Shivering, I take hold of his shoulders for leverage as he grasps my thigh. “You sure about this?” Arthur asks.
“Yes. This… isn’t boring.”
He exhales a breathless laugh as he pulls a condom from somewhere on the nightstand and rips it open with his teeth. Then he’s pushing the fabric between us to one side and nudging against me, and there’s nothing in my busy, hectic, overworked mind except how he slips right in, every spinning neuron distracted by him.
“Made for me,” he says. “Knew it. Second I saw you—heard your voice—knew I needed to be right here.”
Without moving a single muscle in his hips, Arthur somehow gets his fingers to my clit and strokes, his two thick fingers dampening any direct sensation. It’s almost, barely, just enough, and my legs twitch as he pushes in one more inch, getting my body used to this new shape. He works his fingers up, then down, patient, teasing more choked moans from me.
“That’s it. Can my perfect little wife come around the tip of my cock?”
Game, game, game. This isn’t real.My brain gets the memo, but my body doesn’t listen. Even though I’m so turned on I’m trembling, I bite my lip and say, “Make me.”
Arthur huffs. Instead of quickening his fingers, he slows to a punishingly leisurely tempo. He takes his time, and the sheer confidence of it all turns up the beat pounding in my core.
“Deeper. Please,husband.”
“Fuck.” He sounds ragged. “Say it again.”
“Please? Or husband?”
“You know which one.”
“And you know my answer. Make me.”
With a tortured noise, Arthur looks down to where our bodies meet and pushes in. He exhales a rapid-fire string of curses and jumbled praise, and I watch as he swallows, my head swimming.
“I… I’m not going to last long,” he pants.
I dig my fingernails into the back of his neck. “Me neither, husband.”
“Screw it, then,” Arthur whispers, more to himself than me I think—since moments later he starts to really move. Cold fire burns beneath my skin, buried in my bloodstream, at the glowing mix of adoration and awe on his face as we meet, there, here. All the way. He looks at me like he never wants to go to sleep again.
“I want it. What you want. With you, only you.” He says it in soft, staggered breaths I almost don’t understand. “Wanna put a baby in you. See you round and happy ’cause of me. My pretty wife pregnant with our pretty babies. Give it to me, right now.”
Everything inside me clenches—my heart and my jaw and my thighs—before the embers collapse, and out goes the fire. And it’s better than I ever thought this could be. Excruciatingly good. AnI might’ve just died but that’s fine, leave me hereorgasm.
“Did you come for me?” he gasps, and I laugh nonsensically, nodding back.
Maybe it’s my laugh. Maybe it’s every way our bodies are fitting together—like he said, made for each other. Arthur hisses my name into the side of my neck. Then he’s following me, his own pleasure peaking as his lips find my skin again and again and again, whispering words about our future and our life and everything he wants to give me, children, houses, gardens, cars, his time, his life.
And I want all of that one day, I think. When this isn’t a game, if it’s ever not a game with him… I’ll want to be loved like that.
Eventually, his breathing goes from tornado to summer storm. “I told you I’d keep you up,” he mumbles, a smile in his voice.
“I’m not complaining.”
When we’re back to only cuddling, our clothes righted and Arthur curled around my back, I finally find the right words to say. Just as I’m falling asleep, my body thoroughly exhausted. “Sorry I was so slow at figuring you out.”
He laughs and pulls me closer, his heat saturating through my skin. “Sorry I fell so fast,” he replies, and it’s the last thing I hear before I’m gone.
Chapter Twenty-Four
When I wake up, my new watch says it’s ten a.m., but I don’t believe it. I rub my eyes, peek under the duvet to confirm I’m alone, then slide out, tiptoeing to the wide windmill-patterned curtains that cover one side of the room.Gone for breakfast, reads the note on the side table.Stay in bed.
I smile. It’s a brand-new day, and I need to deal with what happened last night. But I think I’m also… happy.
Letting the curtains drop back into place, I check that my T-shirt is long enough for ten a.m. behavior and then walk over to my phone.
