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“She gets the good stuff from me.” His hand finds the small curve at my waist that won’t be a secret much longer and spreads warmth over it. “How’s the spring project?”

“Making me nauseous at bookstore readings.” I tip my head back against his shoulder. “Worth it.”

He’s quiet a second, palm moving slowly over the swell of our second. When he speaks, his voice has gone down to the grain, the gravelly-low register I heard the first night, straight off a fire.

“Five years ago tonight,” he says, “you held a door open and told me to walk through it.”

“And you shut it in my face.”

“Best decision I ever made.” He turns my chin up. Soot’s long gone, but I can still find the memory of that first clean stripe he drew through it. “I told you I’d be here at every dawn. You believe me yet?”

“I stopped needing to check somewhere around year two.” I turn into him and get a fist in his shirt, the same as I did on the floor of that shop with the mountain still burning off him. “But you can keep proving it.”

“Planned on it.” His mouth finds the corner of mine. “Consider yourself warned.”

Warned. The word that used to gut me. He’s said it to me a thousand times since—in advance, out loud, stone sober, every time before it could ever be the thing that happens in the dark. Five years of warnings. Not one broken.

I reach up and undo the top button of my own collar, then the next, unsealing myself in the low light, on purpose, for him. The bravest thing I ever learned to do, and by now the easiest.

His mouth finds mine fully then, slow and deep—the kind of kiss that knows exactly where it’s going and takes its time getting there. I climb into his lap without breaking the kiss, knees bracketing his hips, the seam of my jeans dragging over his through two layers of worn denim. Five years, and my body still answers the same way—catching fast, going from a simmer to a boil in seconds.

His hands slide under the open edges of my blouse, palms warm along my ribs, thumbs tracing the undercurve of my breasts through the thin lace of my bra. I work the remaining buttons myself, one after another, until the fabric hangs open. He helps push it off my shoulders. I shrug free and let it fall. Then my fingers find the clasp at my back. The bra loosens, and he draws the straps down my arms and tosses it aside.

His mouth is on me before the air cools my skin. He takes one nipple between his lips, tongue circling, the pull of it sending a bright line of heat straight down.

I arch into him, fingers in his hair, and he gives the same attention to the other, slowly and thoroughly, like he’s got all night and intends to use it. I rock against him, grinding over the hard line of him through our jeans, the friction perfect and maddening.

A low sound leaves his throat. His hands settle at my hips, guiding the rhythm for a moment before one drops to the button of my jeans. He works it open and slides the zipper down, and then his hand is inside, palm cupping me over the cotton of my underwear first, then slipping beneath.

Two fingers find me already wet, part me, and stroke. He knows the exact pressure, the exact place. I move with him, breath coming shorter.

“That’s it, my girl,” he murmurs against my mouth, voice wrecked-low and certain. “You’re so wet for me.”

He rubs steady circles over my clit, dipping lower to push inside, then back, building me without hurry. The pleasure coils tight and familiar, and I come hard against his hand, thighs shaking, a broken sound caught between us. He works me through it until the last tremor fades, then eases his fingers free.

I stand on unsteady legs, pushing the jeans and underwear down, then stepping out of them. He’s already unfastening his belt. I kneel between his spread knees, undo the button and zipper, and help him shove the denim and briefs down. He springs free, thick and flushed. I wrap my hand around him, lean in, and take him into my mouth.

I lick a slow stripe up the underside, then close my lips around the head and sink lower, taking what I can. His hand settles in my hair—not pushing, just holding—while I suck and stroke, tongue working the sensitive underside, the wet heat of my mouth drawing soft curses from him. I feel him swell, the first warning pulse against my tongue.

“Enough.” His voice is rough. He guides me up with a hand under my arm. “Climb on. Want to feel you.”

I smile—the naughty one he always answers with a darker look—and turn so my back faces him. He steadies my hips as I straddle him in reverse, knees outside his thighs. I reach between us, line him up, and sink down slowly.

The stretch is perfect, the full slide of him filling me until I’m seated flush against his lap. A long moan slips out of me—it feels so good, the deep press of him exactly where I need it.

I start to move, rising and falling in a steady rhythm, hands braced on his knees for leverage. His hands find me at once—one slides around to rub tight circles over my clit, the other cups my breast, thumb brushing the still-sensitive nipple.

I ride him harder, the wet sound of us and the low creak of the couch filling the quiet house. Pleasure builds again, sharper this time, driven by the dual pressure of his fingers and the thick slide of his cock.

“Come for me,” he says against the back of my shoulder, the command soft and absolute. “My girl.”

I break on the next thrust, clenching around him as the orgasm rolls through me in long, shuddering waves. He follows a heartbeat later, hips jerking up hard, a rough groan buried in my neck as he empties inside me. I keep moving through it, slower now, until we’re both spent and trembling.

After, we’re tangled on the couch under the throw off the back of it, the porch decorations still burning orange past the glass, and I have my ear over his heartbeat where it’s lived for five years. His hand moves through my hair. He hasn’t stopped touching me. He never does.

I feel myself going warm and loose and unguarded, the exact feeling that used to trip every alarm I had. The one that meant the light was coming and someone was about to be gone. I wait for the old cold to follow it down.

It doesn’t come. It stopped coming a long time ago. That’s the thing nobody tells you about the fear with no cover on it—you don’t spend forever bracing against it. One day, you notice you’ve just been living in it, warm the whole time, and you can’t remember the last time you checked the door.

“Where’d you go?” he says into my hair.

The same three words from the first night. Our oldest joke—the one that used to mean I was already halfway out and bracing.

I tip my face up to his. Out the front window, it’s full dark, the porch light throwing its last orange, hours yet before any gray touches Prospect. Doesn’t matter. We stopped needing the actual sky for this a long time ago.

“Nowhere,” I tell him, and I mean it all the way down. “I’m right here.”

“It’s dawn,” he says.

It isn’t, and that’s the whole point. It’s the thing we say now—has been for years—the two of us daring the word that used to take me apart, saying it in the dark on purpose because he taught me it’s not the enemy. He’s always there for it. Every real one, and every made-up one like this.

“It’s dawn,” I answer, and settle back over his heart, exactly where we said we’d be. “And here we are.”