A/N: Big thanks to my eternally suffering beta ecaftraf and to all of you for hanging in there. We're steadily approaching the end of this monster now...
Chloe's heart is pounding.
It's been pounding since Beca grabbed her wrist in the hallway. Since she first put her hands on Beca in a manner that was more than friendly. It's been pounding since she kissed Beca for the first time, since she climbed the stairs to Beca's room that night a few weeks ago and told her that the comment she'd made at the retreat had been a serious one.
Chloe's heart is pounding and, at this point, she isn't sure it's ever going to stop.
Certainly not now. Not with the imprint of Beca's hips seared into her palms like a brand and the taste of her lingering on Chloe's tongue.
Not now she knows what Beca sounds like, really sounds like, when she comes apart. Not now she's heard her name fall from Beca's lips as she's tipped over the edge.
Not now she knows what it feels like to be here with Beca like this, to have her naked and spent, and know that it's all Chloe's doing.
It hasn't been exactly what she'd imagined and even her enthusiastic reading had, it turns out, done very little to actually prepare her for the real thing. And it's not as though she's never had sex before but this….
This is different.
Not just because Beca's a woman - though that has been a separate pleasure in and of itself - but because she's Beca. And Chloe knows, she does, that she's had this thought before, albeit under slightly different, slightly less intimate circumstances, but it bears repeating; Beca is special. In so many ways. They keep accumulating, each new one that Chloe discovers being laid to balance precariously on top of the last, building a now unsteady tower that sways with each addition. It all holds together, though. Stays upright and solid against what should be terrible odds, and Chloe gazes at it much like she's gazing at Beca now.
Like there's nothing that can topple this moment. Not a single thing could possibly shake its foundation as Chloe, after pressing a kiss to the inside of Beca's knee, moves leisurely through it, upwards, until she's stretched out beside Beca, watching the rise and fall of her chest as she tries to catch her breath.
Breath that Chloe had stolen from her with her own mouth.
And there's an ache between her legs but getting to watch Beca pull in shaking, ragged breaths as she lies there, boneless, and with her eyes closed is, Chloe thinks, a more than satisfactory reward in its own right.
Beca's gorgeous like this. Sweat-slicked atop rumpled sheets, her hair a mussed disaster, gloriously naked. It would take Chloe's breath away if she had any to spare. Would gladly give her last if it meant Beca would understand. Would see herself through Chloe's eyes.
Eyes she drags from Beca's face - beautiful, flushed, serene - along the length of her body, drinking in the sight of shining skin and trembling limbs. She wonders, absently swiping the back of her hand across her mouth, if she looks much the same. Certainly feels like she should.
After indulging in an extensive appraisal, the back of Chloe's neck starts to prickle and she looks up to find Beca watching her. There's a rush of nervousness then, an echo of uncertainty, and she knows that the smile she gives Beca - small, sheepishly curious - paints those feelings across her face in bold strokes. Knows that it would be useless to try and smother them under the guise of something else, something more confident, because Beca would see right through her attempts.
So, Chloe doesn't even try.
Beca's breathing is still ragged, stuttering, and Chloe says nothing as they lie there, intent on one another while the air settles around them. She just looks, mapping the lines of Beca's face like she's done a hundred times before only to find new landmarks there now. Or perhaps they'd merely been hidden before.
There's new light here, casting new shadows that beckon Chloe toward them instead of making her want to flee in fear of the dark. These shadows promise to hold her close and careful in the quiet of an endless night, hidden away from the too-bright lights of the rest of the world, and Chloe wants to sink into it. Let it fold around her, halt time, hold off the dawn of tomorrow so that she can stay here.
Here, with Beca.
In a place where the sound of her name falling from Beca's lips and the feel of her around her fingers, under her mouth, is fresh in Chloe's mind.
She's still dizzy with the feeling of being inside Beca, even as the fingers that had been graced with the honour lie idly against the flat of her own stomach now. Driven half mad by the taste of her, the world around Chloe is cloudy and dreamlike. Her head buzzing with a euphoric cocktail of joy and happiness, and a dash of arousal.
Maybe more than a dash.
She wonders what Beca's thinking as they look at each other, considers asking but then Beca's eyes are fluttering and she's lifting a hand to drag her fingers through messy hair, and Chloe is so thoroughly caught up in the innocuous act that she can't help herself.
She ducks her head to catch Beca's lips in a kiss and, without thinking, deepens it immediately. It's only when Beca lets out a grunt of surprise that Chloe's mind catches up with the rest of her.
"Sorry. I'm sorry," she says, reeling back with her eyes still closed beneath a frown. Her right hand has drifted, pressing lightly against the soft flesh of Beca's stomach as she holds herself back. "I should have asked before, I mean I was just- you might not want-" Her concerns are cut short as Beca snakes a hand around to the base of her neck to pull her back in and the sound that leaves her when she tastes herself on Chloe's tongue a second time curls Chloe's toes and has her whimpering needily into the kiss.
She can't ever remember wanting like this before. Is fairly certain she never has.
Not as a sexually curious teenager or a confidently sexual young adult.
Not with Tom, not with anyone.
Only Beca.
It's only ever been Beca.
Chloe moves her hand to a jutting hip bone, squeezing firmly before skating it up over Beca's ribs and grazing the swell of a breast with the pad of her thumb. She covers it then, its stiffened peek bumping her palm as if asking for attention, which she's more than happy to give.
Beca breaks the kiss with a sharp inhale as Chloe's fingers pinch and pull, and the short distance between them now is enough to afford Chloe a glimpse at the face below her.
Beca's eyes are closed, the eyebrows perched above them pinched together in concentration as Chloe continues to draw soft sounds from her, reveling in every hitched breath and growing warm as Beca's hips begin to roll in a slow, unconscious rhythm, looking for any small measure of friction. Pulling Chloe in again.
She allows herself another deep, searching kiss as she drags blunt nails down to Beca's waist. Feels Beca's hand slip into her hair as she squeezes her hip again and holds tight this time. Pulls. Urges Beca to roll towards her, onto her side, their lips only parting when Chloe nudges her thigh between Beca's, whose eyes snap open, shock flashing like moonlight over twin seas of blue.
"Chloe," she moans, sounding helpless as her hips cant without coordination, painting Chloe's leg with her arousal. She looks embarrassed for a second, like she's about to apologise for something. But Chloe, heady desire burning bonfires beneath her flesh, most definitely does not want to hear them.
She wants to hear Beca and touch Beca, and find a way to explain to Beca how she feels. How deeply she feels it. She wants her name wrapped in Beca's voice, whispered and spoken, and screamed until Beca forgets her own.
Chloe's never wanted anything like this before.
She shifts again, pressing close and letting her eyelids flutter like butterfly wings when she feels Beca on her skin.
"I want," Chloe pauses, taken aback by how rough her voice sounds, "I want you to..." She's prepared to say more. There are other words there, waiting their turn to come out, but Beca is already tucking her head under Chloe's chin, hooking the fingers of the hand wedged awkwardly between them into the front of Chloe's underwear. "I want to feel you-" Pulling the lacey material taut against Chloe, causing her own hips to jerk as Beca bares down against toned muscle. "Yes," Chloe breathes, tilting her head to press her cheek to Beca's temple so she can hear her better. "Yeah, like that." Feel the hot puffs of air wash over her neck and chest as Beca pants and rocks, and groans.
Chloe wants her closer and so she slides her hand around to palm Beca's backside, grabbing and pulling, groping along her outer thigh and guiding her leg up until her knee is touching Chloe's hip.
"How long," Chloe rasps, a woman possessed, wanting so badly to know, "have you wanted this?"
"I don't know," Beca says and she doesn't, Chloe can tell. Knows Beca isn't hiding or shying away from a more real answer because she can hear the truth of it threading itself through Beca's voice.
It can wait. The details, timeline, questions going unanswered because they haven't been spoken aloud; it can all wait. For now, Chloe just wants as much of Beca as she can get, as much as Beca will offer her, before the sun comes up tomorrow and burns the rest of their time away.
Beca's fingers trip down from their place tangled in red hair, stumbling over Chloe's neck and arm, blindly grasping for her hand until they catch around a slim wrist and guide it in much the same way Chloe had done Beca's that last night in Copenhagen. And that pounding heart of hers all but stops when Beca tries to press that hand between her legs. Would have been able to, if Chloe's thigh weren't in the way.
"Please," she murmurs across Chloe's collarbone. "Please, Chloe, I need to feel-" She cuts herself off with a keening cry, choked out in time with Chloe's which is wrenched from her as she shifts just enough to give her hand room and finds Beca hot and wet against her fingertips. She strokes them through slick heat with a graceless eagerness that exposes her own aching need and marvels at how good it feels to touch Beca like this. Good in a way that transcends any and all previous sexual encounters Chloe has had.
None of them had felt quite like this. Hadn't made it seem like the simple act of putting her hands on another person might break her in two. Might make her feel whole despite the pieces it leaves her in.
Beca's hand curls around Chloe's elbow, grasping for purchase, and Chloe finds that any direct action from her isn't really needed. Just the press of her fingers as Beca bucks hard against them, gasps when they dip inside for a heartbeat or two.
Chloe's mind is fuzzy and fogged, arousal blurring everything around her. But she hears Beca with an unmatched clarity. Her breathing, the rustle of the bed sheets beneath her, the airy way she says Chloe's name as she closes in on a release. It's all filtered through a loudspeaker and the sounds fill Chloe in a way that makes her skin buzz.
And then Beca's there, right there, and Chloe's matching the sounds she makes without even realising it, ceasing only when she takes in a lungful of air and holds it, listening to Beca's moans as they climb higher in pitch until there's nowhere left to go and the glass ceiling shatters above them.
She doesn't say Chloe's name this time, doesn't say anything at all. She unravels with a silent cry that Chloe can't hear but can feel against her skin and when Beca's hips stutter out of rhythm, Chloe uses gentle touches to draw out every last twitch of pleasure, until she feels Beca's body slacken and sink heavily into the mattress. Only then does she move her hand away, not even bothering to wipe her fingers off on the sheets.
Beca is panting, her lips brushing Chloe's neck as she struggles to catch her breath, and the brief, barely there contact is driving Chloe toward a new level of insanity. She squeezes her eyes shut and wills herself to stop spinning before doing anything else. Beca's grip on her elbow has grown loose but remains and Chloe lets the weight of it ground her.
Once she's certain she isn't going to fall - any further, not just yet - Chloe lifts her head and tilts it just so, dropping a kiss onto Beca's cheek which is already tacky with cooling sweat. Then she rolls onto her back, attempting to calm her heart as its furious beating tries to tug her up towards the ceiling, and they lie like that for a while.
The silence that falls between them now isn't awkward. Charged, maybe, more than anything else. Chloe wonders if it's because there are so many things she wants to say, all bumping around and into one another creating a mess of friction and static that sits heavily in the air but isn't suffocating.
Chloe lets her head loll to the side and is met with a heavy-lidded, blue-eyed stare that has her opening her mouth to question the look shimmering through it, but she isn't quick enough. Can't get the words out before Beca's pushing herself up with one hand and reaching for Chloe with the other.
She considers making a joke, something about how she can't have done it right if Beca's already recovered, but the thought is fleeting. Put to bed by the bumbling manner in which Beca drags her into a kiss that is uncoordinated and hungry. Frenzied in a way that tells her Beca hasn't recovered at all. In between kisses, she's gasping for air, unable to catch her breath, unable to care, and returning to Chloe's lips again and again, as if they're the only thing sustaining her right now.
Chloe feels thoroughly punch-drunk by the time Beca finally breaks away for a more significant stretch, and although she's in a similar state in regard to a need for air, she instantly misses the feel of Beca's tongue in her mouth. The scrape of Beca's teeth across her bottom lip. The burn in her lungs as Chloe refuses to end it.
She wants to kiss Beca until she stops breathing.
And she almost does – stop breathing, that is – when Beca crawls over her, onto her. Sits astride Chloe and gazes down, an indescribable expression on her face. Indescribable not because it's blank, but because the mix of emotions there are so dense, Chloe's certain she'll drown in them if she looks too long.
Her heart kicks unevenly at the back of her ribs, thumping out a string of Morse code – di-dah-di-dit dah-dah-dah di-di-di-dah dit – that leaves her rattled in the best way. Shaken. Because she doesn't know what's coming next and the anticipation keeps building the longer Beca spends just looking at her.
Chloe's never felt so seen in her whole life.
Beca doesn't sit up. Chooses to hover over Chloe instead, a forearm braced on either side of her head to hold herself up. It seems very much like she wants to say something, or that's how it appears to Chloe, but she doesn't. She just keeps looking, as though Chloe's about to open her mouth any second now and divulge the answer of some grand, cosmic question.
When time continues to stretch on, Chloe has to ask.
"What?" She looks up at Beca, who seems startled by the question and blinks a few times in rapid succession.
"Nothing." Beca stops and Chloe watches as she frowns, reconsiders. "No, that's not… right. You just," Beca swallows, pulling Chloe's gaze to the column of her neck, "you look…." And when Chloe flicks her eyes back up, she can see the words Beca wants to say written across her face in a delicate, dreamy script. They're there, plain as day, even though Beca seems unable to find them.
Chloe understands. She knows what it feels like.
She also knows that if their roles were reversed right now, she'd want some sense of confirmation on that. And so she cradles Beca's face in her palms and eases her down into a kiss that she hopes conveys it.
Then it's all sweetly rolling tongues that flow like lava into heated kisses, and before Chloe knows it, Beca's mouth has begun trailing downward. Along her neck and across her clavicle. She draws skin between her teeth and closes her lips around a straining nipple, wrenching high whines from the very back of Chloe's throat that seem to spur Beca on.
And then it's like Beca is everywhere at once. Her hands and mouth are all over Chloe, but not quite where she needs her. She's everywhere, but her touches keep landing just shy of where Chloe aches for Beca to be and for a little while, Chloe bites her tongue. She doesn't want to tell Beca what to do; she wants Beca to go at her own pace, to do whatever she feels drawn to do.
It's when Beca drags a hand lazily from Chloe's hip to graze over the front of her underwear and Chloe's hips lift to chase her fingers once they move away that she hears it.
Beca's huff of laughter.
She's doing it on purpose, Chloe realises in a flash.
Beca is teasing her.
Beca is enjoying herself enough to tease her.
She's prolonging this, drawing it out to stretch their time together a little wider, and that revelation only serves to make Chloe want things to move faster.
"Beca, please," Chloe begs, her voice rough and gravelly as the other woman peppers kisses down across the ladder of her ribs, nipping at sensitive skin before sucking a bruise into the flesh of her stomach. Chloe's back arches off the bed and she tangles her fingers into thick, dark hair as she relishes the sharp spike of ecstasy that blossoms out from behind the sting of pain.
"What do you want?" Beca's huskily spoken request is accompanied by a look so blazing that it scorches a line of fire right through Chloe, leaving her nerve endings smouldering and eating up the oxygen in the room until Chloe feels like she's being smothered on a hot day.
What does she want?
With Beca?
Chloe wants everything.
"If you don't touch me, Beca, I swear-"
"What?" Beca cuts in, breathing a little bit like she's at the midway point of a marathon she wasn't quite prepared to run but is damn committed to finishing. Her lips quirk, shifting and curling into a smirk that is far more confident than Chloe had been expecting and the sight of it has her clenching around nothing as Beca goads, "Gonna leave?"
"Maybe," Chloe fires back, but the threat is undercut by the squeak of surprise that precedes it.
Beca arches an eyebrow and Chloe decides that's enough, disentangling her fingers from Beca's hair and dropping her hand to the back of her neck. She pulls hard, not giving Beca much of a choice in which direction she's about to go, and Beca doesn't fight it. She goes willingly, it seems, meeting Chloe's impatiently waiting mouth with her own.
Chloe is kissed with a fervor that turns everything bright white behind her eyes, blinds her so that she's moving on instinct, instead of by sight. She uses her hands to find her way, mapping soft curves, cataloguing sounds, filling every sense she can with as much of Beca as possible. Something that Beca seems all too happy to help with.
And when Beca settles a leg between Chloe's thighs, high enough to press into flimsy lace that Chloe is certain does nothing to hide how wet she is, those senses seem to fizzle and pop, all trickling down into the same place. Melding into one intense sensation that leaves Chloe hypersensitive to every touch.
She rolls her hips, groaning into their kisses as Beca steers them from frantic and reckless to something with a slower pace. Deeper, heavier, and Chloe's hand covers the one lying at her waist, squeezing lightly as she tries to pull away from the kiss. She's not quite able to get herself out of Beca's gravitational pull though and it's another few moments of half-hearted struggling before she can move far enough away to speak.
"I don't," Chloe whimpers, "I don't want to like this." Rolls her hips again, hand tight around Beca's now as she blinks up into dark eyes. "I want it to be you. I need…." She pauses, swallowing thickly, still moving against Beca's thigh despite her words. Can't seem to grasp control long enough to stop herself. "I need to feel you, please."
She doesn't care how desperate she sounds. The idea of masking it, trying to cover it up with some semblance of togetherness, doesn't even enter her mind. Would be impossible to consider, given that she's in the middle of being pulled apart. Unravelling like a sweater with a loose thread that's caught on something, only noticing the damage once the thing is undone halfway up her torso and it's much too late to do anything about it.
"Okay." Beca's voice cracks, the cockiness she'd displayed only moments ago now nowhere to be found, and she tries again. Another quick, "Okay," before she's rearranging herself onto her side next to Chloe, elbow bent and nestled into the bedspread, head propped up against her open palm.
There are live wires running through Chloe's body, buzzing and arcing, making her jolt when Beca's free hand finds her stomach again, but Chloe is quick to grab it before she can take it away. She parts her lips to let short, shallow breaths disturb the quiet of the room, her chest rising and falling quickly as she holds Beca's gaze and urges her hand lower. Guides it to the topmost edge of her underwear and then lets go. She feels the pads of Beca's fingertips graze the skin above it. Feels her hand stall and sees the way her attention drifts down to look at where it's resting.
"You don't have to," Chloe says, meaning every word, "if you don't-"
"I do." Beca's looking at her again and Chloe knows she means it too. "I do, I'm just…." She lifts her hand to brush a few strands of hair away from her face and Chloe catches it on the way back down, holds it.
"You're shaking," Chloe murmurs and it's an equally tremulous, nervously embarrassed exhalation of laughter that leaves Beca the instant before she speaks.
"I'm really scared right now." All brash and painful honesty, the kind Chloe can tell she's uncomfortable delivering, spoken around a clenched jaw.
"It's just me." She brings her other hand up to stroke Beca's cheek, brow furrowed in confusion. She wouldn't hazard a guess as to why Beca is scared. Wouldn't know where to start pulling potential reasons from. No, the why of it is decidedly unclear to Chloe.
"That's just it." Beca's eyes close and Chloe can hear the threatening swell of tears swimming in the undercurrent of her next words. "It's you."
And Chloe finds herself nearly swept away.
She stares at Beca, gaze heavy with a hundred different thoughts as she takes in the naked emotion dusting Beca's features, feels it pull at her heartstrings, and then she's kissing her.
And any threat other than that of simply falling, falling, falling vanishes.
Chloe lets Beca's words cut the heart from her chest with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel and happily takes it in her hands, only to lie it at Beca's feet. She brushes her fingers delicately over the side of Beca's face as they kiss again and again, momentum steady and holding, and entirely unhurried.
She feels Beca's deep inhale, mouth so close she seems to draw the breath from Chloe's lungs, and then fingertips are dipping below the last remaining barrier between them.
The way Beca's fingers slip against her is inexperienced and unsure, and so good, Chloe thinks, however briefly, that she might black out. She doesn't, though. By some merciful miracle, Chloe is allowed to remain conscious and present during those first few exploratory touches. Gets to experience the white-hot rush of pleasure that sings through her veins when she hears Beca's whimper sound in time with her own moan, both ringing out as Beca's fingers stutter across swollen nerves and hot, wet flesh.
Her breathing, she knows, has already become erratic, her body responding to Beca with a level of enthusiasm that betrays how close she already is. How close Beca has gotten her without even touching her, not properly.
Not like now; the flat of slender fingers slowly dragging, held firm against her by the confines of the material stretched across the back of Beca's hand.
"You're so…." Beca trails off and Chloe can feel her frowning where their foreheads meet. She swipes her fingers through Chloe almost idly, the tremor in her hand no longer detectable.
"I'm-" Chloe's breath hitches as Beca's fingers slide against her, grazing her clit tentatively at first, before coming back stronger, more certain, prompting her to let out a sinful sounding groan. "Beca." They circle lightly, then with increasing pressure, winding up a rhythm at Chloe's hips, which buck wantingly against Beca's hand. "I'm what?" She's opened her eyes and is waiting for Beca to do the same, and when she does, when eyes, turned a midnight-blue, do eventually meet hers, Chloe wonders if Beca can hear her heart where it still sits, beating at Beca's feet.
Beca parts her lips to speak but no words come out, despite the fact that Chloe can practically see them sitting on the tip of her tongue. She knows, she thinks, what Beca is thinking, what Beca wants to say, but she also knows that something not quite like embarrassment might be holding her back. Might be acting like a roadblock, forcing her words to take the long way around.
Their journey seems to be taking up far too much time, however, and when the seconds have spilled overside of Beca's palm, she holds Chloe's gaze and slides a finger inside.
Chloe gasps her surprise, back arching slightly, and she sees the worry flash across Beca's face in the next instant. Feels her drawing her hand out and away and-
"Stay," she grips Beca's bicep, squeezing, holding, then in a breathless rush, "Stay, stay, stay."
"Are you sure?" Beca still sounds apprehensive, looks it, too. "I don't want to hurt-"
Chloe cuts her off with another deep kiss, rolling her tongue against Beca's slowly a few times before pulling back with a soft, "You won't. You didn't." Before bumping her nose against Beca's and murmuring, "Don't stop." She relaxes her grip on Beca's arm, waits a beat and squeezes it again, encouragingly.
Then, before Beca so much as twitches, Chloe bends her knees and draws them towards her chest to slip off her underwear. Discards them somewhere along the side of the bed and stretches out the leg closest to Beca again. The other she leaves bent but adjusts so that her foot is flat against the bed and she can spread herself wider for Beca, who remains stockstill and staring. She doesn't need instruction this time, though.
She pushes back into Chloe, first with one finger and then, after a whispered but earnest request for more, with two. Snaking a hand around to the back of Beca's neck, Chloe draws her close for a kiss and starts to move her hips, matching Beca's slow rhythm. She can feel how careful Beca is being, the desire to make Chloe feel good butting up against the need to make sure she doesn't do something wrong, and it's thoughtful and sweet, but Chloe wishes she would take the safety harness off.
"I'm not going to break," Chloe tells her, leaving a few chaste kisses along the curve of Beca's jaw. "You don't have to be so-" A halfway to silent and strangled moan breaks off the end of her sentence as Beca presses more deeply into her. She tilts her hips, rocking down onto the fingers that have gone still inside her now, mouth open and brow furrowed, nails digging crescent moons into Beca's neck.
"Is that good?" Beca asks and Chloe doesn't think she's ever heard Beca's voice sound quite like this before. All rough and shaky, and raw with want.
"Yeah, it's," she's forced to pause as Beca pulls out almost all the way and then repeats the previous action, sinking deep into Chloe and pulling a long, low wine from her. "Yeah, that's good," she manages, though only just. Beca dips her head, her lips finding Chloe's neck where they leave mindless, open-mouthed kisses and probably a mark or two, while she works her hand between Chloe's legs.
It's indescribable, having Beca here with her like this. It's everything she hadn't known she wanted and she lets the feelings that evokes wash over her as Beca trails her mouth downward, licking one long stripe across the front of Chloe's breast before sucking the nipple into her mouth. Teeth dragging, making Chloe's hips jerk more harshly, which in turn coaxes Beca into moving a little faster.
Chloe knows she's straddling the border of being close. Knows that it could take very little to push her fully onto the other side and over the edge. She doesn't want it to be over so soon, though. Doesn't want this to end because she has no idea what comes after this and the unknown is scary. She'd rather stay right here, rocking into Beca and alternating between ragged gasps and desperate moans, while Beca kisses every inch of her she can reach.
"You feel so good," Beca pants into the hollow of Chloe's throat. "I want," she pauses, swallows, "to feel more. Fuck, Chloe, I just-" The sentence cuts off and Chloe's heartbeat is already frantic when she feels Beca draw her fingers all the way out, only to come back with three. Their tips brush Chloe's entrance and her hips surge forward, searching for more but being denied for the moment because Beca has suddenly decided she wants to take her time. "Do you want me?"
"God, yes," Chloe whines, pitiful and shameless, and loops her arm under Beca's, reaches around and back until she can claw her nails from Beca's shoulder blade to her waist, pulling a hiss from her. "Beca, please," she begs, clutching at Beca's hip with one hand while the other remains at her neck. "I want you inside me."
The sound Beca makes is sinful and filthy, but ultimately concessional and she gives in easily, pushing languidly into Chloe with all three fingers. The agonisingly slow pace affords Chloe enough time to enjoy the slight sting of the stretch and she tries to cry out but the sound gets caught. Ends up strangled and so she screws her eyes shut and bites down on her bottom lip hard enough to almost break the skin.
Beca, fingers sinking as far as they can into wet heat, leaves a lazily distracted kiss at the corner of Chloe's mouth and the tender intimacy of the act paired with the feeling of being near delirious with a mixture of pleasure and happiness has tears pricking the backs of her eyes.
"Beca." Her voice breaks over the name, shattering into grains of sand that melt beneath the heat between them to form a thin layer of glass that then continues to crumble, melt and reshape itself in an endless loop with every breath she feels Beca take. Her hands refuse to remain still. Traversing Beca's body with mindless abandon, they grip and squeeze, tug and grope, and turn into claws against sweat-slicked skin.
After remaining still for a few long moments, Beca starts in on a slow pull and push that has nonsense and jumbled obscenities falling from between Chloe's parted lips within seconds. Small gasps and pitchy moans she can't control roll out alongside them, turning into a series of whimpers as Beca kisses her again, stroking her tongue into Chloe's mouth. It's a slightly sloppy kiss, both of them distracted by how Beca's fingers feel moving inside Chloe, but it's perfect. For the moment, for them.
Beca trails her kisses down over Chloe's jaw and neck, along her collarbone and sternum, and through the valley of her breasts, where fingers brush the rise of her left and a hot, slick warmth closes around the peak of her right. She rocks her hips to meet Beca's inward thrust and lets the tendrils of mind-melting pleasure crawl through her as the heel of Beca's palm bumps against her just right. Lets them pull her strings like a marionette and lift her back from the bed in a smooth arc.
Her cries are growing in volume and she releases the hand she'd had locked around Beca's bicep to drop her forearm across the lower half of her face. She presses the underside firmly against her mouth for a few moments before turning her head towards the pillow she's lying on. She feels Beca tilt her head to look up at her then and shivers slightly at the shock of cool air that replaces the heat of Beca's mouth around her nipple.
"Don't," Beca whispers, either unable to speak any louder or afraid to do so in case it breaks whatever spell has been cast over this room tonight. Her grip encircles Chloe's wrist and she gently pries her arm away. "Don't hide." Doesn't let go until she's guided Chloe's hand to the smooth curve of her shoulder. "Chloe, look at me." And Chloe does, turning her head back to fall feet-first - a jump, some might say - into Beca's gaze. Finds it hooded and burning. Holds it, even as Beca lowers her mouth to Chloe's skin again and leaves the beginnings of a trail of kisses across her stomach, the hand between her thighs never letting up. "I want to hear you."
And this is it, Chloe thinks, the beginning of the end. She can feel it building, a steel coil winding around and around, and it's as if her ribs suddenly can't quite expand enough to inhale properly. She's so full, with so many different things, that she thinks she should feel heavy, weighted down, but she doesn't. Light as air, free to float, her mind spins as Beca continues her descent and Chloe's moving her hand from Beca's shoulder to the back of her neck before she even registers the intent to move it at all.
"Don't-" Chloe begins, hand clenching, tongue poking out to wet dry lips. "Just… stay here." She tugs and Beca goes, resettling herself so that she's once again on an even level with Chloe. "Stay with me. I want to feel-" Chloe squeezes her eyes shut as Beca slows her pace even further and experimentally crooks her fingers as much as she can while they're surrounded by tight muscle. "-you. Fuck, Beca. I'm so close."
Beca hums, a dreamily happy, dazed little sound, and leaves a handful of chaste kisses at Chloe's lips before she drops her forehead to rest lightly against her cheek.
Chloe slides her hand into tousled dark strands and tries to hold herself still, wanting to really feel the way Beca moves inside her. Focuses on every delicious drag and each firm press; the way she kisses Chloe's neck and pours red-hot, rapidly growing anticipation over her entire body with whispers of warm breath.
It's a dream, Chloe thinks. It has to be. Things just don't feel this good, this right, not on this level. Not the first time. She's had fun with people before, has enjoyed herself and felt connected to the person she's chosen to share a bed with. Loved them, even. But this is different.
She's never been pressed so closely to someone and still wanted to pull them further into herself. Never wanted to meld her body into another's so completely. She's never felt so compelled to tell the person coaxing her closer to the edge how much she loves them.
Loves Beca.
And it bubbles up, unconcerned and without warning, and it suddenly seems so vitally important that Beca knows. That she understands exactly how much she means to Chloe. There are a thousand different ways she could say it:
I love you so much.
I've never loved anyone the way I love you.
I think you might be it for me.
And she's running out of time, she knows she is. Maybe already has, the minutes slipping into overtime and through her fingers, and tomorrow she'll be on a plane. She'll be on a plane destined to take her hundreds of miles away from Beca and Chloe wants to cry because the thought of leaving her, of leaving her now, hurts in a new way. Has opened up new wounds that Chloe doesn't think she can stitch closed. Certainly not before her flight. Maybe never.
Beca lifts her head and Chloe opens her eyes just wide enough to be able to see the way Beca is looking at her.
Clock hands slow to a gradual stop and time departs, leaving them hanging there together suspended in a borrowed moment that Chloe refuses to give back. Let time take something else from her, she thinks, but please, leave her this.
Beca is all breathless awe and shattered amazement, and she's looking at Chloe like she loves her. Like this means as much to her as it does to Chloe.
Chloe, who feels a warm dampness tumble down the slope of her cheek but doesn't have time to figure out which one of them the tear belongs to before Beca is brushing her lips against Chloe's in a barely-there kiss that becomes the catalyst.
Building pressure breaks, pleasure swells, and Beca doesn't move even a millimeter as she gently pushes Chloe over the edge and into a freefall. And then she's falling fast so slowly, gravity rushing up to meet her as she hovers in place.
That first final moan gets caught and, for a second, Chloe is content to leave it there. But she remembers what Beca had said and makes sure the next one escapes. And the next, and the next, so that Beca can hear her. Can hear her name as Chloe chants it like a prayer while her legs shake and she hangs onto Beca for dear life.
She can feel Beca drinking in each and every sound, mindlessly grazing her parted lips against Chloe's mouth as she clenches around Beca's fingers, and where her ribs couldn't expand quite far enough before, something takes a hammer and chisel to them now.
And cracks everything wide open.
Chloe comes undone and all of those things she's kept sequestered away for the last few weeks - longer than that, maybe - are suddenly free. Love and hope, and every one of her secret, silent 'what ifs', their locks broken simultaneously as she cries out Beca's name and the brightest, most vivid colours Chloe has ever seen burst to life behind her closed eyes.
The earth tilts on its axis to flip Chloe's world upside down and even though she knows it'll swing back around, everything is going to be different when it does all roll into place again. It's going to look different and feel different, but she pushes the thought away for now. Off to the side where she can talk to it later.
Her breathing is pitchy and sharp as she comes down, coaxed back to her regular plane of existence by Beca's slowly moving fingers, which only cease their motion once Chloe is able to draw in a full, albeit still laboured, breath.
"No," Chloe rushes to say when the hand between her thighs moves slightly as Beca begins easing out of her. "Don't. Please." Chloe pauses there and Beca freezes. "Please just stay. Just for a minute." She feels Beca's whispered "'kay" more than she hears it, the simple agreement kissing her lips and banishing the intense, instantaneous panic that had seized her mere seconds ago.
Eyes still closed, Chloe releases a heavy exhale and spends a moment simply feeling.
She twitches and clenches around Beca's fingers as tiny aftershocks ripple through her at random and when she opens her eyes she finds that Beca's are fixed on her. Wide with something softer than surprise, as though she can't believe what just happened, can't believe she was the one to make it happen.
"You okay?" Beca asks, seeming to search Chloe's face for a sign of some sort. It makes Chloe think back to the dampness on her cheek and she wonders once more about the source of it as she gives a wordless nod.
She watches Beca's throat bob as she swallows, her chest rising and falling almost in perfect time with Chloe's, and there's so much that Chloe wants to say. So much that she's feeling but that she can't figure out how to express because her brain had stalled somewhere out in the hallway and never quite got kick-started again.
They trade kisses back and forth, loose and easy, and when Chloe tells Beca that, "You can now," Beca takes her time withdrawing her fingers. Chloe whimpers, body responding reflexively and trying unsuccessfully to keep Beca inside. The emptiness she feels once Beca's is gone is strange; an aching loss tempered by the close proximity of the other woman and yet amplified by the desire to be wrapped around her or held close in her arms.
With her heartbeat returning to some off-brand of regular, Chloe releases a sigh and accepts another kiss from Beca before she lies down on Chloe's right. She places herself so close, Chloe can feel the pleasant heat radiating off her body and it's soothing in a way she can't ever remember it being before. Isn't sure it's ever felt like this.
Knows, in fact, that it hasn't.
Every ounce of pent-up-everything she's been dealing with, it's as if it's all been leisurely and lovingly siphoned out of her, leaving her lethargic. All at once, everything from her eyelids down to her ankles feels heavy and a pressureless weight settles onto her chest like a cat that's happily purring away.
She rolls onto her side to face Beca and a few remaining puzzle pieces drop into place as their legs slot together seamlessly. A perfect fit, she thinks, as sleep pulls at the both of them and Beca's hand curls around her hip. Chloe brings one of her own up to push sweat-dampened hair away from Beca's face and can't help letting it trail down to cup her cheek.
"You're so…." Beca begins and, for the second time that night, her wouldbe observation goes unfinished, but the crease of her brow tells Chloe the ending is in there somewhere. Waiting for Beca to find it or be brave enough to speak it.
"You keep saying that." The pad of Chloe's thumb drifts across the Cupid's bow of Beca's lips. "What am I this time?"
Beca stares at her for a small eternity, gaze gently scrutinizing but devoid of judgement.
"Just…." Dark eyes flutter as Chloe dips the tip of her thumb just inside the welcoming warmth of Beca's mouth, before dragging it down over her bottom lip. "You're beautiful." Beca's confession - because that's what it feels like in the moment, crackling through the air around them - makes Chloe pause. Makes the purring sensation in her chest swell almost unbearably and she lets her hand fall to rest against Beca's clavicle. "You know that, right?"
And there's a difference between being confident about your appearance and having someone else tell you what they see when they look at you. Even moreso depending on the words they choose to use. Sexy versus hot, hot versus cute, cute versus pretty; they all carry their own special weight and meaning.
Beautiful, it turns out, is the kind of special that leaves it in a league of its own.
It also leaves Chloe awestruck and speechless.
And without anything to say, Chloe can only hope that the kiss she gives Beca will speak for her, loud and clear.
She doesn't care who hears.