Chapter 10: Hers

I took him upstairs by the hand.

I had asked for that hand, and it was warm, and I held it all the way up the narrow stairs without looking back.

In the bedroom I left the lamp off.

The streetlight came through the curtains and laid a pale bar across the bed.

"Eyes closed," I said. "For the first part. I need it."

"They're closed."

I turned around.

He stood in the middle of the floor with his coat on and his eyes shut.

He waited for me to tell him what came next.

"Don't say anything I haven't asked for," I said. "Don't say your name. Don't say mine."

"I won't."

"If I say out, you go."

"I'll go."

"If I say stay, you stay."

His mouth moved, a small, helpless line.

"Yes," he said.

I put my hands on his lapels and pushed the coat off his shoulders and let it drop.

I opened his shirt one button at a time, with my fingers shaking.

His chest was hard and hot under my palms, and a scar ran along one rib that I did not ask about.

I pulled his belt open and heard his breath stop.

"Hazel."

"I said I'd ask for it."

"You said no names."

"Right," I said. "Sorry."

He laughed once, low and unsteady, and I found that I was smiling against his collarbone.

I stripped him slowly, because I wanted to.

When I knelt to pull his trousers down he put his hand on the wall and said a word that was not a name.

His cock was thick and flushed and hard against his stomach.

I put my mouth on the tip.

He swore.

I felt it go through his whole body, a long shudder.

His hand slid from the wall into my hair and stopped there, not pulling, just resting.

"Is that all right?" he said, and it was a voice I did not know yet, gone ragged at the edges.

"Don't ask. Let me."

I took him deeper, slow, with my hand at the base.

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