Chapter 382: Amara Virginity

Not the chair. He steered them both toward the low wall at the north edge—waist-high, warm stone, the neighborhood laid out below it—and he lifted her, easy, one arm under her, and set her on the wall with her feet off the ground and her back to the city and her knees bracketing him where he stood.

The air moved across her skin. Warm. Mild. The night of a Saturday that had known it had something in it.

He kissed her again.

This time slower. Longer. His mouth moved down her jaw, and she tilted her head and let him, her hands finding his shoulders, her breath going uneven in a way she heard and did not bother to hide. He kissed the side of her throat and she felt the shape of a sound come out of her that was not a word.

He sank.

Not fast. Not dramatically. He lowered himself in front of her on the wall, his hands under her thighs, easing her forward to the edge, and she looked down at the top of his dark head and understood with complete clarity what was about to happen and could not have stopped it if she’d wanted to.

Sean, she said.

Yeah.

She didn’t say anything else. There wasn’t anything else.

He put his mouth on her.

The first contact—flat tongue, slow, the length of her—sent a jolt up through her that made both her hands grip the edge of the wall. Her heels lifted off the stone. She heard the small sound she made and let it stand.

He worked slowly.

That was the thing. He was unhurried in this too, and the unhurriedness was its own kind of pressure, because he was not trying to get anywhere. His tongue moved along her in long, deliberate passes, and then his lips closed and drew, and she felt the whole architecture of her body start offering itself up to what he was doing.

Her breath came short. The city sounds below them layered under the sound of her own blood in her ears.

He added a finger.

One. Slow. He circled first, testing, watching her from below—she could feel him watching, could feel the specific quality of being read—and then he pressed in. Careful. The pressure of it, the stretch of it, the first time anything had been inside her—she sucked in air through her teeth and her hips shifted and he stopped, immediately, mouth still on her, finger still inside, and waited.

She breathed.

He waited.

Okay, she said.

He curled the finger and found the spot and her whole body twitched like a caught wire, and she gripped the wall and said his name again and he kept going, mouth and finger together, slow and steady like he had all night, which he did.

She felt it build.

Not the stock wave—something closer, something that started low and specific and pushed outward, gathering in her thighs, in her hips, in the place where his mouth was working. Her legs came up on their own, heels on the wall, knees wide, opening for him, and he moved with her, adjusting, adding a second finger now, spreading her carefully because she was tight and new and he was reading that too and accommodating it.

Two fingers. Working her open. His tongue flat and steady and the specific warm pull of his mouth, and the sensation climbed and climbed and then—

It broke.

She came hard and wet, and it wasn’t just the one place. Her whole body contracted and let go at once, and she felt the release—sharp, sudden, drenching—slick down her thighs and into his hand and onto the stone, and she heard herself make a noise she had never made before, high and broken, and her heels dug into the wall and her hands locked on his shoulders and she rode it out with her eyes on the city behind his head.

When it passed she slumped back against the night, chest heaving, legs trembling, and looked down at him.

He had lifted his head. His face was wet. He was looking at her the same way he always looked at things—seeing, not reacting.

Sorry, she said. Reflex.

Don’t apologize, he said.

I just—she started, and stopped. She didn’t know how to finish it. She had not known her body did that.

I know, he said. Quietly.

He stood up, and she watched him rise, and she felt the difference immediately—the empty, open, slippery feel of what he had just done, the way her body had loosened, the way the air moved against skin that had been warmed. She was wet everywhere. His hand had spread it down her thighs. The stone beneath her was slick with it where it had hit.

He looked at her.

Ready? he said.

She looked at him. Flat, direct, the version of her that said true things.

Yes, she said.

He lifted her off the wall—one arm, easy—and set her down on her feet, then turned her and guided her back to the chairs, where the wine and the lamp and the low table were, and he lay her down across both chairs, clearing them with one sweep of his arm, the glasses and the bottle set aside on the stone.

She lay back with her head on one chair and her hips on the other and looked up at the sky above the city and at him between her legs.

He settled over her. Face to face. His weight on his forearms, framing her. The warm lamp light on one side of his jaw, the night on the other. His dark hair, his dark eyes, the cool precision of him even now, even here, and she understood that this was not coldness—it was the opposite. It was the form attention took when someone was trying not to miss anything.

He positioned himself. She felt the head of him against her, and her whole body went still.

He’s going to be this large the whole time, she thought. Flatly. Just a fact.

He pressed.

The stretch was real. Much more than his fingers. She felt herself open around him, the pressure spreading, the slow give of muscle that had never been asked to give before, and her hands came up and gripped his forearms and her breath came out in a long, controlled exhale because that was the only thing she could do with it.

He stopped. A third of the way in. Just stopped.

Don’t move, she said.

He didn’t.

She breathed. Counted, maybe. Felt her body adjust around the shape of him, the sharp burn easing into pressure, and after a long moment she nodded and he pressed again.

Second stop. Deeper. The fullest stretch of it, the point where she felt him in her chest, in her throat, in the backs of her knees. She made a sound.

Okay? he said.

Yes, she said. Her voice came out thinner than she wanted. Give me a second.

He gave her a second.

And another, when she needed it.

Then he was fully inside her and his hips were flush against her and he was still, absolutely still, breathing slow above her, and she looked up at him and he looked down at her and she understood something about the way he did things. He had waited for this. He had not waited passively. He had occupied the waiting. He was inside her now and he was not moving because he was not finished with the waiting, and the waiting was for her, and this was the most attentive thing anyone had ever done.

Move, she said.

He moved.

Slow, deep thrusts. Long pulls out and pushes back in, careful, watching her face the whole time, and every pass of him through her opened the tight, stretched feeling into something warmer, something wetter, something that made her hands tighten on his forearms and her breath break on the second syllable of his name.

She was wet. He was working through the wetness left by the squirting, and the sound of it was unmistakable in the quiet of the rooftop, and she stopped caring about the sound immediately.

He built. Slow and steady. Her hips began to move with him, to rise to meet him, and after a while he read that too and matched it, still controlled, still careful, and she felt the second thing start to gather low in her—smaller than the first, tighter, more specific.

She was close. He was close—she could feel it, the specific thickness of him, the slight changes in his rhythm.

Not yet, he said.

No, she agreed, breathless. Not yet.

He slowed. Stopped. Held still inside her, forehead resting against hers, both of them breathing.

She heard herself laugh—short, low, disbelieving.

What, he said.

I was whole two hours ago, she said.

You still are, he said. Different arrangement.

She laughed again, and then he kissed her, and then he pulled out and turned her over.

Come here, he said, and she went, on her hands and knees across the chairs, hips raised, hands gripping the seat edges, looking out at the city below while Sean settled behind her.