Ooh, he’s getting bolder now. I flip onto my front, and he nudges my legs open. “Are you sure about this?” he asks. When I nod, he guides himself between my legs, then very slowly presses forward.
I lift my bottom and groan as he slides inside. He waits for me to adjust, then moves back and pushes forward again.
“Okay?” he checks.
“It feels amazing,” I whisper back.
“Tell me if you want me to stop.”
“Oh God, please don’t stop…” My words are so heartfelt that he laughs with pure joy and starts moving inside me.
I love this position, and I clutch hold of the pillow, sighing as he bends and kisses my neck and shoulder. He’s thrusting hard and fast now, and I feel another orgasm approaching, slightly different from the first one, much deeper and not so focused on my clit. When I come, it feels as if my whole midriff is clenching, and I cry out with the pulses.
“Oh fuck,” he says, and, just as the pulses are dying down, he shudders and stills, his hips jerking as he comes inside me.
“Baby,” I say, managing to hold on just long enough for him to finish before all my strength goes and I sink into the pillows. “Oh God.”
We stay like that for a few moments, letting our bodies return to normal. Then he withdraws and shifts to the side a little, but wraps his arms around me. I murmur my approval, and we lie like that for a while, as our breathing calms, and our heartbeats slow.
“That was fantastic,” I tell him with a satisfied sigh.
He kisses my ear. “Understatement of the year. You are amazing.”
“Aw. I just had to lie there.”
“That’s true. But I’m happy to do all the work.”
We both chuckle.
I stroke his arm, feeling him kiss my ear. “Do you feel better now?”
He sighs. “Yeah. I’m so sorry I woke you up.”
“It’s not a problem at all. I’m guessing it was a bad dream?”
“Yeah. Same old, same old.”
“Will you tell me what it’s about?”
He’s quiet for a moment, but I know that means he’s thinking, so I don’t say anything. Eventually, he says, “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you…”
“Did Penny react badly?”
He strokes my hair. “Not in the beginning. She tried to be kind. But despite working in family law, she never had much empathy. I think she was on the spectrum, although she’d never have admitted it.” He blows out a breath. “I’m not blaming her.”
“I know.”
“It must have been a lot to put up with. But in the end, she said she couldn’t keep waking up when she had a busy day ahead. So she started sleeping in the spare room. That was the beginning of the end, for me.”
Now I understand why he was so reluctant to sleep in here with me. “I’m so sorry.”
He doesn’t reply, but he nestles into the pillows, bringing me even closer.
It’s warm and cozy beneath the bedclothes. I give him a while, letting him think, and sure enough, eventually he takes a deep breath and says, “We were working with an allied force in eastern Afghanistan. Intelligence suggested there was a Taliban weapons cache in a village. My job was overwatch. I was on a ridge about eight hundred metres away with a clear view of the valley while the rest of my platoon went in.”
I feel like holding my breath as the words spill from him. I can’t believe he’s finally confiding in me. Stroking his arm, I lie quietly, letting him talk.
“It should have been straightforward. We’d done dozens of operations like it. Then the first explosion went off.” He falls silent for a moment. “It wasn’t a cache. It was a trap. They’d been waiting for us.”
