Page 56 of Brother in Law with Benefits

But something shifts, slow, underneath the comfort of it. I feel it in the way his hand stills against my back, in the way his breathing changes, and I recognize it because the same thing is happening in me—grief turning into something else, somethingwith teeth, something that wants very badly to prove a point to a man three states away who doesn’t get a say in any of this anymore.

I pull back far enough to look at him.

“I want you,” I say. “Right now. Not gentle. Not careful. I want to feel like myself again, and I don’t feel like myself when I’m careful.”

Something flares in his eyes—dark, immediate, all the careful restraint he’s been holding onto since he walked through the door burning off at once.

“Yeah?” His voice has gone rough.

“He doesn’t get to decide what this is,” I say. “He doesn’t get to put his ugly little theory in my head and have it live there rent-free for the rest of my life. I want to remember what it’s supposed to feel like. Show me.”

I don’t have to ask twice.

He kisses me—hard, no build-up, no patience, the exact opposite of every unhurried, deliberate thing he’s ever done to me before—and it knocks the breath clean out of me. One hand fists in my hair, the other grips my hip hard enough to bruise. I kiss him back with everything the day left in me, teeth and want and something close to fury, and he groans low against my mouth like he’s been waiting all night for permission to stop being careful.

We don’t make it off the couch.

He yanks my shirt over my head. I go for his belt at the same time, both of us clumsy and urgent in a way we’ve never once been together. Every previous time between us has had some thread of restraint in it. Tonight there’s none. Tonight it’s just skin and heat and the specific, defiant relief of two people proving with their bodies what words already promised.

“Sophie.” My name comes out wrecked against my throat. “Look at me.”

I do. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide, and there’s nothing careful left in his face at all—just heat, and certainty, and something fierce that matches the thing living in my own chest.

“Say it again,” he says.

“I love you.” It comes out steadier this time. “I love you, and Chris doesn’t get an opinion about it, and neither does anyone else in this entire town.”

“Say the other thing.”

I know exactly what he means. “This is ours.”

Something breaks loose in him at that. His hands go rougher, more certain. He gets my bra off and his mouth is on me before the fabric even hits the floor—no slow build, no patient cataloguing, just hunger, focused and immediate. He sucks hard on one nipple, teeth grazing just enough to make me gasp, while his hand works the other, rough and possessive. I arch into it, already aching for more.

He pulls back only long enough to strip the rest of his clothes. I shove my own jeans and underwear down and kick them away. Then he’s on me again, pinning me into the couch cushions with his full weight, the thick, hard length of his cock sliding against my stomach, already leaking. It’s not gentle. I don’t want gentle. I want exactly this—proof, physical and undeniable, that whatever Chris tried to plant in my head today is a lie.

“Tell me you believe me,” he says, hand sliding between us. He finds me soaked, open, desperate, and makes a low, rough sound at the evidence. Two fingers push inside me without warning, curling hard, and my hips jerk up to meet them. “Tell me you know this is real.”

“I know.” My voice is already breaking. “I know, Grant—please!”

He doesn’t wait. He pulls his fingers free, lines himself up, and drives into me in one long, hard thrust that punches a cry out of me loud enough that I’d worry about the neighbors on any othernight. Tonight I don’t care. He’s thick and deep and relentless, and the stretch of him after the day I’ve had feels like being claimed all over again.

Something in his rhythm turns almost punishing after that—deep, fast, no patience left in it. The couch creaks under us. Every thrust drives me harder into the cushions. I wrap my legs around him and dig my heels into his back, urging him deeper, and he gives it to me without hesitation.

“You feel that?” His voice is rough against my ear, every word landing between hard thrusts. “That’s real. That’s not a math problem. That’s not a father-shaped hole. That’s me, choosing you, over and over, every single day since a wedding five years ago.”

“Grant.”

“Say you believe it.”

“I believe it.” My nails drag down his back hard enough to leave marks and he groans, hips snapping even harder into me. “I believe you, I believe this, I believe us.”

He shifts the angle, one hand hooking under my knee to open me wider, and the next thrust hits so deep I see white. I come apart first—hard and sudden, crying out something that might be his name and might not be a word at all, clenching down around the thick length of him while the orgasm rips through me.

He doesn’t stop.

He’s still hard and relentless inside me when the last of it rolls through, fucking me through the aftershocks like he’s determined to drive every last scrap of doubt out of my body. Only when I’m shaking and oversensitive and still somehow wanting more does he finally go still, breathing ragged against my throat.

Then, he sits back on his heels and pulls me up with him.