He started moving.
Slow at first, long and deliberate, his hands spread wide across her hips, each stroke carrying its full weight from beginning to end. She had both hands flat on his back, her legs wrapped around him, her heels pressing into him gently on each forward drive.
"Mm," she said, quietly, the sound arriving before she decided on it.
He kept the pace exactly where it was, not building toward anything yet, just staying in it, feeling the warmth of her around him and the warmth of the room and the specific quality of the afternoon that had settled into the lake house since they came inside.
Her hands moved from his back to his shoulders, pressing there.
"Haa," she said. "Oh."
He drove slightly deeper and she exhaled against the side of his face, her whole body receiving it and adjusting to it without her deciding to adjust.
He moved his mouth to her neck while he kept going, his lips finding the skin there, warm and slightly salt from the afternoon on the balcony, and she turned her head to give him more room without being asked.
"Mm," she said. "Oh god. Haa."
He kept both things going at the same time, his hips and his mouth, feeling her respond to each of them, her sounds coming more frequently now, each one slightly less contained than the one before.
Her legs tightened around him on the next stroke.
He drove forward and held briefly, feeling her, and she made a sound that went directly into his ear from how close her face was to his.
"Haaaa," she said. "Oh. Right there."
He pulled back and drove forward again and stayed right there.
"Oh god," she said. "Don’t move. Stay right there."
He stayed.
He kept the angle and drove forward from it again, short and deep, and her whole body shifted toward it, her hips rising slightly off the linen to meet him, her hands pulling at his shoulders.
"Haa," she said. "Mm. Oh."
He picked the pace up from there, finding the rhythm that the angle wanted, driving forward steadily, feeling her open around him with each stroke, the linen bunching beneath her from the movement.
Ta. Ta. Ta. Ta.
"Oh," she said. "Oh. Haaa. Liam."
He moved his mouth from her neck to her collarbone and kept going, his lips pressing along it while his hips kept the rhythm below, the two things working together without competing.
"Mm," she said. "Haa. Oh god."
Her boobs moved with the rhythm, swaying toward her face on each forward drive and pulling back on each withdrawal, the skin of them pale and flushed pink, warm in the bedroom light. He moved his mouth from her collarbone to the top of her chest, pressing there, and her hands went to the back of his head.
"Oh," she said. "Oh. Haa."
He drove forward harder.
Her back lifted off the linen slightly, her hands pressing his head down against her chest, her sounds climbing with the pace, each one arriving before she had time to decide whether to let it out.
"Haaaa," she said. "Oh. Oh that’s. Mm."
Ta. Ta. Ta. Ta. Ta.
He moved his mouth back up to hers and kissed her while he kept going and she kissed him back hard, her arms going around his neck, her whole body pressing up against him from below.
He drove forward and she made a sound into his mouth.
He drove forward again and she made a louder one.
He pulled back from the kiss and looked at her face beneath him, her lips parted, her brow pulled together, her gold eyes half open and carrying nothing composed anywhere in them.
"How does that feel," he said.
"Don’t ask me questions right now," she said, her voice rough.
He drove forward.
"Haa," she said. "Oh god. Mm."
He moved one hand from her hip to the front of her and pressed his thumb lightly and she made a sound that had no shape to it at all, her whole body reacting to both things at once, her legs pulling him deeper and her hands gripping his arms.
"Oh," she said. "Oh. Liam. Oh god."
He kept both things going, the rhythm of his hips and the pressure of his thumb, feeling her build toward something, the tightening of everything around him, the way her sounds were losing their separation and running into each other.
"Haa," she said. "Mm. Oh. Oh I’m going to. Oh god."
Ta. Ta. Ta. Ta. Ta. Ta.
"Haaaa," she said. "Liam. Oh. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop."
He didn’t stop.
He drove forward steadily, his thumb still where it was, feeling everything build toward the point where it had to go.
"Oh," she said. "Oh. Oh god. Haa. Haaaa."
Her whole body tightened around him all at once, her legs locking, her hands gripping his arms hard enough to feel it, her back coming off the linen, a long raw sound leaving her that went up into the quiet of the bedroom and stayed there, her whole frame shaking through the release in long continuous waves.
He held his pace through every second of it, feeling each wave move through her, not slowing, not rushing, just staying present and consistent until the last one passed and her body finally released and she lay flat and still and breathing hard against the white linen.
He stayed there.
Both of them breathing.
The room quiet around them.
He looked at her lying beneath him, her hair across the pillow, her chest rising and falling, her expression carrying nothing that had been arranged or managed or placed there with any intention at all. Just whatever was actually there after everything had been used up.
She looked up at him.
"That," she said, her voice rough, "was not quick."
"No," he said.
She exhaled slowly. "Good," she said.
He moved beside her and they lay there together looking at the ceiling, the curtain shifting at the window, the lake visible through the gap in the early evening light, the room warm and still around them.
Neither of them said anything for a while.
Then she turned her head and looked at him. "Are you staying tonight?"
He looked at the ceiling. Then at her.
She held his gaze for a moment and then got up from the bed, wrapping the sheet loosely around herself, her hair still thoroughly undone, and moved toward the door.
He watched her go.
Then he heard it.
A cabinet opening in the kitchen. The specific sound of a pan being set on a surface. Water running.
He sat up.
He got off the bed and found his clothes from the floor and put them on and walked down the corridor.
Elena was at the stove, the sheet still loosely around her, her hair still completely undone from everything, a pan in front of her and something already beginning to smell like food in the warm air of the kitchen.
Liam stood in the doorway.
"You cook," he said.
She glanced back at him over her shoulder. "Don’t make it a thing."
"I’m not making it a thing," he said. "I’m just." He looked at the pan. "You cook."
"When you spend most of your time alone and avoiding people," she said, turning back to the stove and adjusting something, "you develop skills." She moved the pan slightly on the burner. "Sitting in restaurants every night gets old."
He came into the kitchen and sat on the counter beside the fridge, his arms folded, watching her.
She moved through the kitchen the same way she moved through everything, finding things without looking for them, adjusting heat and timing with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this enough times that the individual steps had stopped requiring thought.
"What are you making," he said.
"Something you’ll eat," she said.
He watched her.
The sheet had slipped slightly at her shoulder and she hadn’t fixed it. Her hair was still loose and undone.
She looked completely unlike the Elena that walked into rooms and made people change how they were standing.
She just looked like herself, standing at a stove in a lake house kitchen in the early evening making food.
He stayed on the counter and watched her and the kitchen was warm and neither of them needed to fill the quiet with anything.
His phone buzzed beside him.
He picked it up.
Tasha.
*Hey. Are you free?*
Elena turned from the stove, catching something in his face. "What’s wrong?"
He held up the phone slightly, not really an answer.
"I have to go see someone," he said.
Something shifted in her expression, small, quickly controlled. "I wanted you to stay."
"It’s Tasha," he said, like that explained it, like it didn’t.
She turned back to the pan, adjusted the heat that didn’t need adjusting. "At least eat something before you go. I made this."
"I don’t think I can," he said. "I’m already moving."
She nodded slowly, not looking at him. "Okay." A pause. "I’ll see you later, then."
There was nothing sharp in it, nothing accusing. Just a flatness that was worse than either would have been, and a sadness she wasn’t quite hiding.
He looked at her. The sheet at her shoulder. The pan she wasn’t really watching anymore.
"Stop looking like that," he said.
She glanced up.
"I’ll stay tonight," he said.
Something eased in her face, and then she was smiling, turning back to the stove, moving again like the moving itself had been waiting on him.
He typed a quick message to Tasha — tomorrow — and put the phone back in his pocket.
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