top of those pretty folds of flesh while delving inside her? Would she break for him then?

A pang of need coursed through him, centering in the dull throb at his groin – which seemed to have become the very center of himself. Desperate and aching. He had the powerful urge to wrap his hand around it, to mimic the sliding strokes Whitney had used on him and relieve some of the discomfort, and was somewhat surprised by it.

He had been taught almost exclusively without spoken words that he wasn't to touch himself there apart from seeing to the function of urination, unless it was to wash. It had never occurred to him that there might be a reason aside from that of cleanliness. Knowing what he did now about this part of him, its involvement in this entangling of bodies and pleasure – and what few scraps he recalled of his mother's opinion on involvement between older boys and girls – he thought he understood it had been an indirect caution against the exact thing that had just flitted through his mind.

But why? Why caution him against it? Because it was bad? Dirty? The way his mother had implied in her disapproval? But it hadn't felt like either of those things when Whitney had touched him. And she was neither bad nor dirty.

Still something gave him pause – more to do with Whitney's words than to any unease on his part.

Wait, she had said. Don't move.

He didn't think this was quite what she had meant, but there seemed to be a wisdom in it. Not that he could have said in what way.

So he stayed where he was to wait, just as she'd told him to. Moving only to lift his hand, fingers shining, to the perforation beneath the nose-guard of his mask to breathe in the scent of her – musky and salty-sweet – and wondering again with a wistful yearning what it would be like to taste her.

~/~

Her knees had become pudding.

At least it certainly felt like they had as she wobbled her way down the stairs, gripping tight to the railing with one hand, her knuckles white and her heart battering at her sternum like a wild, trapped thing.

The floor was cold, clinging to the chill of the night before for all that there was pale sunlight streaming in through the windows. She padded on her tiptoes across the rec room to the kitchen, wavering once, badly enough that she had to throw out a hand to catch herself with the edge of the counter, and promptly snorting with giddy laughter at her own expense.

Adults ragged on and on about horny teenagers, but shit, she'd certainly never experienced that supposed reality. At least not enough to act on. And not at all like this – where her own skin didn't seem to fit her right anymore.

She didn't remember the last time she'd wanted a man inside her so badly. If she ever had. She felt slightly crazed, truth be told, lust and adrenaline putting an almost drunken slant to her center of gravity and a low tremor in her limbs. Her vaginal muscles were wracked with heartily unsatisfied spasms, grousing loudly at her for interrupting a perfectly fantastic experience, demanding she go straight back and let him finish what he'd started.

Which she was absolutely going to do.

She tore one corner of the paper bag in her haste to grab it from where she'd tucked it in the corner by the useless toaster, which would have tipped her into hysterical laughter if she hadn't been too busy staring down at the little black package cupped in her hand and tying to read the back of it.

Too small and the latex would break – not to mention being quite uncomfortable, she imagined. Too big and it might slip off, causing all manner of problems.

Now that she'd actually seen him, had her hand around him, she could better calculate and realized suddenly that average was not going to cut it.

She did laugh then.

Men were so obsessed with (and sensitive about) the size of their dicks. Most who were average covetously wanted to be bigger, and those who were larger preened and bragged. Yet even among the men who fell on the bigger end of the spectrum, she knew for statistical fact that only a few of them were actually large enough to max out the limits of average-size condoms. Jason – who had absolutely no concept of this stupid, supposed measure of machismo and prowess – was. As intimidated as she was by that, she couldn't help her amusement in the face of such perfect irony.

Tossing the second package back into the bag she returned to stairs, trying not to focus too hard on said larger-than-average cock. Or how fucking much she wanted it. Except it was hard not to think about it when the almost desperate craving she felt was so strange and new.

Her trip back up the stairs was a bit easier, since her legs had steadied somewhat. Only to re-liquefy the instant she stepped back into the room and saw him again.

Apparently having taken her words to heart, he was exactly as she had left him – on his knees, back to the door. She'd always had a bit of thing for a nice back: the way the muscle flared out from the depression of the spine, flowed into the shoulders and down into the arms, the slight lines that arced in mirror of the hipbones in more muscular men. Like this one. Her gaze followed those lines down the dip of lower back where he was sitting back on his heels, and just like that she found herself with an eyeful of his ass. And…

Oh.

Jesus fucking hell on a goddamn motorcycle.

She didn't even like butts all that much. They were fine, but she definitely favored other parts of a man's body. Yet here she was, her mouth dry and her eyes wide as saucers, her pulse skittering in her throat like a cat's claws on wet tile.

He turned slightly, hearing her steps or simply sensing her there behind him. She caught the flash of heat in the eye she could see. There was a very natural authoritarian slant to that look – a firm order to get herself back over there or he was going to do it for her, and she was going to like it.

Or so said the feverish flutter between her thighs.

God, yes, please. Yes.

She moved somewhat unsteadily forward, her fingers digging into the top of the box to break the tape sealing it shut.

His gaze dropped to it, blinking, his head angling with a curious tilt as she fished out one of the little silver packets and set the box on the table. She tore the packet open, extracting the circular roll of clear latex as she dropped back to the bed.

Reaching down, she cupped him gently in her palm, delighting in the sharp intake of air as she stroked him. He hadn't softened at all in the (albeit brief) time she had been gone, still beautifully hard and straining toward his stomach, which would make it all the easier to fit the condom into place. He looked down to watch her set it to the tip of him, another tilt of curiosity interrupting the stutter of his breath at the graze of her fingertips, then back up to her face as if in query.

"I'll explain later," she promised, guiding the latex up his length.

Trepidation fluttered high in her stomach, a tiny, sudden hint of unease. He was a big man. Every part of him was. She might have to spread her legs as far as they would go to fit his body between them. Which she would, and gladly. She'd take every goddamn inch of him she could.

Still…

"We're going to have to go slow, ok? You're a little...larger than average."

He had no idea what the hell she was talking about, but she saw his eyes widen, and it was concern there – concern, not pride or smug, boastful arrogance. Any apprehension she had about doing this with him was gone the second she saw it.

She had taken him out of the mood a bit with those words, with the hint of uncertainty she knew had underlined her voice. She could see the gears working frantically behind his eyes, trying to decode what she meant, why it had sounded like a caution to be careful. Be careful of what? He didn't want to hurt her – so desperately did not want to hurt her.

Sweet, gentle man.

She leaned back, catching herself on her elbows. Her knees were bent, her calves sliding against the outsides of his thighs in what was both an extremely vulnerable and extremely sexual position. The fine muscles in her cunt gripped compulsively at nothing, a forceful pang of very specific hunger. She couldn't help it. The man had muscle in his legs that could have made a nun cry.

His gaze dropped, sliding over the length of her naked body, and the pang sharpened.

Extending a hand she reached for his arm, pleased when he offered a hand. She tugged gently, amused when he merely shuffled forward an inch or two, still too distracted by trying to think to do anything more.

She wanted to be patient with him, she truly did. But just the sight of him above her like this – broad and powerful and glorious – was enough to take that patience, crumple it into a ball, and chuck it far, far away. Her body kindly flipped the bird to her brain and did what it goddamn wanted. Which was to curl her calves around the back of his legs just under the butt and pull him forward.

With a startled exhale, he caught himself with a hand against the bedding beside her shoulder. The other splayed across her middle, as if to ensure she didn't move in his moment of unsteadiness. Just like that she was pinned down, her legs wedged open around his hips, and she was reaching down between them, her fingers wrapping around him to guide him to her opening. She could tell he understood when she saw his eye widen ever so slightly in dawning realization as his hips bore instinctively down over hers.

It ached a bit initially, and not in good way.

It was a horrible, destructive lie that intercourse was only painful the first time and never again. There were far more variables than a single barrier forever gone once tested – especially considering that barrier was total primordial bullshit forged in shame and control. Frequency of use was a factor, as with any group of muscles. As was the level of arousal. And, unfortunately, size. She wasn't sure if she was smaller or shallower than some, but it had always felt that way; that she required far more time to adjust than seemed normal. It was also maddening that her body could want something so badly and yet work so hard to keep it out.

Wincing, she forced her breath to leave her slowly and did her best to relax – difficult when everything in her was resolutely clamping down.

It was more discomfort than real pain. It didn't sting or burn the way it would if something was really wrong. But it was...a lot.

Damn it, this was not how this was going to go. She refused to allow this to be like every other first time she'd experienced. She wanted something better with him than the resentment she wouldn't be able to fully swallow. And she owed her own body more than resentment.

She needn't have bothered with the hand she pressed against his chest, he was already pausing, her signs of distress far louder than any demand to stop she might have made. If he felt anything being an inch or so deep into her, he didn't show it. His eyes were rapt, his brow furrowed under the mask, frowning – clearly not liking whatever he read in her face. He began to pull away, and she knew there was not a single thought of complaint in his mind, only concern. Only caring.

Somehow knowing it reaffirmed her determination. She was going to make this work and enjoy the ever loving hell out of it.

"It's ok," she said, smoothing her hand reassuringly down his chest. "Everything's ok, I'm fine."

He was clearly unconvinced.

She smiled, hoping to put that inclination toward protectiveness at ease.

"Just—remember I said we'd have to go slow?" He didn't nod, but she knew he heard her and remembered. "You're a little big for me, that's all. I have to...adjust."

Sudden understanding flared to life like a spark behind his eyes and she wondered if he was recalling how tight she had been around his fingers. He glanced down to where they were joined – if only partly – seemingly contemplative. His hand was still at her waist. Though his grip there had tightened slightly it loosened now as he slid his palm up along her side, thumb meeting the underside of her breast before sliding back down, running all the way over her hip and thigh almost to her knee. Then he reversed path again, repeating the caress along the length of her body. Tender and…yes, soothing.

Somehow he'd gathered that the best way forward was to help her relax.

Clever man. And so damn loving. Far from frustrated or annoyed with her for not being perfectly ready at exactly the right time, he wanted to help her – wanted her to be comfortable and happy, not tense and in pain.

It was working, too.

The callus at his palms was just the right kind of rough, his fingernails blunt, but just long enough to graze gently across her skin when he turned his wrist to follow the shape of her thigh. It was nice, and endlessly affectionate. Especially considering he was probably aching something awful being so close to her this way. She never would have known it if he was.

She draped an arm over one heavy shoulder, enjoying the sense of closeness, of bonding through touch, her other running softly across his chest. And gradually her abdominal muscles began to loosen.

On his next path up he kept going, passing over her chest to reach her neck and stroking softly down the side of her throat, tracing the edge of her jaw. Her skin tingled in his wake, nerves singing at the touch. He brushed her chin, fingertips skimming her mouth, and she was about eighty percent sure his doing it meant that he wanted to kiss her – maybe even that he was imagining what it would feel like.

This time she didn't stomp down the reflex to open her mouth and flick her tongue against the tip of his index finger.

Oh, the way he looked at her…pupils blown wide and irises dark, as if he could devour her just with his eyes.

That look was pure promise. The kind of look that said very clearly that he fully intended on doing whatever it took to make her dissolve into a writhing, gasping wreck.

A hot rush of wetness, a pang of pleasure at the idea of just what he might do to elicit such a result. This time the reflexive clench of her cunt was not the kind that seemed designed to keep him out, but to pull him in. He felt it, the give of her body around him, and she didn't have to coax him forward.

With incredible care and a control that would have been beyond most men at their first time being inside a woman, he arced his hips and slowly, carefully pushed. So slowly that it was almost infuriating. But she let him, because she had no desire to ruin the moment again in her haste. And because the sensation of it, drawn out this way, was downright decadent, strong internal muscles closing greedily around him. Her eyelids fluttered, a low, involuntary sound falling from her tongue as the length of his cock slid deep.

There was nothing else quite like it: this sensation of being filled, of being locked together with another body. It was almost indescribable, the sense of relief that was also one of immense tension, the sense of being connected in a way that was otherwise impossible. Physically yes, but also emotionally.

It was utterly irrational: a full-on influx of hormones flooding her system like water through a spillway, her brain immersed so deep in biological imperative that she couldn't discern where the edges lay. She knew it was, but she couldn't feel the truth in it. She was tied to him, bound to him in this crucial way, hearing his breath hitch shallow and feeling him tremble with every inch he gained, his heart like thunder against her hand. In that moment she was completely, stupidly in love with him.

The brain was the most powerful erogenous zone in the human form and operated on a feedback loop. Would she have felt so much affection if she didn't feel so good physically? Or did it feel this good because of that affection? She wasn't sure she would have been able to tell even if she wasn't eyeballs deep in it. Nor did she really care.

He stopped exactly when he should have at the resistance of her cervix, not trying to force deeper. As expected, he was too long for her, but not by that much – or so she gauged by what she could feel. Less than an inch. Which was better than she'd assumed. Depending on how things went, she might be able to take all of him with the right angle and level of arousal.

And she was pretty fucking aroused.

He didn't need her to tell him what to do then. Bracing his hand and knees against the bed, he withdrew from her, and returned with a little less caution. This time she saw the over-bright burn of pleasure in his eyes, the slight arch of his neck.

The hand at her throat had lowered to the mattress next to her, but now he moved, wedging it under her back, splaying his hand across her side and lifting to press her up into his chest. His breath hissed between his teeth at the graze of her nipples against his skin. A sound she felt all the way down to her toes.

The next thing she knew, she was hitching one leg high over his hip, rocking up into the motion of his body. A good rhythm. Steady, sure, but too gentle. Not enough.

Her hand slipped under his arm, following the shallow dip of his lower back and down to press against the swell of his ass. His gasp was sharp, a hard in-taken breath. Muscle bunched beneath her hand and between her thighs as he thrust, harder this time, rougher. It had been absolutely unintentional, yet it struck her somewhere deep and delicious and she gripped him tighter, coaxing him to do it again. His hips stuttered, the hand high at her waist twitching, rhythm momentarily broken by the swift shiver that rippled through him, echoed in his cock.

Her hands were sliding almost mindlessly over his skin, slick and fever-hot, the muscle in his shoulders flexing tight with every stroke, her cunt clenching around him as he shoved into her – thick and perfect. With every roll of his hips he was rubbing across her clit and she was squirming, near to choking on her whimpers at the pressure. With every second just a little more desperate, and a little more shocked.

Holy shit…

Holy shit.

Was he actually going to make her come?

She had had plenty of sex, and never in her life had she ever reached an orgasm with her partner inside her. Not even with her own hand to help her along. It just hadn't happened, for whatever the reason, though she had never blamed either of her boyfriends who both had usually made sure to see to her beforehand, or after. Mostly. All right, sometimes. But she had been all right with that, liking the sense of closeness enough not to mind.

But she was…and he was…

Holy. Shit.

~/~

Mercifully, she didn't make him wait long.

This was not to say that he wouldn't have waited as long as it took, because he would have. But he was still more than a little relieved she had come back so quickly.

She was clutching a little box in her hands as she drew near, and he eyed it, perplexed, and intensely curious. Was this why she had left? What was it for? And why had she needed it right then, badly enough to interrupt them?

Her fingers curled into the seam of the matte black surface to pull back the lid and extract a little silver square. Abandoning the box to the table, she sank to her knees back on the bed and took the square between her fingers, pinching the corners and tearing it open to reveal something else inside – an odd, perfectly circular bit of what looked like clear plastic.

Studying it, he didn't notice her reach until her hand curved with the shape of him, fingers sliding up along the underside where his pulse seemed to echo as insistently as in his temples. Heat surged, and how he wished he had a voice to tell her: yes, and please, and touch me.

She was pressing the plastic against him and he angled his head down to watch her fit it to the end, fighting the reflexive shudder at the touch to incredibly sensitive skin. It felt more akin to rubber than to plastic, he noted, and appeared to be a sheath of some kind, for she was rolling the material down to encase his flesh in a snug sort of membrane.

"I'll explain later," she assured him, and he nodded, unconcerned.

While the casing wasn't entirely comfortable, he hadn't exactly been comfortable to start with and it wasn't uncomfortable either. Clearly there was a reason for it, if it required explanation. But he was content to wait for that part if it meant she continued to touch him.

He was half considering simply asking by closing her fingers around him when she spoke again, this time with a tiny quaver in her voice.

"We're going to have to go slow, ok?" she said. She was staring down at the part of him still cupped in her hand looking at him rather like the way she had upon first seeing him, a uniquely confounding mix of awe and apprehension. "You're a little...larger than average."

Concern prickled at the edges of his mind. Her words were utterly baffling to him, but something in the way she formed them was more than a little troubling.

What did she mean by that? He knew the truth in statement logically: he had never come across anyone as tall as he was, nor so bulky, yet he suspected she wasn't referring to his build. What, then? And why was she saying they needed to be slow? Slow with what? She usually explained things so well, but she seemed deliberately cagey about this and he wasn't sure how he felt about it. She had said she would explain later. But there had been that hint of unease in her voice, and waiting didn't really seem…

His thoughts splintered, scattering into pieces when she lay back upon the bed.

He couldn't not look at her. She was so endlessly lovely, and like this – bare and inviting, stretched out for him to see – she was somehow even more so. It took him following the soft curving lines of her body down to realize she had positioned herself so that his legs were between hers, not all that unlike the way she had done to straddle his lap. It wasn't that different, really…and yet it was.

What was it about this that had caused her concern? What was it about this that made his brain feel like it had turned to scalding liquid within his skull?

She was reaching for him and absently he offered a hand to her, unthinking, as if to help her up. Her slim little fingers gripped him tightly. He felt her skin slide against his, a forceful pressure at the backs of his legs as she pulled firmly at his hand.

With a cold surge of alarm he tipped forward, yanking reflexively from her grip to throw out his hand. The other flattened against her belly, willing her to stay where she was in case his arm didn't hold and he had to pitch his weight sideways to keep from crushing her. It held, thank goodness. He didn't have the time to be relieved, however, suddenly all too aware of the soft skin at the insides of her thighs sliding along the space under his hipbones, warm and smooth. Of her hand reaching between them to grasp his length and angle him down the slick heat at the juncture of her legs.

The thick ridge fit with strange perfection against her, aligning with her shape in a way that was…

With a shock of sudden clarity he understood.

He'd always thought the people he saw entangled together were merely rubbing against one another – an assumption only fortified, in his mind, by what he'd experienced with Whitney two nights ago, and again this morning. But he had been wrong both times. He saw it now, the complimentary differences in their bodily construction; the contrast between her, soft and concave, and him, stiff, protruding. They were meant to fit together, not unlike a key and lock.

Once the comparison struck him so did the implication of the image, the realization that his body had been designed to be inside of hers.

Inside her.

Finally he understood what it was his mind had been instinctually trying to push him to do – the gaps closing with the click of gears falling into place. And now that he knew, his entire being seemed to be humming with the urgency to get inside her, to sink deep into that soft, secret place.

He gave into the compulsion and pressed forward, his vision nearly bleaching white as her body parted around him and the tip of his suddenly painfully aching flesh slipped into her, hot and silken and perfect.

Just…perfect.

This. This was where he was supposed to be. Here was purpose and belonging and rightness, and…

Something was wrong. She wasn't languid and pliant and sighing the way she had when she'd guided him to use his fingers. There was resistance. She was tense, the muscles in her abdomen and thighs wound tight, but in the wrong way. It was not welcoming, but defensive.

He blinked back the haze of bestial impulse screaming for him to shove as deeply as he possibly could, just in time to see the flinch streak across her face.

He froze.

That had been pain. He had hurt her.

Her hand was pressed flat against his sternum, asking him to stop, and his blood ran cold as though injected with liquid frost. He was already moving cautiously back, terrified to move too quickly in case pulling away brought her more pain.

"It's ok."

There was a faint tremor in her voice which clashed with the gentle slide of her hand across his chest, a touch meant to soothe.

"Everything's ok," she added, and she was definitely trying to reassure him. "I'm fine."

But she wasn't fine. Nothing about her being in pain was anywhere close to fine, and he did not understand why she would claim it to be. Yet, as he looked at her, the frown carving deep into his brow, she smiled at him, and he saw no traces of the pain he'd glimpsed so briefly. There was only a mild kind of frustration, and restless wanting.

"Remember I said we'd have to go slow?"

She had said that, and it had worried him then, before she'd distracted him with all her pretty soft skin and insistence on pulling him down over her. He should have wrenched himself out of it. Made her stop and refused to move until she told him what it meant.

"You're a little big for me, that's all," she explained quietly, "I have to...adjust."

Larger than average. That was what she had called him, and now it made sense why it had seemed to be in reference to something aside from his general stature in contrast to her smallness. She hadn't been talking about his body, but this specific part of him.

And of course. She had been so tight around his fingers. It hadn't occurred to him that this was due to anything more beyond just how that place inside her functioned, but it was so obvious now that wasn't the case. He was so much bigger than she was in every other capacity. It only made sense that the key-and-lock fit would be wrong. And she had known this all along. Why, then, would she have him…but then she had just said that she needed to adjust, which implied that this issue of size and fit wasn't a permanent one.

It was more difficult to think than normal, his body was locked in a heightened state of distress at her nearness, the whispered promise of ecstasy right there within reach. But he could not abide feeling pleasure at the expense of her pain. He would far rather go without this particular connection with her – as much as he wanted it.

So much that his lower back was shrieking with it.

Firmly he shoved the discomfort out of his mind and focused instead on how to help her. He wasn't sure there was much he could do short of removing himself from between her legs, but as she didn't appear to want that, he was determined to find something else. He wanted her as she had been those minutes ago, sleek and lush and relaxed. He wanted her eyes hazy and bright, her voice in his ears, rich and sweet with ecstasy. How did he bring her back to that without aggravating the problem?

He was moving without thinking, following the curve of her side up and down with his palm the same way she was reassuring him with the hand still resting soft against his chest.

It was an idle touch, meant to mirror some of her soothing back to her. He hadn't expected it to result in some of the tightness in her legs to lessen. But he felt it under his hand as he traced back up the supple length of her thigh, the muscle uncoiling ever so slightly. Which is when it occurred to him.

There was muscle lining the channel inside her, both intricate and strong, as evidenced by the grip she'd had on him and the resistance he felt now. Muscle contracted and released according to tension, the tone and amount of that tension changing depending on the need. Maybe her body had anticipated pain in accordance with his size and the anticipation had caused her to inadvertently guard against him rather than allow for that adjustment she spoke of – which had resulted in the very pain she had worried about.

Wonderful, infuriating woman. He wished she had just told him, but he couldn't rightfully say he didn't understand why she hadn't. He would have refused, too horrified by the prospect of hurting her to hear the rest. She would have had to coax and wheedle and plead with him, and even then he might not have conceded. She wanted this with him and was willing to do what it took to have it, even if it meant enduring a bit of pain, and he had no right to insist that she couldn't make that choice. All he could do was lean on her knowledge as best he could.

He let his palm slide inward along the graceful arc of her side, his eyes skimming over her bare torso to rest at her neck, slender and pale.

She liked to be touched there, along the throat and at the nape, under the jaw; and he liked touching her there. So he did, softly, his goal to elicit calm and comfort.

Her lips parted on a faint sigh and he couldn't curb the impulse to touch her mouth. To his surprise, her little pink tongue darted out to graze the tip of his finger, her eyes suddenly glittering as if she knew exactly how his groin had just clenched in response to the tiny burning stroke. In almost that same second he felt the rush of heat, slick and beckoning, as her body gave beneath his.

He didn't wait for her to encourage him. He pressed down and forward, as slowly as he possibly could, in case the adjustment process wasn't an immediate thing.

It was not an easy task. He was warring with his own impulse to shove quick and hard, near to shaking with the effort it took him not to do so – to take, to claim – almost certain it would hurt her. And not only that, but there was the look of something close to rapture on Whitney's face. Her eyes half-closed and her teeth digging into the lush surface of her lower lip. She clutched at him, made a little broken sound, and the gentle scrape of her nails down his chest as her fingers curled was enough to make his skin ignite.

Resolutely, exercising all the willpower he possessed, he seized the impulse and held firm. Sliding slowly, inch by luscious inch, until he could go no further.

There was a definite end point within her. He took pointed note of that, mentally calculating how deep he could physically go. And maybe the fit was, as she implied, a little less than perfect. He could not have cared less about that even if he tried.

She had already taught him what to do. She'd had him mimic the necessary motions with his hand, imitating this other, even more intimate act. He pulled away from her, the friction tight as if loathe to see him gone, and when he pressed back, it was a little more firmly. The way she had asked him to use his fingers – sinking smoothly into the soft, molten heat of her.

Oh…

When she had put her hands on him he had thought he knew what pleasure was. Oh, no. No, he had been quite mistaken.

This was pleasure.

Braced upon his forearm, he slid his other hand beneath the arch of her back and pulled to him, obeying the compulsive urge to have her closer. The softness of her breasts pressed into him, warm and inviting, and somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if the right thing to do would be to stop, to make sure she was all right – if this was still all right. But he felt the inside of her thigh slide up to hug his waist, her hips moving to meet his as he thrust back into her, and realized somehow that must mean the answer to both questions was yes.

He felt the edge of her thumb graze his side, her hot little hand splaying across his back and moving down. To his shock, she gripped him boldly by the backside and pulled.

She wasn't strong enough to move him simply by raw force, but there was power in her touch, which she well knew. The muscles in his back and belly and limbs tightened upon a thick shiver as heat carved along his spine like lightning to stab deep into his brain.

His hips jarred roughly into hers, hard, unmeasured. She whimpered, pulled again, the grip of her thigh at his waist tightening.

He was rapidly losing grip on his sanity. Rationality was crumbling, at the mercy of how gloriously good she felt, turning him to a crude mass of bestial craving and instinct. It was almost alarming. Almost. It might have been enough to make him retreat from her, afraid of the damage he might do were he to truly lose himself with her…had she not been doing all of those things she had when it had been just his fingers buried inside her body. Telling those bestial parts of him, quite clearly and with unmistakable fervor, that she liked it.

The pleasure was intoxicating. Drugging.

His chest was heaving, his breaths gone shallow and raking in his lungs in the way of intense endurance. He felt everything, heard everything: the gliding rasp of skin upon skin, the soft, slick sounds every time he thrust into that lush, perfect heat. He didn't even know how to describe the sounds she was making, needy, trembling moans low in her throat that stoked the lust in his blood like fire and that he knew would haunt him forevermore. The scent of her was so thick that he could taste it on his tongue, rich and heady and sweet. She filled, completed him. He wanted to sink himself somehow deeper and never leave again.

He lowered his head, pressing the brow of his mask into the juncture between her beck and shoulder. It was probably extremely uncomfortable for her, hard and clunky and abrasive, yet she wound her hand around the back of his neck, fingers sliding across the base of his skull as if to hold him there.

She must not mind. That was good, because he didn't think he had the strength to lift it.

Her body was clenching around him, a powerful rhythmic pulse in precise, even match to the throb in his groin and spreading out through his flesh and lodging in the base of his spine. He could no longer think. He could do nothing but feel, stumbling into the blinding rush of ecstasy as it reached up and dragged him down.

"Jason," Whitney breathed.

That was it, the sound of his name in her honey voice. It was all he needed to cross the threshold of desperate pleasure into agony. The heat in his body snapped, shattered, cutting through him like a lash until it consumed everything that wasn't her.

The euphoria seemed to strip him entirely, rendering him weak, unsteady and fever-chilled.

He was cognizant enough to catch himself, though only just. His body was pressing down on her, heavy and loose and too much, yet she didn't seem bothered by it. She seemed restless, but not…

With a pang of self-chastisement he realized that she had not reached the culmination of her own pleasure. She had been near to it: that he was relatively confident of, judging by the sounds she had been making, the edge of wildness to her movements. But she hadn't quite gotten there.

Determined, he raised himself up on an arm that trembled, but held, and shifted his weight to the left.

She was looking up at him, her face soft and warm with affection, which turned quickly quizzical when she met his gaze and didn't see what she seemed to expect there.

Reaching down, he slid his free hand over the curve of her hip to find the sensitive little place just above where he was still joined with her.

She had been running her hand along his back, but he felt her pause then. Her eyes widened with surprise and a trace of what he thought was disbelief before her head fell back, onto the waves of coppery hair spilled and shining across the sheets, and she emitted another one of those keening moans that could have reduced him to so much rubble. All at the gentle stroke of his fingertips. Intent on doing what he'd planned to do before she had sidelined him with this wondrous interconnecting of bodies.

This lock-to-key perfection.

There was just one thing missing – and he was going to remedy that.

~/~

Whitney smiled, folding herself around him as he jerked and shuddered against her, endorphins pooling warm and light along her nerves.

If he had managed to hold on for just a little bit longer, he would have had her there. But she honestly couldn't even be disappointed by that. There was a kind of relief in being joined like this that she couldn't get by reaching an orgasm. She had wanted him inside her and she had gotten it (oh wow, hadn't she just). That was plenty to be getting on with for now.

She was impressed he'd lasted as long as he had, frankly. A testament to his impeccable control, especially in the beginning, and probably with the aid of the latex. And this had just been the first go. He was definitely going to be getting her off with his cock at some point, and she wasn't going to have to wait very long once he started building up this specific endurance.

She was pretty sure the thought had just made her a little faint.

Jason was still shaking, still immersed in the grips of his own release. She was still running her hand up and down his back in an almost absentminded, affectionate reflex as his grip on her slackened and she settled back against the bed. He had been sagging over her, muscles uncoiling and loose, when suddenly she felt him move.

Abruptly he shoved himself back up, angling his torso to one side as he lifted his head to look at her, and she felt the slightly giddy smile fade from her own mouth as he met her eyes.

He didn't look dazed and sex-drunk. His gaze was set, resolute. Purposeful.

What on earth…?

It wasn't until she felt his knuckles graze her navel before she realized what he was doing.

Oh my god.

Sweet, beautiful, attentive man.

Even solidly in the grips of his own orgasm he'd realized she hadn't followed and was apparently not going to be fully satisfied until she had. His hand splayed across her lower belly, thumb sliding through damp curls to find her clit, slick and suddenly throbbing for him.

She hadn't had time for her arousal to lose its edge. At the first hint of touch her back arched, sharp and involuntary – suddenly hurled back into a state of staggering, mindless need. His fingertip circled the tight knot of nerves, surely able to feel the shuddering spasms of her walls around him. He did. She felt it in the slight jerk of his hips even though he had already spent himself inside her.

Fuck, was this going to work him back up again?

Holy hell, it just might.

He had taken note of the little whining noise she had made in response to that reflexive jerk. Because of course he had. And of course he would put it together with the fact that he was still buried deep within her. He began to move: very slight back and forth motions timed exactly to the quick, teasing strokes of his thumb.

Her body curved like a bow, her hips pressing helplessly up into him. She was moaning like something out of a bad porno, utterly uncontrolled and half-delirious with the screaming burn of pleasure as her cunt clenched and spasmed and clamped down around him like a fist…

For a moment she tipped straight into madness.

She couldn't see. She couldn't breathe. She was nothing but raw nerves, the pulse of the heartbeat centered in her abdomen, bleeding her way back to sanity as her head lolled against the bedding.

Vaguely she felt him shift them both to one side, sliding free from her body and nudging her leg out from beneath him as he cradled her like the ragdoll he had reduced her to. She could almost hear the words he could not speak in the stroke of his hand in her hair and down her back: soft endearments, affectionate and sweet, her name. His love. She could do no more than lay there, stunned right out of her blessed mind, trying to work her brain around just how ridiculously…good he had been.

Because of course he would turn out to be incredible in bed.

It actually made total sense, even in her completely addled state.

It wasn't that he was naturally just that good. Not in the way that implied practice and mastery. He simply paid attention. That was really all it took to take a man barely on the other edge of being a virgin (whatever the hell that even meant, honestly) and turn him into a sex god.

Jason was more observant than both her previous lovers put together, and he was endlessly patient by nature. He watched and listened for the cues she offered and he ran with them, knowing from previous encounters that the more he did so the better she responded, which fed both the part of his mind based in instinct geared to making her want to stay with him and the part that loved her and which found pleasure in her happiness. The more blunt she was the better, and that was not something she had much direct experience with.

He more than deserved the praise. He did what men should do without getting his ego all wrapped up and bruised in it.

Women were complicated and diverse – what worked for one did not work for others – and if a man wanted to bolster his prowess by getting his partner off then he needed to watch and listen and give a damn, not just bulldoze his way through assuming he knew what he was doing. Jason had no ego attached to the act. He wasn't relying on it to fulfil a narrative he was seeking to believe about himself or even just to fulfil his own needs. He enjoyed being with her. And he very obviously enjoyed getting her to orgasm. The results couldn't have been better if he'd had a decade to perfect his technique.

It was just that simple.

It took her at least a few minutes to be able to do it, but bolstered by those same powerful, bond-forging endorphins she managed to wriggle as close to him as she could get and nuzzle her face into his neck, humming in contented bliss. She felt a soft vibration against her cheek, a low, soundless rumble, as if he had purred like a cat. Which was goddamn delightful.

He had such nice skin. Smooth and healthy aside from the scars. She wouldn't have expected that upon her first sight of him…although there were plenty of things she hadn't expected. And now here she was, sprawled next to her serial killer boyfriend after some truly fantastic sex.

Was he her boyfriend now? The word seemed thoroughly wrong – beyond just a bad fit. So then what was he? Her partner? Her lover? Her Significant Other?

Definite nope on that last one.

The word boyfriend had always come with these weird unspoken strings and expectations. After a period of dating there would come cohabitation, then marriage, then children, and that was the way relationships were conducted. It had always seemed too far off in the future for her to worry about seriously, and neither of her previous relationships had been long-term enough to get within sneezing distance of those stages. She and Jason had skipped straight to cohabitation (if a little unorthodoxly so) and then backpedaled to...she couldn't really call it dating as she understood it to be. Unintentional and somewhat unwitting courtship, she supposed.

Wow, this was weird.

But as strange as the whole thing had been she was happy with him. And now that she was very seriously considering it, she found she didn't really find herself wishing for the normal expected life that came alongside a standard boyfriend situation. She didn't give a shit about marriage aside from whatever legal and financial reasons there were to it, which wasn't likely to be an issue here, and she had never really felt the draw toward having kids.

She had been told so many times that she would – that she really would – but she never had. She had firmly begun to believe that if she hadn't felt it by now she never would. Which was also a thing in favor of this less than typical relationship. There was no doubt in her mind that Jason would have made a more than wonderful father had he not been quite so scarred in all the ways he had been. She hadn't asked, she probably never would, but she didn't think he associated children or childhood with much approaching the realm of positive. Maybe she could have talked him into it, helped him deal with some of his trauma and his misgivings if she wanted to. But it certainly wasn't worth doing for such a petty and unnecessary reason. And she simply didn't care to.

Though speaking of children…

"Here," she said abruptly, and (with something of a struggle because her bones were still fusing themselves back together) sat up.

Carefully she slipped the condom from him – still somehow intimidating in spite of being mostly soft and having just had him inside her – and leaned over his body to toss it and its contents into the little dusty plastic-lined basket under the table which she assumed was for trash. Well, it was now. She stretched out her arm for her already soiled shirt, bending a knee for balance and grateful for the hand Jason laid against her lower back to keep her from toppling headfirst to the floor.

Straightening, she offered the shirt to him to clean up, which he did, looking bemusedly absorbed in doing so in an all too charming way.

When he offered it back she just pointed to the floor. She was a bit…damp, but it was nowhere near to the degree it would have been without the latex barrier, and she needed to pee anyway. Rather than chucking it as she had, he reached over the side of the bed and set it gently down, which inspired her to lean over and kiss the mouth of his mask before scooting clumsily to the end of the bed.

"I'll be right back."

She was always somewhat surprised by how easy it was to pee after sex, even if she hadn't had to beforehand. It was a good thing, too, since it was so necessary to do so in order to avoid problems. UTIs, bacterial infections, etcetera. It did ruin the moment a bit, but she suspected Jason would be up for plenty more cuddling.

He was examining the condom box when she got back, turning it over in his hands and studying the writing as though trying to string together complex pieces of code.

Right. Explanation time.

Crawling back to her spot on the bed she lay on her side, propped up with one arm, trying to sort out where to start.

Jason returned the box to the table and angled his body toward her. Reaching, he laid one great, gentle hand against her side and coaxed her lower body a bit closer so that their legs touched. She smiled, tucking one of her calves over his.

"Do you remember when I made you take me to the bathroom in the middle of the night because I was bleeding?"

She'd had it before, but she certainly had his full attention now and for an entirely different reason. She could tell he did just from the way his eyes honed in on her face, so she continued. Slowly, a little haltingly.

"I said it was like an internal wound."

He nodded again, encouraging, as if to say: keep going.

"And I asked if you knew where babies come from…" she added hopefully, only to be met with the same blank confusion he'd given her before when she'd posed the question. Nope, he definitely didn't know. "Every month a woman's body gets ready to have a baby—sort of like making a nest, but inside. In here."

She laid a hand flat to her belly, a few inches down and in from where his own hand still rested at her hip.

"If she doesn't get pregnant, then her body sort of…throws a tantrum. It tears the nest apart and throws it away. It's blood and tissue and other things. It lasts a couple days and, like an injury, the woman needs bandaging of some kind to absorb the blood and such. To stay clean. And because it's not like urine that you can hold until you're ready. It just comes out, whenever it happens."

His eyes dropped to her stomach, processing her words with that bright, keen light of interest at something that so many people (men and women) found completely disgusting. Even with her gnarliest stories she wasn't sure she had managed to gross him out yet. She wasn't sure if she should take that as a challenge or not. Though she kind of wanted to.

"If…"

She paused, thinking. What was the best, simplest way to phrase it?

"A baby is made when a man and a woman do what we just did. The man puts his—"

She couldn't say penis. She just couldn't. She hated the word and it was clinical as shit and she just couldn't do it.

"—cock," she indicated with a tip of her chin, "into a woman's body and inserts genetic material to mix with her genetic material. The woman's body keeps that material in the nest it made and over a few months it grows into a baby. Which then comes out of her when it's ready."

Like a loaf of bread. Good gravy this was hysterical. But he seemed to be following as well as she could have hoped.

"I'm not ready to have a baby, so we use things like those," she pointed over his shoulder to the box, "to form a barrier between us to keep me from getting pregnant. There are other methods I would prefer, but I'd have to see a doctor for those. And I didn't want to wait to…"

Was she blushing? Yes. Yes, she absolutely was.

"To do this with you. Have sex with you, I mean. That's what it's called."

She had averted her eyes from him simply due to habitual response to embarrassment. Which was silly really. Why should she be embarrassed? He certainly wasn't. He was just taking in what she taught him.

"It's mating for animals. Which I guess is the same thing, really, except it kind of implies babies will happen."

His hand left her side to gently touch her chin. That sweet, completely unforceful request to look at him. She did, finding the blue-gray of his eyes soft and warm as if reminding her that she was safe. The jitters lessened immediately, for which she was grateful.

"Does that make sense?" He nodded. "Was the…was it uncomfortable?"

He frowned slightly, as though he didn't follow the question. She was about to rephrase, make it clearer that she was talking about the condom and not intercourse, when he seemed to catch her meaning and shook his head. Thank goodness. She fully intended on getting to a doctor and seeing about some other form of contraception as soon as possible, but she didn't really want to wait until then to repeat this experience – because she wanted him to fuck her stupid.

The movement of his hand caught her attention and she blinked, focusing on him as he indicated her with his two-fingered point, then his own groin, then his covered mouth, tapping the fiberglass twice before watching her expectantly.

Nope, she had nothing.

"One more time?"

Ever patient, he reached for her. was much plainer the second time, reaching to skim his fingertips across the apex of her thighs, then cupping his hand over his cock – specifically the organ itself, not simply the groin area – and finally tapping the mask.

Wait, she had given him a name for his penis. Did he want the same for her? Was that what this was – a way to refer to the anatomy in his own head?

"Are you asking what this is called?" she lowered her hand to cover the dark curls between her legs, and he nodded, openly enthusiastic. She couldn't not smile. He was so damn earnest and unbothered by any of it. It was really nice not worrying about social stigma and the weird, toxic repression it caused. "It's…complicated."

And it was. Women's bodies were so much more complex than men's were. That would be harder to explain, there were so many parts involved.

She decided not to go into too much detail. He didn't need to know all the internal parts involved in child-production, just the things important to his purposes. Turning her leg, she bent her knee and opened her thighs for him to see. And weirdly enough, while talking about it had been embarrassing due to deep mental conditioning, this didn't bother her nearly as much. He'd watched her orgasm. He'd had his fingers inside her. She needed to be past the point of shyness about it.

What she was less sure of was what terminology to use. So she started easy, indicating the tight bunch of nerves at the very top.

"This is called the clitoris—or, the clit, for short." She was blushing again. Damn it. Moving on. "And this is…" Her fingers brushed lower, indicating the opening to the vagina. "There are a lot of names. Just like for yours. I use cunt. Except not out loud, because it's—kind of rude."

Although really, even if he could talk, who was he going to offend by saying it? She could teach him every dirty word in existence and there was only her to say it to.

He seemed to find this satisfactory, for he nodded, then reached again, his fingers grazing the curve of her breast. Once again he brought his hand back to his mask and tapped the mouth.

"Breast," she named simply. He shook his head.

So he already knew that – or so she assumed since he was rejecting rather than absorbing it like the rest.

He reached again, this time very deliberately touching the pad of his index finger to the edge of her nipple, and she realized he'd been trying to be polite. Bless him. Goosebumps had immediately risen along her arms at the contact, and her skin tingled, which justified the effort.

"Oh," she said, a little breathy, which he definitely noticed. "Nipples. You have those too."

This he accepted with a nod and returned his hand to her side, stroking softly along the curve of her waist.

She lowered her head to a pillow, considering the exchange.

If they were going to continue this relationship, it would help if he had a better way of communicating with her. Not because it would make things easier for her – though she certainly wouldn't turn that down – but in case of emergency, when he didn't have time for her to guesstimate and end up hurt because she had done so wrongly. He had said reading was difficult, and she had no desire to force him to learn something that had taxed and frustrated him. But…

Oh for fuck's sake.

Why hadn't it occurred to her before now? The solution had been right there in front of her face the entire time. He was already doing it, if not with the universally recognized methods.

"What if," she hedged, not wanting to imply that there was something wrong or insufficient about his communication, "what if I told you there was a way for you to talk to me without talking or writing?"

Jason's head jerked up from where he'd laid it next to hers, his eyes sharp on her face – so intently focused she might have thought he was about to shove her down and demand she teach him right now and why the hell had she waited this long to do so.

"There's a language for…well, mostly used by people who are deaf. Essentially it's talking with your hands. Sort of the way you do already. I—" There was something like pleading in his eyes. "I only know a few words and some letters. But I could get some books, maybe from a library. I could learn, and I could teach you. If you want?"

She hadn't even finished asking before he was cupping her face in his hand to emphasize how he then looked her straight in the eyes and nodded in the vehement affirmative.

She smiled. "Ok."

He continued to stare at her, and after a moment she realized he wanted her to show him the words she knew.

What little she did know wasn't all that helpful. Father (not even mother, how useless was that?) and bullshit, and the sign for applause. She did show him the sign for thank you, which he had her repeat just to ensure he hadn't missed some little inflection. She wasn't sure how helpful the alphabet would prove to be when reading and writing, and thus spelling, had been difficult, but she did show him the letter J for Jason, and W for Whitney.

"That's all I know," she sighed, her heart aching a bit at his obvious effort not to let her see his disappointment. "But we'll learn more," she promised, "it'll be fun!"

His breath left him a bit heavily, in a sigh of his own. It had to be frustrating. He clearly wanted this quite badly, and having the possibility made known to him only to find he would have to wait for it must have been difficult. Still, he nodded his agreement and settled back down next to her.

He studied her for a moment, unusually pensive. She almost wanted to ask what was wrong, though she assumed it was just the issue of not being able to jump right into learning more Sign. But he surprised her. As he regularly did.

Once more he lifted his hand to his mask, touching the ends of index and middle finger to the fiberglass shield over his mouth. Then he turned his hand outward to lay those same fingertips across her lips.

She didn't need him to repeat this gesture in order to understand it perfectly.

Emotion surged, wrenching the breath right out of her. Her throat tightened, her vision blurring at the corners, and it was all she could do not to burst into tears.

"Is it ok if I sleep a little more?" she asked, her voice tight.

Jason's eyes softened. Rather than nodding, he slipped his arm underneath her and lifted her gently so that she was resting with her head on his chest, his arms wrapped warm and secure around her, his hand a soothing weight against her back. The way she had been when she'd woken.

Obviously he had no intention of leaving this bed unless it was with her.

Fuck it.

She let herself cry.

Just a little bit.

---

NOTES:

Hey all!

I almost thought about promising to get back to the plot next chapter…but let's be real, this has always been part of the plot, so sorry not sorry!

This one was a bit more of a wait than the last few. It's clear to me now that I needed to focus on something else for a little while, because I ended up getting unexpectedly sidetracked by a burning, mania-driven inspiration to write something else to the level of mad purging just to get it out (almost 50 pages in 4 days with very little planning/rumination time, which is insane even for me). It's not F13 and not horror/slasher, but if you like the way I write and enjoy sweet, somewhat tragic (but not really) romance, you might like it if you're in need of reading material.

While I have an endpoint planned and most big things plotted from here until then, I don't have much of it in strict order or very much written out yet, so please bear with me. I'm also actively searching for a new place to live with the intent of moving and I'm not sure what affect that's going to have. Rest assured I will continue to update as quickly as I'm able.

I'm going to leave it here for now, but a giant goddamn THANK YOU to all of you for your comments and your kudos and for giving me literal life. Thank you for reading. Thank you for all the love you show me.

Be well.

Until next time.