he held secrets.

it was a cold winter's night, dry as washington winter nights sometimes are, and he held secrets from her as he traced his hands down her sides; she knew this, but did not seem to care. his touch was new, and different, and when he kissed her it seemed like she was the only thing in his world, so she ignored the fact that he held secrets from her.

he held secrets from many people; he held them from himself, on occasion, and also for others, even at the cost of his own credibility. he drew his tongue across a small, smooth patch of her neck, and, in the darkness of his bedroom, he thought he heard a flicker of love in the rushing of her blood.

she had gone to dinner with him once, twice, many times, and they had made the society pages; but on the front page was his picture, splashed under headlines with words like lies and scandals. she ignored it, for she was his lawyer and friend and now also his lover, and she knew the reports were wrong because he doesn't hold important secrets from her.

but he does hold them from her, as he traced with his tongue that invisible line that dropped down from her navel; he held the secret that in the very back of his mind, when he is with anyone, in the very, very back of his mind, underneath all the dusty layers, he is constantly thinking about bills and conventions and rulings. it is a track, a mechanical ticker that never turns off, and then he heard her gasp as his fingers trembled against the soft, giving flesh of her thighs. for a moment, that constant, choking train of thought became muffled.

she whispered his name, and pulled him up before she could climax; she could taste herself on his lips, in his mouth, and she pushed him onto his back before he could let his mind be dominated by other, quiet thoughts. her nails dug into his shoulders, and the ticker-tape in the back of his mind disappeared; his hands left red marks on her hips as she straddled him, wet and hot and teasing. she put his secrets in a lockbox, and she dragged a finger across his lips to silence whatever protests he may have had; he took that finger in his mouth, and suckled the tip.

he realized, then, that she could hurt him, and he wondered when he'd become vulnerable. he was no longer the invincible creature he'd once thought himself to be and he thought, with her, he might not mind. she could be his next addiction, and he held that secret from her. jenny was never this way, he thought, before banishing her name from his mind. this was new, dazzling, sweet, frightening, and he wondered when he'd started wanting this.

he held secrets. and then he broke inside her and let all his little secrets out-