Page 46 of The Marriage Blunder

He said, “Come for me, Jude. Do it.”

And I did. It tore out of me, blinding, savage, spattering my own chest, my arms, the sheets.

He kept fucking, even as I collapsed forward, the last spasms squeezing him in. He shuddered, a full-body convulsion, and came, cock pulsing so hard I felt every hot jet.

He held inside, locked, panting, his arms crushing me to him. The room was silent except for our breath, loud and ragged. He let go, finally, and rolled us onto our sides, still inside me, refusing to break contact.

I lay there, half-conscious, head pressed back to his shoulder, the world bright with afterimages and heat.

He didn’t say a word, just buried his face in my hair, arms wrapping me up like I was the last safe thing in the universe.

And for a long, long time, we didn’t move.

I didn’t want to.

He never pulled out.

We just lay there, my ass leaking around him, his cock softening, but still lodged inside, the world an orbit of sticky, fucked-out heat.

He rolled onto his back, taking me with him, and pulled the covers over us both. I went boneless, head on his chest, his heartbeat slow and heavy under my ear.

He ran his fingers through my hair, not with any pattern, just tracing circles, gentle, almost absent-minded.

The only light was the spill from the city, blue and gold through the glass, washing over the tangle of our bodies.

I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to think, or talk, or ever have to put words to any of this.

We didn’t.

We lay there until the sweat cooled, until the edge of the night blurred into something soft and shapeless.

Every mark he’d left—the bites, the handprints, the sting where his cock had split me open—burned just enough to remind me they were real.

He never let go.

I let myself drift, eyes closed, breathing matched to his, the world narrowing down to the rise and fall of his chest and the weight of his arms around me.

No nightmares came.

No doubts.

Just the steady, quiet certainty of being exactly where I belonged.

Chapter Ten

~ Kenneth ~

When I woke, I was alone in the bed. The sheets were cold, except for a residual patch near the edge where Jude had slept until, presumably, three minutes ago. My body ached, but it was a good ache, the kind that comes from exhaustion earned rather than imposed.

I found Jude in the bathroom, already dressed, already brushing his teeth. He wore last night’s pants, a fresh shirt from my closet—he had picked white—and his glasses, which sat just slightly crooked, as always.

He met my eyes in the mirror, raised an eyebrow, and said, through the foam, “You have ten minutes to get presentable or I’ll drink all your coffee.”

“Threat noted,” I said, and went to do exactly that.

The kitchen was the same as always: hard surfaces, expensive appliances, a sense of stillness that bordered on the forensic. Adams was nowhere in sight, which was unusual, but not a problem. The coffee was already made, two mugs set out—one black, one the blue-enameled one that Jude had, last night, declared “the only thing in this apartment with a soul.”

I poured, sipped, and waited for the burn. It was hot. Actually hot, not the tepid approximation I usually allowed to go cold before I remembered to drink it, but burning hot.