The scent orgasm on the floor. On my knees in the entryway with everyone watching.
His tongue on me, between my legs, his mouth shining with my slick while he told me about the seven Thursdays.
Riding him in the alcove, begging him to breed me, coming on his knot while I cried.
The lull. His hands on my back. Telling me about the animals. Telling me it doesn’t make you less. The way my chest cracked open when he said that, and the way I let it, and the way nothing terrible happened when I did.
The private room. Four orgasms deep and still going, his voice in my ear, pretty boy, give me one more, and my body obeying even when I was sure it couldn’t.
I stare at the wall. The light in here is warm, almost yellow. I can barely see my reflection, just a dark, curled-up shape. That’s me. I’m the one who did all that last night, said all that stuff, begged, cried, came, and meant every second of it.
I wait for the shame to hit. It always does. Last time it sent me running for the shower, trying to scrub everything off and pretend none of it happened. I’m bracing for it, like waiting for someone to punch me.
It doesn’t come.
The shame is there, hovering, but it’s not hitting me like it usually does. Maybe it’s his arm around my waist, or the way he’s breathing steady behind me, or just remembering him saying that’s allowed. Some tired part of me is actually starting to believe it.
His breathing changes. A deeper inhale, the arm around my waist shifting, and I feel his nose press into my hair. He’s awake.
I tense. I can’t help it — my shoulders go rigid and my hands curl into the sheet and my whole body does the thing it does when it’s getting ready to run. He feels it. Of course he feels it. He’s pressed against every inch of me.
He doesn’t tighten his grip. His arm stays exactly where it is, exactly how it is. Light enough to pull away from. Heavy enough to know it’s there.
“Morning,” he says. Sleep-rough. Quiet.
“Morning.” My voice sounds like I gargled gravel.
It’s quiet. Not awkward, just heavy. The kind of silence you get after something huge, when both people know what happened but neither one wants to be the first to bring it up in the morning.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
“Like I got hit by a truck.” I shift, and my whole lower body protests. I wince. “Several trucks.”
“That’s fair.” His thumb traces a line across my stomach, lazy. “You need water. Food.”
“I need a time machine.”
He huffs a laugh against my hair. “To go back and not come?”
“To go back and not say half the things I said.”
“Which half?”
I close my eyes. He’s doing that thing again, being patient, asking questions he already knows the answers to and just waiting for me to say it. He did it last night with his fingers inside me, and now he’s doing it with his arm around my waist. Same deal. He’s steady, not rushing me, just waiting.
“All of it,” I say. “The — breed me. Theplease. The crying. Pick one.”
“What if I liked all of it?”
“That makes one of us.”
“That makestwoof us.” His mouth is against the back of my neck, his words warm on my skin. “You liked it too. You told me. During the lull, you told me, and you were lucid when you said it.”
I was. That’s what messes me up. The heat was an excuse for the first time, maybe the second, but during the lull, when I sat in his lap and told him I liked the breeding talk and the way he called me pretty, that was all me. I was clear-headed. I chose to be honest with a stranger about something I’ve been lying to myself about for months.
“I’m going to sit up,” I say. “And I’m going to look at you. And you’re not going to say anything devastating for at least thirty seconds.”
“No promises.”
