What He Takes
1044 Words
She didn't sleep.
Not because she was scared. Because every time she closed her eyes she saw his — dark and ancient and burning red at the edges — and her body refused to settle.
By 3 a.m. she gave up.
She padded to the kitchen in just her oversized shirt and underwear, poured water she didn't drink, and stood at the window watching the city below. Empty streets. Orange streetlights. The kind of quiet that felt borrowed.
The knock came soft. Three times.
She knew before she opened it.
Damien stood in her doorway in dark trousers, no shirt, hair slightly undone from whatever it was usually pressed into. He looked like something that had climbed out of a painting — too beautiful to be safe, too dangerous to be real.
His eyes dropped down her body once. Just once. And the slow drag of that gaze felt like a physical thing.
"You weren't sleeping," he said.
"Neither were you."
"I don't sleep." He leaned against the doorframe. "Can I come in?"
"You didn't ask last time."
"Last time you'd already let me in." His voice was quiet, deliberate. "I'm asking now."
She stepped back.
---
He sat on the edge of her bed and she stood in front of him, arms crossed, trying to look more composed than she felt. The lamp was off. Only the city light through the window, painting everything silver and orange.
"What are you doing here, Damien?"
"I told you," he said. "I can't stop thinking about you." He said it like a confession he hadn't wanted to make. "I've been trying. It's not working."
She looked at him — at the tattoo on his ribs, the scar on his hip, the way he sat perfectly still like a man who had learned centuries ago how to wait.
"What do you want from me?" she asked.
He reached out and took her wrist. Gently. Pulled her one step closer.
"Come here," he said.
She went.
She stood between his knees and he looked up at her — for once, looking *up* — and his hands slid slowly up the backs of her thighs under her shirt. Not rushing. Just claiming, inch by inch, the way you handle something you intend to keep.
"Damien—"
"Tell me to stop," he said quietly. His thumbs traced slow circles on the soft skin at the top of her thighs. "Say it and I stop."
She said nothing.
His hands slid higher and found the waistband of her underwear. He pulled it down slowly — watching her face the whole time — and let it drop. His fingers came back up the inside of her thigh and she grabbed his shoulder to keep herself standing.
"Look at me," he said.
She looked.
He held eye contact and pressed two fingers against her — slow, deliberate, reading her — and she exhaled sharply.
"You've been thinking about this," he said. Quiet. Certain.
"Shut up."
He almost smiled. "Say it."
"*Damien—*"
"Say you've been thinking about it."
"Yes," she breathed. "Fine. Yes."
"Good." He pushed two fingers inside her — slow and deep — and she bit down on her lip hard to keep the sound in.
"Don't do that," he said. "I want to hear you."
She stopped biting.
The sound that came out of her was embarrassing and she stopped caring immediately because his fingers curled and found the exact right place and her knees buckled. He caught her with his free arm around her waist, holding her up, fingers working a slow devastating rhythm, and she had one fist in his hair and her head dropped forward against his.
"*God—*"
"Not quite," he murmured.
"Don't be smug right now—" Her voice broke on the last word and he pressed deeper and her whole body shook.
"That's it," he said quietly, like he was talking her through something. "Give it to me."
She shattered. Hard. His arm held her through it, fingers slow and relentless until she was trembling and limp and breathing in pieces against his neck.
He lowered her onto the bed.
She pulled him down with her.
---
He was unhurried in a way that felt ancient — like a man who had forgotten what rushing felt like. He kissed her throat, her collarbone, worked his way down with a mouth that felt like a slow fire. She arched under him and he pressed her hips back down with one hand.
"I've got you," he said against her skin. "Stop trying to rush me."
"I'm not—"
"You are." He looked up at her from her stomach, eyes dark and amused. "You've been rushing toward things your whole life." A kiss to her hip. "Tonight you don't."
She would have argued but his mouth moved and she lost the sentence entirely.
By the time he came back up to her she was desperate and not pretending otherwise. She pulled at his trousers and he helped, unhurried still, and when he finally pressed against her entrance and paused — just to look at her face — she made a sound that was half frustration and half plea.
"*Please,*" she said. She'd given up pride several minutes ago.
He pushed in slow — all of it, watching her — and the sound she made was involuntary and complete and she didn't care at all.
"*Christ,* Zara," he said, and for the first time his voice cracked slightly. The control slipping. Just at the edge.
She pulled him deeper.
They moved together like something that had been practised in another life — her legs around him, his forehead against hers, the city glittering below them through the window like it was watching. He drove into her hard and slow and thorough and she held on with both hands and let herself be completely undone.
"*Damien—*"
"I know." His voice was low and unravelling. "I know."
She came apart again with his name in her mouth. He followed seconds later, his whole body shuddering, face buried in her neck — and for those few seconds she felt something in him she suspected almost no one ever got to feel.
*Human.*
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After
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