I Know

I Know
POV: Felix

Her weight settled onto me and the world narrowed to the point where we joined.

Selina exhaled, a sound that was half relief and half something more dangerous, something that had been building for weeks. Her hands braced on my chest, fingers curling against the old scars, and she began to move.

Slow.

Deliberate.

The way she did everything that mattered.

"Look at me," I said.

Her eyes met mine. The lamplight caught the dark of her hair, the flush spreading across her chest, the specific way her lips parted when she was concentrating on sensation. I had catalogued that expression months ago and it was still here, still accurate, still producing the same tightness in my chest.

"You're beautiful," I said.

"So you've mentioned."

"I'm mentioning it again." My hands found her hips, guiding her rhythm. "I'm going to keep mentioning it until you believe it."

"I believe it." She rolled her hips in a way that made my vision narrow. "I just like hearing you say it."

The rhythm built. Not urgent, not yet. The specific cadence of two people relearning each other's bodies after months of distance, months of careful performance, months of wanting and not having. Her breath came faster now, her movements less controlled, and I watched the careful composure she wore like armor begin to crack.

"I love you," she said.

The words landed somewhere in my chest.

"Again."

"I love you." She leaned forward, her hair falling around us like a curtain. "I love the way you look at me. I love the way you say my name. I love the way you—"

I thrust up into her and the sentence dissolved into a moan.

"That," she breathed. "That too."

The bed was too far from where we started. The kitchen table, where she had been waiting with her sketchbook and her decision, was a better location. The lamp had made its circle there first, before this one, and I wanted to reclaim every surface of this house, every place where she had sat alone and hoping.

"Kitchen," I said.

"What?"

"I want you on the table."

She laughed, the real one, the one that reached her eyes. "Now?"

"Now."

I pulled out of her and the absence was a physical ache, but the look on her face, the anticipation, the specific brightness in her eyes, made it worth it. She climbed off me and stood beside the bed, naked and unselfconscious, and I took a moment to look at her the way she deserved to be looked at.

Her breasts rose and fell with her breathing. Her thighs gleamed with the evidence of her arousal. Her dark hair was tangled from my hands and her lips were swollen from my mouth and she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

"The table," she said. "You're serious."

"Every surface." I stood and took her hand. "Every room. I want to reclaim this house. I want to make it ours."

Something moved through her face. "Ours."

"Yes."

I led her downstairs through the quiet house. The kitchen lamp was still on, making its circle on the table where she had been waiting. Her sketchbook was still there, closed, her pencil beside it. I moved them carefully to the counter.

"The art," she said.

"Is less important than what I'm about to do to you."

I lifted her onto the table. The wood was cool under her skin, I could tell by the way she shivered, the way her nipples tightened further. I stepped between her thighs and put my hands on her knees.

"Lie back."

She did. Her hair spilled across the table's surface, dark against the wood, and her body was arranged in the circle of lamplight like something painted, something meant to be looked at.

"Felix." Her voice was unsteady now. "What are you—"

My mouth found her inner thigh and the question stopped.

I kissed the soft skin there, working my way up with the specific patience she had shown me upstairs. She was already wet, already ready, but I wanted to taste her the way she had tasted me, wanted to relearn the geography of her pleasure with the same attention she had paid to mine.

My tongue found her center.

She gasped. Her hands went to my hair, fingers threading through and gripping, and the slight pain of it was perfect. I worked her with my mouth, finding the rhythms she liked, cataloguing the sounds she made at different pressures and speeds.

"There," she said. "Right there. Don't stop."

I didn't.

She was close now, I could feel it in the tension of her thighs against my shoulders, in the way her breathing had gone ragged, in the small desperate sounds she was making. My name fell from her lips like a prayer, over and over, and when she came it was with a cry that echoed through the quiet kitchen.

I stayed with her through it, gentle now, easing her down.

When I raised my head, she was looking at me with the expression that wasn't guarded or careful or any version of distance. The expression that was simply Selina, entirely present, choosing to be here.

"I love you," she said. "I have loved you since before I knew what loving you was going to cost me, and I will love you until I stop breathing, and even then I will find a way. Do you understand?"

My throat tightened. "Lina."

"I'm not finished." She sat up on her elbows, her body still trembling slightly from the aftershocks. "I spent months pretending I didn't love you. Pretending I could live without you. Pretending I didn't notice the way you looked at me, the way you protected me, the way you built a life around me without ever asking for anything in return. And I am done pretending."

She reached for me, pulling me closer.

"I love you," she said again. "I want to say it until the words lose meaning and then I want to find new words. I want to wake up beside you every morning and fall asleep beside you every night. I want to argue about furniture and make terrible coffee and sit at this table with my sketchbook while you do whatever it is you do in your study."

"Business," I said. "I do business."

"I don't care what it is. I just want to be in the same house while you do it." She pulled me down to her, our bodies aligned on the table. "Make love to me, Felix. Here. On this table. And then on the sofa, the terrible leather one you refuse to replace. And then on the floor of the study. And then in the garden when it's warm enough."

"The garden."

"Yes."

"You hate the garden."

"I hate the garden. But I love you more than I hate the garden." She kissed me. "Every surface. You promised."

I entered her in one motion.

The table creaked beneath us and the lamp flickered slightly and outside the October city continued its ordinary business, but the kitchen had become a world, the circle of light our entire universe. She wrapped her legs around my waist and met every thrust with a counter-motion, her body rising to meet mine.

"I love you," I said.

"Yes."

"I love the way you catalogue things. I love the way you remember everything I've ever told you. I love the way you look at art like you're having a conversation with it."

My rhythm increased, and her breath hitched.

"I love the way you fight with me about furniture and the way you make coffee that I pretend to enjoy and the way you sit at this table with your back to the wall because you've learned to be careful."

Her eyes were wet now. Not crying, not exactly, but something was moving behind them.

"I love that you're still here," I said. "After everything. After the distance and the fear and the three weeks of knowing and not saying. I love that you chose to stay and I love that you will keep choosing it and I love—"

She pulled me down and kissed me.

"I'm close," she said against my mouth. "I'm close and I want you there with me."

"Yes."

"I want to feel you."

"Yes."

She came again, her body clenching around me, and the sensation of it pulled me over the edge with her. I buried my face in her neck and let the wave take me, let it wash through me, let myself be undone and remade in the circle of lamplight on the kitchen table.

For a long moment, neither of us moved.

Then Selina laughed. A real laugh, the one that reached her eyes, the one I catalogued without meaning to.

"The table," she said. "You actually did it."

"I told you. Every surface."

"The sofa next?"

"The sofa next."

I pulled out of her gently and helped her sit up. Her hair was a mess, her skin flushed, her eyes bright with satisfaction and love and the specific presence that was hers alone. She looked at the table beneath her and then at me.

"We're going to need to clean this."

"Later."

"We're also going to need to move the sketchbook somewhere safer."

"Also later." I kissed her forehead. "For now, there's a leather sectional that needs reclaiming."

She slid off the table, her legs slightly unsteady, and I caught her before she could stumble. She looked up at me with the expression that was entirely herself.

"I love you," she said.

"I know."

"Cocky."

"Accurate." I took her hand. "Come on. The sofa awaits."

She followed me to the living room, and the kitchen lamp stayed on behind us, making its circle on the empty table, waiting for morning.