He says her name and she says — something, Orlesian and heated against his lips, her forehead pressed to his between kisses and breaths and sweat tacking her curls around her hairline, the nape of her neck. She slides her hand along his arm behind her until she's gripping his wrist, slanting her hips just so to grind her clit down against his pelvis every time she draws him in, losing whatever clever thing she might imagine she's got to say on shuddering breaths and the very abrupt reminder of just how close he'd got her to the edge before they rearranged themselves.

She starts to say something else — his name again, maybe — and loses it against his jaw, bowing forward, trembling and tensing around him, thighs taut and her cunt tightening, spasming, tumbling over that edge he'd walked her up to and not crying out only because she's taking heaving, dragging breaths—

nails digging in at his wrist, at the back of his shoulder,

she kisses him through it, bumps her cheekbone into his, pressing together and murmuring, “Fuck,” urgently near his ear, then: “I'm— good,” with a kind of ragged overconfidence, wildly sensitive and uninterested in even entertaining the idea of pausing when she's just hitting her stride finding a rhythm that works for him.

(Gwenaëlle would never lie about how she likes to get off. She'd never fake an orgasm. She has, a couple of times, tried to pretend she wasn't having one to stop her partner from slowing down.)