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There were days when Kaz’s hands flowed through her hair and traced the curves and angles of her body and she arched into them like a cat in sunlight, days when she could touch his skin and hear the sharp intake of breath as the touch shivered through his nerves with nothing but pleasure. There were days when their ghosts and scars could be pushed aside by the sheer depth and strength of their trust in one another.
Those days were still a rarity, and today was not one of those days. This time, it was worse for Inej than Kaz. She didn’t usually remember her dreams, but this morning, she had, and… well. That had been enough.
So they were back to this again-- lying side by side beneath the sheets, trading wishes and desires, trying to find some sort of satisfaction together despite the limits of their bodies and minds.
“If we could…” Kaz whispered, dark eyes fixed on hers. The intensity of his focus at moments like this did indecent things to her. Kaz Brekker’s full attention was something more intimate than the touch of any other man’s mouth. When he loved, he loved with a ferocity that could topple empires. Inej did not doubt that she was loved by her family, her parents, Jesper, Wylan, Nina… and it was probably not sane or healthy to love another human the way that Kaz loved her.
She didn’t care if it was healthy or not. It made her feel treasured, protected, and unimaginably powerful.
“If we could?” she replied, biting her lower lip and watching his gaze drop to her mouth. Knowing he wanted to kiss her. Wishing he could.
“Tell me what you’d want to do,” he urged her, not moving even a hair’s breadth toward her, giving her the safety of the space between them. “Tell me what you’d want me to do.”
They had done this before more than once. First words, then their hands on their own bodies. Gasped encouragement and shared fantasies. The first couple times, it had been surprisingly difficult for her. For years, the pleasure that Inej was able to find alone with her own body had been the only kind of sex that had remained untainted. It had been a private indulgence, something that was hers alone. His presence had made her feel vulnerable, awkward, and he had admitted to feeling the same way.
But unrequited desire was a powerful motivator, and so was the way he greedily drank in every sound and movement and overcame his own insecurities to let her watch him in return.
They were both fully dressed, this time. Inej wasn’t sure she could bear eyes on her skin, her body, even Kaz’s. Making this concession to her fears was not weakness but honesty, she told herself. She knew he couldn’t see her under the sheets, but being unclothed was something she struggled with. In a way, she envied the girls who worked the streets– they could charge extra for their clients to see them fully bare, or deny them the privilege altogether. At the Menagerie, it was part of the unspoken promise of admission– after all, they were nothing but animals, and the scant clothing they were allowed was only the exotic trappings of their native lands, something for greedy hands to remove.
Her body was her own now. She could keep it for herself alone. Her heart belonged to Kaz, but her flesh, her touch, her sex, belonged to no one but herself. Tonight, she would stay hidden. She refused to let the visceral panic that eyes or hands on her skin could stir up when the memories were this close keep her from sharing this with him. Her body might be unready, but her heart knew what it wanted.
“We can do anything we want in fantasies,” Inej said softly. “Impossible things. Things I might never be able to do. Things I still want.”
“Will you tell me?” Kaz’s voice was never quite gentle, but there was a solemn certainty in his tone and face. “I’d never expect…” he trailed off, then spoke again, bluntly. “You know there’s things I want with you that I’d never be able to have without going to pieces and ruining it.”
Inej nodded, though she had many more hopes for the two of them than Kaz would allow himself to harbor. She took a deep breath.
“Sometimes… I think about how it would feel to have you on top of me. Inside of me.”
He shivered and she could almost see the impact of her words travel through his body in the set of his mouth, the tension of his jaw. “Tell me. What would it be like.” There was a note of pleading in his voice. She supposed that was no surprise. They had talked about it, and he knew she might never reach a point where she felt safe being penetrated, or held down by the weight of a man’s body. And she knew that, like all men, he wanted that, whether he admitted it to himself or not.
She realized that he didn’t know how very arousing the abstract idea of it was to her – how much she wanted to feel that kind of complete intimacy without being dragged back to other times, other memories. Quietly, she continued.
“In the fantasy, I don’t feel trapped or panicky. I just feel hot, needy. I want you inside me. I can feel you pressing against me and there’s no fear. I want this.”
Kaz closed his eyes and swallowed hard, letting himself sink into the fantasy with her. She continued, watching his face.
“You’re on top of me, and I wrap my legs around you to pull you down into me. And you just slide in, no pain, no tension, no effort, just the feeling of you inside. And it feels good .” Inej slid her hand down beneath the sheet, not rubbing yet, but cupping her hand between her legs, pressing, letting the arousal build.
“I’d just stay inside you,” he breathed. “I wouldn’t move for a long time. Just… surrounded by you. Your arms and legs around me, bare skin on mine. How wet and perfect you’d feel when I pressed into you. Just breathing in your skin, your hair, loving you.”
His words, the contrast between their fervent tenderness and the rough rasp of his voice, made her body thrill sharply. His face, so controlled and reserved in public, betrayed everything he was feeling– reverence, lust, and the same fierce, burning frustration that she felt at not being able to take each other in their arms and have what they both needed so badly.
“I would feel your weight on me, holding me down, and it would be safe,” she said fervently, pushing against the heel of her hand, her breath coming quicker at the little jolt of pleasure it sparked. “You’d be sheltering me. Protecting me with your body. I wouldn’t have to moan or demean myself for you or pretend. I could just feel. Be completely vulnerable to you. Know that you would give me what I needed. Nothing more, nothing less. That this was something just for me.”
Kaz opened his eyes, reaching out to her, and stopped his hand just in time. He made a sound of frustration. “It would be,” he told her fiercely, clenching his hand and pulling it back. “Just for you, Inej. Never anything but what you wanted from me.” Inej lifted her hips to pull off her trousers beneath the blanket. She watched Kaz realize what she was doing,how his eyes dilated fully black with arousal as they darted from her face to the movements of her hand and body beneath the sheet. She wondered if he was imagining how wet she was, wishing that it was his hands in place of hers as she lightly began to circle her clit, slowly easing her body into the pleasure.
“Inej.” Kaz’s voice caught in his throat. “Can I?”
She nodded her encouragement and eagerily watched as he unfastened his trousers, the sheet sliding down to his waist. His eyes fluttered shut for a moment and his lips parted soundlessly as he took himself in hand. Her own breath caught. She could see the angle of it, the firmness of his grip, the little gasps as those first slow strokes sparked through his nerves. She loved it when he started slow like this, drawing out those first moments of pleasure for her, letting her drink it in.
“I wouldn’t want to think,” she said, the words pouring out of her. “Wouldn’t want you to let me. No thought, nothing but you moving inside me. The relief of our bodies coming together, of how good it would feel. I wouldn’t have to make a sound, but I’d want to, I wouldn’t be able to help it.”
Kaz made a quiet choking noise. His voice caught with emotion. “Oh, Inej. I would be kissing you. I’d catch every single sound with my lips. Keep them secret for you.” The lazy movements of his hand took on a steady rhythm. His breathing grew rougher, his eyes fixed on the motions of her rubbing herself beneath the sheets. “I’d be touching your clit– just like you’re doing now– and kissing the little moans and cries from your mouth– each time I filled you up.”
Inej reached down and slid the fingers of her other hand inside herself, imagining the smooth, hot girth of him, how it would feel as he pushed into her body again and again and again. The simple, heady closeness of his chest pressed to hers, where she could feel his gasps and the pounding of his heartbeat. The rhythm of his circling fingers driving her inexorably higher, making her clench around him. His mouth on hers, urgent, greedy, stealing every sound she made for his own.
She curled her fingers inside herself, arching into the freedom of it. The freedom from fear. The power over her own body, to take the man she loved inside her. She let herself believe for a moment that he could reach out now and press her to the mattress and it wouldn’t be just a fantasy. That she could have this, real and hot and good.
“You’d… find the angle and the rhythm I needed to come apart for you and… when I did… you’d be… holding me close, pinning me down–” she could hear Kaz gasp at that. He hadn’t expected it and she hadn’t either, but it was perfect and so hot, the idea of him keeping her present with his gentle kisses, the hard grip of his hands, the press of his cock in her– “you wouldn’t let me disappear… you’d make me feel every second of it until it felt like… my body couldn’t hold so much pleasure.”
“I’d give you everything you needed.” His voice was strained, breathless. “Anything you needed. I’d hold you so close. So tightly. Watching– watching you come apart for me. Needing to see it. Giving you– all of me." Her own eyes drank in the way the pleasure rippled through him and drew the tension in his muscles tighter with every stroke of his hand. The way his head fell back, the little shudders that ran through him– she wanted to be the one drawing those from him. Giving him that pleasure as she climbed towards her own dizzying release. She imagined how his straining body would feel as he worked in her, hard and steady and unrelenting, the way she’d be able to feel each desperate shudder as he held himself back from the edge.
“I’d want it. All of you. Deep.” She whimpered, rubbing harder, faster. Each swell of pleasure chased the next and she could feel the crest of her rising climax nearing, charging her blood, filling her with desperate, reckless need. She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out everything but the fantasy, her fingers working frantically. “Talk to me. What would you do, Kaz? What would you say?”
“I’d want to come inside you,” he blurted out. The low, urgent sound of his voice, the way she could hear the mattress shift as he thrust fast and hard into his fist under the sheet, told her that he was close as well. Eyes shut, still lost in the fantasy, Inej imagined that the sounds of them touching themselves were the sounds of their bodies coming together, wet and frantic. That each slide of the edge of the mattress against the bed frame was driven by him thrusting into her.
“Inej–” his words tumbled out, breathless and ragged. “I wouldn’t– do it if you– oh– didn’t want me to, but– oh, fuck, I– ahh– could I?”
“Yes,” she moaned, and she could hear the moment he came, shuddering, with a broken cry. She imagined the gentle, spreading heat of him spilling inside her, the intimacy of it, and ground her hips into her own touch. She let herself feel the fragile moment when he shattered and gave himself to her entirely, the way he would collapse into her arms, and followed him over the edge.
Her own breath stuttered in her lungs and she strained and arched and whimpered. She could hear the soft sound of wonder and arousal he made, the way he said her name– worshipful, treasuring– “Inej. Just like that, come for me, that’s it–” and the elation in his voice, as if he was feeling it with her.
As if her pleasure meant so much more to him than his own.
And she knew that it did, and she soared, with him, for him– beneath him as he kissed her, tender and passionate and more real than anything in her past. More real than the faltering attempts and lingering nightmares of her present.
“I’d hold you,” he said (and he was holding her in every way that mattered.) “I’d tell you how brave you are. How strong and perfect you are. How I’ll never betray the trust you’ve given me, ever.” She could hear his labored breathing and imagined it on the hollow of her throat, the weight of him on her, around her, inside of her. She could almost feel his heartbeat slowing as he slipped out of her and caressed her hair with a shaking hand. He would, he would. He would touch her like she was sacred and she would revel in it.
“I’d call you my love.” His voice shook. Her heart clenched, and she breathed the words back to him as the aftershocks sent their slow ripples through her. My love.
A warm, tender silence grew between them, and she nestled into the sheets, unwilling to speak or move and let this closeness dissipate. She opened her eyes and watched him. His face was deeply flushed, his throat and upper lip glistening with sweat. His expression was blissful to the point of pain. He was there with her, she knew, whispering tender things into her bare skin as they lay tangled together, free from the scars on their bodies and souls.
She reached for his hand and twined her fingers into his. He squeezed lightly.
She squeezed back.