Karin hisses under him. "Slow—slower—ah…"
"It's okay," he says. To help her to relax, he drags his thumb across her clit with his free hand, building a slow rhythm as he meets the first bit of resistance. "You can take it."
He means it as an honest reassurance, but Karin seems to find something very frustrating in it—she whines, loudly, and her hands tighten in the blankets above her head. One of her legs, thrown over his shoulder, begins to tremble, her heel digging into his back. Her other leg is spread wide, his knee sunk into the meat of her thigh to keep it open.
Overall, she makes a very pretty picture—immobile, vulnerable, every inch of her exposed to him.
She instinctively tries to snap her leg shut every time he touches her, more by reflex than any genuine desire to keep him away. For the same reason - that is, primarily for practical purposes, though Karin disputes this - he has her hands bound back to the headboard, where they will be out of his way.
Karin appears to enjoy it independent of this practicality, so he sees no need to question it.
Though he struggles to see much of anything as a general matter, he's able to see a good deal of her now, so close—her bared neck, her heaving chest. Karin struggles, the muscles in her abdomen flexing every time she pulls against her restraints. She grows red under his scrutiny, a lovely blush traveling down to her neck and chest.
"It's—" A shudder rolls through her body, and her eyes slide shut. "Hah, ah—you can go deeper." After a moment, she whines. "Please."
Please is rare enough from Karin that he doesn't think he can refuse her.
It takes a good while to work her up to something like this, but it is, in his opinion, time well spent. He went slow in warming her first with his own fingers, hoping to ease her discomfort as much as possible, though that - as with most things where Karin is concerned - does not appear to be as much of a priority to her as it is to himself.
Going slow is an arduous task when Karin is involved. She'll grow impatient, begin to beg. After a while, that begging will turn into sharp demands, angry threats. More often than not, he only has a small window of leeway before Karin takes matters into her own hands, assuming she is able to do so.
With this, though, he finds it very easy to keep Karin still and in one place.
He presses the toy in a little further, barely an inch more, then looks up to gauge her reaction. It is hers, something she had selected and purchased on her own, but that he's gladly repurposed for his own use.
In part, perhaps, because he doesn't particularly like the thought of it being used any other way.
"Is that alright?" he asks.
Karin's mouth opens, but it takes her a moment to reply. She licks her lips, breathy gasps escaping when he slowly pulls the toy out again before sliding it back into her, the slick sound of it entering her so loud that it's obscene.
Karin's response is just as obscene. She throws her head back and sobs loud enough that their neighbors - if they had any - would have certainly heard.
Having no neighbors, he slides it in as far as it will go and allows Karin to be as loud as she'd like.
"More, faster," she cries out. "I need more."
Despite her pleas, he fucks her slowly at first, allowing her to adjust. He has no interest in seeing her in pain, but seeing her overwhelmed, seeing her slowly losing control—that does have something of an appeal to him.
Her leg twitches, as if she were trying to pull him in closer.
"Does it feel good?" he asks. He tempers his voice, speaking softly to her. "I won't know unless you tell me, Karin."
"Heh, ha—" Karin chokes. "Shit. Fuck."
Karin has never been short of words, but to see her reduced to this is particularly satisfying. When he changes the angle of his thrusts, angling deeper inside of her, the best she can manage is a choked gasp and more hazardous bucking.
Still, he goes slow, even as Karin whines and begs him for more.
"Come—come the fuck on." Her head digs back into the mattress, until the cords in her neck are standing out. "Stop dragging it out," she whines.
"Am I?" he asks. "I don't like to keep track." He glances over at the window. "It's still light outside. I think you can keep going."
Karin sobs, her chest heaving. There's a certain petulance to her that tells him she's reaching the true end of her tolerance, and that her begging now is earnest.
She squeezes her eyes shut again when he sets his free hand on her stomach, her jaw tightly clenched. Her glasses are set askew over her nose, her cheeks bright with fresh tear trails. Karin has mastered the art of crying on cue, though, and he has learned to not place much stock in it.
It isn't the act of completion he wants, though he knows better than to withhold it. It is ikebana: more than just the flowers in their container, but also the careful arrangement of them, the meaning they take on when they are placed together in a particular fashion.
And that's what he'd like to give Karin—the scene and careful attention, the thoughtful time spent teasing and coaxing and denying her, if only she can feel a greater appreciation when he relents.
If he can not carry the weight of all of her problems, he can at least be the counterbalance to them.
He can, for this short period of time, take care of Karin as well as she's taken care of him.
He presses one palm down against her stomach to hold her in place when she begins to writhe. She moans again, louder this time, and he wonders whether it's the pressure or the restraint that she loves so much—whether it's the act itself or the image it creates in her mind.
Karin is solid earth and blunt desire—she's grounded, the embodiment to his incorporeal soul. Hunger and desire to his quiet abnegation, heat and passion to his cool calculations. .
He could never say that he has treated her kindly or gently or with the respect a man owes to a woman, but he cares for her as much as a person like himself can manage.
She's hot between her thighs, wet, swollen, and viscerally red. He drags his hand down, and her moans break down into stuttering gasps, mindless fragments of words and sentences that rise in intensity the closer his hand comes.
Her face contorts into a grimace that he knows well. "You're getting close," he tells her, almost as a challenge.
Karin nods, her head bobbing unintelligibly. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish gasping in air.
He presses his thumb down over her clit. "Now."
She comes with a strangled, strained moan. Her stomach muscles clench and her body grows pleasantly taut, pushing back against him, willing it as deep inside of herself as it will go.
"There…" He's gentler when he brings her back down, careful not to overstimulate her, but not shying away from it either.
As with all things, there is a balance to it. He continues making wide circles over her clit until the best he gets is a soft, exhausted wheeze with each waning contraction, and then he stops.
He finally slips the toy out of her, and Karin lets out a lightheaded fuck before her head lolls to the side. The leg over his shoulder grows slack, her thigh just barely kissing his cheek.
Because it is Karin, however, that alone does not satisfy her.
It is not long before she begins to squirm anew, fidgeting in place while he takes care of the toy and returns to loosen the bindings around her wrists. Before he's even managed to work her free, Karin is pressing up against him, her body hooking into his like a parasite, worming her way into any space she can latch onto.
Her tongue presses against his throat, her teeth nipping along the edge of his jaw lazily, with no real sense of urgency. Her arms wrap around his shoulders and neck, her thin fingers tangling themselves into his hair.
It warms him, even though he knows there's no sense in going any further than that.
"Karin, I—"
"I know. Don't care." She tucks her legs around his waist, hoisting herself up into his lap. He presses a steadying hand to her back and finds it warm and sticky with sweat.
He imagines she's still sore and oversensitive, which are two things she'll complain about with relish, only to mourn once they fade.
"Shower?" Karin breathes. "You gonna carry me?"
"In a minute."
Gently, he lays Karin out on her back and situates himself between her spread legs.
"One more," he tells her. "And then we will stop."
"Again?" Karin rises up on her elbows to watch him. Her eyebrows climb as he makes his way down her stomach, until his hands come to rest on her hips. "It must be my birthday or something."
"Or something," he agrees, before he leans down and kisses her, tenderly, between her legs.
Karin shudders, her leg twitching as he slips his hand underneath it and guides it back over his shoulder.
Having already brought her to orgasm once, he sees no need to drag on with the last one—he presses the pad of his thumb up against her, feels her entire body jolt beneath him, as if he'd shocked her.
He sets a damning pace, one that quickly has Karin shrieking for real, her back bowed off of the bed at an angle so steep he almost worries she'll injure herself.
He wants to give her everything she could ever ask of him—gentleness and intensity, affection and stability. Despite her previous orgasm, she is still tight around his fingers, almost painfully so, though Karin does not seem bothered in the least by it.
She clings to him now instead of the bed, grabbing fistfulls of his hair and tugging harshly, as if trying to keep herself grounded. He crooks his fingers inside her, and she fucks herself down onto them, her hips canting up into his mouth as she comes again with a loud, cracked moan.
Again, he waits for her to recover, for her body to loosen and fall lax before he pulls away. When her fingers finally fall from his hair, he rests his cheek on her stomach, feeling the quick rise and fall of her breathing under him.
Karin lets out a low groan, her body still slack against the sheets. "I'm gonna die," she murmurs. She stares up at the ceiling with a hopelessly blank look in her eyes. "You're gonna fucking kill me one of these days."
"You'll be fine," he murmurs. He finally slides Karin's leg off of his shoulder, and it thuds uselessly onto the bed. Karin whines softly.
He waits there for her breathing to slow, running his hand up and down her side as the tension gradually ebbs away.
Her body relaxes, sleepy, dreamy. She curls up close to him, snuggling in closer when he raises his arm to accommodate her. She's still naked, still covered in sweat and her own release, but that's a problem for later—a problem he will gladly manage for her, if she'll let him.
She cracks open one tired eye at him when he sets his arm on her back. "Hey," she says. Her voice is throaty, rough from use. She laughs and rests her head back on his chest. "Holy fuck."
"Yes? Is that good?"
Karin snorts. "Not sure if I've made up my mind yet," she says, in a way that tells him she almost certainly has.
He runs his fingers through her hair, smoothing down loose strands of it. Despite his best efforts, pieces still curl at odd angles around her face, kinked with sweat. "Well, then that's good."
"Hm." She leans into his touch, her eyes closing again, red eyelashes fluttering. "Dunno what I did to deserve this kinda treatment. Maybe I gotta do some more to earn my keep, huh?"
"Mm." It is not much of a response, and for several moments she doesn't reply. "You have more than earned it," he says.
Karin laughs.