Fuck, he says, and you don’t want him to stop, ever, and he doesn’t, instead he gets rougher with you, pounding into your body with hot, deep thrusts that push you right to the limits of your strength.
But you love it, you love it—the ache, the heat, the brutal force in his body, the surrender of yours, the guttural sound of his moan, and the unbelievable thrill of him throbbing within you. You feel close to him in a way you’ve never felt with anyone before and doubt you will again.
So as you lie there, still wrapped in his arms, you try to distance yourself from your body. You try to stay in your head, where things make sense. You see the entire thing like a story in your mind. You remind yourself that the pleasurable afterglow of an orgasm is due to the release of oxytocin and should not be confused with genuine human emotion.
Still … it’s hard not to feel something.
How did he do it?
Twenty-One
Ryan
I woke up the next morning at six like I always did.
Immediately I looked over at Stella. I’d fallen asleep with her nestled against my side, but at some point she had rolled away from me. Now she was on her stomach, her hair spilling like sunlight across the plain white pillowcase. The sheet was at her waist, and I felt a tightening in my lower body at the sight of her bare back. There were marks on it. From me.
It made me feel good in a chest-thumping kind of way, but also bad. I hadn’t meant to hurt her.
I hadn’t meant to do a lot of things.
Like ask her to stay.
It’s not that I was sorry, exactly—I wanted to be with her. But I had to be careful to keep things under control. Things like her expectations. Her hopes. Her feelings.
Mine had an on/off switch. Hers did not.
So I decided not to reach for her like I wanted to and picked up my phone from the floor beside me instead. I had one text message, from Mack, sent at midnight last night.
Hey. Call me.
I frowned at the screen, wondering if I still had a job. If I called him now, he’d probably tell me, but I didn’t want to get fired over the phone. And I owed Mr. and Mrs. Sawyer an apology. Mack, too. I knew I’d let him down. Maybe if I owned my mistake and swore it wouldn’t happen again, they’d give me a second chance.
I set my phone down and carefully got out of bed. In the shower, I continued to berate myself for what I’d done outside the inn. Yeah, that guy had been an asshole, and drunk besides, but I’d dealt with my share of inebriated dickheads in my life without losing my shit like that. I usually had a solid handle on my temper. Between that and the way I’d confessed so much to Stella and then asked her to stay over, it was like I’d been a different person last night. Fucking weird.
But actually, I thought as I toweled off, it had felt kind of good to act on impulse that way, to break my own rules, whether it was defending myself to Fox or giving in to Stella’s charms. I’d kept everything inside so long, it was really no wonder I’d burst at the seams. But I wouldn’t make a habit of it. Two more days was fine, but after that, Stella would leave and I could go back to who I’d been before. Without her here to trigger all these strange emotional responses, it would be much easier.
Back in my room, I put my work clothes on and debated waking her. She’d probably hate waking up alone here, but she was sleeping so soundly, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. For the briefest of moments, I watched her sleep, imagining what it would be like to have this every morning. To wake up beside her, get ready for work, kiss her goodbye, knowing that we’d come home to each other that evening, and get to do it all over again. Something warm and strong rose up inside me, pushing against the soft underbelly of my heart.
Quickly, I left the bedroom before it could work its way in, shutting the door behind me.
In the kitchen, I found a scrap of paper and a pen and scrawled a quick note.
Didn’t want to wake you, had to get to work.
Well, fuck. Now what? Thanks for last night didn’t feel quite right, although I was grateful to her. I just didn’t know how to put it into words. Thanks for sticking around after I shoved an old man? Thanks for listening to me rant? Thanks for more sex in one night than I’ve had in the last year?
Maybe I should say something nice like I had a great time. No, that sounded stupid. Should I ask what she was doing later? Offer to take her to dinner again? See if she wanted to take a run together or something?
In the end, I got frustrated with my inability to come up with the right thing and left the note as it was. I put it on the floor right outside the bedroom where she’d see it and quietly let myself out the back door.
I got halfway to the garage before turning around, going back into the house, and adding a line.
Wish I could spend the day with you.
I reported to Mack first thing.
“Hey,” I said, entering his office. I was all set to apologize when I noticed he looked like shit. Wrinkled shirt, baseball cap on his head, dark shadows under his eyes.
Fuck. Was this my fault? Had he gotten fired too?
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He took off his cap and set it on his desk. His hair was a matted mess. “No. I didn’t sleep at all.”
I squared my shoulders. “It’s my fault. I’ll take the heat from Sawyer. You shouldn’t lose your job over my mistake.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that.”
“What is it?”
“Fucking Carla.”
“What happened?”
“She told me last night she wants to move home to Georgia and take the girls with her.”
“What?” I sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Can she do that?”
“No. Not without my permission. But it makes the divorce a lot more contentious and shitty for the kids.”
“Jesus, Mack. I’m sorry.”
He rubbed his eyes. “She’s losing her fucking mind, I swear. First this bullshit about how she knows I’m cheating on her, then all the spending, and now this.”
“Spending?” I didn’t know many details about their split, just that things had been difficult before their last daughter was born, and Carla had begged for another baby to save the marriage.
Mack sighed and sat back in his chair, defeated. “About two years ago, when it was clear having a baby hadn’t solved our problems, she apparently decided that buying more things online would.”
“What did she buy?”
“You name it, she bought it. Clothes. Jewelry. Shoes. Electronics. Furniture. Half the time she never even opened the packages. They just piled up in closets until I finally realized what she was doing.”
“Shit,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Then there were the self-help courses. The life coaching sessions. The personal trainers. The private yoga classes. The salons.”
“How much?” I asked, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
He shook his head. “Thousands.”
“Fuck.”
“Nothing made her happy. And she refused to get help. She blamed me, said if I paid more attention to her, she wouldn’t have to seek happiness elsewhere. But I was wrung the fuck out. I had nothing more to give.”
“I get it,” I said, recalling how I’d felt the same way with Brie.
“She told me to leave, so I did, thinking some space was what we needed, but apparently that validated all her insecurities. And she’s on all these pills that her fucking whack job of a doctor gives her. She’s taking them constantly. I think she’s drinking too much, too.”
“Christ, Mack.”
“I tried to help, offered to take the girls full time, and she freaked out. She immediately filed for divorce, constantly badmouths me to the girls, and I’m worried they’re going to end up hating me, too.”
“They won’t. You’re a good dad.”
“Okay, so tell me this. Does a good dad let his kids go through a nasty, name-calling custody suit? Or does a good dad let his kids move out of state with their unstable mother?”
My stomach tightened. I felt sick for Mack and wished I had something helpful to say, like Stella would have. “I don’t know, dude. That’s a fucked-up situation. What does your gut say?”
But you love it, you love it—the ache, the heat, the brutal force in his body, the surrender of yours, the guttural sound of his moan, and the unbelievable thrill of him throbbing within you. You feel close to him in a way you’ve never felt with anyone before and doubt you will again.
So as you lie there, still wrapped in his arms, you try to distance yourself from your body. You try to stay in your head, where things make sense. You see the entire thing like a story in your mind. You remind yourself that the pleasurable afterglow of an orgasm is due to the release of oxytocin and should not be confused with genuine human emotion.
Still … it’s hard not to feel something.
How did he do it?
Twenty-One
Ryan
I woke up the next morning at six like I always did.
Immediately I looked over at Stella. I’d fallen asleep with her nestled against my side, but at some point she had rolled away from me. Now she was on her stomach, her hair spilling like sunlight across the plain white pillowcase. The sheet was at her waist, and I felt a tightening in my lower body at the sight of her bare back. There were marks on it. From me.
It made me feel good in a chest-thumping kind of way, but also bad. I hadn’t meant to hurt her.
I hadn’t meant to do a lot of things.
Like ask her to stay.
It’s not that I was sorry, exactly—I wanted to be with her. But I had to be careful to keep things under control. Things like her expectations. Her hopes. Her feelings.
Mine had an on/off switch. Hers did not.
So I decided not to reach for her like I wanted to and picked up my phone from the floor beside me instead. I had one text message, from Mack, sent at midnight last night.
Hey. Call me.
I frowned at the screen, wondering if I still had a job. If I called him now, he’d probably tell me, but I didn’t want to get fired over the phone. And I owed Mr. and Mrs. Sawyer an apology. Mack, too. I knew I’d let him down. Maybe if I owned my mistake and swore it wouldn’t happen again, they’d give me a second chance.
I set my phone down and carefully got out of bed. In the shower, I continued to berate myself for what I’d done outside the inn. Yeah, that guy had been an asshole, and drunk besides, but I’d dealt with my share of inebriated dickheads in my life without losing my shit like that. I usually had a solid handle on my temper. Between that and the way I’d confessed so much to Stella and then asked her to stay over, it was like I’d been a different person last night. Fucking weird.
But actually, I thought as I toweled off, it had felt kind of good to act on impulse that way, to break my own rules, whether it was defending myself to Fox or giving in to Stella’s charms. I’d kept everything inside so long, it was really no wonder I’d burst at the seams. But I wouldn’t make a habit of it. Two more days was fine, but after that, Stella would leave and I could go back to who I’d been before. Without her here to trigger all these strange emotional responses, it would be much easier.
Back in my room, I put my work clothes on and debated waking her. She’d probably hate waking up alone here, but she was sleeping so soundly, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. For the briefest of moments, I watched her sleep, imagining what it would be like to have this every morning. To wake up beside her, get ready for work, kiss her goodbye, knowing that we’d come home to each other that evening, and get to do it all over again. Something warm and strong rose up inside me, pushing against the soft underbelly of my heart.
Quickly, I left the bedroom before it could work its way in, shutting the door behind me.
In the kitchen, I found a scrap of paper and a pen and scrawled a quick note.
Didn’t want to wake you, had to get to work.
Well, fuck. Now what? Thanks for last night didn’t feel quite right, although I was grateful to her. I just didn’t know how to put it into words. Thanks for sticking around after I shoved an old man? Thanks for listening to me rant? Thanks for more sex in one night than I’ve had in the last year?
Maybe I should say something nice like I had a great time. No, that sounded stupid. Should I ask what she was doing later? Offer to take her to dinner again? See if she wanted to take a run together or something?
In the end, I got frustrated with my inability to come up with the right thing and left the note as it was. I put it on the floor right outside the bedroom where she’d see it and quietly let myself out the back door.
I got halfway to the garage before turning around, going back into the house, and adding a line.
Wish I could spend the day with you.
I reported to Mack first thing.
“Hey,” I said, entering his office. I was all set to apologize when I noticed he looked like shit. Wrinkled shirt, baseball cap on his head, dark shadows under his eyes.
Fuck. Was this my fault? Had he gotten fired too?
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He took off his cap and set it on his desk. His hair was a matted mess. “No. I didn’t sleep at all.”
I squared my shoulders. “It’s my fault. I’ll take the heat from Sawyer. You shouldn’t lose your job over my mistake.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that.”
“What is it?”
“Fucking Carla.”
“What happened?”
“She told me last night she wants to move home to Georgia and take the girls with her.”
“What?” I sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Can she do that?”
“No. Not without my permission. But it makes the divorce a lot more contentious and shitty for the kids.”
“Jesus, Mack. I’m sorry.”
He rubbed his eyes. “She’s losing her fucking mind, I swear. First this bullshit about how she knows I’m cheating on her, then all the spending, and now this.”
“Spending?” I didn’t know many details about their split, just that things had been difficult before their last daughter was born, and Carla had begged for another baby to save the marriage.
Mack sighed and sat back in his chair, defeated. “About two years ago, when it was clear having a baby hadn’t solved our problems, she apparently decided that buying more things online would.”
“What did she buy?”
“You name it, she bought it. Clothes. Jewelry. Shoes. Electronics. Furniture. Half the time she never even opened the packages. They just piled up in closets until I finally realized what she was doing.”
“Shit,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Then there were the self-help courses. The life coaching sessions. The personal trainers. The private yoga classes. The salons.”
“How much?” I asked, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
He shook his head. “Thousands.”
“Fuck.”
“Nothing made her happy. And she refused to get help. She blamed me, said if I paid more attention to her, she wouldn’t have to seek happiness elsewhere. But I was wrung the fuck out. I had nothing more to give.”
“I get it,” I said, recalling how I’d felt the same way with Brie.
“She told me to leave, so I did, thinking some space was what we needed, but apparently that validated all her insecurities. And she’s on all these pills that her fucking whack job of a doctor gives her. She’s taking them constantly. I think she’s drinking too much, too.”
“Christ, Mack.”
“I tried to help, offered to take the girls full time, and she freaked out. She immediately filed for divorce, constantly badmouths me to the girls, and I’m worried they’re going to end up hating me, too.”
“They won’t. You’re a good dad.”
“Okay, so tell me this. Does a good dad let his kids go through a nasty, name-calling custody suit? Or does a good dad let his kids move out of state with their unstable mother?”
My stomach tightened. I felt sick for Mack and wished I had something helpful to say, like Stella would have. “I don’t know, dude. That’s a fucked-up situation. What does your gut say?”
