Susan's Night

He paused at her door with his coat half on, and Susan said, "Take it off."

"Thought you wanted me gone by midnight."

"I wanted you to think I did."

He grinned and hung the coat where she pointed, and that was the last efficient thing either of them did for six hours.

He kissed the way he argued -- patient, then suddenly not. His hand came up her spine and closed on the back of her neck, not squeezing, just holding, the way you hold something that might bolt. Susan made a sound into his mouth she hadn't made in years and hated how good it felt to make it.

"Bedroom is that way," she managed.

"Show me."

"Walk behind me and you will see it eventually."

He did walk behind her. She felt his eyes on her hips the whole way down the hall and let him look, let the sway be for him, and when she turned at the foot of the bed he was already unbuttoning his shirt with that unhurried confidence of a man who has decided the evening belongs to someone else and is fine with it.

"Yours or mine tonight?" he asked. "The rules."

"Yours is easier. Mine takes longer."

"Susan." He stepped in, put his mouth at her ear. "I've got all night and a morning if you'll allow it."

She turned her head and bit his earlobe, gently. "Allowed."

The dress had a zipper that had never been worth the price. He found it anyway, and the fabric dropped, and she stood in lamplight in nothing but black lace while a man younger than her divorce looked at her like a portfolio he'd waited years to open.

"You're staring."

"Yes," he said. "I am. You knew I would."

"Get on your knees and keep being honest."

He went down like it was a promotion. His mouth went to her stomach first -- patient, thorough, tasting the salt at her navel -- and his hands were already working, thumbs hooking the lace, drawing it down her thighs slow enough to make her curse him, which made him grin against her hip and slow down more.

"Say it," he murmured.

"You're a bastard."

"That's not the word."

She said the other word. She said it twice, because the second time his mouth finally arrived, and words stopped being Susan's department.

He was merciless the way careful men are merciless -- reading her, adjusting, a slow flat tongue where she was hottest and two fingers curling up into her until her knees gave and he caught her with one arm under her thigh and held her up through it, worked her through it, swallowed everything she said and made her say worse. She came with her fist in his hair and his name in a voice she didn't recognize as hers, and he stayed there, gentle now, until she stopped trembling.

"Up," she ordered, hoarse. "Bed. Now."

"On my back?"

"On your back. I'm not finished being in charge."

She rode him slow at first, savoring the fullness, his hands full of her hips, both of them watching the place where they joined like it was a fire they'd built. He lasted admirably while she set the pace; he lost the argument when she leaned down, chest to chest, and whispered in his ear exactly what she wanted -- harder, there, don't stop, don't you dare stop -- and then it was his hips driving up into her, the headboard keeping vulgar time, her orgasm arriving on top of the first one like weather on weather.

"Come for me," she ordered him, close, shameless. "Inside. That's not a request."

He came with her name buried in her neck and a groan six years deep, and she held him through it, milking him with slow deliberate squeezes that made him shudder and laugh at the same time.

After -- the lamp still on, wine warm now, his hand drawing lazy circles on her hip -- he said, "You're going to keep the sock, aren't you."

"Which sock?"

"The one I'm going to lose looking for my clothes, so you have an excuse to text me."

Susan smiled at the ceiling like a woman who had already found the sock. "Get out by six," she said. "The morning's mine."

"Deal," he said, already reaching for her again. "But the night's still mine."

"Prove it," said Susan, and he did, twice more before the window went grey.