Page 64 of Lady and the Butcher
I picked it up from the console. The mesh set lay inside with its soft dare. He looked at it, then at me. I felt theyesclimb up my throat before I said it.
“Go shower and change,” he said, voice low, a thread of heat pulled tight. “Bathroom. Leave the door open.”
I walked past him, every inch of my skin remembering his mouth on me, the carriage, the window, the way his hands made my body feel.
I turned the water hot. Steam climbed the mirror. I scrubbed the day off my skin and the birth center from my hair, quick and greedy, the kind of rinse that resets your pulse. When the water ran clear and my head felt new, I stepped out, towel blotting, heart sprinting.
The mirror caught me, and I liked the woman in it. Wanting, a little wild, not afraid of it. I slipped the set on. No panties. It fit like a promise. I left the door open and stepped back into the room.
He was where the light from the windows cut long across the floor. When he looked up, something moved through his face I had never been important enough to cause in any man. The kind of focus that has gravity. Claim dressed as attention. I felt it land on me, everywhere at once.
“Come here,” he said.
I did. The room fell away until there was only the weight of his gaze and the small sound the fabric made when I stopped in front of him.
His fingers skimmed my shoulder strap, a gentle test, a test I passed by not breaking eye contact. He tipped his head, pleased.
“Hands on the glass,” he said. “Start where we left off.”
I turned. The city spread before us in evening light, water like hammered metal, the bridge a line drawn with a patient hand. My palms met the window. Cool. Familiar. Everything in me warmed to meet it.
He stepped in, heat at my back, breath finding the notch below my ear. He didn’t rush. He never did. That was his cruelty and his care. He took time from me and handed it back in pieces.
“Say yes,” he murmured.
“Yes.”
“Say you’re mine right now.”
“I’m yours right now.”
He touched me like he was writing the word on my skin. Slow. Insistent. He drew a path down my arms, lifted my hair, closed his hand at the back of my neck. The weight of it made my knees want to bend, made my mouth open on nothing. He pressed closer. I felt the strength in him like a wall at my back that could move when I moved and hold when I needed to stop.
“Watch us,” he said.
I did. Our reflection was the same sin it had been the night before, and worse. My eyes heavy. His mouth set. His chest against my shoulders. The mesh was a whisper of fabric, nearlyno barrier at all. I had thought I knew what it was to be looked at. I had been wrong. This was not consumption. It was recognition, sharpened until it cut.
He kissed the place where my jaw meets my throat and waited for the sound that always slid out of me there. It came, helpless and soft. He smiled against my skin. He knew every lever already. He was learning the pressure each one needed.
“Red,” he said, quiet, a reminder. “Say it if you want me to stop.”
I nodded. I wouldn’t. I loved that he asked, anyway.
He set one palm at my stomach and pulled me back into him. We stood inside a breath that felt like it lasted a year. Then he turned me.
He put his mouth on mine, deep, a kiss that took and gave and took again.
I had never liked being guided before. Somehow, I liked it now. He kept me where he wanted me with his hands at my hips, then the small of my back, then the base of my skull. It wasn’t rough. It was sure. He kissed me until my spine lost the habit of being a rod and learned to be a bow. He kissed me until I forgot where the edge of my body ended and his began.
“Bed,” he said, when my legs were unreliable. “Now.”
He made me walk. It felt like crossing a long bridge with wind under it, every step a reason to give in, every step a reason to keep moving. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at me from under that fringe of lashes that made his eyes seem colder and made his mouth look hotter.
“Climb on,” he said.
I did. I straddled his lap and he exhaled like the air had changed quality. One hand went to his belt and then his fly, a quick rasp of metal, and he freed his cock, thick and hot against my inner thigh before he guided me down to take him. His hands braced me, low and steady.
He didn’t let me find a rhythm. He set one. I followed because I wanted to. Because it felt like dancing with a partner who could lead in a way that made me more myself.
