The rustle of sheets at dawn, the soft drag of her thigh over yours, skin still sleep-warm and humming.

Her voice drops low when she murmurs your name against your collarbone, the shiver that races down your spine when her teeth graze the shell of your ear.

The air is thick with that hazy, half-dream quiet where time feels optional. She shifts again, deliberate this time, her knee sliding higher until it nudges between yours, pressing just enough to make your breath hitch. Her lips find the corner of your mouth first (not quite a kiss, more a tease), then trail slow and open along your jaw, tasting salt and last night’s want still clinging to your skin.

You feel her smile when your hips roll up to meet hers without permission.

“Still sleepy?” she whispers, voice rough velvet, the kind that scrapes gently over every raw nerve. Her hand slips under the sheet, palm flat against your stomach, fingers spreading possessive and lazy. Heat pools instantly beneath her touch, heavy and liquid.

You manage something that might be a no, or maybe her name; it comes out broken anyway. She hums, pleased, and lets her nails drag downward, light enough to raise goosebumps, firm enough to promise more. The sheets twist around your thighs as she moves over you fully now, hair spilling like dark water across your chest, her mouth finally sealing over yours (deep, unhurried, filthy in the sweetest way).

Dawn can wait. The world can wait.

There’s only the slow, deliberate drag of her body against yours, the catch of her breath when you grip her hips hard enough to leave marks, and the way she sighs (like relief, like surrender) when you finally pull her down and make her forget the concept of morning altogether.

The sheets are damp where your backs touched all night, cool now against the sudden furnace of her skin as she drags her thigh higher (slow, deliberate, the fine rasp of faint stubble along her leg catching on yours). You feel every millimeter: the slick heat of her inner thigh sliding over your hipbone, the tremor in her muscle when your own leg hooks instinctively around hers, locking her in place.

Her breath is a hot, uneven ribbon across your throat (coffee and sleep and something darker, metallic with want). When she says your name it vibrates straight through bone, a low thrum that settles between your legs like a second heartbeat. You answer with a sound you don’t recognize, raw, half-swallowed, and she rewards it by biting down on the tendon at your neck (not gentle). The sting flares white-hot, then melts into a pulse that throbs in your cunt in perfect sync.

Her hair is everywhere, cool silk dragging over your chest, your nipples tightening painfully at the contrast. You smell her: skin warmed by dreams, faint traces of last night’s sex still clinging to the hollow of her throat, the sharp citrus of her shampoo gone feral with sweat. When she shifts, the sheet peels away from her back with a wet little sound that makes you clench around nothing.

Her hand is under the waistband now, no hesitation, two fingers sliding through the slick that’s been gathering since the first rustle of cotton. The noise it makes is obscene in the quiet room (wet, shameless). She pauses there, just the pads of her fingers resting against your entrance, letting you feel how ready you are, how you’re fluttering against her like you’re trying to pull her in without words. You can hear your own pulse in your ears, a frantic drum that matches the throb beneath her touch.

“Look at me,” she says, voice shredded, almost angry with need.

You force your eyes open. The room is still gray with early light, but her pupils have swallowed everything else, black and enormous. She watches your face like she’s memorizing it while she sinks those two fingers inside you in one slow, merciless push. The stretch burns just right; your back arches hard enough that your shoulders leave the mattress. She curls them immediately, finds that spot with brutal accuracy, and holds there (no movement, just pressure, letting you feel the throb of her knuckles against your clit every time your hips jerk).

You’re panting into her mouth now, open and desperate, tasting her tongue every time she allows it. The air between you is so thick it feels edible. Your hands scrabble for purchase (one fist twisted in her hair, the other clawing at the small of her back, trying to drag her impossibly closer). Your thigh is trapped high on her hip; she grinds down against it once, twice, a broken moan tearing out of her when your muscle flexes under her slick heat.

She pulls her fingers almost all the way out (agonizingly slow), then slams them back in, knuckles first, the wet slap echoing. Again. Again. Each thrust drags a helpless sound from your throat; each withdrawal leaves you empty and aching for half a heartbeat too long. The tension coils so tight it hurts, a wire pulled vibrating between your hipbones.

“Please,” you rasp, the word cracking in half.

She smiles against your lips (small, wicked, tender) and finally, finally gives you the rhythm you’re dying for, fast and hard and perfect, her palm grinding against your clit with every stroke. The world narrows to the slick drag of her fingers inside you, the scrape of her teeth on your lower lip, the broken way she keeps whispering your name like a prayer and a threat at once.

You’re so close it’s almost unbearable, every nerve screaming, suspended right there on the edge she refuses to let you fall over just yet.

Her fingers are still buried deep, moving in that ruthless, perfect rhythm, but suddenly it’s not enough and it’s too much all at once. Your chest cracks open like a fault line.

You turn your face into the damp hollow of her neck so she won’t see, but of course she feels it (the way your breath catches wetly, the tremor that has nothing to do with pleasure anymore). She slows, just enough to keep you teetering, and presses her lips to your temple.

“Hey,” she whispers, soft, almost scared. “Come back. Stay with me.”

The tenderness undoes you worse than any cruelty could. A sound rips out of you (half sob, half moan) and you cling harder, nails digging crescents into her shoulder blade like if you let go she’ll vanish. You’re shaking everywhere now, not from coming but from the terror that this (her mouth on your skin, her pulse against your tongue, the way she says your name like it’s the only word she’s ever loved) might be temporary.

“I’ve got you,” she says, and her voice cracks on it. You feel the sting of her own tears against your cheekbone, hot and impossible. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

She curls her fingers inside you and holds them still, letting you throb around the invasion, letting the ache bloom into something bigger than bodies. Your hips rock helplessly, chasing and retreating at once, because the pleasure is suddenly too bright, too sharp, like looking straight at the sun.

You pull back just enough to meet her eyes and they’re glassy, wide open, stripped raw. No smirk now. Just fear and want and something so tender it feels lethal.

“I’m—” you start, but the words choke. I’m terrified. I’m yours. I don’t know how to be this bare and still breathe.

She hears it anyway. She always hears everything you can’t say.

“I know,” she breathes. “Me too.”

Then she kisses you like she’s drowning and you’re air (slow, reverent, filthy with devotion). Her free hand cups your face, thumb stroking the tears you didn’t mean to let fall, smearing them across your cheekbone like she’s claiming them. When she starts moving again, it’s different (not fucking you anymore, but holding you together with every stroke, anchoring you inside your own skin).

The coil in your belly is still there, white-hot and unbearable, but now it’s braided tight with something softer, something that hurts in the center of your chest. You can feel her heart hammering against your ribs, frantic, the same rhythm as yours.

“Let go,” she murmurs against your lips, voice shaking. “I’ve got all of you. Every broken piece. Let me have it.”

The words shatter the last of your defenses. You come undone with a cry that sounds like her name and tastes like salt, clenching hard around her fingers, wave after wave of it ripping through you until you’re sobbing openly into her mouth. She keeps moving through it, drawing it out, gentling you only when your body starts to fold in on itself from overstimulation.

When it finally ebbs, she doesn’t pull away. She stays inside you, wrapped around you, letting you shake apart in the cradle of her arms. You bury your face in her neck and feel her swallow hard, feel the tremor in her own breath as she presses kiss after kiss to your hair.

Minutes (or hours) pass in the wet hush of aftermath. The dawn has gone from gray to gold, light spilling over the tangle of your limbs, gilding the tears on her lashes.

You’re both crying quietly now, foreheads touching, breathing the same small pocket of air.