MAILAH GASPED.

It might be the fourth one. Or fifth? She lost count.

The way Grayson moved his tongue was so slow.

Deliberate. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Like he was reading braille against her skin with it.

She tried to press her hips up—just an inch—but his grip tightened instantly, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her inner thighs. The sharp pinch of pain made her gasp again, louder this time.

Her breath hitched when he finally—finally—slid a single finger into her, the stretch deliberate, the drag of his knuckle against sensitive flesh calculated to make her hips jerk.

He held her still with his free hand splayed across her abdomen, his grip firm enough that she could feel the imprint of each finger branding her skin.

It was unbearable: the slow, relentless movement inside her while his thumb continued its lazy orbit just shy of where she needed him most.

His tongue traced a wet path up the inside of her thigh, pausing to press an open-mouthed kiss to the spot where her pulse hammered beneath the skin.

The heat of his breath against damp flesh made her toes curl, her calves tensing against his shoulders as if she could somehow press closer without his permission.

He seemed amused or impatient, she couldn’t tell—before biting down just hard enough to make her cry out.

The sound seemed to fracture something in him.

His fingers stilled inside her, then withdrew with a slow, slick drag that left her clenching around nothing.

She whimpered—a raw, broken sound—and he caught it with his mouth, kissing her deeply as his palm slid beneath her hips to lift her higher.

The shift was slight but devastating; suddenly she could feel the rough texture of his belt buckle pressing into the soft skin of her inner thigh, the cold metal a stark contrast to the heat of his hands.

His thumb found her clit with the same unhurried precision he’d used to fold his jacket earlier—just the pad of his finger circling in slow, deliberate passes that made her spine arch away from the mattress.

She gasped when his teeth grazed her earlobe, the sharp sting mingling with the relentless pressure of his touch.

"Count," he murmured, his voice rough against her skin, and when she shook her head, confused, he pressed down harder—just once—until her breath hitched.

"One," she gasped, the word dissolving into a moan as his fingers returned to her, this time with a third knuckle pressing insistently at her entrance.

The stretch was exquisite, the burn of it radiating through her thighs as he worked his fingers deeper with torturous patience.

He growled when her nails raked down his back, his hips pressing forward instinctively—not enough to relieve the tension in his slacks, just enough for her to feel the hard line of him against her thigh.

The noise he made was almost pained, a low groan muffled against her collarbone as his thumb continued its relentless orbit. "Two," she sobbed, her hips jerking against the unyielding cage of his forearm.

His lips curled against her skin when she arched violently, her body bowing off the mattress as his fingers crooked inside her—just once—with devastating accuracy.

The sensation ricocheted up her spine like a live wire, her vision whiting out for a heartbeat before returning in a haze of static.

He watched her come back to herself with dark, hungry eyes, his breath ragged against her throat.

"Three," he prompted, his voice rough with restraint, and when she hesitated, he dragged his fingers out slowly, leaving her clenching around nothing.

The cool air against her damp skin made her thighs tremble with the effort of staying still.

He blew softly against her collarbone—a mockery of comfort—before biting into the curve of her shoulder.

The sharp sting made her gasp, her hips jerking reflexively, and he rewarded her with the slow slide of his fingers back inside, this time with his thumb pressing firm circles against her clit.

The dual sensation was unbearable, her muscles fluttering around him as he set a rhythm that was just shy of enough. "Four," she choked out, her voice breaking on the word.

His free hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head back sharply to expose the frantic pulse in her throat.

His mouth followed—not kissing, not biting, just the wet drag of his tongue against her skin as if tasting the salt of her desperation.

Every exhale against her damp flesh felt like a brand, his fingers moving inside her with the same calculated precision as a safecracker testing combinations.

When his thumb pressed harder suddenly, the pressure just shy of pain, her sob caught in her throat, her back arching violently off the mattress. "Five," she gasped, her fingernails carving half-moons into her own palms.

The noise he made was raw—something between a growl and a groan—his forehead pressing against her sternum as his rhythm faltered for the first time.

She felt the tremor in his fingers before she saw it, the slight unsteadiness in his next exhale betraying the control he’d worn like armor.

His teeth grazed her nipple through the thin fabric of her camisole, the sharp sting making her hips jerk against his restraining hand, and when he sucked the bruised flesh into his mouth, the vibration of his groan against her skin unraveled her further.

Her thighs trembled violently when he withdrew his fingers entirely—only to replace them with the blunt pressure of his thumb circling her entrance, the drag of his skin against oversensitive flesh drawing a ragged whimper from her throat.

He watched the sound take shape with dark, fascinated eyes, his free hand tracing the frantic flutter of her pulse at her wrist as if measuring its cadence. The deliberate cruelty of it—the way he catalogued every involuntary response—made her stomach twist with something hotter than shame.

His palm flattened against her abdomen, pressing down with just enough force to make her feel the imprint of his fingers against her pelvic bone—a silent edict that held her trembling thighs apart as his thumb dragged higher, achingly slow, the rough pad catching against her clit with a pressure that bordered on punitive.

The sound she made was raw, fractured by the way his teeth closed around her earlobe—not biting, just holding her there, suspended between the sharpness of his grip and the molten drag of his touch.

He exhaled sharply through his nose when her hips jerked involuntarily, his free hand sliding beneath her to grip the base of her spine, angling her hips upward until the stretch of her thighs burned and every shallow thrust of his fingers hit deeper, harder.

"Six," he murmured against her jaw, his voice fraying at the edges, and the way he said it—like it was both a command and a confession—made her stomach clench around his fingers.

Cool air rushed over her damp skin as he withdrew again, leaving her clenching around nothing, her breath coming in ragged gasps that fogged the space between them.

He watched her with dark, unreadable eyes, his thumb tracing idle circles on the inside of her thigh—close enough that she could feel the heat of him, far enough that the absence was a torment.

When he finally—finally—pressed back inside, it was with three fingers this time, the stretch bordering on painful, the drag of his knuckles against sensitive flesh deliberate in its cruelty.

Her cry turned into a moan when his palm ground against her clit with each thrust, the rough texture of his skin sending shockwaves through her with every pass.

His free hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head back sharply to expose the frantic flutter of her pulse.

His mouth hovered over the spot just breathing against her skin in slow, measured exhales that raised goosebumps in their wake.

She felt his fingers twist inside her—a slight rotation of his wrist—and the stretch transformed into something sharper, deeper, the friction burning along nerve endings she didn’t know could ache like this.

The noise she made was raw. His thumb suddenly pressed down hard on her clit in perfect counterpoint.

And then she felt it.

It was subtle. The kind of thing you wouldn’t notice unless you were paying attention, and Mailah, despite everything, was always paying attention.

It was the quality of his hands — still certain, still deliberate, but operating on a frequency that was just slightly removed.

The way his eyes, when she caught them, were focused but not present. The way his mouth against her throat was skilled and attentive and nowhere near where he actually was.

He was doing this correctly. He was doing it well. He was doing it the way someone executes a plan they’ve already decided on, which meant he had stopped deciding sometime in the last few minutes and was now simply completing the task.

She suddenly put her hand flat against his chest and pushed.

Not hard. Just enough.

He stilled immediately. Pulled back an inch. His eyes found hers.

"Your heart isn’t in this," she said.

The words sat between them. He didn’t deny it. He also didn’t confirm it, which was its own kind of answer from a man who used silence as punctuation.

"Grayson."

His jaw shifted. He looked at her for a long moment — that same cataloguing look, except this time she had the distinct impression he was examining himself rather than her, and finding the results inconvenient.

He sat back.

Not away from her entirely. Just enough to put a few inches of deliberate space between them, his forearm braced on the mattress, his eyes somewhere past her shoulder. The posture of a man doing arithmetic.

"You’re still depleted," he said finally. "And I’m still feeding."

"That’s not what I said."

"It’s what I’m saying."

She studied him. The set of his shoulders. The way his free hand had flattened against the mattress, fingers spread, the small unconscious tell of a man applying controlled pressure to something.

"You’re not going to tell me what it actually is," she said. Not a question.

He looked back at her then. Direct. Unapologetic. "No," he said.

There was something almost refreshing about it.

He didn’t dress it up. He simply declined.

Mailah held his gaze for a moment. Then she lay back against the pillows.

She could push. She had pushed him before and she would push him again, in some future conversation, in some waking room where she could read the full architecture of his face rather than this dream version that he had built and could therefore edit at will.

But something in the quality of the silence told her that pushing now would not open the door — it would simply cause him to build another wall on the other side of it.

So she didn’t.

She looked at the ceiling instead. The gold paint. The lamps burning at their lower register.

The mattress shifted as he moved. She expected him to stand. He didn’t.

He lay down beside her instead, on top of the blanket, maintaining that inch of deliberate space with the precision of a man who had decided exactly how close he was willing to get and had surveyed the boundary carefully.

He stared at the ceiling alongside her.

Neither of them spoke.

It was, somehow, more intimate than everything that had come before it.

The silence between them wasn’t empty. It had weight and texture, the particular quality of two people existing in the same space without requiring anything from each other, and Mailah thought distantly that this might be something he hadn’t done in a very long time.

She closed her eyes.

The dream began to soften at its edges — the sound of the water fading, the lamps dimming by degrees, the warm air thinning into something lighter and cooler.

The last thing she registered was the weight of his hand. It settled over hers on top of the blanket.