Under Control.

chapter sixty five.

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It starts with a fingertip wandering along the edge of Nora's towel, and a questioning look that's met with a smile.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes.'

'Nora,

'Jules.'

'Are you sure?'

Nora disappears her towel herself and then she looks back at Julian with wide, determined eyes. All of the ice is gone from her, and the uncertainty too. This is the version of herself that exists only to him.

'I love you, you know?' She says, and it is a question. Sometimes, she wonders if he believes her when she says it. And sometimes, he doesn't, it's true.

But not now, not here, tonight.

'I know,' Julian nods and smiles, then drops his own towel off the edge of the bed to join hers on the floor. 'I love you.'

Not, 'I love you, too,' — no, too. Just love. He loves her, full stop. He loves her with everything he's got.

When they come together finally, the room blurs at the seams, and so too does the night.

Julian tugs Nora with gentle insistence until she's on top of him and all around him, her damp hair a curtain around their blushing faces, and then he wraps her up in his arms and lugs them both up the length of the bed. He wants her to be comfortable and warm, and he's greedy to have the space to revel in her like he wants.

So, once they're there — snug in a cocoon of mussed linens — Julian shifts, and tucks Nora's body beneath his. And then, he is everywhere.

The room is alive and so are they, and to Nora, Julian is all that there is.

He is warm and the weight of him hovering above her is a delicious kind of solidity that she doesn't realise she's been craving until he's there. The air around them sparks with anticipation and longing, and the need to prove. And Nora wants to kiss him. She wants to drink Julian up, wants to flick her tongue hungrily into his waiting mouth, wants to feel him, and taste him, and loose where the edges of she begins, and he ends.

Julian wants to see. He needs to remember how his hands look trailing down her sides and up her thighs. He wants to remember what Nora looks like when he makes her shiver, the tickle of his wavering touch skimming over her hips, the crest of her ribcage, the space above her beating heart. And he's determined to keep the sound of her sighing gasps, her soft giggles, her stubborn moans, tucked away inside of himself, for always.

Nora's skin is soft and her eyes are dazed and her lips are pink, and waiting. And so Julian finds his way back to her — back up the expanse of her pliant body, up the plains of the bed — and once he's there, he takes a breath, gives a suddenly shy smile, and then he dips his head and rushes hungrily to cover her mouth with his.

All Julian can feel, is Nora — her teasing tongue, her warm slick mouth, the feel of her nails scratching through his hair and over his shoulders — and the fire she's ignited in his veins. He's fighting against himself and the temptation to rush. He wants to stay here, maybe forever, he thinks. And while that fleeting thought might just have been a fantasy, what Julian knows he can do that's real is to take his time, and make sure that when the sun rises to greet them once more, Nora knows undeniably just how much she is loved by him.

And even though Nora already does know, she lets him go. Because being reminded feels nice and feeling him alive, everywhere and all around her, is overdue. It's a need that was there before, in the way that it always is when he's gone. But after their night spent falling to pieces on the phone, when the ember of their mutual need became absolute the moment the dread seeped in — after the wreckage of the past two days and all their time spent trying to paper over the memory of him, bathed in antiseptic and misery — it's more.