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When a rustle of cool air tickles your shoulder, you clutch at the blanket. Cocooned in the darkness of sleep, you are vaguely aware of the warmth of his body, his tired heave as he slides into bed beside you. You roll towards him, the scent of his teaching robes still clinging to his pores.
“What time is it?” you croak.
“Four o’ clock,” he breathes. “Go back to sleep.”
You grizzle. As his arm drapes over you, you bury your nose in the silk of his hair.
“So late,” you mumble.
Memory flickers in your slumber. The untouched dinner left on his desk in the study. His brisk peck on your cheek when you wished him goodnight. Your fleeting resignation as you glanced at the Gale-shaped hole beside you before you blew the candle out.
“Forgive me, my love.” His soft lips graze your forehead. “I got carried away with the modifications I was making to--"
A gaping yawn swallows his words. You nuzzle into him, your fingers seeking his. His legs tangle into yours, the tendrils of sleep wrapping around your bodies. He lets out a small sound, half-moan, half-breath, as his nose settles into the crook between your neck and shoulder.
It could be minutes or hours. You drift through the veil between dreams and wakefulness, Gale’s breathing a soothing rhythm against your skin. From a distance, you feel the firm brush of his toes against your calf, a hard heat whispering against your thigh.
You ignore it at first. But a gentle pressure is circling your nipple, trailing down to your navel. A faint wetness tingles on your earlobe, his rasp trembling through you like a siren. Your lips search the roughness of his beard as you press against him.
His mouth is open when you find it. His length nestles into your core, firm and insistent. Your tongues are lazy and slow as you savour his taste, thick with sleep and stupor and need. In the blind haze of exhaustion and desire, you do not need speech. Nor do you need light to find the points of each other’s pleasure, imprinted on your senses like an ancient map.
He does not need to ask when he hooks his knee around your waist, pulling you closer. You do not need to check before your hand dips into his briefs to free the thrust of his cock. It surges against your touch as you skim his leaking tip, tracing the veins that twitch on his girth. You know them as well as the lines on your own palm, the heady fragrance of his musk. You relish each other’s groans as you lift your leg over his, guiding him into your waiting folds. And when, with one long stroke, he fills you to the brim, the ache that flares is like a spell.
Your fingers fist into his tousled hair, the peaks of your nipples rubbing raw against his chest as he rocks. He clasps the cheeks of your ass in a silent demand, and you whimper as you angle your leg wider, inviting him deeper, into the deepest parts of you, reserved for him alone. You arch your back as he pumps into you with growing urgency. A throbbing hunger pulses with his every pant and plunge. You are fully awake now, and so is he.
“I missed you.” He laps and sucks at your mouth, your earlobe, your chin. “Gods, I missed you.”
“I'm here.” You grind against him, desperate for more. For all of him. “I’m yours.”
You clutch at his muscles, hard and taut as he rolls into you with gathering speed, a raging flood against your banks. There is no reserve, no restraint in him, nothing but love and unbridled need. Your walls clench around his stretching stiffness.
“I love you."
He spasms, a shaking hand cupping your cheek, his forehead pushing against yours in a mist of sweat and sandalwood and desire.
“I love you.”
Your tongues are a ravenous frenzy, his beard a dizzying rasp against your chin. His hips snap furiously as he bottoms out again and again.
“I love you.”
You can no longer tell if it is his voice or yours, or where his touch meets your own in the darkness. You are one body, one soul, and when you cry out and shatter into each other, you cannot tell where his ecstasy ends and yours begins.
He remains inside you as your chests rise and fall, your breaths slackening. Sated, complete, your kisses become languid and halting. When he pulls out, he plants a feather light kiss on the tip of your nose, and you let out a silent laugh. Your fingers remain intertwined as his arm returns to drape over you, where it belongs.
“I forgive you,” you murmur, and you feel him smile into your skin as you sink back into sleep.