"Desensitization."
Griswald stared.
Not at her face. Not at the wall behind her. Not at the mythology book splayed on the floor or the tablet on his pillow or any of the safe, neutral surfaces his survival instincts screamed at him to redirect his attention toward.
He stared at her breasts.
The olive skin caught the overhead light and held it, turning the sterile fluorescence into something warm and alive. Each breast sat heavy and round against her slender ribcage, their fullness defying the narrow frame that supported them. They rose and fell with her breathing, a slow, measured rhythm that drew his gaze to the way the soft flesh shifted with each expansion of her lungs. The pink of her nipples had tightened further in the cool air, the small buds stiffening into delicate points that cast tiny shadows across the smooth curve beneath them. A faint crease formed where each breast met her sternum, a line of shadow that deepened and softened as she breathed. The skin there looked impossibly smooth and unblemished. The kind of surface that existed only in paintings, and of course it did, because the woman who designed this body had invented chiaroscuro and understood light and shadow the way other people understood breathing.
She had sculpted herself into the embodiment of beauty. And these, bare and presented without ceremony or shame, fit that design so completely that Griswald's brain refused to process them as real. They belonged in a museum. Behind glass. Accompanied by a placard written in Italian and a security guard who would politely ask you to stop drooling.
Da Vinci giggled.
The sound broke through his paralysis like a stone through still water. Her shoulders shook with it, her breasts bouncing gently with the motion, which did nothing whatsoever to help his condition.
"I'm flattered." Her eyes danced. Warm amber lit from within by genuine delight. "Truly. That expression is worth preserving. I should sketch it."
His jaw worked. No sound emerged.
"However." She raised a finger, and even that simple gesture pulled the soft flesh of her chest into a new configuration that his eyes tracked with desperate, involuntary precision. "This is precisely the problem. You cannot afford to be rendered catatonic by a pair of breasts in the field. If a Servant requires emergency mana transfer and your response is to stand there with your mouth hanging open like a landed fish, people will die."
The bluntness cut through the fog. His jaw closed with an audible click.
"I wasn't... I'm not..."
"You were. You are." No cruelty in her voice. Just the patient certainty of a diagnosis. "And that is perfectly natural. But natural responses can be trained." Her smile softened. "That is what we will work on first. Getting you accustomed to the female body without it shutting down every higher function you possess."
Her hand left his knee. Rising her fingers slid around the back of his skull, threading into the messy layers of blond hair at his nape. Her palm was warm against his skin. The touch was gentle. Guiding rather than forcing. She applied the barest pressure, a suggestion more than a command, and drew his head forward.
His vision narrowed. The sterile white of the ceiling disappeared. The walls vanished. The room ceased to exist. The world compressed to warm olive skin and soft, yielding flesh as Da Vinci guided his face into the valley between her breasts.
The sensation of her skin pressing against both his cheeks simultaneously, smooth, heated and impossibly soft. His glasses pushed askew, one lens flat against the inner curve of her right breast, the frame digging into the bridge of his nose. He couldn't see. He could barely breathe. His entire sensory field reduced to the feel of her against his face and the scent of her filling his lungs.
His body locked rigid. Every muscle taut. His hands frozen at his sides, fingers splayed, not daring to touch.
"Shhhh."
The sound vibrated through her chest and into his skull. The hum of it resonated through the soft tissue pressed against his ears, muffled and intimate, closer than any voice had ever been.
"Shhh. It's all right."
Her fingers moved through his hair. Slow, deliberate strokes from the crown of his head down to his nape, her nails barely grazing his scalp. Each pass sent a cascade of warmth down his spine that loosened the rigid knots in his shoulders by fractions. She combed through the tangled blond layers with patient, unhurried fingers, working through small snags without pulling, her touch as precise as everything else she did.
"Just breathe, Griswald. Enjoy this." Her voice was hushed. Intimately close enough that her lips brushed the top of his head when she spoke. "There's no urgency here. No enemy. No timer. Just let yourself feel."
His lungs obeyed before his brain could object. A shaking breath drawn through the narrow gap between her breasts, filling with her warmth. The exhale fogged against her sternum.
"Good." Her fingers traced a circle behind his ear. "Just like that."
Something in the word unlocked a hinge inside him. The praise, simple and undemanding. Not a grade or an assessment or a comparison against siblings who outperformed him. Just acknowledgment that he was doing something right by the act of breathing.
He nuzzled into her.
The motion was instinctive. His nose pressed deeper into the warm crease between her breasts. His cheek turned, sliding against the soft inner curve, his skin dragging across hers with a friction that sent heat pooling low in his stomach. His chin tucked. His forehead settled against her breastbone. The rigid line of his spine softened by a single degree, then another, his weight shifting forward until he was leaning into her rather than being held.
"There you go." She whispered it into his hair. Her fingers gathered a fistful of blond strands and released them, let them fall, gathered them again. "See? Nothing to fear."
He turned his head the other direction. His nose traced a line across her sternum and settled against her left breast. The skin was warmer here. He could feel her heartbeat through the flesh, a steady drum beneath the softness, rhythmic and unhurried. His lips parted against the curve without conscious decision. Not kissing. Just resting there. Breathing her in.
Da Vinci hummed. Low in her throat. Pleased.
Her biceps flexed. The motion was subtle, a tightening of the muscles in her upper arms that pressed her breasts inward from both sides. The soft flesh compressed around his face, enveloping him. His cheeks, his temples, the bridge of his nose, all buried in yielding warmth that squeezed gently from both directions. The world outside her body vanished completely. Sound muffled to a distant hum. Light reduced to the faint glow filtering through the thin skin pressed against his closed eyelids.
His glasses had been pushed entirely off his nose. They dangled from one ear, forgotten.
"You're doing wonderfully," she murmured, her arms maintaining the gentle compression, her breasts pillowed around his head like the most indecent cradle ever constructed.
A sigh escaped him. Long, shuddering, drawn from somewhere behind his ribs that he hadn't known existed. The tension in his shoulders dissolved like salt in warm water. His hands unclenched at his sides, fingers relaxing from their rigid splay into loose, open palms that rested against his thighs.
Da Vinci felt the change. Of course she did. She noticed everything.
"Now then." Her arms loosened their compression, allowing a sliver of cool air to reach his flushed cheeks. "Desensitization is only step one. Knowing how to look at a woman without fainting is survival. Knowing how to make her feel good?" She paused. Her heartbeat quickened beneath his cheek. Just a fraction. Just enough that he noticed. "That is artistry."
She reached down. Her fingers found his wrists where they hung limp at his sides and circled them. Her grip was firm but not forceful. She lifted his hands, guiding them upward through the narrow space between their bodies, his knuckles brushing the flat plane of her stomach, the ridge of her lower ribs, the soft underside of each breast as she positioned his palms against her.
His fingers made contact and his entire body flinched.
"Don't pull away." Quiet authority in her voice. The teacher who brooked no retreat from a lesson already begun. "Keep your hands where I placed them."
He obeyed. His palms lay flat against the outer curves of her breasts. The flesh was heavier than he expected. Dense and warm beneath skin so smooth it felt frictionless. His fingers curved slightly, following the natural shape, and Da Vinci's breath caught.
"Good instinct." She released his wrists. "Now. The breast is not a stress ball. I cannot emphasize this enough. Do not squeeze it like you are wringing water from a cloth."
His fingers, which had been tightening unconsciously, froze.
"Begin at the outside. The periphery. The nerve density increases as you move inward and upward, so the approach should mirror that gradient. Light pressure first. Circular motion." She placed her hand over his right hand and demonstrated, pushing his fingers into a slow orbit around the outer edge of her breast. The flesh yielded beneath his palm and reformed behind it, a rolling wave of softness that followed his touch. "Feel how the tissue moves? Work with it. Not against it."
He repeated the motion without her guidance. His left hand mirrored the right. Two slow circles tracing the circumference of each breast, his palms gliding across warm olive skin, the heels of his hands pressing just enough to create that yielding compression and release. Da Vinci's chin lifted. Her eyes half-closed.
"Mm. Increase the pressure slightly. Draw the circles tighter."
He spiraled inward. Each revolution brought his fingers closer to the center, the flesh growing more sensitive beneath his touch. He could tell because Da Vinci's breathing changed. The measured rhythm he had listened to whilst buried between her breasts stuttered. Shortened. Her ribs expanded in quick, shallow draws that pushed her chest into his palms.
"Now the nipple." Her voice had dropped half a register. A huskiness had crept in that hadn't been there moments before. "Don't pinch it immediately. Cup the breast from beneath. Use your thumb."
He slid his hands lower, cradling the weight of each breast in his palms. The fullness settled into his grip. His thumbs found the stiffened peaks and brushed across them.
Da Vinci's stomach contracted. A sharp, involuntary pull of muscle that she smoothed over almost instantly, but not before he felt it ripple through the flesh he held.
"Lighter. Barely touching." Her hand found his hair again. Fingers tightening. "Circle it first. The areola. That darker skin surrounding the nipple, it has its own sensitivity. Tease the perimeter before you address the center."
His thumbs traced the textured border where smooth skin gave way to the pebbled circle of her areolae. The change in texture fascinated him. Rougher, warmer, the tiny raised bumps catching against the pad of his thumb as he orbited. Da Vinci's fingers curled in his hair. Not guiding anymore. Gripping.
"Now across." Barely a whisper.
He dragged his thumb directly over the stiff peak. The nub compressed under his touch and sprang back. Da Vinci bit her lower lip. He watched it happen from below, his face still cradled against her chest, his eyes angled upward to see her jaw tighten and her teeth dig into the soft pink flesh of her mouth.
"Repeat that. Vary the speed."
He did. Slow drags alternating with quick flicks. Rolling the nipple between thumb and forefinger when her breathing told him she wanted more. Her lessons grew less articulate, instructions dissolving into fragments and single words. "Harder." "There." "Again."
"Your mouth now."
His pulse spiked.
"Turn your head. You're already in position."
He was. His lips rested centimeters from her left nipple. The stiffened bud stood flushed and swollen from his attention, the areola puckered tight around it. He could feel the heat radiating from the sensitized skin against his lips.
"Start with your tongue. Flat. Broad strokes."
He opened his mouth. His tongue pressed flat against the underside of her breast and dragged upward in a slow, wet line that ended with the tip flicking across her nipple.
Da Vinci gasped. Not a controlled sound. Not measured or composed or calibrated for his benefit. A raw, sharp intake of breath that hiccupped in her throat and came out fractured.
"Yes." Her fingers fisted in his hair. "Circle it. Slowly."
His tongue traced the circumference of her areola, following the same path his thumb had carved. The taste of her skin bloomed across his palate. Clean, faintly salt, with something underneath that was purely her. He completed one circuit and began another, tighter, spiraling inward until the tip of his tongue caught the stiff peak and pressed.
Her back arched. The motion pushed her breast deeper into his mouth. His lips closed around the nipple without instruction, sealing warm and wet around the sensitive flesh, his tongue working the trapped bud in slow, firm strokes.
"Suck gently." The words came out ragged. "Pulse it. Don't... don't maintain constant pressure, vary it, build and release, build and..."
He pulled. Gentle suction that drew the nipple against his tongue, held it, released. Drew again. Harder. His other hand kneaded her right breast in counterpoint, thumb rolling the neglected nipple in circles that matched the rhythm of his mouth.
Da Vinci's composure fractured. Her head fell back. The mechanical bird on the desk fluttered its wings in agitation. Her thighs pressed together beneath the hem of her hiked-up dress, the blue stockings whispering against each other as her hips shifted on the edge of his mattress.
"Switch," she breathed. "Other side. Mirror what you just did."
His mouth released her left nipple with a soft, wet sound and crossed the valley of her sternum. His lips found the right breast already flushed and swollen from his fingers, the nipple dark pink and straining. He didn't wait for instruction this time. His tongue pressed flat against the underside and dragged upward, retracing the same path that had pulled that broken gasp from her moments ago.
The reaction was different. Subtly, but measurably. Her right breast responded to broader strokes where the left had preferred tight circles. He catalogued this without conscious thought, his analytical mind filing the data even as his mouth worked. When he sealed his lips around the nipple and pulsed, her fingers tightened in his hair and her hips rocked forward on the mattress edge.
"Both now." Her voice had shed its pedagogical cadence entirely. What remained was low, textured, the vowels stretched longer than precision demanded. "Mouth on one, hand on the other. Simultaneously."
He obeyed. His left hand cupped her right breast, thumb finding the wet nipple his mouth had just abandoned, rolling it between finger and thumb while his lips and tongue devoted full attention to the left. The dual stimulation drew a sound from Da Vinci that he'd never heard from anyone. Not a moan exactly. More like the audible equivalent of a calculation resolving, a quiet "ah" that carried equal parts surprise and satisfaction.
He varied the rhythm. Sucking in slow pulses on the left while his thumb flicked quick and light across the right. Then reversing. Fast, firm strokes of his tongue against the captured nipple while his hand kneaded in deep, rolling compressions. Each combination produced a different response. Her breathing would hitch or deepen. Her fingers would clutch or release. Her spine would curve toward him or straighten.
"You're watching." She noticed, even through the fog settling behind her amber eyes. "That's the most critical skill. More important than any technique I can teach you."
His mouth released her nipple long enough to speak. "Different reactions to different pressures."
"Precisely." She cupped his jaw, tilting his face up. Her cheeks carried a flush that the overhead light turned golden against her olive skin. "Every woman who comes to you for mana transfer will respond differently. Some will want what I want. Others will want the opposite. Your tongue is useful, but your eyes are essential." Her thumb traced his lower lip, still glistening with saliva. "Watch the breath. Watch the muscles. Watch where her body moves toward you and where it pulls away. The body tells you everything words won't."
"When you put it like that you make it sound like a hard skill to learn."
"It does." She smiled. That enigmatic curve that belonged in the Louvre. "But you have good instincts, and the basics are what matter now. We build the foundation tonight. The artistry comes with practice."
She guided his mouth back to her breast, and the lesson continued.
Minutes dissolved. He lost track of how many. His jaw ached pleasantly and his lips felt swollen and sensitized. He learned that light suction followed by a firm tongue-stroke against the tip made her breath stutter. That kneading the full weight of her breast upward while his mouth worked the nipple from above made her thighs clench. That grazing his teeth, feather-light, across the stiff peak made her fingers spasm in his hair and a sharp "oh" escape through her clenched teeth.
"Enough." The word came out rougher than she intended. She cleared her throat. Straightened her spine. Reassembled the composure that had been steadily unraveling for the past quarter hour, though the flush staining her chest and throat refused to cooperate. "You have the fundamentals. We can refine later."
She released his hair. Her hand settled on his shoulder and pressed downward.
"Kneel on the floor."
Heat flooded his face. The clinical portion of his brain understood the logical progression. The rest of him, the part still tasting her skin on his tongue, the part that had spent the last fifteen minutes learning the specific pitch of her pleasure, that part sent his pulse hammering into his throat.
"On the floor?" His voice cracked on the second word.
"On the floor." Patient and expectant. The teacher waiting for the student to comply.
He slid off the mattress. His knees found the cold tile and the chill shot through his trousers, grounding him. He straightened his back, adjusted his crooked glasses with trembling fingers, and looked up.
Da Vinci rose from the bed. She stood before him and the perspective shift was immediate and disorienting. From this angle, she towered. The overhead light haloed her chestnut waves. Her bare breasts hung full and heavy above him, nipples still dark and swollen from his attention, glistening faintly where his mouth had been. The red and gold panels of her bodice framed them like an open curtain around a stage.
Her skirt fell to mid-thigh. Below its flared hem, those blue stockings with their gold diamond accents climbed her legs and disappeared beneath the fabric. From his knees, the stockings dominated his field of vision. The way the material clung to the toned shape of her calves, hugged the gentle swell of her thighs, the gold accents catching light with each micro-shift of her weight.
"Undress me." She looked down at him with half-lidded amber eyes, her lips still carrying that infuriating, beautiful, knowing smile. "From the waist down. Take your time."
His hands reached for the hem of her skirt.
They were shaking.
His fingertips brushed the hem of her skirt, and the fabric was softer than he expected. Not the stiff brocade it appeared to be from a distance but something yielding, almost silken, that whispered against his knuckles as he gathered it between his fingers. He didn't lift it. Not yet. Instead, his thumbs found the outer seams where the red material met the structured panels of her bodice and traced them upward, following the architecture of the garment, learning how it was constructed before attempting to dismantle it.
Da Vinci watched him with those calculating amber eyes. Her lips parted a fraction.
His fingers found a series of small clasps hidden beneath decorative gold trim at her left hip. Clever construction. He worked the first clasp open. Then the second. The fabric loosened by degrees, the structured tension that held the skirt's shape against her hips releasing incrementally as each clasp surrendered.
He took his time.
Not because Da Vinci told him to. Because he wanted to.
The realization settled into him like warm water filling a glass. He wanted this. Wanted the slow revelation. Wanted to watch the garment peel away from her body in stages, each inch of newly exposed skin a reward for patience. His fingers moved to the right hip and found matching clasps, working them with the same deliberate care, and the skirt sagged. The waistline drooped below her navel, revealing a strip of olive skin between the bunched fabric and the blue underlayer of her bodice. A shallow depression marked her navel, the skin around it taut and smooth, the faintest trace of muscle definition visible beneath.
He hooked his thumbs into the loosened waistband and eased the skirt downward. It slid over the swell of her hips with a friction that required him to angle his wrists outward, accommodating the curve of her body, and the sound it made against her skin was a soft hush that filled the quiet room.
The skirt pooled at her feet in a puddle of red and gold. Beneath it, she wore nothing but the blue stockings and a strip of fabric so minimal it barely qualified as underwear. Sheer, pale blue, stretched taut across the junction of her thighs, the material thin enough that the shadow of what lay beneath darkened the center in a way that drew his eye like gravity draws water downhill.
He forced himself to breathe.
His hands settled on the tops of her thighs, just above where the stockings ended. Bare skin met his palms. Warm and impossibly smooth, the transition from the textured weave of the stockings to naked flesh creating a contrast that made his fingers tighten involuntarily. The gold diamond accents pressed into his wrists as he slid his hands upward, following the line of her thighs toward her hips.
Da Vinci's stomach pulled inward. A shallow contraction she smoothed away almost instantly. But he saw it. He watched, like she told him to.
His fingers curled around the thin straps at her hips. The fabric was damp against his knuckles. He drew the undergarment down with the same patience he'd given the skirt, peeling the sheer material away from her skin, the fabric clinging for a moment where moisture held it before releasing with a faint, wet sound that sent blood rushing to his ears.
Down past her thighs. Past her knees. Down the length of those blue stockings until the scrap of fabric joined the skirt at her feet.
He straightened on his knees and looked.
Her pussy was bare. Smooth olive skin that deepened to a flushed rose where her outer lips pressed together in a neat seam, the delicate folds glistening with arousal that caught the overhead light and turned it liquid. A pearl of moisture clung to the lowest point of her slit, trembling with each subtle shift of her weight, threatening to break free and trace a line down her inner thigh. The hood of her clit peeked from the apex of those pressed lips, a small prominence of darker pink flesh that swelled slightly as he stared. The scent of her reached him. Warm, musky, and very intimate. Not perfume or soap but the raw, undeniable smell of a woman's arousal, rich and thick enough to taste on the back of his tongue.
His mind went blank.
Every rational thought evacuated. His analytical brain, the one that catalogued and categorized and filed data into neat mental folders, simply ceased operations. The entire processing power of his intellect redirected itself to the glistening folds inches from his face, to the way the light played across wet skin, to that single trembling droplet that broke free and began its slow descent along the crease of her inner thigh.
His lips parted. His body swayed forward on his knees.
Then he stopped.
A test. This was a test. Desensitization. The same lesson she opened with, applied to new territory. She was watching him the way she watched everything. Waiting to see if the landed fish had learned to breathe on dry land.
He closed his mouth. Clenched his jaw until the muscle jumped beneath his ear. Pulled his gaze away from the wet, flushed center of her body with an effort that felt like dragging an anchor through mud. His eyes climbed her stomach, her bare chest, her throat, until they found her face.
"Impressive."
Da Vinci's smile held genuine warmth. The flush across her cheeks and throat hadn't faded, and her breathing remained quicker than baseline, but her eyes were sharp and bright and delighted.
"Most men never manage that." Her fingers found his hair again, combing through the disheveled blond layers with a tenderness that undercut the clinical framing of the moment. "You looked. You appreciated. And then you chose where to direct your attention. That is control."
Her thumb traced the ridge of his ear.
"Now that you understand the basics of pleasing a woman's breasts, it is time to learn how to pleasure her properly." Her weight shifted. Her thighs parted by inches, the wet folds between them opening just enough to reveal the deeper pink within, slick and inviting. "Lesson two, Griswald. Pay close attention."
His eyes dropped back to the glistening folds between her thighs. This time with purpose rather than paralysis.
"Begin with the thighs." Da Vinci's voice had settled into that low, textured register. The one that lived halfway between lecture and confession. "The inner thigh shares nerve pathways with the genitals. Stimulating one primes the other."
His palms pressed flat against the tops of her stockings, just above the knee. The gold diamond accents dug into his skin as he slid his hands upward along the inner seam of blue fabric. Where the stockings ended, bare skin began, and the temperature difference startled him. Hot almost fever-warm. The flesh softer here than anywhere else he'd touched, yielding under even the lightest pressure of his fingertips.
He traced slow lines up her inner thighs with his thumbs. Long, dragging strokes that started at the stocking line and climbed toward the crease where thigh met hip. Each pass brought him closer to the wet heat at her center without making contact. Da Vinci's quadriceps tensed beneath his fingers on the third stroke. On the fifth, her hips tilted forward by a fraction.
"Good. You're building anticipation." Her voice held a slight waver that she didn't bother correcting. "Now. Cup me with your whole hand. Don't penetrate. Just hold."
He cupped her.
The heat was extraordinary. Wet flesh pressed against his palm and fingers, her outer lips parting slightly around the curve of his hand, slick arousal coating his skin in a warm film. He could feel her pulse through the contact. Quick and strong, throbbing against his palm in a rhythm faster than the measured heartbeat he'd listened to between her breasts.
"Pressure." She breathed the word. "Heel of your hand against the pubic bone. Rock it."
He pressed the heel of his palm upward. The firm bone beneath her skin met the pressure, and between them, the soft, swollen tissue compressed. He rocked his hand in a slow, grinding circle, and Da Vinci's thighs clamped against his wrist.
"That's indirect clitoral stimulation." She spoke through her teeth. "The internal structure of the clitoris extends far beyond what's visible. When you apply pressure here, you're stimulating the legs of the clitoral body through the surrounding tissue. Effective for warming up. Less intense than direct contact."
He rocked again. Slower. Firmer. Her moisture spread across his palm.
"Now separate the labia. Use your index and middle fingers. Part them gently."
His fingers slid through wet heat and found the seam of her outer lips. He eased them apart. The inner folds unfurled against his fingertips, slick and impossibly soft, delicate tissue that radiated warmth. Between them, the deeper architecture of her sex revealed itself to his touch. Textured ridges and smooth valleys, the firm nub of her clitoris at the apex, the yielding opening below.
"Explore." The command came out thready. "Map me. Learn the topography of my cunt."
His fingers traced the inner lips from top to bottom. Thin, ruffled edges that thickened toward the base, their texture somewhere between silk and wet petals. He followed each fold to where it merged with the other, creating a hood over the small, hard bud above. His fingertip grazed it.
Da Vinci's hand shot to his shoulder. Fingers dug into muscle.
"Indirect first." Sharp. Almost scolding. "The clitoris has eight thousand nerve endings compressed into a structure smaller than a pea. Direct contact without adequate arousal borders on painful. Circle around it. Use the hood."
He adjusted. His fingertip settled on the hood rather than the exposed bud beneath, pressing the protective fold of skin in slow circles over the sensitive structure underneath. The indirect friction produced immediate results. Da Vinci's grip on his shoulder loosened from desperate to firm, her breathing settling into deep, rhythmic pulls that matched the speed of his circling finger.
"Vary the orbit. Wider circles, then tight. Change direction."
He widened his orbit, sweeping across the broader area where her inner lips met the clitoral hood. Then tightened. Reversed direction. Each variation produced a micro-shift in her response. Wider circles relaxed her thighs. Tight clockwise orbits made her stomach contract. Counterclockwise drew a humming sound from deep in her chest.
"Your other hand." She swallowed. "Use it."
His left hand, which had been gripping her thigh for balance, slid inward. His middle finger found the opening below where his right hand worked. The tissue here gave differently. Far softer than before. The entrance fluttered against his fingertip.
"One finger. Slowly. Curl upward once inside."
He pressed inward. The heat was intense. Wet muscle closed around his finger in a grip that pulsed and shifted, drawing him deeper with each rhythmic contraction. He curled upward as instructed and his fingertip found a patch of tissue with a distinctly different texture. It felt like like velvet dragged against the grain.
Da Vinci made a sound.
Not composed. Not measured. A broken exhale that climbed into something higher and thinner before she strangled it behind closed teeth.
"That." Her hips rolled against his hand. "That is the anterior vaginal wall. The G-spot, in common parlance. Stroke it. Come-hither motion."
His finger beckoned inside her. The ridged tissue swelled against his touch, growing firmer and more prominent with each stroke. His right hand maintained its orbit around her clit, the two rhythms operating in tandem, and Da Vinci's knees buckled.
She caught herself on his shoulders. Both hands now, her weight pressing down as her legs trembled on either side of his kneeling body. Her head dropped forward. Chestnut waves cascaded around his face.
"Add a second finger," she whispered into his hair.
He slid his ring finger alongside the first. The stretch made her walls grip tighter, the added width increasing the surface area of each curling stroke. He pressed both fingers against that swollen patch and pulsed in rhythm with the circles his thumb now drew over her hooded clit.
Her hips moved of their own accord, grinding against his hands.
Da Vinci's spine straightened. A visible act of will that pulled her weight off his shoulders and restored the vertical line of her posture. Her hands released their white-knuckled grip on his deltoids and settled on top of his head, fingers threading through sweat-damp blond hair. Her thighs still trembled against his wrists, but the rest of her reassembled into something approaching composure.
"You learn quickly." Her voice had recovered most of its pedagogical steadiness, though a roughness clung to the consonants. "Your fingers understand pressure and rhythm. Now refine the internal technique. Vary the depth of your strokes."
He obeyed. Shallow pulses that barely passed the entrance, his fingertips teasing the sensitive ring of muscle before plunging deep to curl against that swollen ridge. The alternation between shallow and deep produced a response his fingers alone couldn't have told him about. Her walls reacted differently at each depth, the entrance gripping and releasing in quick flutters while the deeper tissue clenched in slow, rolling waves that squeezed his fingers in sequence.
"Scissor them apart." Breathless but instructive. "Gently. Stretch the walls. The vaginal canal has nerve clusters distributed unevenly. Stretching activates ones that stroking misses."
He spread his fingers inside her. The wet muscle resisted, then yielded, and Da Vinci's hips jerked forward. A pearl of arousal ran down his wrist and dripped onto the tile between his knees.
She let him work for several more minutes. His wrist burned from the angle and his forearm ached with the sustained effort, but her reactions kept him focused. The way her stomach hollowed when he found a particular spot. The way her inner walls would suddenly clamp and pulse around his fingers when he combined a deep curl with pressure from his thumb against her clit. He catalogued each response, filed each correlation between technique and result, building a map of her pleasure with the same methodical precision he brought to medical diagnoses.
Then her hand closed around his wrist and stilled him.
"Withdraw."
He slid his fingers free. They emerged glistening, coated to the knuckle in her arousal, strings of it stretching between his fingertips and her swollen folds before breaking. The cool air hit the wetness and his fingers tingled.
"Your tongue now." She looked down at him. Amber eyes dark, pupils blown wide enough to swallow the iris. The flush on her throat had spread to her collarbones and the tops of her breasts. "Everything you just learned with your fingers, you will relearn with your mouth. The tongue offers something fingers cannot. Texture. Temperature. Moisture. Suction." Her thumb traced his lower lip. "And for a healer whose magic channels through bodily fluids, oral contact provides the most efficient mana pathway short of intercourse."
She widened her stance. Her thighs parted further, the blue stockings stretching taut across the muscle. From his position on his knees, her sex opened before him. Flushed deep pink, swollen from his fingers, glistening with arousal that caught the fluorescent light and held it.
"Kiss the inner thigh first. Same principle as before. Prime the nerve pathways."
He leaned forward. His lips found the bare skin above her left stocking, and the heat of her radiated against his face. He pressed a slow, open-mouthed kiss to the soft flesh. Tasted salt and the faintest ghost of her arousal where it had traced a wet line earlier. His tongue dragged a broad stroke upward, following the crease where thigh met hip.
Da Vinci's fingers tightened in his hair.
He mirrored the attention on her right thigh. Letting his tongue linger in the sensitive hollow where her pulse beat visibly beneath the skin. Her legs quivered against his jaw.
"Now the outer lips. Broad tongue. Flat. One long stroke from bottom to top."
He pressed his tongue flat against the base of her slit and dragged upward. Her taste flooded his mouth. Sharp and rich, utterly unlike anything he could have imagined. A salty-sweet taste, with a mineral depth beneath that coated his tongue and clung to his palate. The texture of her folds against the broad surface of his tongue was extraordinary. Soft ridges and slick valleys that his fingers had mapped now translated into a completely new sensory language.
His tongue reached the hood of her clit and she hissed through her teeth.
"Again. Slower."
He repeated the stroke. Bottom to top. Agonizingly slow. Pressing harder this time, splitting her outer lips with the flat of his tongue so the full surface dragged across the exposed inner folds. Her arousal coated his chin, his cheeks. He breathed through his nose, inhaling her scent at its source, thick and intoxicating.
"Now the inner lips. Trace them. Each one individually. Learn them with your tongue the way you learned them with your fingers."
His tongue narrowed to a point and found the edge of her left inner lip. He traced it from where it emerged near her clit down to where it thickened at the base. Thin, delicate tissue that fluttered against his tongue like something alive. He sucked the fold gently into his mouth, rolling it between his lips, and Da Vinci's hand slammed against the wall behind her.
"The other one." Ragged.
He released the left and mapped the right with identical care. This one was slightly longer, slightly thicker, and when he sucked it into his mouth, her hips bucked forward and ground her sex against his face.
"Now the clitoris. Remember what I said. Indirect first." Her fingers wound tight enough in his hair to sting. "Use the broad of your tongue over the hood. Circle it. Do not touch the glans directly until I tell you."
He sealed his lips around the hooded nub and laved it with slow, broad circles. His tongue pressed the protective fold of skin in the same orbits his finger had traced, but the wet heat and texture of his mouth produced an entirely different magnitude of response. Da Vinci's thighs clamped against his ears. The world reduced to wet heat and pressure and the muffled sound of her breathing turning ragged above him.
"Tighter circles. Firmer. Use suction."
He tightened the orbit. Drew gentle suction through his sealed lips while his tongue maintained its rhythm. Da Vinci's heel left the floor. Her calf pressed against his back as her leg hooked over his shoulder, opening herself wider, pulling him deeper.
"Now." The word cracked. "Direct contact. Flick the tip of your tongue across the glans. Quick and light."
He retracted the hood with the pressure of his upper lip and flicked.
Da Vinci's entire body convulsed. Her spine arched, her hooked leg clenched against his back, and both hands fisted in his hair hard enough to water his eyes. The sound she made was sharp and high and completely devoid of composure.
"Again," she gasped. "Alternate. Circles then flicks. Build the pattern then break it."
He built the pattern. Three slow circles over the exposed nub, each one pressing the flat of his tongue against the slick, swollen bead, followed by two rapid flicks with the pointed tip. The contrast between sustained pressure and sharp, fleeting contact created a rhythm that Da Vinci's body locked onto. Her hips began rolling in time with his circles, grinding her pussy against his mouth, smearing arousal across his chin and cheeks in a warm slick that dripped from his jaw.
"Combine it." Her voice had abandoned all pretense of instruction. Raw need threaded through every syllable. "Tongue on my clit, fingers inside. Simultaneously. Match the rhythms."
His right hand found her entrance without guidance. Two fingers slid inside the wet heat, her walls immediately clamping down in greeting, and he curled them against that textured ridge while his tongue maintained its alternating pattern against her clit. The dual stimulation pulled a sound from Da Vinci that vibrated through her thighs and into his skull.
"When you feel the walls begin to pulse in quick succession, that signals approaching orgasm." She delivered this information through clenched teeth, her abdomen visibly trembling. "At that point, maintain consistent rhythm. Do not change speed. Do not change pressure. The instinct will be to intensify. Resist it. Consistency brings climax. Variation delays it."
He filed the information while his tongue worked.
"Now. Flatten your tongue and press it against the full length of the clitoral structure. From the hood down across the shaft. Maximum surface contact."
He pressed his tongue flat and wide against her, covering the hood, the exposed glans, and the sensitive tissue below in one broad, wet surface. The pressure was firm and unbroken. Da Vinci's breath caught mid-inhale and stayed there, her ribs locked in expansion.
"Hold that pressure and nod."
He nodded. The motion dragged his flattened tongue up and down across the compressed nerve cluster in short, firm strokes that used his entire head rather than just the muscle. The effect was immediate and devastating. Da Vinci's heel dug into his back. Her fingers wound so deep into his hair that her nails scraped his scalp. Her walls clenched around his fingers in rapid, rippling contractions.
"Good." The word dissolved into a moan she didn't bother suppressing. "So good. My cute student. You're doing so well."
Something detonated in his chest.
The praise hit him like a physical blow, landing somewhere behind his sternum and spreading outward in a wave of warmth that had nothing to do with arousal. My cute student. You're doing so well. Simple words. The kind a teacher offered a promising pupil. But Griswald Von Garmisch, the man whose own parents had stopped attending his academic presentations after the second year of consecutive mediocrity, had never once heard those words directed at him without qualification or caveat.
Not "good, but." Not "well enough, considering." Not the silent, damning pause his father employed before redirecting the conversation to his siblings' achievements.
It was the most praise he had gotten from any teacher in a long time and he got it on his knees… that could be phrased better.
His tongue pressed harder against her. Not because the technique demanded it but because something fierce and desperate rose inside him, a hunger that had nothing to do with skill or efficiency and everything to do with earning that voice again. That warmth. That simple, devastating approval from a woman whose genius could calculate the trajectory of stars but who chose, in this moment, to notice him.
His fingers curled deeper inside her. The ridged tissue swelled against his touch, hot and firm, and he pulsed against it while his tongue maintained the nodding rhythm she'd taught him. Her arousal ran freely now, coating his hand to the wrist, pooling in his palm, the wet sounds of his fingers working inside her filling the small room with obscene clarity.
Da Vinci's free hand pressed flat against the back of his skull. Not guiding. Pushing. Her fingers splayed across the crown of his head and shoved his face deeper into her pussy, grinding his nose against her pubic bone, burying his mouth in slick, swollen flesh until breathing required conscious effort through his nose. The pressure sealed his lips tighter around her clit, his tongue trapped against the throbbing bud with nowhere to retreat.
"Deeper." She rolled her hips against his face. "Stay there. Right there. My brilliant, sweet student."
Brilliant.
No one had ever called him that.
His eyes burned. He blinked the moisture away and channeled the swell of emotion into his tongue, into his fingers, into the steady rhythm she'd demanded. His analytical mind, the one asset everyone acknowledged he possessed, catalogued her reactions with obsessive precision. The flutter of her walls when he curled left rather than center. The way her clit pulsed against his tongue in quickening intervals. The specific pitch of her breathing, higher now, thinner, the exhales truncating into sharp bursts that came faster and faster.
She was close. Her walls had begun the rapid-fire contractions she'd described, gripping his fingers in staccato pulses that squeezed and released in frantic succession. Her thigh muscles locked rigid against his ears. The heel hooked over his shoulder dug into his spine with enough force to bruise. Her stomach hollowed with each breath, the muscles beneath her olive skin standing in sharp relief.
He maintained the rhythm. Exactly as she'd taught him.
"Stop."
Her hand wrenched his head back. His mouth separated from her pussy with a wet, obscene sound, strings of arousal and saliva stretching between his lips and her swollen folds before snapping. Cool air rushed across his drenched face. His fingers slid free of her clenching walls, and the sudden emptiness made her hips chase the contact before she locked them still through visible effort.
Griswald stared up at her. Dazed. Lips swollen and shining. Chin dripping. Glasses fogged beyond usefulness.
Da Vinci's chest heaved. The flush had consumed her, spreading from her face down her throat and across her bare breasts in blotchy patches of rose that stood vivid against olive. Her nipples jutted dark and swollen, still bearing the faint redness from his earlier attention. Her pupils had swallowed her irises almost completely, leaving thin amber rings around black pools that glittered with something between hunger and calculation.
She stepped back from him. Her leg unhooked from his shoulder, the blue stocking sliding across his back as she planted both feet on the tile. Her hands moved to the remaining structure of her bodice, working clasps and hidden fastenings with fingers that trembled only slightly. The blue underlayer came away first, gold star motifs catching light as the fabric fell. Then the structured red and brown panels, each one peeling free to reveal more flushed skin beneath. She shrugged the remnants from her shoulders. The mechanical bird on the desk chirped once as the garment pooled on the floor beside her skirt.
Naked except for the blue stockings with their gold diamond accents, she turned toward his bed.
The sight stopped his breathing.
Her back was a canvas of smooth olive skin stretched over the elegant architecture of her shoulder blades and spine. The narrowing of her waist above the flare of her hips created a curve that belonged in the mathematical proofs of divine proportion she herself had codified. The stockings framed her legs like a deliberate artistic choice, the deep blue contrasting against her skin, drawing the eye down the length of her thighs and calves to the heeled shoes she still wore. She stepped out of them, losing two inches of height, and the shift in her proportions made her look softer. More human. Less universal genius and more woman.
She settled onto his narrow bed. The mattress dipped under her weight as she reclined, her chestnut waves fanning across his pillow, her body arranged with the unconscious grace of someone who understood exactly how light would fall across every plane and valley. One knee bent, the stocking-clad leg planted flat while the other extended, the blue fabric pulling taut across her calf. Her arms rested at her sides. Her breasts settled into soft mounds against her ribcage, rising and falling with each deep breath. Between her parted thighs, her pussy glistened under the overhead light, the swollen folds flushed dark pink and visibly pulsing, still hovering at the edge where he'd left her.
"Come here." She patted the mattress beside her hip. "Show me what you've learned. Make me cum."
He rose from his knees. His joints protested, stiff from the sustained position on cold tile, but the discomfort registered as distant and irrelevant. He climbed onto the narrow bed. The frame creaked under their combined weight, metal struts groaning in a way that would have mortified him an hour ago. Now it barely registered.
He settled between her legs. His knees sank into the thin mattress on either side of her thigh. He looked down at her, and the image seared itself into permanent memory. Leonardo da Vinci, the universal genius, history's greatest polymath, naked and flushed and waiting beneath him with dark eyes and parted lips.
He started with her breasts. Not because the lesson demanded a particular sequence, but because he remembered. Lighter pressure first. Right breast responds to broad strokes. Left prefers tight circles. Teeth make her gasp. Both simultaneously breaks her composure.
His mouth found her left nipple and his hand found the right. He sealed his lips around the swollen bud and pulsed, alternating suction with firm strokes of his tongue while his thumb rolled the opposite nipple in counterclockwise circles. The combination he'd discovered earlier, the one that made her thighs clench.
Her thighs clenched.
He added the variation she hadn't taught him. A discovery of his own during lonely nights fantasizing. He hummed against her breast, the vibration traveling through the captured nipple and into the sensitive tissue beneath. Da Vinci's back arched off the mattress. Her hands flew to his head, fingers burying themselves in blond hair.
"Where did you learn that?" Genuine surprise in her voice.
He didn't answer. His mouth was occupied.
He switched breasts. Broad strokes for the right, his tongue painting wet lines across the areola before converging on the stiff peak. His left hand kneaded the breast he'd just abandoned, maintaining stimulation. Teeth grazed the right nipple and Da Vinci's stomach clenched hard enough to lift her shoulders off the pillow.
His free hand traveled south. Down the trembling plane of her abdomen, fingertips tracing the shallow groove of her linea alba, dipping into her navel before continuing along the smooth skin below. He didn't rush. Let his fingers drag across the sensitive strip between navel and pubic bone that he'd noticed made her hip tilt when he grazed it earlier.
Her hips tilted.
He cupped her. The full-palm contact she'd first taught him, heel of his hand pressing against the pubic bone, fingers curved over the wet heat of her sex. He rocked his hand in slow, grinding circles while his mouth worked her nipple.
Da Vinci writhed beneath him. Not performing or demonstrating. Writhing. Her spine undulating, her hips chasing his hand, her fingers pulling his hair in directions that contradicted each other as her body couldn't decide whether to push him toward her breast or drag him lower.
He gave her both. His mouth released her nipple and blazed a trail of open-mouthed kisses down her sternum, between the valley of her breasts, across the quivering plane of her stomach. His tongue dipped into her navel and she cursed in Italian, something rapid and musical that he couldn't translate but understood perfectly.
His lips reached the junction of her thighs. He pressed a kiss to the bare skin just above her slit, his breath washing hot across her swollen folds, and held there. Building anticipation. The way she'd taught him.
Her fingers tightened. Her hips strained upward.
He sank his mouth onto her.
No preamble. No teasing strokes. He sealed his lips around her clit and sucked, his tongue pressing flat and wide against the hooded bud, and two fingers drove inside her in one smooth thrust. The dual impact hit her like a current.
Da Vinci's legs snapped shut around his head. Her heels dug into his back. The blue stockings were silk-smooth against his ears as her thighs compressed, muffling the world to a dull roar beneath the hammering of her pulse. Her voice cracked into something high and sharp.
"Oh. Oh, you absolute..."
He nodded against her. That trick she'd taught him, using the motion of his head to drag his flattened tongue across her clit in short, firm strokes. His fingers curled inside her, pulsing against the swollen ridge of her front wall in the come-hither motion that had made her knees buckle earlier. His free hand reached up, found her left breast, and rolled the nipple between finger and thumb.
Three points of stimulation. Synchronized rhythms. Mouth on her clit, fingers inside her walls, hand on her breast. He varied the tempos against each other, creating a polyrhythmic pattern of pleasure that denied her body the ability to anticipate any single sensation because the others kept shifting.
Her walls began the rapid contractions. Staccato pulses gripping his fingers in frantic succession. He remembered her instruction. Maintain consistent rhythm. Do not change speed. Do not change pressure.
He locked in. Tongue flat against her clit in steady, nodding strokes. Fingers curling at a fixed tempo. Thumb rolling her nipple in unbroken circles.
Da Vinci's hands abandoned his hair. They fisted in the sheets on either side of her hips, knuckles white, tendons standing in sharp relief beneath olive skin. Her back arched into a bow that lifted her hips off the mattress, driving her pussy harder against his mouth. Her breathing dissolved into fragmented sounds, half-words in Italian and English and something older than both that tumbled from her lips without order or intention.
"Don't stop." The universal genius, reduced to two words. "Don't stop don't stop don't..."
He didn't stop.
Her orgasm hit like a wave breaking. Her walls clamped around his fingers in one sustained, crushing contraction that held for three full seconds before releasing into violent, rhythmic pulses. Her clit throbbed against his tongue, each beat of her climax surging through the swollen bud in shocks he could feel against his lips. Her thighs shook uncontrollably, the blue stockings vibrating against his temples. Her stomach muscles fired in sequence, visible ripples of contraction that traveled from her pubic bone to her ribcage. The sheets tore free of their hospital corners as her fists wrenched them loose.
He maintained rhythm through the peak. Riding the clenching pulse of her orgasm with steady tongue and steady fingers until the contractions began to space, the intervals between each squeeze lengthening from one second to two to three.
Only when her hands released the sheets and her thighs loosened their vice grip on his skull did he slow. Eased the pressure of his tongue by degrees. Gentled his fingers to shallow, barely-there pulses. Feathered his thumb across her nipple rather than rolling it.
Da Vinci lay beneath him, chest heaving, skin shining with sweat, her chestnut hair plastered to her forehead and tangled across the pillow. Her eyes were closed. Her lips parted around each shaking breath. The flush that consumed her body glowed under the fluorescent light, turning her olive skin to burnished copper.
He withdrew his fingers. Pressed one last, gentle kiss to the inside of her thigh. Tasting salt and her.
Her eyes opened. Amber irises blown dark, still unfocused, searching for his face. When they found him, her lips curved into that smile. The one that belonged in the Louvre. But different now. Looser. Unguarded. The calculations behind it temporarily offline, leaving only warmth.
"Full marks." Her voice was wrecked. Barely above a whisper. "My cute student passes with honors."
Griswald lifted his head from between her thighs, chin still glistening, and the words tumbled out before self-consciousness could strangle them.
"Thank you. For teaching me. For all of this." His grey eyes met hers with an earnestness that bordered on painful. "I mean it. Really, truly, genuinely thank you."
Da Vinci's enigmatic smile cracked into something wider. Less Mona Lisa, more woman. A giggle escaped her, bright and musical and so at odds with the sweat-slicked genius sprawled across his ruined sheets that the dissonance made his chest ache. She giggled again, covering her mouth with the back of her hand, amber eyes crinkling at their corners.
"You are adorable." She reached for him. Both hands framing his jaw, fingers sliding into the damp blond hair at his temples, and drew his head down. His cheek met the soft, warm pillow of her breast. She folded her arms across the back of his skull and held him there, his ear pressed against the steady drum of her heartbeat, his nose buried in the salt-sweet skin between her breasts.
A full-body blush ignited from his collarbones to his hairline. The heat of it radiated against her chest.
"What about the lesson?" His voice came out muffled. Vibrating against the curve of her breast. "Is there more? Should I be taking notes? I feel like I should be taking notes."
"This is the lesson." Her fingers combed through his hair in long, unhurried strokes. Nails barely grazing his scalp. "You're soaking in it right now."
He tilted his head enough to peer up at her with one eye. "Cuddling?"
"Aftercare." She tucked a strand of blond behind his ear. "The most neglected chapter in the curriculum. Any fool with a tongue can make a woman orgasm. What you do after determines whether she trusts you enough to come back." Her thumb traced the ridge of his ear. "Hold her. Let the body chemistry settle. Oxytocin needs physical contact to do its work properly. Skin on skin." She pulled him tighter against her chest. "A woman who feels discarded after intimacy will never open herself to you again. A woman who feels cherished will give you everything."
He settled into her. His angular frame softened by degrees, the tension draining from his shoulders, his spine losing its habitual curve as he let her hold his weight. His arm draped across her waist. The narrow bed forced them close, his hip against hers, his legs tangled with blue stockings and bare skin.
"Are there more lessons?"
He said it too quickly. Heard himself say it too quickly. Clamped his jaw shut and prayed the blush already consuming his face would camouflage the fresh surge of blood to his cheeks.
Da Vinci's chest vibrated with a low laugh. "Trying not to sound hopeful?"
"Failing, apparently."
"Catastrophically." She pressed her lips to the crown of his head. "But yes. Many more. We've barely scratched the surface." Her fingers walked a lazy path down his neck to his shoulder and back up. "You need to learn how to endure pleasure when it's directed at you. Receiving is its own skill. Most men think they already know how, but the ones who've never been touched properly tend to finish in moments, which is efficient for mana transfer but deeply unsatisfying for everyone involved."
His ears burned.
"Then there's the rest of a woman's body. Her mouth." Her finger tapped his lower lip. "How to position yourself, how to read when she wants more or less, how to use your hands while she uses hers. Her ass." The finger trailed down his jaw to the hollow of his throat. "An entirely different set of techniques. Different preparation. Different communication."
He swallowed audibly.
"And then there are the subtler skills. Reading preferences. Identifying desires a woman might not voice because she doesn't know how, or because she's afraid of judgment." Her hand settled warm and flat over his chest. "Like how I identified your praise kink within the first five minutes."
His entire body went rigid against her.
"I don't have a..."
"My brilliant, sweet student who passes every test I give him with flying colors?"
His face burned so hot he worried about leaving scorch marks on her breast.
"Your breathing changed," she continued, conversational and merciless. "Your pupils dilated. Your tongue pressed harder. Every time I praised you, your body responded more intensely than it did to any physical stimulus I provided. Classic praise-responsive arousal pattern."
Griswald pressed his face deeper into her chest. His voice came out small. Honest in a way that hurt.
"I haven't gotten a lot of it. In my life. Praise."
The fingers in his hair stilled for a single beat. Then resumed, slower, gentler.
"Most mages don't." Quiet warmth in her voice. "The magical community rewards power and pedigree. It has no vocabulary for effort or growth. Those of us who fall outside the acceptable parameters learn to starve in silence."
A beat passed. Two.
Then she tightened her arms around him and unleashed.
"You are talented, Griswald Von Garmisch. You are attentive and clever and your instincts are remarkable. Your hands are gifted. Your mouth is inspired. You made a five-hundred-year-old genius lose the ability to speak in complete sentences. You are worthy of every good thing that comes to you. You deserve to be here. You deserve to be held."
Each sentence landed like a hammer blow to the wall he'd built around his chest. His eyes stung. His throat closed. His fingers curled into the sheet beneath her hip and held on.
"You are now my cute little student" She whispered it into his hair. "And I can already tell you are going to wow me."
He made a sound that wasn't a word. Pressed his burning face against her breast and breathed through the pressure building behind his ribs.
"Relax." Her palm settled between his shoulder blades. Warm. Steady. An anchor. "Just relax against me. No more lessons tonight. No more tests. Just this."
He let go. The last rigid line of tension in his body dissolved and he sank into her. Her arms held him, her heartbeat filled his ear, and the soft warmth of her skin pressed against every point of contact. The narrow bed cocooned them. Her breath stirred his hair in slow, even rhythms.
For the first time since he got back Griswald Von Garmisch rested without dreaming of a flaming city and the women he lost there.