She had left the candle
burning.
One candle, on the table by the window, enough light to see by without being the kind of light that made a room feel exposed. Mira was standing near it when I came through the door, still in her work dress, her arms loose at her sides. She had let her hair down. It fell to her shoulders in dark waves and the candlelight caught the edges of it and she looked nothing like the composed, efficient woman who ran the bar downstairs.
She looked like someone who had decided to stop being composed for the evening.
I closed the door behind me.
"You did not have to wait standing," I said.
"I know." She did not move. "I wanted to."
I crossed the room to her slowly, not hurrying, and she watched me come with that steady dark gaze that had never once looked away from anything. I stopped close enough that I could feel the warmth of her and lifted a hand to her face, tracing the line of her jaw with my thumb.
She turned into it slightly. Just slightly. The way a person leans toward heat without meaning to.
"Hard day?" she said.
"Good day. Long one."
"I heard about the Governor's hall letter."
"I assumed you would."
"Are you nervous?"
I looked at her. "No."
A small smile. "Of course not." She reached up and covered my hand with hers, pressing it against her cheek for a moment. Then she turned her face and pressed her lips to my palm, slow and deliberate, her eyes closing.
Something in the room shifted.
I brought my other hand to her waist and pulled her in and kissed her. She came without resistance, her hands moving to my chest, her mouth warm and certain against mine. This was different from the first night.
That had been relief and decision and the breaking of something long held. This was comfort that had grown into hunger, familiarity that made everything easier and nothing less.
I walked her back until her shoulders met the wall and she made a low sound into the kiss and her hands gripped the front of my shirt.
***
I undid the lacing at the front of her dress slowly, my fingers working without rushing, and she stood still for it with her head tilted back and her breathing already unsteady. When the fabric loosened I pushed it from her shoulders and let it fall and she stood in her underdress and looked at me with dark eyes and said nothing.
I traced the line of her collarbone. Down the curve of her chest. She inhaled.
"Kael."
"I know."
My hands moved over her, learning her again the way you relearn something you already know well, finding the places that made her breath catch and staying with them until she was pressing toward me rather than simply standing still. Her hands were in my hair. Her forehead dropped to my shoulder.
"You are not in a hurry tonight," she murmured.
"No."
"I notice you are rarely in a hurry."
"Things done quickly are done once," I said. "Things done properly stay with you."
She lifted her head and looked at me and something in her expression was open in a way she did not usually allow outside this room.
"Is that a philosophy," she said.
"It is experience."
She almost smiled. Then she reached for my belt.
Her fingers were sure and unhurried, undoing the buckle with the calm efficiency of a woman who had decided what she wanted and intended to take her time with it. She pushed my shirt off my shoulders and ran her hands across my chest with a frank appreciation that had nothing self-conscious in it.
Then she looked up at me.
"Sit down," she said.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
She stood before me for a moment, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, her eyes holding mine with an expression that was equal parts warmth and want. Then she lowered herself to her knees in front of me with the deliberate ease of a woman doing something she had chosen freely and completely.
She opened my zip and took a moment to simply look, her hands resting on my thighs, before her eyes came back up to mine and stayed.
The eye contact did not break.
She started slow. Her lips traced the length of my dick with careful attention, unhurried, thorough, the way she did everything. A kiss pressed to the tip, soft and intentional, her gaze still on mine. Then she opened her mouth and took me in and the warmth of it moved through me like something settling into place.
She worked with a rhythm that built gradually, her hands braced against my thighs, her head moving in long unhurried strokes that became deeper as she found her pace. She did not perform. She was simply present, entirely focused, her whole attention on the task with the same precision she brought to everything she did.
My hand found her hair. Not directing. Just holding.
She made a sound around me, low and satisfied, and the vibration of it ran straight through my spine. Her pace did not change. If anything it became more deliberate, more exact, as if she had found the rhythm she wanted and intended to maintain it for as long as she chose.
Her eyes never left mine.
I let her set the pace and the terms and kept my hand loose in her hair and watched her face and understood that this was what she had come upstairs for. Not to be taken.
To give something, on her own terms, in her own time, and have it received properly.
I received it properly.
The candle burned low on the table by the window.
Neither of us was in a hurry.
First Bond: deepening further.