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[ailerons]

[ Call, response. His palms hook at her hips, pulling her close and flush with a firm tug. Like a nip at her jaw, or the kind of accusation that gets followed by a real, open kiss: You like that I'm a fucking dumbass. She's close and in his lap and he watches, through half-lidded eyes, the way the pretty bow of her mouth presses into the gold band. Anora Mikheeva, as sweet as she is mean. And she is so goddamn mean. His wife who laughs and writhes and loves and runs. His wife. His wife.

His hands catch at hers. Rolls his spine and curves his shoulders inward, in clear invitation for her to take the chain over his head. The grin on his face is smaller, flashing just for her. Marquise cut, clear as a bell:— ]

You just want me to fuck you while I'm wearing it.

[ As easy as following escape routes and paths to glory, his right palm sinks into the landscape at her back, just above her tailbone. His left unsnaps the chain; lets it unspool, snakelike metal flash, to disappear somewhere into her carpet.

The first time, he'd been blinded by it. All the sacred ways going back home centered him, to a place that felt permanent even when it wasn't; the loosening of pressure when he could turn off the light, roll over, and bury his nose into the soft crook of her throat. No more sirens, no more deadbolts. Houdini fucking bullshit. Practicing easy lifts, sleight of hand he'd known since he was barely fifteen, because the weight of something as simple as a ring threw him off his game.

He knows what it means, now. A thief takes what isn't his, expatriates, but a man stays. The gold band fits just as easily as it used to on his ring finger, and Jake grins wide. Doesn't show off the sight — just presses his left hand to the creamy-soft skin of her stomach, above her bellybutton, widening the gap of her robe. Feeling it, over seeing it. ]

I'll get you a new one, [ he says. Tells, intones, promises, because he never did ask what she did with hers. Angling in, he runs his mouth over her jaw, lips working over her skin when he murmurs, ] What do you want? Tereshchenko Blue? The Wittelsbach-Graff? [ A wick of a laugh. ] Botticelli? Klimt?

[ His hand skates up. Boyishly playful, teasing, brushing against her sides, light enough to almost be ticklish. An echo, softer: ]

You and me, huh?

[haggle]

( not liable to survive a lie detector: the uptick-jump of her pulse, an arrested inhale in her throat. busted and booked and bagged, evidence to serve on trial. ani smiles through it, anyway. sticky-sweet, shameless, a mugshot that says: i'd do it again. she might have denied it, made him sweat to extract the confession from her, if she'd missed him less. if he was only another failed audition for a husband in her bed, and not the real thing. the one she wrote her life around, even when he wasn't on set. a leading man she can't recast. )

You and me, baby. ( a practiced silhouette, her head tips to the side, dark hair sliding down the bared curve of her robe. femme fatale charm, right before the double-cross — innocent voice, bedroom eyes, dirty mouth, worse mind. she leans in, the big reveal: ) I want everyone to know you fuck me wearing it. That ain't a crime, officer.

( a good thief works in the shadows, lets the job speak for their reputation. he doesn't have the luxury of an anonymous identity anymore; ani never had one the minute she signed away her privacy. jake seresin, retired burglar. anora mikheeva, retired wife. until that one last irresistible job comes around. if he's going to wear that ring and mean it, she wants him caught in the act of loving her. let the whole goddamn world know what he stole. some men don't stay gone. some things don't need to stay hidden. sometimes, stepping into the spotlight ain't so bad, when you've finally got something worth showing off.

she never did have the same taste for subtlety that makes a good con artist.

punctuation, the question mark at the end of that sentence: she swirls her hips over his jeans. proof she still fucking owns him, proof she can still drive him crazy without lifting a finger. she giggles around a sigh, a shivering hum. equal parts siren song and girlish glee, like playing opposite him again is the most fun she’s had in years. )

Save 'em for the anniversary. ( her head moves with his mouth, distracted, squirming when callouses catch on her sides. letting him case the joint, look for new pathways, map the old ones. wondering, all the time, if she still feels like a blueprint he'd known blindfolded, if he has every one of her structural weaknesses memorized. ) Nothin' beats the originals.

( her first love. her first husband. her first ring. sentimental, sure. always. proven by her fingers plucking up his chain, wrapping it around her wrist until it's been repurposed. finders keepers. oldest trick in the book. )

How about a deal? ( a glint in her eye. high stakes, high drama. the way she's always loved to play, if he's her opponent. the way she knows he can never resist the thrill of a challenge, especially if the prize on the other end is worth the pursuit. ) I'll wear it if you can find it. First clue: it ain't far.

[ailerons]

[ His cock jumps. Hard. Twitching with a jerk of his hips, proof that she still fucking owns him, and Jake laughs with a strain in his throat and his fingers digging into her hip. Yeah — she does. Yeah — she still drives him fucking crazy. I'll wear it if you can find it, meaning that she kept it, like she kept the postcard, and the good memories, and the bad ones, and his lit up, ambitious, greedy fucking heart. Still and still and still and always.

He kisses her. Bruising, tender, both things all at once. His palm skips upward and over the ladder of her ribs, dragging hard-won calluses, right up to the underside of her breast. His thumb swipes at the soft swell of it. Tease, play, calling then raising: ]

You're making me work for it.

[ The kind of accusation that's approving, thick with the messy knot of attraction and desire and press of a denim zipper that might not be so comfortable in a couple of minutes. Playfully, he returns the glint in her eye with one of his own. It's all the warning before he rolls them, a strong thigh between her legs. His shoulders rolling as he crowds her into the floor. No other way to say Game on, honey. No other way except to bend his head and kiss her cheek. Chaste and slow and hiding a smile, her hair tickling his nose, smelling like smoke and cherries and too-early walks on the broadwalk. ]

How about here? [ X marks the spot, however it goes. Jake's mouth trails lower to the join of her shoulder. ] Or here? [ Lower and lower again: her collarbones, the spot between them, the place of her knitted sternum, between the valley of her breasts.

A beat. A hard stop, as his head stays bowed, his brows pushing together in thorough motion. And then, distractedly, blithely, as if he's only just remembered, a mouth that never shut up but a brain that was clocking in overtime as he looks up: ]

Locked drawer?

[ He snooped, before she found him here. Obviously, obviously, but didn't pick open the lock. Wary of time, wary of distance. Wary of what she might find sacred in a life where she didn't need him anymore. His face splits into another wide grin. ]

I thought that was where you kept your favorite vibrator.

[haggle]

( obvious spots for a secret. a locked drawer. the little tripwires of her neve-endings, the parts of her body where her sighs still live and breathe, pressure points that arch under his sweeping thumb, the clasps where she comes unlatched prettily. old hiding places he used to love. still does — she can feel it in the kiss-swollen pout of her mouth, an insecurity kissed right out of her along with her oxygen. wary of time, wary of distance, wary of what rusts in absence.

she nips back a pearly smile. not a tease, not a play — just the giddy shimmer that comes with making her own invaluable find: she must still feel, taste, sound like home. not so broken or reshaped that his body has forgotten how to want her. too wanted to ever go forgotten again.

he still tastes like her favorite oral fixations: spearmint, nicotine, jake. if one wasn't in her mouth back then, another always was, anora mikheeva's holy trinity of filthy habits. her tongue flicks out, drags him up by the hair to chase the flavor again. gripped too tight, like he might disappear if he travels too far down her body.

the rest of him is as familiar as it isn't — ridges of new muscle her fingertips slide over, trespassing underneath the hem of his henley. prison-strong, made hardier behind bars. her heart tightens. not arousal. not not arousal. it's an ache closer to remorse. for things she's missed. showing up to the trial, but not the pen pal letters, conjugal visits, one-a-day phone calls. what she might've gotten to see play out, if she hadn't been so fucking scared. )

Uh huh.

( dealer's choice what it's agreement to, dripping off her tongue like caramel. melted into something sweet, distracted. probably his guess. probably his observation of the obvious: you're making me work for it, as if she's ever let him have it easy. probably the solid press of his thigh between hers, her own squeezing a bracket around it. dragging herself against him in slow, syrupy glides, cunt to muscle, rough denim to lace. indulgent, unrushed, unconsciously — like a lazy sunday morning, soft warmth, nowhere else to be. she laughs a beat late, like she's only just now paying attention. )

That vibrator's 24K, sweetheart. Show some respect. ( trick of the trade he taught her: sometimes the obvious is so obvious, it's missed. other tricks of the trade: the well-made false bottom to that drawer, ani's matryoshka doll of secrets. treasure worth hiding well, even if it meant nothing to anyone but her. a sound chimes out of her, wound-up like a music box. lyrically closer to a whine, eyes hazy, dare and hint both: ) Second clue? Try goin' lower. Ain't the first time you're gonna have to talk your way into somethin' tight.

[ailerons]

[ Conversationally, ]

Personal best is four minutes.

[ Like she doesn't know. Like it wasn't with her, fucked up from jetlag and starving at 2am, convincing a local restaurant to stay open just a little longer. She rocks herself against his thigh and Jake hums, tightening, pushing up, giving back, letting her take it; he looks down at her with an expression impossibly open and tender, like she isn't grinding over his jeans. His girl. His mean, mouthy, soulmate of a girl.

His left hand finds her first. A palm wrapping over her throat, a signal more than an attempt at a squeeze. He kisses her again, filthy and warm and open-mouthed. Spearmint sugar and spit and gum, passed from his mouth to hers. Jake grins, as blinding as fucking lights when he pulls away, mimes a lazy mockery of a salute, and drags himself lower. The rasp of lips and stubble against her breasts, her ribs, her belly; the glint of teeth as he bites into intricate lace, tugging her panties off with his thumbs and his mouth. Show and fucking tell.

He shoulders in between her legs. Right there, on the floor, palms cupping her hips. His cheek knocks softly into her knee and he kisses her everywhere but the small, swollen aftermark of her burn.

Doesn't avoid pressing his mouth right over her bruises. Not the way boyfriends say sorry in arguments, not the way husbands apologize for forgotten anniversaries — but the acknowledgement, instead. That it happened. That it all happened, in the dark, lying beside someone else in silk-soft sheets, while Jake stared up at cinderblock ceilings and thought about what he'd written behind a priceless painting in Saltburnt with bold, inky Cyrillic. Defacing the joy of a Fragonard because it was the next best thing to the back of a napkin. Five words, the vows that had come first before the practiced ones later: I'll take care of you. ]

Thought about you all the time, Ani.

[ He murmurs it into the softness of her thigh. Easy enough, to think he might just be talking about sex. That he's talking about that first moment when he puts his mouth over her, leisurely and wet and syrup-slow. That he's talking about the way his lashes jump, then close, the grunt before he tugs her closer, indulgent but needy, wanting to know if her thighs still shake the same. If she still tastes the same when he hungrily maps her open with his lips and his tongue and a finger, slick and easy, to give her something to clench down on. ]

[haggle]

( her body still knows he's home. one of those undeniable facts you never forget: sky is blue, grass is green, and jake seresin is the only place that's ever been strong enough to hold her up. safe walls, quiet place, a solid foundation she could finally trust to carry all her heaviness. a man who built love the way others build houses: stupid, stubborn, sturdy. brick by impossible brick, promise by impossible promise. so she opens her legs wider to him, like she always did, always has, always will; petals apart with slick, shameless ease — warm, welcoming, wet. clenching down on his finger, her cunt, greedy, bossy, soaked with need: don't you dare fucking leave me again.

it hurts, a little. not because of jake — because her body jolts where he's pressed his mouth to the aching bruise of what she's become. months of skinned knees, trying to outrun the ghost of him in someone else's bed. weeks of begging for it to hurt just to drown out the echo of his name in her head. nights spread wide for mouths that never kissed her right, just spat her out when they were satisfied. never asked her where it hurts; never tried to make it better, only worse.

it tears a gasp from her, sharp and wanting. the whole of her sensitive, sore, starved, shuddering up to meet him like she might just come from the warmth of his breath alone. like she's waited decades for him to come back and kiss it better. feels longer still when his tongue drags a devastating line up her slit — too hot, too slow, too fucking much.

she shakes through it, the wobble of something strong threatening collapse. it's not polished or practiced; not costumed or choreographed like she's been for the others, only worth keeping around when the performance stays pretty. only willing herself to stay when they didn't ask for anything real. her spine bows, tight with tension; toes dig into the carpet, her other heel landing uselessly between his shoulder blades, sliding down his back in a restless stutter. hips squirming with a need to run from what feels too good, too raw, too ruining. )

God. ( a sobbing keen of a moan, done with all the hiding. ani's eyes prickle from the intensity. ) I fucking missed you.

( easy enough, to think she might just be talking about the sex, not how he fucking devours her even — especially — when she's mean, messy, mouthy. not how she knows, now, she's starred in his thoughts as much as he's haunted hers. not how his mouth between her legs always sounds like an i love you. her hand fumbles down to her hip, grasps at the back of his fingers. less desperate to come than to be chosen.

softer, ragged. safer to sigh, because his mouth is too full to answer fast: ) I thought you'd never come back.

[ailerons]

[ For a moment — one where he's knuckle deep inside of her, mouth laving hotly over her cunt, heavy lidded eyes angling up the roam of her body to watch the way her spine tenses and shakes and bows — he thinks of the skies. He looks at her and something tugs urgently inside of his chest. The same, limitless promise. Open and a wonder. Endless. Weightless. Like he can do anything, in the place where he belongs.

It feels so disorientingly familiar that he groans, heavy and dark and low, right against her. His fingers at her hip turn, clench; the thick band of his digits knits tightly against hers, curling so harshly that it's as if Jake is trying to anchor her there, between dirt and atmosphere, by something as ordinary as touch alone. He mouths over her folds, and the messy crease of her thigh, and his finger hammers into her with soft, slick fucks. Muscle memory that his body never unlearned, for the way she likes to come. The way she is when she wants more. The way her hips roll so hard that he uses his hand, the one that's folded into hers, to move an arm across her hips, baring her flat and down and close as he drags his tongue across her clit over and over again.

Keeping her there with a different kind of strength. An iron-bar promise. Stay. Stay still. Stay still for me, and we'll build this all over again, anywhere you want. Anywhere you ask.

I'm always going to come back for you. I'll never be late again.

There. Close. Almost. Always. There's no real force on earth that can promise any of those things like they're non-negotiables. Jake Seresin, acting like doubt isn't ever in his DNA, even when it was. (What the hell is wrong with you. Why didn't you write me. What did I do wrong. I thought you'd never come back.) She flutters and clenches and he pushes in another finger without warning, a coax and call, and when she comes he doesn't stop until it has to edge something that aches.

And then he's the one who bears all the urgency, too good and too raw and too ruining. Pupils blown and jaw shiny and thumbing open his jeans, his zipper, bowing back up and catching her mouth with his own full of her taste, the force of a shudder rolling down his back as he barely stills. ]

Ani—

[ Helpless. Right there, hook and line, target and bullseye, heart and home. He kisses her all over again, pushing the taste of her further inside, his own movements suddenly turning clumsy and fever-hot, spinning recklessly into the hairpin turn. ]

[haggle]

( panic from a thief — in any room beyond this one, it's an unforgivable crime. makes him sloppy, makes his tells too loud, makes the greed a fucking neon sign lit up in his eyes. ani smooths back the wild strand of hair haloing his temple, smooth southern charm sandpapered to rough grit. his usual calm glide through life's storms, untouchable — all man-made turbulence against her, now. she's not the place a man sticks an easy landing; she's the up-draft. lifts a man up, tears him down, on a whim of nature. the only one that can ever have him like this — golden, godly icarus singed by a girl who burns brighter and bolder, nosediving down into the dirt. made real, made raw. made hers, like nothing else has ever been hers.

she knows that look of desperation. knows she's wearing it now, pupils blown wide, swallowing the warm whiskey‑brown. knows she's worn it, with deja-vu clarity — reflected back to her in the glittering face of diamonds, blue glow of an atm screen, eyes that looked at her without seeing. people who were never hers, lives that she'd never get to have. the times she's drawn up short: that's not for you, ani. never for you. and the one time she'd thought, maybe, maybe that unbelievable daydream was finally hers —

jake kisses her with the same split-open longing, like she's always wanted to be kissed: not just worth wanting, keeping, but vital. precious, priceless. she whines, loud, into his mouth, wrecked by the intensity of him; drags her tongue, wet and messy, to catch the salt-sweet taste of her sugared to his teeth. spit threads between them, sticky gum still tucked behind her molars; it gets lost and caught up between their tongues, slick and saliva and spearmint, a sting of nicotine. so dizzyingly nostalgic she can only gasp, )

Jake.

( call and response. here, it says. i'm right here. you're home. look at me, look at me. a hand cups his jawline to hold it steady, licking clean the evidence of her orgasm on his skin. snags her nails in his shirt with scrambling impatience, an annoyed, pissed-off breath at finding any barrier still exists to separate them. flexes her thighs tight around his hips, taking out the frustration on his denim, the obscene drip of her darkening the fabric, a monet watercolor that's all ani's frantic, hip-arching brushstrokes. and when the blunt head of his cock catches on her clit, slips down to nudge her open perfectly —

she clenches down so violently she can only curl forward, sink her teeth into his lip to hide the high, broken sound it breaks loose in her. ragged and reedy against his mouth, like he isn't already jet fuel burning up, another match to light him up: )

You feel that? That's what missin' you did to me. ( she's never known how to beg out loud. learned real fast that it never changed a damn thing for her. still, it sounds like a plea, the please locked in her throat, when she grips at his fucking stupid, perfect hair: ) This pussy's been waiting for you, baby. You gonna stay where you belong this time?