@thenerdandthedove asked:
[ wristgrab ] in the middle of a heated moment, sender pins receiver’s wrists above their head + reverse //for aj, from paloma
AJ caught Paloma’s wrists before he fully thought better of it.
That was the problem with her. Or one of the problems, anyway, because there seemed to be a growing list and every single one of them was becoming less useful as a warning and more useful as an excuse to get closer. She got under his skin too easily. Too fast. One look, one challenge, one little spark of defiance in the middle of something already burning too hot, and suddenly all the careful pieces of himself he usually kept locked down started slipping their chains.
His fingers closed around her wrists and lifted them above her head, pinning them there, not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough to make a point.
A point that immediately made something low and hungry drag through him when he saw the position they were in.
AJ’s mouth curved before he could stop it, teasing because teasing was safer than admitting that his pulse had gone ugly and frantic beneath his skin. Teasing meant control. Teasing meant he could pretend he was still standing on solid ground instead of leaning over the edge with both hands open and no damn intention of stepping back unless she gave him a reason.
“Careful,” he murmured, voice low, rough at the edges despite his attempt to sound amused. “You keep looking at me like that, I might start thinking you’re trying to get yourself in trouble.”
It was a gamble, saying it that way. A door left open, not a verdict. He watched her as the words settled between them, watched for resistance, for discomfort, for anything that told him he had misread the heat in the room. He had spent too much of his life learning the difference between being wanted and being endured, between someone leaning in and someone freezing because they did not know how to get away.
He would not become that kind of man.
So even as his mouth lowered to the exposed line of her skin, even as the first kiss landed warm and slow enough to make his own restraint feel like a personal insult, AJ kept part of himself braced and listening. His thumb shifted against the inside of her wrist, not quite a question, but close. The pressure of his grip eased by a fraction, enough that if she wanted to pull away, she could. Enough that he could tell himself he was still being decent.
Because the rest of him was already gone.
He kissed along every stretch of skin he could reach, each one less controlled than the last. Her temple. The edge of her jaw. The delicate place beneath it that made his thoughts trip over themselves before they could become anything useful. He did not know what she was thinking, not really. He could guess. He could hope. He could build whole arrogant little theories out of the way she let him remain this close, but guessing was still guessing, and wanting something badly enough did not make it true.
That was the part that irritated him most.
No, worse, he wanted her to tell him.
He wanted her to snap at him, shove back, laugh in his face, pull him down, say his name like a warning or a dare or a mistake she had every intention of making twice. He wanted whatever she chose, so long as it was hers. So long as when he pushed, she had somewhere to push back.
His mouth paused against her skin.
For half a second, AJ almost said something stupid. Something too honest. Something that would have handed her the knife and shown her exactly where to put it.
Instead, he breathed out a quiet, uneven laugh.
“Still with me?” he asked, softer now, though the heat had not gone out of his voice. If anything, it had sunk deeper, turned heavier, turned into something that made restraint feel less like virtue and more like punishment. “Because I can keep teasing you all night, sweetheart, but I’m not doing a damn thing if you don’t want me to.”
That should have cooled him down.
If anything, saying it made him more aware of the space between them. Of the way his hand still held hers above her head. Of the fact that he could let go. Of the fact that he had not yet, because he was waiting for her to decide what happened next and every second of that waiting was its own particular form of torture.
AJ lifted his head just enough to look at her properly.
The teasing was still there, because he did not know how to exist without some kind of armor between himself and the truth, but it had thinned. Cracked, maybe. Something more careful showing through the heat of him.
“Tell me what you want,” he said, quieter than before.
And then, because he was still AJ, because even now he could not leave well enough alone, his mouth tugged at one corner.
“Or tell me to stop being smug before I start enjoying myself.”
titsay
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
2087
areudirty
