Elevated

Nora found, despite his hesitance, that it was impossible to feel unsafe with Bucky lying beside her. She’d had some sort of nightmare, well after they’d gone to bed. She couldn’t remember it and she only knew it had happened at all because she could remember the arm he’d wrapped around her stomach. He had pulled her back against him and the fear that had swelled up, fizzled away.

She thought she should probably tell him so but when she opened her eyes the thought fell away.

His eyes were just so blue. He was smiling, just a little, and the blanket sat somewhere around his waist so she could see all the hard muscle of his chest. She didn’t really think about it first, just propped herself up on an elbow so she could lean and kiss him.

It wasn’t at all like the one the night before. It was soft instead. The barest press of her lips on his. He hummed against her and the sound rattled around in her ribs, shaking loose the warmth she felt every time he held her. She slid her hand up and into his hair, dragging her nails across his scalp the way she knew he liked.

He made another soft noise, this one lower, and wrapped his arm around her back curling his fingers against her hip. It wasn’t quite where she wanted his hand, but she still liked it a lot.

Nora pulled away, sucked in a long slow breath and sat. His hand flexed against her, but he didn’t make a sound. She thought maybe she could read him after all. The slant of his mouth, his blue eyes dark. He was gentle with her but maybe that wasn’t quite what he needed.

It was hard to drag herself out of bed and he didn’t want to let her go, catching her hand and resisting the first time she tried to pull away. She managed anyways, whistling for Luna and heading down the hall despite the frown that twisted at his mouth.

She ordered Luna to the chair in the living room and slipped into the bathroom. She surveyed herself in the mirror. Nora was confident in her work, but she didn’t really consider herself confident in many other things. She wasn’t the type of person to do things on her own and she struggled to do things that put her on a limb. She should’ve told Bucky she liked him way sooner and gotten stuck, nerves tangling up with the feeling and stopping her cold.

Well, she wasn’t wasting any more time. Not when she was some kind of magnet for horrible lab accidents. She yanked off the shirt she was wearing and left it pooled on the floor.

Nora only caught it for a second when she stepped into the room. Bucky had moved, he was sitting against the headboard, frowning at his left hand. But then his eyes were on her as she kicked the door shut. She didn’t know for a second what the expression on his face was. Then he licked his lip and she did.

“Nora,” he breathed as she crawled onto the bed beside him and hitched her leg over his for the second time. She didn’t sit across his knees, she scooted forward to fit right against his hips. His breath came a little uneven. His eyes slid down over her bare skin and snagged at her ribs.

She took his face between her hands and kissed him, gentle, then firm. She could feel the tension across his body, “I know you’re worried,” she whispered, pressing up against his jaw until he tilted his head and couldn’t see her stomach anymore. She kissed across the underside of his jaw, mumbling against his skin “I’m not worried. You can say no, and I will wait forever. But I don’t want to.”

His hands came up to rest against her hips, right hand open and searing, left closed in a fist and cold enough to make her shiver, “What d’you want?” He asked, voice low and gritty.

Nora thought the answer was pretty obvious, but she didn’t mind telling him anyways, “You.”

She thought he would be slow to decide. That she would feel the slow unraveling like she had the night before. He wasn’t. One second, she was straddling his lap and the next she was flat on her back, the weight of him pressed against every inch of her. She made a surprised noise into his mouth, already pressed against hers.

Heat ignited in her stomach and seemed to spread everywhere as he licked easily past her lips. It was like she’d been starving, deprived, and suddenly had what she wanted. She couldn’t get enough. His tongue swept across hers, her teeth, her lips and she chased it the whole way, whimpering when he set his teeth to her lip.

He broke away, kissing a line down the column of her throat and growling when she clutched at his arm and tried to pull him back. He had always let her move him, but he didn’t now. He continued his slow path down, nipping at her collarbone. Nora whined, reveling in the feeling even as she wished he’d return his attention to her mouth.

He didn’t. He licked across her breast instead, setting his mouth to her nipple and rolling it between his teeth. Nora gasped and arched but he had a hand on her chest still and there was nowhere to go. He kept her pinned and sucked at her skin, lighting every inch of her on fire and sending a rush of wet heat between her legs.

He continued his path down her chest, following the line of the bruise on her ribs with feather light kisses that sent little shocks of electricity through her body.

“Bucky,” She reached to grip his shoulder, and he paused, his fingers curled under the hem of her underwear.

His eyes, darker than they’d ever been before, met hers, “Hm?”

“I want-” She didn’t know what she wanted. She was on fire, unbearable want coursing through her without a direction to go. She wanted him to kiss her again, on her mouth, her neck, her chest. Wanted him to continue the path he was on. She wanted to beg him to keep going, or come back, or never stop.

“What d’you want?” He rumbled.

It wasn’t fair. She thought so carefully about her questions, tried to make them easy for him. She didn’t know how to answer. It was almost embarrassing but the desire on his face was so open the feeling didn’t stick, “Kiss me, please.”

He hummed, “I’ll kiss you,” His fingers slid from out from under the fabric at her hip and then down. He slid his thumb down over her clit and circled it almost lazily, disallowing her of the ability to buck her hips with the strength of his hand, “Here.”

She wanted to cry. The lazy circle of his thumb fired shocks through her nerves, coiling tension already looping low in her stomach. She wanted to do something, anything, and he wasn’t letting her move.

“Tell me,” He demanded.

“Yes,” She begged, then again, and a half dozen more times. She wanted whatever he was going to give her and she’d do whatever he wanted if he said it in that same growling voice.

The noise he made was pleased, and not. He let her hitch her hips up as he pulled her underwear off and then pinned her again with his right hand on her hip. He licked a hot line through her slit and she must’ve sworn, her head falling back, and then again when he circled her clit with his tongue.

If it could be called a kiss at all it was the filthiest she’d ever experienced. Bucky didn’t hesitate and he seemed to know somehow exactly where to put his lips and tongue, like his mouth had been made to ruin her. He hadn’t wasted any time putting his mouth on her, but now he seemed to think he had all the time in the world. The flicks of his tongue were almost lazy, each one looping the knot in her a little tighter.

She wanted to beg but for once she was the one without any words. She could barely drag in a breath. She tried to buck her hips and failed. She buried a hand in his hair, the other reaching to grip his cold left arm where it was braced at her side, trying desperately to get him to do something and having no idea what it was.

He didn’t change the lazy glide of his tongue at all, but he did let out a growl that shot straight to her core, “Bucky please,” she didn’t know what she was begging for but she was sure he did, “Please- fuck- please.” He loosed another growl and he did know what she needed because he pressed his lips to her clit and sucked and she broke. Hot waves of pleasure rolled over and through her and kept going when he didn’t stop, continuing instead to flick his tongue over her until she stopped trembling.

One more time he licked a wide stripe over her pussy and fucking hummed. Like he enjoyed the taste. A sound she’d never heard from him before and which sent heat pooling in her stomach again even as it spread across her cheeks. He lifted the hand that had kept her pinned and shoved up to sit back against his heels. His gaze wandered across her body and stuck on her red cheeks, “Fuckin’ beautiful.”

Nora thought the same. His posture was loose in a way it had never been before. He slouched, his hand hooked loosely around her calf. His body was all smooth hard muscle, his chest, abs, thighs all bared. She wanted desperately to be able to see the hard line of his cock properly, “Bucky.”

He licked his lip and he was obviously good at reading her because he hooked his thumb into his waistband and dragged it down, just far enough that she could see dark hair where it met the base of him, “Tell me.”

She didn’t think she could, but the words came tumbling out anyways, “I want you. I want to see you.” She had thought him withholding the night before, but he wasn’t anymore. He slid back off the bed and shed the layer, let her drink in the sight of him, naked and hard and beautiful. And then because he didn’t come back, she continued, “Kiss me.” He followed the order, hitching his knee back onto the bed and crawling over her, dipping to kiss a path back up her stomach, lingering at her breast, then at her neck.

Nora lost patience and gripped his hair to pull him up and kiss him properly. She whimpered, tasting herself across his tongue. Now that he was close, she took the opportunity to slide her hands over his skin, one down his chest and the other across his back. She wrapped her hand around his cock, hot and hard and fucking perfect.

His reaction was instant, he huffed against her mouth and dropped his metal hand, palm flat to the bed beside her head.

She pressed her lips to his neck, working her hand over him and marveling at the sounds he made, half-broken. She tried to hold onto each one, file it away in her mind, with the feeling of what it did to her. Every breath of his coiling the tension in her own body a little tighter.

“Nora-“ he grit, “Fuck.”

Then she was begging, Bucky and yes and please and maybe something else but she didn’t know what. Bucky didn’t make her beg long, he set himself at her entrance and pressed into her. Nora could’ve cried as the head of his cock split her and fit fucking perfect- and then he stopped and she did let out a sob. She tried to pull him closer with her legs around his hip and couldn’t and then she was begging again.

“Fuck, sweetheart,” He crooned and Nora was grateful that he couldn’t manage a lot of words because if he called her that again she’d be wrecked. Then he rolled his hips into her and she was anyways.

The pace he set was agonizing and perfect, a slow lazy glide that hitched at the end to press hard against the deepest part of her. She still didn’t know what she wanted but Bucky seemed to know what she needed, every stroke edging her a little bit closer.

She needed to do something, slid her hands over his skin and through his hair. She pressed open mouthed kisses to his collarbone, his neck, his jaw, his mouth. He kissed her back almost lazily, and she understood what he worried about because he was completely in control, but she was grateful for it. Even as she gripped at the metal of his wrist and tried to match the shifting of his hips. There was nowhere to go, nothing she could do but take what he gave her and let it wind her closer.

She sank her teeth into his neck and his rhythm stuttered, then sped. Her head fell back and he curved to meet her lips, rolling her lip between his teeth as his thumb ghosted across her clit and she shattered. Sparks flew across every inch of her skin, the sweet burn of her orgasm rolling through her unbearably slow even as he gave her what she wanted and thrust into her quick and hard.

His hips stuttered, met hers and stopped as he came with a groan into her mouth. He slid his hand from between them to curl it around her head instead, continuing the slow exploration of his tongue across her teeth.

Nora wanted to say something when he finally pulled away, mouthing lightly across her jaw, then properly to look in her eyes. He stroked his hand through her hair, body still pressed to every inch of her. She couldn’t manage it. She didn’t know what words to put to the feeling he’d lit in her.

“Fuckin perfect,” he mumbled.

That was it, Nora thought. He already knew.

Bucky had thought when he kissed her the first time that he didn’t think he’d be able to let her go.

Well now that he’d held her like that, felt the perfect wet heat of her and listened to her beg his name there was definitely no going back. He’d do anything to make her happy. To convince her to stay.

Not that she seemed inclined to go anywhere, at least not for a little while. When he managed to pull himself away and roll onto his back, she rolled with him, pillowing her head on his shoulder and tracing lazy lines over his torso. She drew imaginary circles on his ribs, stars on the hollow of his hip, lightning bolts over the web of scars at his shoulder. It made him shudder, a strange blend of emotion rising up.

He spent a lot of time with his scars. More than he wanted to. When he caught sight of them in the mirror it was all disgust and shame and painful grief. But Nora doodled her way across them and it all felt further away. The grief lingered, he would’ve liked to touch her with two hands, but the others dulled.

He hadn't touched her with his left hand but she had held it. Gripped his arm and wasn’t concerned at all that if they were anywhere else in the apartment he would have broken something. He thought it might be embarrassing to have to explain that he’d put his hand through drywall because Nora touched his cock and he lost control of his body.

It didn’t make him any less inclined towards fucking her against the bare wall of the living room.

Nora huffed and complained when he rolled out of bed to walk Luna but she let him go. He saw Bruce in the elevator and managed to answer his question about Nora with ‘fine’ even though his brain had conjured the image of her naked and begging for him to fuck her. He had a hard time not running back to his apartment.

She was sitting on the island when he opened the door, wearing his shirt, and humming. She smiled at him, wide and open.

He was used to the feeling of his heart breaking. It was entirely different to feel it knit back together.