He licked his lips. "Yes, you are." He lowered his mouth to her right nipple and gave it a gentle kiss before turning to the other one and greeting it similarly.
"Just a reminder, Professor. We are short on time," she threw his words back at him, but her voice came out breathy with need.
He chuckled against her nipple and then took it between his lips and sucked.
Fenella moaned, her arms coming up and her fingers threading into his hair, holding him close.
He feasted on her for a moment longer, alternating between gentle and firm, reading her responses and adjusting accordingly, but was keenly aware that they didn't have a lot of time for extended foreplay.
Letting go, he leaned back and removed his shirt. The rest of his and her clothing followed in a tangle of fumbling hands and breathless laughter, and when they were finally skin to skin, Fenella's mouth found that spot on his throat just under his jawline that always made him groan.
He was inside her within a heartbeat, and as she held him tightly to her, he got lost in her touch, in the slide of skin against skin, in the catching of her breath, in the incoherent endearments she murmured against his shoulder.
It was a familiar dance by now, passionate in the intense way of new lovers, but saturated in the deeper connection of two souls recognizing each other across time and space.
"I love you," he said, the words coming unbidden but never unwelcome.
He'd say them a thousand times if that's what it took for her to believe them, to accept them, to return them.
Fenella's eyes flew open, meeting his, and for a moment, he thought she might finally say them back. He saw the words forming, saw her lips part, saw the internal struggle play out in her eyes.
Instead, she pulled his head down and kissed him with a fierce tenderness that said everything she couldn't yet manage to say.
It was enough. For now.
Some walls took time to crumble. He'd already waited fifty years, and he could wait a little longer for those words, when every touch, every look, every soft sigh already told him the truth she couldn't yet verbalize.
