Page 63 of Brother in Law with Benefits

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Everyone clears out by ten — Camden first, then Bonnie with a hug that lasts a beat longer than usual, then Patty, who takes both our faces in her hands at the door the way she always does, one after the other, and doesn't say anything at all, which somehow says more than if she had.

"You two did good," she says finally, to the room in general, and lets Grant walk her to the car.

I stand in our half-empty kitchen when he comes back in, boxes stacked against one wall, a card table with somebody's leftover cake on it, dishes soaking in a sink that's ours now, sketchy plumbing and all.

"So," Grant says, leaning in the doorway. "First night."

"First night." I look around at the chaos of it — nothing where it's supposed to be, half our lives still in cardboard, a house that doesn't know us yet. "It's a mess."

"It's ours." He kisses me, then adds. "Come on. I found the bedroom boxes. Mattress is on the floor until the frame gets delivered, fair warning."

"Very romantic."

"I never claimed otherwise."

We climb over three boxes labeled BOOKS and one labeled — in my handwriting, apparently, though I don't remember writing it — SUCCULENT ??? DO NOT CRUSH, to get to the bedroom, where the mattress is in fact sitting directly on the floor, sheets half-tucked, moonlight coming in through a window that doesn't have curtains yet.

"This is not how I pictured our first night in this house," I say, standing in the doorway.

"How'd you picture it?"

"Furniture, mostly. A working nightstand. Some dignity."

"We can aim higher next time." He tugs his shirt over his head, unhurried, dropping it somewhere near a box of towels. "Tonight I was thinking about a mattress on the floor, boxes everywhere, and you."

He crosses the room, catches my hand, pulls me down onto the mattress with him, careful about it even now, even exhausted, even surrounded by cardboard.

“Come here,” he says.

He kisses me slow at first, then deeper, unhurried the way he always is—like there’s no schedule left in the world. No Brazil. No scan results. No ghost of Chris anywhere near this room. Just a mattress on the floor of a house that is finally, actually ours. His mouth moves down the side of my throat, open and warm, then lower, tracing the line of my collarbone with deliberate care. Even exhausted, even with half-unpacked boxes stacked against the walls, he takes his time.

“New house rules,” he murmurs against my skin. “We get to find out how loud these walls actually are.”

I don’t answer. His hands are already under my shirt, warm and sure against my ribs. I lift my arms and he pulls it over my head, then the rest of my clothes, slow enough that I feelevery inch of fabric leave my skin. He undresses himself just as carefully, never looking away, and when he’s bare the thick, heavy length of him is already hard against my hip. He settles over me again, mouth finding the soft place below my ribs, then lower, until he’s between my thighs.

I arch into him with a sound that carries cleanly in the empty room—no neighbors close enough to hear, no thin walls left to worry about. He makes a low, approving noise and keeps going, using his mouth and two fingers until I’m trembling, until the only thing I can do is twist my hands into the sheets and let his name break out of me, louder than I meant it to be.

“That’s it,” he says, voice rough, watching my face the whole time. “Let me hear you. No one else gets this. Just me.”

He gives me almost no recovery. He moves up my body, settles between my thighs, and sinks into me in one long, slow thrust. The stretch is familiar and still overwhelming—thick and deep, filling me completely. I wrap my legs around him and hold on, forehead pressed to his, both of us breathing the same air on a mattress that doesn’t even have a bed frame yet.

“I love you,” I tell him against his mouth, already a little wrecked.

“I love you too.” Simple. Certain. No performance in it—just fact, laid down soft between us while he’s buried inside me.

He starts to move. Long, deliberate strokes at first, the kind that make me feel every inch of him dragging against me. I meet every one, hips lifting to take him deeper. When the rhythm finally builds it builds the way he always builds it—slow, controlled, then deeper and harder, his hand sliding between us to find my clit with exact, devastating pressure. The dual sensation—his cock filling me, his fingers working me—has me shaking within minutes.

“I know,” he says, rough against my ear, reading the way my breath catches. “I’ve got you. Let go for me.”

I do. It rolls through me hard, my whole body tightening around the thick length of him and then breaking, his name the only sound left in my mouth as I come. He fucks me through it, steady and deep, until the aftershocks start to ease—then he follows a few strokes later, burying himself to the hilt with a low groan against my throat, cock pulsing as he empties into me, his body shuddering over mine until there’s nothing left in either of us but the quiet and the heat.

We collapse together after, tangled in mismatched sheets on a mattress that is, technically, still on the floor. His hand finds mine in the dark and holds on. He’s still inside me, softening only slowly, and neither of us moves to change that.

"Worth the mess," he says, into my hair.

"Marginally." I trace a lazy line down his arm. "Ask me again once we've actually found the coffee maker."