katherinesage:

He bent over her. This much they had done together, before. This much he remembered. That she liked to be kissed in a line down her throat, and that if he followed the shape of her collarbone with his mouth she would cry out and dig her hands into his back. And if he had been terrified of what came next — not knowing what to do, or how to please her — it was washed away in the rush of her responsiveness: her soft cries as he ran his hands down her legs and kissed her chest and stomach.

“My Jem,” she whispered as he kissed her. “James Carstairs. Ke Jian Ming.”

No one had called him by his birth name in over half a century. It was as intimate as a touch.

— After the Bridge, Cassandra Clare