CHAPTER 0037- Still here

I woke before him.

Gray light was leaking around the curtains. His arm was still heavy across my waist, his breath steady against the back of my neck. For a few minutes I just lay there, cataloguing the aches — the dull soreness between my thighs, the faint bruise-tenderness on my wrists where he’d pinned them, the leftover heat in my face from everything I’d admitted the night before.

I’d told him.

And he was still here.

That fact sat in my chest in a complicated way. Not relief exactly. Not safety either. Something closer to the feeling of standing on a ledge and realizing the drop hadn’t taken me after all.

He stirred behind me. His hand flexed once on my stomach, then slid up to rest between my breasts.

“You’re awake,” he said, voice rough with sleep.

“Yeah.”

“How long.”

“A few minutes.”

He made a low sound and pulled me more firmly against him. I felt him hardening slowly against the curve of my ass. Neither of us moved for a while. The quiet felt different from the night before — less sharp, still heavy.

“Are you going to keep being angry,” I asked eventually.

“Yes.” His mouth brushed my shoulder. “But not in a way that makes me put you in the guest room again. Not today.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

He kissed the side of my neck, then the place just below my ear. His hand drifted down my stomach, over the jut of my hip, and between my legs. I was still slick from the night before. He made a quiet, satisfied sound when he felt it.

“Sore?”

“A little.”

“Good.”

He rubbed me in slow, lazy circles, not rushing, just waking my body up under his hand. I shifted against him and he exhaled against my skin. After a minute he hooked my top leg back over his and guided himself between my thighs from behind. He didn’t push in right away. Just let the head of his cock slide through the wetness, teasing, until I made a soft impatient sound.

“Ask.”

“Please.”

He pushed into me in one slow, deep stroke. The stretch pulled a shaky breath from my lungs. He stayed still once he was fully seated, one arm banded around my waist, the other braced on the mattress in front of me.

“Last night wasn’t forgiveness,” he said against my ear. “It was me reminding you where you end up when you test me.”

“I know.”

“And this morning is me deciding I still want you here anyway.”

He started to move. Unhurried, deep thrusts that made the bed creak softly. There was no punishing edge to it — just possession, steady and thorough. I reached back and gripped his thigh. He laced his fingers through mine and held on while he fucked me in that slow, claiming rhythm.

“You’re not going to see them,” he said.

“I already said I wouldn’t.”

“I’m saying it again. Because I need to hear myself say it. And because if I find out otherwise, measured stops being an option.”

I nodded, forehead pressed into the pillow. “I understand.”

He reached around and rubbed my clit in time with his strokes. The dual sensation built gradually, warm and inevitable. When I came it was quiet, shaking against him, clenching around his cock while he kept the same deliberate pace. He followed a minute later with a low groan, buried deep, holding me through it.

We stayed joined afterward. His heartbeat thudded against my back. Outside, birds had started up in the trees along the street.

Eventually he pulled out and rolled me onto my back. He looked down at me for a long moment, eyes moving over my face like he was still checking for something.

“Chloe gets back this afternoon,” he said.

“I know.”

“We’re going to act normal. You’re going to look her in the eye. And you’re going to remember that every secret you’ve kept in this house has eventually ended with you underneath me explaining yourself.”

I almost smiled. It came out crooked. “Is that supposed to be a deterrent?”

“It’s supposed to be a fact.”

He leaned down and kissed me. Softer than the night before. Longer. When he pulled back he rested his forehead against mine briefly.

“Shower,” he said. “I’ll make coffee.”

He got up. I watched him cross the room naked, the long line of his back, the faint marks my nails had left on his shoulders at some point in the night. He didn’t look back before stepping into the bathroom.

I lay there a little longer, staring at the ceiling, feeling the slow leak of him between my thighs and the strange, fragile calm that had settled over the morning.

I was still in trouble.

I was still his.

And for now, those two things were allowed to exist in the same bed without tearing each other apart.

I got up and followed him into the shower.