Chapter 11: Three

He lit every candle in the house.

There were forty of them, in saucers and brass holders and one in a teacup, and they turned his bedroom the color of honey.

I stood in the doorway in my black work pants and watched him light the last wick with a shaking hand.

"You don't have to make it a ceremony," I said.

"I've never had a ceremony," he said. "I'd like one. Just this once."

I walked across the room and put my arms around his neck.

"Then we'll do it right."

I undressed him slowly, button by button.

He undressed me the same way.

He knelt to take off my boots, and kissed my ankle, and my calf, and the soft place behind my knee.

When we were both bare, he laid me down on the iron bed and lay beside me, propped on his elbow, and just looked.

"Don't waste the night looking," I said.

"I want to remember."

"You'll remember the rest."

I pulled him down into a kiss.

His mouth was warm, and I tasted lemon and candle smoke.

I pulled him on top of me and wrapped my legs around his waist.

He braced above me with his arms on either side of my head.

His glasses slipped down his nose, and I pushed them back up with one finger.

"Keep them on," I said. "I want you to see this."

"I will."

"Tell me you love me."

"I love you." He said it against my mouth, again and again, between kisses. "I love you. I love you."

"Come inside me."

He reached between us, and I felt the head of him at my entrance, hot and blunt.

He pushed in slowly, inch by inch, his eyes on my face the whole time, and I felt every bit of it.

I gasped, and he stopped.

"Don't stop."

He slid in to the root and held still, shaking, and we breathed together.

"You feel," he said hoarsely, "like being let in."

"Move."

He began to move.

He rocked in and out in slow strokes, deep and unhurried, kissing my face between every one, my forehead, my cheeks, my eyelids.

It was the most tender I had ever been fucked.

I dragged my nails down his back, and he shivered, and I felt my whole body tighten around him.

"Faster," I said.

"Not yet."

"Please."

"I want it to last," he whispered.

I locked my ankles behind his back and rolled my hips up to meet him.

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