The 'please' arrived without permission.
Gia heard it come out of her own mouth and noted it the way you note a door swinging open that you thought was locked — the fact of the unlocking more significant than the door itself.
PAH!
He pulled out.
The sound that Gia made at the absence was not a word.
Celia was already moving.
She'd been watching from two feet away — her spine upright, her thighs pressed together and failing to suppress the rhythm the mark had installed — and when he turned toward her the thought she'd been managing for the last five minutes dissolved completely.
'I'm not going to hold still,' she thought. 'I'm not going to be dignified about this.'
She wasn't.
Her hands found his shoulders the way they'd found them during the burn — the grip of a woman identifying the only solid thing in a shifting room.
He sat her on the edge of the flat rock, the cold-warm stone at the backs of her thighs, and positioned himself between her knees.
"Celia."
