November Prompt: Respite (Patreon)

November Prompt: Respite

It had been at least an hour since I’d woken up, but I was under the covers and warm and comfortable, and most importantly of all, Genevieve was still in my arms. She was turned around so her back was pressed against me, and I had my arm wrapped around her waist and my face buried against the back of her neck. It was the most serene feeling I’d had in years. So serene that I didn’t mind lying there, awake and unmoving just so she could sleep for as long as she needed to. Just so I could feel her breathing against me, and experience the warmth of her bare skin, and the smell of her, and the way her hair tickled my face.

It was late in the morning – probably almost noon if my internal clock was close – but I would’ve laid there until well into the evening. I would’ve lain there for days, content to be close to her while we shut out the rest of the world and existed in a place all our own. And I did lie there, for at least another half an hour before Genevieve shifted.

Her body gave a jerk as she whimpered my name, and then she turned violently and shot upright, screaming, “No!”

“Hey,” I said soothingly, sitting up but trying not to scare her. “Hey, it’s okay.” She looked around at me with a mixture of terror and confusion. “It’s okay, I’m here.” After a few more moments of being wide-eyed and afraid, her expression softened with realization, and she buried her face in her hands to rub the nightmare away and took in a deep breath. I set my hand on her back and caressed across her shoulders, saying softly again, “It’s okay.”

She fell onto her back and let her hands drop from her face, and when I lied down again too, she turned to face me and wrapped her arms around my waist. She pulled herself into me, clinging to me as she nuzzled into my chest.

“Bad dream?” I asked, wrapping my own arm around her. She was still trembling as she nodded. “Does that happen a lot?”

She inhaled another deep, slow breath, letting it out against my skin before answering, “Almost every time I managed to fall asleep the last eight months.”

The idea that she’d been plagued and unable to find peace even in sleep was agonizing, and I squeezed her to me. “Always me?”

“Not always,” she whispered. “But mostly.”

“I’m sorry, Gen,” I murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

She didn’t say anything for a long handful of moments, and instead just lay there, the shaking of her body and the tension easing as she relaxed and recovered. Eventually, she asked, “Are you sure I’m not dead?”

“I’m sure.”

She leaned away enough to meet my eyes, taking me in with something like desperation. “How do you know?”

“Because if you’re dead, I’m dead,” I told her. I took my arm from around her to cup her face. “If this was heaven, it wouldn’t have taken me eight months to find you, and if it was hell, I never would have.” I dipped forward and pressed a tender kiss to her forehead. “I’m here. I’m real.”

She returned her face to my chest and held me close, sniffling once with emotion. “I missed you so much.”

“With how much affection I’m getting,” I teased, “I almost can’t complain.”

A huff of laughter hit my skin as she pinched my back. “I even missed you being a brat.”

“It’s my most valuable personality trait,” I laughed, and I knew she was smiling as she scooted even closer. “I missed you too.” Neither of us said anything else for a span of minutes. Five, and then ten passed as we lay there, her hand tracing lines on my lower back and mine running up and down her spine. “How long do you want to stay here?”

Without thinking about it for even a second, she answered, “A year.”

“I’ll stay in bed with you for a year,” I agreed.

“Good,” she said, and pressed a kiss to my collarbone.

“Think we could order room service?” I asked. “I’ll get Blake on the walkie. What do you want?”

“A milkshake,” she said. “And a pizza.”

“That would be heaven,” I said, and she chuckled and nodded. “Did you sleep okay? How do you feel?”

“Better than I have in a long time,” she answered, but she shrugged. “I don’t know… it might take me a while to be completely convinced this is real.”

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked. “Will it help to get a routine back?”

“Probably,” she said, pulling away and adjusting so we were eye to eye. “But I want to stay here with you for as long as possible.”

"As long as you need," I told her.

She reached up to touch my face, and I just lay there to watch her while she began to trace my features. Her fingertips grazed across my forehead, outlining the scar she’d put there the first time she’d ever seen me again. They followed the line of my eyebrow, and then the bridge of my nose. They smoothed across my jaw so her thumb could chart the edges of my lips, and draw over my laugh line, and then caress my cheek.

And for some of those moments that she touched me, I studied her with my eyes. Relearned the shape of her lips and the tone of her skin. Noticed how her hair had gotten long and reached below her shoulders, and how she’d gotten new scars since the last time I’d seen her too. Most of those moments, however, I watched her eyes. Her warm, gorgeous brown eyes, drinking me in with a fondness deeper than I had ever experienced, and deeper than I ever thought I’d deserve to experience.

But she loved me. She’d proven that she loved me like nobody ever had, and while she said that she wanted to spend the rest of her life showing me every day how much that was true, I wanted to give her the same. Wanted to be there any time she had a nightmare, or any time she needed reassurance, or every time she wanted to smile or laugh. We were together despite the odds, and the increasing reality of that instilled me with a comfort that grew for every moment she looked at me.

It wasn’t until she was finished indulging herself with taking me in that she finally met my gaze. Her eyes wandered back to mine as if finally realizing that I’d been watching her the whole time, and then they filled with something like timid adoration, and she smiled. Her signature, modest smile, but it was full of a soft and satisfied joy like I’d never seen, and she didn’t take her eyes off of mine when she said, “I think you should kiss me now.”

There was nothing I wanted to do more, so I eased forward and touched my lips to hers. It was a bare, gentle kiss, but it was slow, and it lasted such a long span of seconds that Genevieve’s hand moved from my jaw to my neck as she pressed herself into me even more. All it did was remind me of how naked she was, how naked both of us were, and even if she wasn’t ready yet, it was amazing just to be with her like this.

It was amazing to feel the cozied heat of her under the blankets. The press of her bare chest to mine. The way her thigh slid over mine so she could push our hips closer and how her foot grazed over my ankle. And I didn’t take my lips from hers. They parted for another kiss that was just as tender and lingering, while my hand wandered to explore the rest of her.

I rounded her shoulder and slid my fingers between her shoulder blades. I caressed down to her middle back and pulled her against me. I smoothed along the dip of her waist and cupped her hip, just to let my fingers fall across the lowest point of her spine. I grazed down her thigh to her knee to encourage the way it hugged me, and then slid back up, from her hip to her ribs to her stomach, working between us to feel every inch of skin that I could.

Her breath hitched against my lips when I touched the sensitive skin beside her naval, and her mouth parted to make our delicate kiss a little deeper. Then her hand left my neck to explore me in the same ways I was exploring her, and for every scar that she touched, she made sure to caress somewhere that I was clean. She slid her palm up my marked arm, and then immediately soothed the muscles in my back. She traced the scar on my hip and then my ribs, and instantly shifted her fingers to follow beneath the swell of my breast, putting me at ease in a compassionate way that almost made me forget.

It almost made me forget everything. Where we were. The world we lived in. The difficulties of our past. Because this was the first time we’d ever been together like this that I didn’t feel fear of how she’d react. I wasn’t afraid of her not liking the ways I touched her, or of her letting me do it because she was scared I’d be upset if she held back. I wasn’t afraid that she’d regret this afterward, or that she’d be mad at either of us for letting it happen. It was the first time amidst the complexities of our relationship that I didn’t feel a single doubt, and that I felt completely and undeniably comfortable giving her all of me. My scars, my sins, my vulnerabilities.

And I felt the same from her, because it was all in her fragility. The walls that I’d toiled for agonizing months just to get a mere glimpse over were gone. She didn’t feel the need to be strong and stoic, she didn’t feel the need to hide how much she loved me and missed me. She wasn’t filtering a single emotion to keep me at bay, and that was everything. And she let it show in her touch.

The next time she traced down my arm, she grazed all the way to my palm, turning her hand beneath mine to slip our fingers together. She brought my hand with her as she shifted onto her back, and it was all the instruction I needed to adjust over her. I settled between her legs, propping myself on one elbow to continue kissing her while she kept our fingers locked on the bed beside her shoulder.

All we did for minutes after that was kiss. No touch other than the free hand she set on my back, no sound other than the steady rate of our breathing, no movement except our lips and the inhaling push of her chest against mine. It was eight eternal months of pain and desperation and longing melting away to simplicity.

I wasn’t going to push. I wasn’t going to try for any more than she was already giving me because I was content just to be with her, in any way that she wanted. But a few minutes later she moved our hands. She brought them between us and set mine on her lower belly, pulling away from the kiss just enough to rest her forehead against mine and look me in the eyes.

“You want me to?” I asked.

She nodded, giving me a few moments of pause to see on her face that she did, and then she returned her lips to mine while her arms slid around my neck. I was ready to make up for lost time, and to show her with that touch how much I loved her, and so I didn’t hesitate to put enough space between us that I could begin slipping my hand farther down her stomach. I reached the space between her hips before she said, “Echo?” against my lips. My hand stopped while I hummed that I was listening, but all she did was press a peck to my lips.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said, and kissed me again. “Just…” Her lips brushed over mine for a few moments before she said, “Gently, this time.”

I opened my eyes to look into hers, to see exactly what she was requesting in their plea. Not like the first time, and maybe not like every time after this, but that’s what she wanted. Soft. Like she had been with me since last night. Tender, like every touch she’d given this morning. Loving, like the shine in her eyes at being with me for the first time in almost a year.

“Gently,” I promised, offering a small smile to tell her that I knew what she meant.

Her focus fell to my lips, hers pulling into a smile of their own as she lifted enough to kiss my laugh line. Then her mouth was back on mine, just as sweetly as every moment before it, but with so much depth. So much feeling. It opened to mine so I could feel the tip of her tongue, so I could feel the invitation in how willingly she was giving herself to me, in how much she wasn’t just trusting me to touch her, but to make love to her.

Because that’s what this was. That’s what she wanted. Not sex as an outlet, or as a mechanism, or for a distraction. It was for intimacy. To be close in a way that she’d shut herself off from for so long, and in a way that we never had before, no matter how many times we’d been together.

So I dropped my hand the rest of the way, until I’d slid it between her legs and found the collecting moisture at her core. With the first brush of my finger over her clit, she drew in a deep, long, jolted breath as her lips froze, and she didn’t let it out again until I’d made several slow passes that melted the impact of the touch. Then she released that breath against my upper lip as hers closed against mine for another kiss.

“Okay?” I whispered.

One of her hands slid up the back of my neck and into my hair as she gave the barest dip of her chin. “Perfect.”

She kissed me again, and she didn’t stop as I devoted myself to what I was doing. I braced myself on my forearm, putting just enough space between us that the weight of me wouldn’t add to the weight of my touch, but not so much that I couldn’t feel the heat of her. And she was still quiet, that hadn’t changed, but she was as expressive as she’d always been. The inconsistent rise and fall of her chest let me know that I was right where she needed me. The clutch of her hand in my hair let me know when I got the motion just right. The occasional twitch of her hips told me that she didn’t want me to stop.

And I didn’t. I didn’t stop touching her, and as much as I wanted to kiss her anywhere and everywhere, I didn’t leave her lips. I knew that was where she wanted me. Knew she needed it as much as she needed the touch, because even as she started panting for air, she kept kissing me. When her breath stuttered through an open mouth, it was against mine, and when the arch in her back deepened, the hand in my hair kept me from pulling away.

The best thing about all of it was that, even though she’d said gently, it didn't stop her hips from moving against my hand. That was Genevieve. Active, determined, insistent, even when she was getting exactly what she wanted. And I loved it. Loved that she just couldn’t stop herself from moving, and couldn’t keep her free hand from roaming down my back to pull my hips against hers.

But no matter how tempting her encouragement was, I didn’t let it urge me into harder. I kept my fingers as light and slow as our kiss. Let it build her up in a way that would make this last, because eight months of yearning was too long to finish this too quickly, and I knew that if she’d been anything less than content to let me draw it out, she would’ve said so.

Only, she didn’t. She kissed me and held me close and rocked against me until she simply couldn’t hold it back anymore. Then her body froze beneath me, one jagged huff left her lungs, and she ebbed over the peak into climax. She curled into me as her mouth fell open, her eyes squeezing shut with the pleasure she felt as she released breath after hard breath against my lips. Her hips pulsed into my hand with every wave that went through her, and I didn’t stop the easy motion of my finger even as she started coming down from it. I kept circling gently as she settled back into the mattress, softening my touch while she recovered enough to kiss me, and then removing my hand completely.

Her lips stayed against mine even after I rested over her, and we kissed for a long couple of minutes until she stopped to press her forehead to mine. She sighed heavily, closing her eyes with her arms around my neck and simply lying there, eventually saying, “That felt real.”

I smiled and pecked her on the lips. "Good."

She loosened the hold of one arm so she could set her hand on the back of my neck and play with my hair, and my eyes drifted shut at the comfort of it. “I think,” she said, “after another nap, and spending another night with you, I might almost be back to normal.” She huffed with laughter, admitting, “The sex helps more than I thought.”

“I’m sure it does,” I teased. She laughed, but didn’t say anything for such a long span of seconds that I opened my eyes to look at her. She was staring at me. “What?”

She shrugged and pressed a soft kiss to the edge of my mouth. “I think the biggest relief is that you haven’t changed. No matter what happens, you’re always the most constant thing in my life.” Her hand fell forward to cup my face, her thumb tracing the scar on my cheek. “You’re my rock, Echo.”

I nuzzled my cheek into her hand, cherishing the warmth of it against my skin. “I love you,” I told her.

"I love you too," she said, and brought me down to her lips.

As we kissed, she gave the slightest pressure on my shoulder to put me on my side, and then on my back, gradually switching our positions until she was lying over me. She pushed the blanket off our bodies while her lips moved away from mine, along my jaw to my neck, and then down my chest. She didn’t linger long, seeming too earnest to stay in one place, but she pressed open pecks along the side of my stomach and my hip, each hot touch of one making me increasingly breathless. Eight months of no contact was enough for this to leave me desperate, and I was grateful that she wasn’t in the mood to tease.

She lowered herself down my body and pushed one of my knees outward, and the hungry look in my eyes when she glanced up at me was all the plea she needed to meet my flesh with her mouth. The flat of her tongue made one stroke over my clit, and then immediately gave another, setting into rhythm so easily it made my head drop back as a groan left my throat.

One of her hands stayed down so she could hold herself up on her forearm, but the other slid up the inside of my thigh to my hip, and settled at the dip of my waist. The thumb of that hand caressed through its range of motion and was a constant reassurance, but it was the only touch she gave. And the lack of distraction made it so all I could focus on was her. The heat of her tongue. The perfection of every stroke. The way that she knew me so well, and hadn’t forgotten even after all these months of separation.

God, it made me feel loved. Every bit of her attention was on what she was doing, doing it as slowly and gently as I’d touched her, indulging in the calm of it because she was in no more of a rush than I’d been. And it was that tenderness that made my hands fist in the sheets, because as much as she liked it when I grabbed her head, I didn’t want to change the tone of her touch even a little bit.

But I had to grab something. Had to squeeze every time her tongue pulled a moan out of me, or every time a twitch in my hips was followed by a whimper. I was gaining on the end fast. There was no way I wouldn’t be with how long it’d been, and how much I adored how soft she was being, and even though I wanted it to last, I also wanted relief.

I didn’t have to wait much longer for it. A few more strokes pushed me over the edge. My fingers tightened in the sheets as I drew in a deep gasp, and then I melted into the easiest, warmest climax I’d ever had in my life. It burst in my lower belly and pooled outward, tensing every muscle in my body in a heavy, leisurely current. The moan that left my throat was low and smooth, falling off my lips with the same serenity as the pulsing blush in my core. It lasted too, a long minute of bliss and contentment that left me exhausted by the time I was done.

I melted into the bed, and there wasn’t a single part of me that wasn’t weak. Genevieve pressed one kiss to the inside of my thigh and then worked her way up, peppering my skin with affection until she’d reached my collarbone. Then she dropped down on top of me, burying her face in my neck while her hand found mine so she could lace our fingers together again.

That was it. For a long time, we lay there, Genevieve playing with my fingers while neither of us said anything. We didn’t need to say anything. The comfortable, placid silence between us said it all. Said how content we were, and how perfect the moment was, and how much we belonged together. I didn’t think there was a single thing I could have said to Genevieve to make it any better. We were there, together, despite the odds and despite every way we’d wronged and been wronged. And so we lay there for long enough that Genevieve fell back asleep. We lay there wrapped up in each other, just as we’d be when she woke again.