barkbites

The weekend is a long time.

The weekend is a thing that has, historically, taken approximately forty-eight hours, and the weekend you have just been through took, conservatively, six weeks. You spent it doing things. You went to the grocery store. You did laundry. You graded a stack of redox quizzes and you made notes for next week's lesson and you did not think about Ryland Grace at all, except for the fourteen hours of Saturday and the eleven hours of Sunday during which you thought about almost nothing else.

You replayed the meeting. You replayed it the way he must have replayed eight months in one night, you suspect, and yours took two days. You replayed the word lazy. You replayed the careful neutral face. You replayed him walking out without looking at you, and the small cold rush of oh, no, and you replayed it from every angle, and at no point did any of the angles get any better.

You have arrived at Monday with a plan.

The plan is: act normal. The plan is: do not give him anything. The plan is: he has made his point, and if you behave for a week he will go back to being the slightly flustered man in a cardigan who you used to be able to ruin with eye contact, and the equilibrium will be restored, and you will have learned a valuable lesson about hubris.

You are very committed to the plan. You believe in the plan. The plan is going to work.

The plan lasts forty minutes.

—

He comes into your classroom at 8:20.

You are at the lab benches, setting up for second period, which is a titration unit and which therefore requires you to be carrying a bottle of sodium hydroxide across the room when he opens the door. You do not drop the bottle. You consider it. You do not.

"Morning," he says.

"Morning."

He is wearing the cardigan. He is wearing, under the cardigan, a t-shirt you cannot fully see, and he has a coffee in one hand and a manila folder in the other and he is standing in your doorway like he belongs there, which, technically, he does, because he is a colleague, and colleagues come into colleagues' classrooms, and you have to keep telling yourself this because your body is reacting to him being in here like he has come in to commit a crime.

"You got a second?"

"I'm setting up."

"I can see that. You got a second."

"Grace."

"Two seconds."

You put the sodium hydroxide down. Carefully. With both hands. He waits.

"What."

He holds up the folder. "Curriculum thing. Alvarez wants it by Wednesday. Thought you might have notes."

"You could have emailed."

"I could have."

He has not moved from the doorway. He is still holding the coffee. He is looking at you with the very mild, very patient, very neutral expression of a man delivering an administrative update, except that his eyes have not left your face since he came in, and a man delivering an administrative update would have looked at the folder at least once.

"Was there something else," you say.

"You said my teaching was lazy."

"Grace."

"I just want to make sure I understood what you meant."

"I was making a point."

"In a meeting."

"Yes."

"In front of the department."

"Yes, Grace, that is generally where meetings happen."

"Mm."

He takes a sip of his coffee. He does not look away. You have, in the last forty seconds, lost approximately three layers of skin and you are trying very hard not to show it.

"Do you still think it's lazy."

"I-"

"Because I went home and looked at the unit and I think you might be right."

"What."

"I think you might be right. I'm changing the unit. I'm doing the yeast thing."

"Grace."

"I just wanted to say that. In person. Since you said it in person."

He is, you realise, not letting you off the hook. He has come in here at 8:20 on a Monday morning to agree with you, and he has done it with the polite, neutral, conscientious face of a man closing a loop, and you cannot tell if you are being thanked or being punished or both, and the both is, you suspect, the answer.

"Okay," you say.

"Okay."

"Was there anything else."

"No."

"Okay."

He nods. He does not leave. He takes another sip of his coffee. He looks, very briefly and very deliberately, at the lab bench where you are standing, and then back at your face. He is, you realise, doing a thing. He is doing a thing that is so subtle that if you described it to anyone they would say you were imagining it, and if you described it to him he would say what thing, and you would have nothing to point at, because the thing is not a thing, the thing is a series of very small choices that add up to him standing in your classroom drinking coffee and looking at you and not leaving.

He is doing exactly what you used to do to him.

"You should go to your classroom," you say.

"Probably."

"First period's about to start."

"Mm."

"Stop."

"Stop what."

"Stop saying mm."

"You say mm."

"That's different."

"How."

You don't have an answer to how. You stand there with your mouth slightly open, and he watches you not answer, and the corner of his mouth does the millimetre thing, and he takes another sip of his coffee.

"Have a good first period," he says.

He turns. He goes. He pulls the door closed behind him with the quiet, considerate click of a man who has just left you in a chemistry lab holding nothing and staring at nothing and having to teach sixteen-year-olds about titration in eighteen minutes.

You sit down on the lab stool.

You sit down on the lab stool and you put your face in your hands and you laugh, which is the wrong reaction, which is the reaction of a person whose brain has fully come off the rails, and you laugh for approximately fifteen seconds and then you sit up and you finish setting up the titration and you do not, for the rest of the morning, allow yourself to think his name.

—

You make it until last period.

Last period is your prep. Last period he also has prep on Mondays, which is a piece of information you have, regrettably, retained, and which you are trying very hard to pretend you do not have. You stay in your classroom. You grade. You do not go to the staff room. You do not walk past his classroom. You do excellent, focused work for forty-five minutes and you feel virtuous and you feel mature and you feel like a person who has, finally, gotten a grip.

At 2:40 he knocks on your door.

You look up. He is in the doorway again, except this time he doesn't have a coffee, and he doesn't have a folder, and he doesn't have a reason. He is just there. He is leaning against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets and he is looking at you with the same mild, neutral expression he had this morning, and you realise, with a kind of slow-motion clarity, that you are not going to make it through the rest of this conversation upright.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi."

"Are you busy."

"Yes."

"What are you doing."

"Grading."

"Grading what."

"Grace."

"I'm just asking."

"You're not just asking."

He smiles. Full smile this time. The one that crinkles his eyes.

"I'm just asking," he says again, gentler.

He comes into the room. He closes the door behind him. He walks over to your desk. He does not sit down in the student chair across from you. He sits on the edge of your desk, sideways, with one foot on the floor and one leg bent, and he looks down at you.

The teacher voice is bad. This is worse. This is the teacher voice with proximity.

"So," he says.

"So."

"You've been weird since the meeting."

"I've been weird."

"Mm-hm."

"You've been weird."

"Have I."

"Yes."

"How."

"Grace."

"How."

You stare at him. He waits. He is very, very good at waiting. You suspect, with a flash of belated insight, that he has been good at waiting this entire time and you simply never made him do it.

"You're being mean," you say.

"I'm being attentive."

"It's the same thing."

"It's really not."

He's looking down at you. His glasses are sliding down his nose, the way they always do, and this time he pushes them up himself, with one finger, slowly, and you watch him do it and you understand that he has done it slowly on purpose, and you understand that he has been waiting to do that since Tuesday in the supply closet, and you understand that you are, possibly, going to die in this chair.

He looks at you for a long second. The mild face does not change. His foot, the one on the floor, taps once against the leg of your desk.

"Stand up," he says.

It is a small instruction. It is delivered at low volume. It is delivered in the voice he uses on a student he wants to give a job to, come up to the board, hand out the worksheets, get the door for me, the easy reasonable teacher voice that you have heard him use a thousand times to a thousand sixteen-year-olds and that you have, you realise in real time, never had pointed at you.

You do not stand up.

You sit in your chair and you look up at him from your chair and you feel, very clearly, the moment he registers that you are not standing up, and the moment passes, and he is still looking at you, and he is waiting.

You should stand up.

You should stand up because standing up is the small reasonable thing he has asked for, and because complying with the small reasonable thing is the move that lets you keep your dignity, and because every cell in your body is currently telling you that not complying will be a catastrophe.

You open your mouth. You say it before your brain catches your mouth.

"Make me."

The room goes quiet.

It goes quiet in the way that a room goes quiet when you have just dropped a glass and have not yet heard it hit the floor. There is a one-second window in which you could take it back. You watch the window open and you watch the window close and you do not take it back, because the part of you that said it is the same part of you that said lazy, and that part of you is, evidently, in charge of the steering wheel and committed to driving off the cliff.

He does not move for a beat. He does not move for two.

Then, slowly, he gets off the desk.

He does not come around to your side of the desk. He does not reach for you. He does not touch you. He just stands up, at his full height, two feet from your chair, with his hands at his sides, and he is suddenly much taller than he is when he is sitting on furniture, and the height of him is taking up more of the room than it has any right to.

You stand up.

You stand up without deciding to. Your body has, ahead of your brain, calculated that remaining seated while he is standing over you like that is not a survivable position, and it has corrected for the imbalance, and you are now on your feet and six inches from him and you have to tip your chin up to keep the eye contact.

He has not done anything. He has not made you. You have made yourself. He is watching you have done it, and the corner of his mouth is doing the millimetre thing, and the millimetre thing right now is the worst thing you have ever seen on anyone's face.

"Grace."

"Don't."

"Don't what."

"Don't talk."

"I-"

"You don't get to say make me in this room, do you understand. Not here. Not at school. I cannot do anything about make me in this room, and you said it anyway, and I want you to think about that for a second."

You think about it for a second.

You think about it for several seconds. He is watching you think about it. The patient teacher mask has burned through and what is underneath is the same man, but with a finger of frustration laid quietly along the jawline of it, and the frustration is so much hotter than the patience was that you cannot, immediately, do anything except stand there and absorb it.

"Get your bag," he says.

"Grace, I-"

"Get your bag."

"I-"

"Get your bag."

You get your bag.

You get your bag without saying another word, because there is, you have correctly intuited, no word available to you that will not make this worse. He waits by the door. He does not look at you while you pack up. When you are done he opens the door and he holds it open and you walk through it, and he follows you out, and he pulls the door closed behind him with the same quiet considerate click as this morning, and the considerate click, given what is happening underneath everything, is the most threatening sound you have ever heard.

In the hallway he walks slightly behind you. Not close. Not far. Close enough that you can feel him there. You do not turn around. You do not speak. You walk through the hall and out into the parking lot and the late-afternoon air hits you and you take a breath and you keep walking.

"Did you drive," he says.

"Yes."

"Good. I biked."

"You-"

"Yeah. So you're driving."

You stop walking. You turn to look at him. He has stopped one step behind you and he is, in the late afternoon light, calmly waiting for you to process the logistics of the situation he has just described, which are: you are going to drive him to your apartment, in your car, with him in your passenger seat, for fifteen minutes, in silence, having just said make me to him in your own classroom.

"My bike's locked up at the rack," he says, helpfully. "It'll be fine overnight."

"Overnight?"

"Mm."

"Grace, you biked?"

"I bike every day."

"It's October."

"I have a coat."

You stare at him. He stares back. He is not, you realise, ever going to defend the bike. The bike is a fact of his life, like his glasses or his terrible t-shirts, and he has, in the middle of this, casually mentioned it the way one might mention having brought a packed lunch.

"Get in the car," you say.

"Mm."

"Get in the car, Grace, I swear to-"

"Easy."

He says easy in the same mild teacher voice he said stand up in. You close your mouth. You get in the car. He walks around to the passenger side. He gets in. He puts his bag on the floor between his feet. He buckles his seatbelt. He folds his hands in his lap.

He looks at you.

"You can start driving," he says.

You drive.

You drive out of the lot and you take a left at the light and you do not look at him, because you cannot afford to look at him. You can feel him in your peripheral vision. He is just sitting there. He is sitting in your passenger seat with his hands folded in his lap and his eyes, you can feel, on the side of your face, and he is not saying anything, and the not-saying-anything is filling the car like water.

You make it three minutes before you have to speak.

"You're being weird."

"Mm."

"You're being weird on purpose."

"Mm."

"Grace."

"Eyes on the road."

You snap your eyes back to the road. You did not realise you had taken them off the road. You had, at some point in the last sentence, turned to look at him, and you had not noticed yourself doing it, and he had noticed, and he had, very calmly, redirected you.

The teacher voice is going to kill you in this car.

You make it another four minutes. You make it through two more lights and one merge and a stretch of road where nothing happens. You can hear him breathing. You can hear, you are fairly sure, the seconds of your life ticking away. At one point, at a red light, he reaches over and adjusts the air vent on his side of the dashboard, casually, the way a man might in any car he was riding in, and the casualness of it is the most intimate thing he has ever done.

You make a small sound.

"What," he says.

"Nothing."

"Mm."

"Stop mming."

"No."

The light goes green. You drive. You make it another two minutes. You think, at minute eleven, I could just keep driving. I could keep driving past my apartment and just keep going and we could be in Vermont by midnight.

"You're not going to Vermont," he says, conversationally, like he can hear it.

"What."

"You're doing the face. The face you do when you're considering an exit strategy. You're not going to Vermont."

"How did you-"

"I've been watching your face for eight months, sweetheart, I know what it does."

You almost run a stop sign. You catch yourself. You brake hard. He puts one hand, casually, on the dashboard to steady himself, and does not comment.

"Don't call me that in the car," you say, through your teeth.

"Mm."

"Grace"

"You're going to miss your turn."

You make the turn. You make the turn and you pull into your lot and you park and you sit there for one second with both hands on the wheel and you think, very clearly: I am not going to survive this afternoon.

You get out of the car. He gets out of the car. He walks around to your side and he stands there, calmly, waiting for you, and you lock the car and you walk to your building and he walks one step behind you and you can feel him there and you fumble the key in the lock once, twice, and you get the door open on the third try, and he reaches over your shoulder and pushes it the rest of the way open for you, polite, and the politeness of it, given everything, is what nearly takes you down at the threshold.

You walk in.

He follows you.

He closes the door.

You turn around to face him.

You have, on the drive, prepared a speech. The speech was supposed to land you back on level ground. The speech contained the deli voice and a wry observation about his pacing and a small joke about Vermont, and you had it organised by the time you parked, and you were going to deliver it the moment the door closed, and you were going to win.

You open your mouth.

He kisses you.

He kisses you before you can get the first word out, and the kiss is not a patient, tangential, slow thing. The kiss is a man whose composure has been scratched off by the last forty minutes of you and who is, finally, allowed to use his hands. One hand is in your hair. One hand is at the small of your back. He has pulled you in hard against him and your bag has dropped somewhere and the wall is at your shoulder blades and his mouth is on yours and you understand, in a single small bright pulse of clarity, that you have miscalculated.

You go up on your toes into it because your body has made an executive decision without consulting you.

You get your hands in his hair.

You get your hands in his hair and you pull, because you cannot help yourself, because the bratting is autonomic at this point, because the part of you that has been driving all afternoon does not know how to stop driving even when the road has ended. You pull and he makes a small sound against your mouth, almost amused, and you take the amused noise personally, and you bite his bottom lip.

You bite it on purpose. You bite it harder than you mean to. You feel his lip catch between your teeth and you hear, very distinctly, the sound he makes, and the sound is not amused anymore.

He pulls back.

Not far. Just enough to look at you. His mouth is wet. There is a red mark on his bottom lip where your teeth were. His glasses are crooked. His face is doing something that has nothing to do with patience and nothing to do with mildness and nothing to do with any of the registers he has been using all day, and you stare at him and you understand, with a small descending lurch, that you have snapped him.

He does not move for a second.

Then he says, very quietly: "Okay."

A beat.

"Okay. You want to do it like that."

It is not a question. You do not answer it. You could not answer it. Your mouth has gone dry and your knees are doing something concerning and you are pressed against your hallway wall with a man you have spent eight months teasing and you have just bitten him, and he is looking at you like he is, finally, going to do something about it.

He turns you around.

He turns you around with one hand on your shoulder, not rough, just decisive, and you are now facing the wall and his hand is on the back of your neck, light, not pressing, just there, and his other hand is at your hip, and his mouth is at your ear.

"You are going to listen to me," he says, into your ear. Soft. Almost gentle. "I am going to tell you what is about to happen. And you are going to be quiet and let me tell you. Can you do that."

"I-"

"Words."

"Yes."

"Yes what."

"Yes, I can do that."

"Good."

The good goes all the way down your spine. You make a sound. He hears it. He does not comment on it. The hand at the back of your neck stays where it is.

"I am going to take you to your bedroom," he says, into your ear. "And I am going to take a great deal of time. And every time you try to rush me, I am going to stop. And every time you try to bite me again, I am going to stop. And every time you say something cute, I am going to stop. Three strikes, sweetheart, and I leave you on that bed and I go home. Do you understand me."

"Yes."

"Yes what."

"Yes Grace."

He pauses. The hand at your neck flexes, once, very slightly.

"Try again."

You stare at the wall in front of you. You can feel his breath at the side of your head and his hand at the back of your neck and your face is hot and you are, suddenly, not sure what he is asking for.

He waits.

He waits long enough that you have to think it through, and then you understand, and your stomach does the wrong thing.

"Yes," you say. "Ryland."

"Good girl."

The words do something to you that you will, later, deny. Your knees actually buckle, briefly, and his hand at your hip catches you, and he laughs, very quietly, against the side of your head.

"Down the hall?"

"Yeah."

"Show me."

You show him.

You walk down the hall and he walks behind you with his hand on the small of your back, and the hand is not gripping, it is just present, and the present-ness of it is keeping you upright in a way that is not entirely metaphorical. You get to your bedroom. You stop at the threshold. You do not know what to do.

"Inside," he says, behind you.

You go inside.

He follows you. He closes the door, which is unnecessary because you live alone, and the unnecessariness of the door-closing is a deliberate choice he is making, and you clock it, and your stomach does the wrong thing. He stops in front of you. He looks at you. He pushes his glasses up his nose with one finger, slowly, the way he did at your desk.

"Take your cardigan off," he says.

You take your cardigan off. You drop it on the chair.

"Shoes."

You take your shoes off.

"Good."

You make a sound. You can't help it. He hears it. He does not smile. The not-smiling is somehow worse than the smiling would be. You are standing in front of him in your skirt and your blouse and your bare feet on the cold wood and you are absolutely certain that you have never been looked at like this in your entire life.

"Grace."

"Don't talk."

"I-"

"I said don't talk."

You close your mouth.

He walks around you. Slowly. A full circle. He is looking at you like a thing he is appraising. You stand still because you have been told to stand still and because, frankly, you are not sure your legs could be doing anything else. When he comes back around to your front he stops and he looks at your face and he says, very mildly:

"You bit me."

"I-"

"That was a question."

"It-"

"Was that a question."

"Yes."

"So answer it."

"Yes, I bit you."

"Why."

"I-"

"Yes or no would be easier. Did you bite me because you wanted to, or because you were trying to make me stop being slow."

You stare at him. You understand the trap. The trap is that there is a correct answer and a true answer and they are not the same answer, and he is going to wait until you give him the true one.

"Both," you say.

"Mm."

"Don't mm-"

"I will mm if I want to. Sit on the bed."

You sit on the bed.

He stands in front of you. He is, now, fully out of the patient teacher register and into something else entirely, something where he is paying attention to you with the same focus he uses on a problem he is genuinely interested in, and the focus, which has been pointed everywhere else in his life for forty-eight years, is now pointed at you and you cannot, you find, look away from him.

"Look at me," he says.

You were already looking at him. You keep looking.

"You can be a brat," he says, very calmly. "I figured that out. I figured it out eight months in but I figured it out. You can be a brat with me all you want. You can say make me and you can bite me and you can do whatever you have planned for the next time you want to wind me up, and I am not going to break, sweetheart, I am going to handle it. Do you understand."

"Yes."

"Yes what."

"Yes Ryland."

"Good."

He kneels down in front of you. He is, suddenly, eye level. He puts his hands on your knees. He pushes them apart, slow, and steps in between them, and his hands are on your thighs, sliding up under the skirt, and his mouth is on the inside of your knee, and your hands fly to his hair.

"No," he says, against your knee. "Hands behind you."

You put your hands behind you, on the bed.

"Good."

The good is going to kill you. You are going to die in this bed. Of the goods. You make a small sound and he hears it and he does not comment on it and he moves his mouth higher up your thigh, slowly, and you bite the inside of your own cheek to keep from saying anything.

"You can talk," he says. "I just don't want you to push. Tell me if it's too much. Tell me if you want me to do something else. Just don't tell me to hurry. Got it."

"Got it."

"What was that."

"Got it, Ryland."

He laughs, very softly, against your thigh. He is, you realise, pleased. He is pleased with the Ryland. He is pleased with all of it.

He pushes your skirt up around your hips. His hands hook into your underwear and he pulls it down, slow, and you lift your hips for him without being asked and he says, soft, "good," and you make a sound that is not language. He drops the underwear somewhere on the floor. He puts his hands back on your thighs and he pushes them wider apart and he just looks at you for a second, with his glasses sliding down his nose and his hair already a wreck and the most focused expression you have ever seen on his face.

"Grace."

"Mm."

"Don't look at me like that."

"Like what."

"Like you're going to write a paper on it."

He laughs. He laughs against the inside of your thigh and the laugh hits you in three different places and you make a sound and his laugh stops, abruptly, like he has just discovered something.

"Okay," he says, quieter. "Okay. Hold on."

He leans in.

The first thing he does is not what you expect. He does not put his mouth on you. He kisses the inside of your thigh, high up, slow, and then the crease where your thigh meets your hip, and then the other crease, and you are already, embarrassingly, lifting your hips toward his mouth because your body has stopped consulting you on anything, and he places one flat hand on your stomach and presses you back down against the bed.

"Stay."

"Grace-"

"Stay."

You stay.

He puts his mouth on you.

He does it slow, the way he does everything in this bed. The first pass is just his tongue, broad and warm and exploratory, and you make a sound that is not a word and his free hand tightens on your thigh in answer. He does it again. He does it again, slightly different, slightly higher, and you can feel him paying attention, the way he pays attention to a malfunctioning copier, the way he pays attention to a problem he wants to actually solve. He is learning you. He is logging which thing makes you make which sound, and he is going to use it.

"Ryland."

"Mm-hm."

"Ryland, what are you-"

"Shh."

He finds your clit. He finds it and he closes his mouth around it, gently, and he sucks, once, and you make a noise that you would, ordinarily, be deeply embarrassed by, and the noise tells him what he wanted to know, and he does it again.

Your hands fist in the sheets behind you.

He goes slow. He goes unbearably slow. He is not in a hurry. He is, you understand with mounting horror, going to take the entire afternoon to do this if he wants to, and he wants to, and there is nothing you can do about it. He keeps his rhythm steady and patient and exact, and every time your hips try to come up off the bed his hand on your stomach presses you back down, and every time you make a sound he files it, and every time he files a sound he comes back to whatever caused it and does it again.

He slides one hand up the inside of your thigh. He hooks two fingers, gentle, just at your entrance, and pauses there.

"Yes?"

"Yes, Grace, please-"

"Words."

"Yes, you can-"

"Yes what."

"Yes you can, Ryland, please, please-"

"Good."

He pushes the two fingers into you, slow, and your back arches off the bed and his mouth is back on your clit and his fingers are crooked just exactly right inside you, like he has been practicing, like he has been thinking about it, and you are immediately, embarrassingly, very close.

"Ryland, I'm-"

He pulls his mouth off you.

His fingers stay where they are. The fingers stay where they are, slow, lazy, exactly not enough, and his mouth is at your inner thigh again, kissing, like nothing is happening, and you make a sound that is genuinely the most undignified thing your throat has ever produced.

"Grace-"

"Mm-hm."

"What are you doing-"

"Taking my time."

"Ryland, I will-"

"Mm."

He moves his fingers, just a little, just enough to make you make another sound, and then he keeps them still, and your hips try to move and he presses you down with his free hand and you understand, with a kind of furious clarity, that he is going to keep you exactly here, on the edge, for as long as he decides to, and there is nothing you can do.

You drop your head back against the pillow and you make a sound that is half a laugh and half something that is not a laugh.

"You are evil."

"Mm-hm."

"You are literally evil-"

"Ask me for it."

"What?"

"Ask me for it. Properly. Like you mean it."

You lift your head. You look at him. He is between your thighs with his glasses fogged and his fingers inside you and his free hand on your stomach and his mouth wet, and he is waiting, and you understand that he is going to wait as long as it takes, and you understand that you cannot wait as long as it would take, and you give up.

"Please, Ryland."

"Please what."

"Please, your mouth, please will you finish, please-"

"Good."

He puts his mouth back on you.

He does not, this time, go slow. He has gotten his answer, and now he is going to give you what you asked for, and what he gives you is steady and focused and exactly the rhythm he had a minute ago, and his fingers crook inside you on the same beat, and you come apart in under thirty seconds with both hands fisted in the sheets and his name in pieces in your mouth.

You come for what feels like a long time. He works you through it, mouth and fingers, until you are pushing at his shoulder with one hand because you cannot take any more, and only then does he ease off, slow, and rest his forehead against your inner thigh for one second, breathing.

"Ryland."

"Yeah."

"Up."

"Are you asking."

"I am asking, Grace, please, get up here-"

"Mm."

He gets up there.

He pulls his fingers out of you, slow, and you make a small protesting sound that you hate yourself for, and he kisses the inside of your thigh once more, and then he climbs up your body, slow, kissing as he goes. He kisses your hip. He kisses your stomach. He pushes your skirt the rest of the way up and then off you entirely, dropping it over the side of the bed, and he kisses up between your ribs and unbuttons your blouse one button at a time with his teeth around the third button which makes you laugh, and he says "don't make me laugh, I will lose track," and undoes the rest with his hands.

He pushes the blouse open. He looks at you. His face does the thing it does when he is looking at something he genuinely cannot believe is in front of him.

"Hi," he says.

"Ryland, please get off me and take your pants off."

He stops.

He stops kissing your sternum and he lifts his head and he looks at you. The look is not angry. The look is patient and very slightly disappointed, in the way a teacher looks at a student who has just done the exact thing the teacher told them not to do five minutes ago.

He sits up. He sits back on his heels between your knees. He puts his hands on his thighs.

He waits.

"Grace."

"Mm."

"What did I-"

"You're pushing."

"I'm not-"

"Mm."

You stare at him. He stares back. He is, you realise with a kind of dawning horror, not going to do anything else until you correct yourself. He is going to sit there, between your bare knees, with his glasses fogged and his hands on his own thighs, until you ask him properly.

The afterglow of the orgasm he just gave you is still in your bones. Your body is still loose and shaky and grateful, and you have just demanded that he hurry up like none of the last forty minutes happened, and he is now demonstrating, with great patience, that they did.

"Ryland."

"Mm."

"I'm sorry."

"Mm."

"I'm sorry, I-"

"Try again."

"Please. Please, will you take your pants off."

"Better."

He stands up off the bed.

He stands up and he turns away from you, slightly, and he pulls his t-shirt off over his head, slow, and you finally get to see him properly, and what you see is a man who is, by any honest measure, real. Real chest. Real shoulders. Real soft middle where his cardigan has been hiding it. Real chest hair, going grey in places. The most Ryland Grace body you have ever seen, and your mouth goes dry.

"Stop looking," he says, without turning around.

"No."

"That's my line."

"Mm."

He laughs, soft. He unbuckles his belt. He undoes his pants. He pushes them down with his underwear in one movement and steps out of them, and he is, you note with some considerable feeling, very hard, and he turns around and he sees you looking and he does not, for once, tell you to stop.

He leans over and picks his pants up off the floor and fishes in the pocket. He comes back up with his wallet. He opens his wallet. He takes out a condom.

You stare at him.

"You had that in your wallet?"

"Mm-hm."

"Since when."

"Couple weeks."

"Couple weeks?"

"Mm-hm."

"Ryland-"

"You want to keep talking about it, or-"

"Get over here."

He stops.

He stops with the condom in his hand and he looks at you, calmly, and he does not move toward the bed.

"Try again," he says.

"Grace, I-"

"Try again."

"I-"

He waits. He holds the condom. He is standing two feet from your bed, naked, hard, with his glasses sliding down his nose, and he is not coming, and you are spread out on the bed with your blouse hanging open and your underwear gone and your skin still flushed from the orgasm he just gave you, and you have just told a naked man holding a condom to get over here, and you are about to lose your mind.

"Please."

"Please what."

"Please, will you, will you come back to the bed, please, Ryland-"

"Better."

He comes back to the bed.

He rolls the condom on, slow, watching your face the whole time, and you watch his hand on himself and you make a sound and he hears it and the corner of his mouth pulls and then he is kneeling between your thighs again and he leans down and kisses you, slow, and his mouth tastes like you, and you make another sound and you reach for him and he catches both your wrists, gently, and pins them next to your head.

"Hands here," he says, against your mouth.

"Ryland."

"Stay."

You stay.

He braces himself on one forearm next to your head. He reaches down with his other hand and lines himself up, and he pauses there, just at your entrance, and looks down at you.

"Yes?"

"Yes, Grace, I have been saying yes-"

"Just checking."

He pushes in.

He pushes in slow. He pushes in unbearably slow, because of course he does, because he has not stopped being himself for one minute of this afternoon, and you feel every inch of him going in and you make a sound that has no shape, and he is making small sounds back into your neck that are not words, and when he is all the way in he goes still and drops his forehead onto your shoulder and breathes out, ragged, against your skin.

"God."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"Ryland."

"Yeah."

"Move."

He moves.

He moves slow at first because he cannot, evidently, help it, because slow is his whole afternoon, but the slow does not last very long this time. The slow lasts maybe thirty seconds. The slow lasts until you wrap one leg around his hip and tilt up into him and make a small please sound against his ear, and then the slow goes out of him in long peeling sheets, and what is underneath it is a man who has been wanting this for eight months and has been holding himself together with both hands, and he is not, now, holding himself together.

He picks up the pace. He picks it up and he does not put it down. He is over you, braced on both forearms now, his hips snapping into yours in a steady deep rhythm, and his face is in your neck and he is talking, of course he is talking, and what he is saying is not the patient teacher voice from the hallway, it is not the careful handler from the desk, it is Ryland Grace talking like he talks, breathless and tangential and chaotic, into your skin.

"God, you are, you are, I have thought about this, I have thought about this so much you have no idea-"

"Ryland"

"You have no idea, I have, eight months, eight whole months of you sitting on my desk and-"

"Ryland, I-"

"Lazy, you called my teaching lazy-"

"Grace."

"In front of everyone, in front of-"

You laugh. You laugh and the laugh shakes you both and he makes a small surprised sound at the way you tighten around him and his hips stutter once before he catches the rhythm again, and you bite his shoulder, the same one as before, harder this time, and he says fuck into your neck which is the first time you have ever heard him swear and the swearing does something to you that you will, later, have to think about carefully.

He pulls his head up out of your neck.

He looks down at you. His mouth is still wet. The red mark from your teeth is still on his bottom lip. His hips have not stopped moving in that deep steady rhythm, and his face, above yours, is focused, and he is looking at you with the calm decisive attention of a man who has just decided to do something about a thing.

He leans down.

He puts his mouth on the place where your neck meets your shoulder. He does it carefully. He does it without hurrying. And then he closes his teeth around the skin there, not hard, just deliberate, and bites you.

You make a sound.

He holds the bite for one beat longer than you expect, and then he releases it, and his tongue passes over the mark he has just left, slow and soothing, and he kisses the spot once, and lifts his head again.

"There," he says, mild. "Closer to even."

You stare up at him. He is still moving. The mark on your neck is throbbing in a way that is travelling through the rest of you, and you make a sound that is not a word, and the corner of his mouth pulls.

You have, in the middle of all of it, one single very clear thought.

The thought arrives without tone. The thought arrives without any particular feeling attached to it, just a flat declarative line in your own voice in the middle of your own head, which is: I am going to murder him and then I am going to marry him.

He laughs, very softly, against the side of your head, like he has somehow heard it.

"Ryland."

"Yeah."

"Harder. Don't ask, just do it."

He stops.

He stops moving. He does not pull out. He stays exactly where he is, all the way inside you, and he goes completely still, and he lifts his head off your neck and looks down at you.

You stare up at him.

"No," you say. "No, no, no, Grace, please, please don't-"

"What did I tell you at the wall."

"Ryland-"

"What did I tell you. About the third strike."

You make a sound. It is not a word. It is the sound of you understanding, in a single small bright pulse, that he has been counting. He has been counting the pulls and he has been waiting to use the threat and the threat is now, and you are full of him and he is not moving and you are going to die.

"Ryland, I'm sorry-"

"What was the rule."

"Don't push, don't push, Ryland please-"

"And what did you just do."

"I-"

"Look at me."

You look at him.

His glasses are fogged. His hair is a wreck. His face, above yours, is focused and patient and unmoving, and his hips are still and his weight is heavy and you can feel him inside you still hard and still right there and he is doing nothing, and you understand, in the same small bright pulse, that he can do this all afternoon, that he is patient enough and frustrated enough and attentive enough to do this all afternoon, and that the only way out is through.

"I pushed."

"Mm-hm."

"I pushed, I'm sorry, Ryland, please-"

"Please what."

"Please, please will you, will you please go harder, please-"

"Mm."

He waits one more beat. He waits long enough to make you sure, for one terrible second, that he is going to say no, and then he leans down and kisses you, gently, on the forehead, and he says, very softly, "okay," and he gives you what you asked for.

It is not gentle this time.

It is not gentle and you cry out at the first hard thrust and his mouth comes down on yours and swallows the sound and then he is fucking you, properly, hard, the way you have been pushing for, and the difference between thirty seconds ago when he was still and right now is so vast that your whole body is shaking with it. His hand has come up to cradle the back of your skull, carefully, like he is making sure you don't hit the headboard, and the carefulness of the hand in contrast to the rest of him is what finally undoes you.

You feel it coming. He feels it coming. He somehow knows, because he is paying attention the way he pays attention to everything, and he reaches down between you with his free hand and his fingers find your clit and he says, into your ear, "come on, sweetheart, come on, I've got you, I've got you, good girl," and you come apart underneath him with his name in your mouth, both of them, Ryland Grace, broken, and you are not, this time, trying to be quiet, and he is saying it again into your ear while you come, good girl, that's it, good girl, over and over, soft and certain, and you understand dimly that he has waited to deploy that one, that he has held it back since the hallway, and the saving of it is the last thing that goes through your mind before everything goes white.

He follows you a few thrusts later with his face buried in your neck and a sound he makes that you will think about for weeks.

He goes still.

He is heavy on top of you. His whole weight. He is breathing hard. His hand is still cradling the back of your skull. His other hand is gripping your hip, hard enough that there will be marks tomorrow, and you do not, you find, mind.

You lie there.

You lie there for a long time. He does not move. You do not push him off. His breath slows. Yours slows. His glasses are pressed sideways against your cheek and are, definitely, bent.

Eventually he kisses the side of your neck, very softly, and lifts his head, and looks at you.

He looks like a man who has just been hit by a small truck.

"Hi," he says.

You laugh. You cannot help it. The laugh shakes you both and he laughs too, and he drops his forehead back onto your shoulder, and you put your arms around him, and he sighs, and the sigh is the most relaxed sound you have ever heard him make.

"Ryland."

"Yeah."

"You had a condom in your wallet for two weeks."

"Yes."

"That's presumptuous."

"Mm-hm."

"You were that sure?"

"I was hopeful."

You laugh again. He laughs into your shoulder. He kisses your collarbone, sleepy now, and after a second he eases out of you, careful, and deals with the condom, and comes back and sprawls half on top of you with his face in your neck.

"Your glasses are bent."

"I know."

"They're really bent."

"I'm aware."

"You should take them off."

"I'm not moving."

"Grace."

"Mm."

You laugh. You laugh and he laughs into your neck and he presses a kiss to your jaw, and you reach up and, gently, take his glasses off his face and put them on the nightstand. He makes a small grateful noise. He closes his eyes.

"Hey," he says, into your neck. Quiet now.

"Yeah."

"You're not actually allowed to call my teaching lazy in front of the whole department."

"Oh my god."

"I'm just saying. As a general policy."

"Grace, I will throw you out of my bed."

"You won't."

"I will."

"You won't."

You won't.

He pulls you closer. He is warm. He is heavy. After a minute, into your hair, he says, very softly:

"I clocked you at the meeting."

"I know."

"I want to be on record. About when I clocked it."

"Grace, I know."

"Just so we're clear."

"We're clear."

"Mm."

A pause.

"You really did call it lazy, though."

"Grace."

He laughs into your neck. You close your eyes. The afternoon light is doing something through the curtains and your apartment is very quiet and his weight is heavy against you and you think, very clearly, oh.

Oh, fine.

Okay.

You go to sleep too.

--

Enjoyed - let me know?

When the evening rolled around, and you wanted a glass of wine to relax, none other than the esteemed Dr. Grace slid into the seat next to you at the hotel bar. You didn’t even try to hold in the sigh that forced its way out at the sight of him. He ordered a glass of “whatever she’s having,” gesturing to your drink. 

He says your name quietly, “been a while.” 

You hum, taking in his appearance. He’d always been cute, as much as you hated to admit it. He looks a little older, sporting a beard and a few wrinkles around his eyes. He’s studying you too, you briefly wonder what he’s seeing. 

“I can’t believe they let you stay,” you murmur, smirking when his ears go red. “The organizer agreed with me, just not with my delivery,” he clinks his glass to yours with a wink. 

“Arrogant as always,” said with a roll of your eyes. He shrugs, sipping his wine. “You haven’t changed either,” he looks at you over the top of his glasses, brows raised. 

You push back on that, jaw dropping when he mumbles “snooty” into his drink. 

“Me, snooty?!” 

He laughs a little, biting his tongue with a grin. 

“You’re unbelievable,” you grumble, reaching for your bag to pay. He stops you with a hand on your arm, face falling quickly. “No - sorry, I - you’re right.” That’s the first time you’ve ever heard him apologize, much less to you. 

“Don’t go, I’ll buy your drink.” It’s an olive branch, an attempt to connect. You settle back into your chair, letting him direct the conversation to the last speaker he watched. There wasn’t really a point in the discussion where it didn’t feel like you were arguing, but you’d never admit that you were enjoying it. 

You didn’t object when he signaled the bartender for a refill, telling yourself that it was for the free wine and not the man paying for it. Somewhere along the way his hand slid closer to yours on the bar, just near enough to brush. He probably thought he was subtle when he checked your fingers for a ring, but you absolutely caught him. 

“So,” you start when the conversation lulls, “no girlfriend?” His eyes go wide, his shoulders tensing before he slouches a little, “that obvious?” 

You laugh, “you’ve never been slick.” He bites back a smile, “fortune favors the bold, I guess.” 

“Oh, have you been fortunate?” You’re teasing, but his cheeks have a pretty dusting of pink and his eyes look a little heavy. “Not fair, there’s no right answer to that question,” he mumbles, leaning towards you slowly. When you lick your lips and tilt your head, he stops. “You wanna get out of here?”

~~~~~~~~~~

He drags you down the hall, pressing you against the door while he digs out his key. He tries to kiss you, laughing when you push him away with a hand on his face. “Open the door, asshole,” you grin.

He steps in, turning sharply and pressing you against the door as soon as it closes. You feel his knee slide between yours, his hands landing on your hips. He kisses you soundly, letting you relax into him before tracing his tongue along your bottom lip. A quiet moan rumbles in his chest, vibrating under your fingers. 

You pull him by his tie, relishing in how big his body felt around you. It earns you another moan, this one delivered right in your ear as he moves to kiss down your neck. His beard scratches against your skin, leaving delicious red marks in his wake. Steady fingers unbutton your shirt, dragging it over your shoulders until it hits the floor. He goes straight for the clasp on your bra, pulling back with a frown when he feels a smooth band. 

“It clips in the front,” you breathe, snorting when he hooks a finger under the clasp and yanks you against him. He claims your mouth again, distracting you while he fiddles with the closure. The bra flies somewhere to the side, his big hands cupping your breasts, squeezing and kneading the soft skin. He licks his way down your chest, whimpering around your nipple when you grip his hair and tug. 

“So fucking hot,” he groans against your skin. Strong arms wrap around the back of your legs, lifting you off the ground. You land on the bed, bouncing enough to make you laugh. He gets your shoes off, hands reaching for your pants. He whispers a quick, “is this okay?” into your stomach, winking when you nod at him. 

Your pants and underwear go together and Ryland stands back for a moment, dark eyes drinking in the sight of you bare on his bed. Self-consciousness washes over you until he leans down to kiss you with a hand under your chin, “play with your nipples while I get undressed.” Your breath hitches but you comply, fingers pinching and pulling the sensitive buds. He bites his lip, clearly enjoying the show, before finally loosening his tie. 

He unbuttons his shirt slowly, teasing a little when he sees you watching his hands. He reaches for his belt and pauses, “spread your legs.” You gape at him. “Touch yourself for me,” he smirks, eyes glued to the hand working towards your center. The intensity of his stare has you moaning, rolling your hips while your fingers circle your clit. You really should be embarrassed but he just looks so good like this.

He yanks his belt off and growls, leaping forward and throwing your legs over his shoulders. His tongue flattens over your core, flicking up and finding a home on your clit. Big hands hold your legs down, thumbs parting your lips so he can reach all of you. Your moans flow freely, hands in his hair, feet crossed behind his back. 

The familiar warmth builds in your stomach, you want to chase it but it’s not quite enough. “Use your fingers,” you gasp out, eyes closing when he groans into your pussy and immediately pushes two fingers in. “So tight, holy- mm- holy shit.” He doubles down on your clit, sucking and licking while his fingers search out that spot inside you. When you jerk with a broken cry, you can feel him smile against you. 

He curls his fingers, groaning between quick breaths to give you that much more stimulation. “Give it to me,” he murmurs, “let me have it, please.” The whimper that follows is what throws you over the edge. Heat rolls through you in waves, your limbs shaking and head thrown back. He doesn’t stop, slurping up every drop that leaks out around his still-pumping fingers. 

When he finally pulls his fingers out, he pushes his tongue right in, groaning and whining at the feeling of your walls pulsing. 

You finally wrench his head away, sucking in a deep breath. He looks up at you and wipes his lips with the back of his hand. The sight makes you clench around nothing. He finally steps out of his pants and underwear, spitting in his hand and stroking his length. You have a moment to lay back and admire him while he digs out his wallet, searching for a condom. 

He’s fit, wide shoulders and toned arms. His hard cock stands proudly against stomach - he’s bigger than you expected, but it was a welcome surprise. He climbs back over you with the foil packet in his teeth. 

You’re reaching for him before he gets the condom on, stroking with just enough pressure to have him moaning against your neck. “You’re big, Ryland,” you whisper into his ear. He whimpers and bites your skin lightly, hips bucking into your hand. 

Quiet words are tumbling out of him, most of it’s incomprehensible, but you catch a few words. “So sexy,” “beautiful,” and “god, yes, baby,” stood out as the important ones. 

When a soft, “please,” falls from his lips, you take pity on him. The condom slides on easily, his lips searching out yours when you line him up with your entrance. The push in has you both moaning, your walls stretching around him in rippling pulses. You can’t keep up with the kiss, your mouth dropping open. He stays close, lips bumping your cheek and temple as he thrusts slowly. 

Every time he bottoms out, he swivels his hips to grind against your clit. It has your eyes rolling back, the flash of his smirk making your stomach flip. Your hands are firm on his back, nails scratching his skin as he fucks into you. 

His babbling starts up again, praise falling from his lips easily. “Y’ feel so good, oh,” he shudders above you. Quick fingers reach for your clit, circling in time with his thrusts. “Need you to come,” he whines, looking into your eyes for help. “What do you need? He asks so honestly, like he’d give you anything you ask for. 

You kiss him a little sweeter than you meant to, then press him down towards your chest. He gets the hint, lips sucking a nipple in with a groan. All the points of contact have your head spinning, his cock hitting so deep inside you that you swear you can feel him in your stomach. He sinks his teeth into your nub and pulls, it makes the coil in you burst with a shock. 

Your back arches up into him, your legs clamping around his waist. Your vision gets dark around the edges, you remember to breathe after a few seconds. He stutters through it, slamming home with one final groan against your breast. You feel him twitch a few times, enjoying the weight on top of you. 

He rolls to his side, hands grabbing your waist to pull you close. You catch your breath and look at him, he’s smiling from ear to ear, eyes shining like he can’t believe that just happened. “What?” You shove his shoulder playfully. “Nothing, nothing,” he raises his hands to block you. 

“I just -,” he laughs, “I used to have the biggest crush on you.”

You push him onto his back, “oh my god,” you smirk. “I hated you, so you never had a chance.” His laugh shakes your body, your hands flying to his chest to keep steady. “Yeah, that’s fair.” And he winks, like that makes up for it.

-----------------