ANMELDENShe woke up before him.
6am, grey light coming through the gaps in his curtains, the television having switched itself off sometime in the night. For a moment — just a brief, disoriented moment — she forgot where she was. Then it came back. The flood. The knock. The blanket that smelled faintly of his fabric softener. She lay still for a second, looking at the ceiling. Then she heard it. The shower. She sat up slowly. Pushed her hair back from her face. Told herself she was just adjusting to being awake, just getting her bearings in an unfamiliar space. She stood, folded the blanket with more precision than was probably necessary, and set it on the arm of the sofa. She should make coffee. Or sit back down. Or look out the window at something neutral and architectural. Instead she found herself standing in the hallway. His bathroom door was not fully closed. A tempting sliver of warm light and steam spilled into the dark hallway. The sound of running water was steady, rhythmic. She should walk away. She knew she should. She was a therapist. She understood boundaries. Impulse control. The dangerous gap between thought and action. But her feet carried her forward anyway. She leaned in, barely, heart hammering against her ribs. Through the narrow opening she could see the glass shower door, fogged with steam. Damien stood under the spray, back to her, water cascading over his broad shoulders and down the sculpted lines of his back. His body was even better than she’d imagined from stolen glances through her window — powerful thighs, tight ass, the kind of physique that came from years of professional football. He turned slightly to rinse the soap from his chest. Olivia’s breath caught. His cock hung heavy between his legs, thick even while soft, long and impressive. As the water ran down his body, it swayed slightly with his movements. She stared, unable to look away. God… he’s huge. The realization sent a rush of heat straight between her thighs. She imagined what it would look like fully hard — how it would stretch her, how heavy it would feel in her hand, how deep he could go. Her mind spiraled: him pressing her against the shower wall, that big dick sliding into her slowly at first, then harder, her legs wrapped around his waist as steam filled the room and he fucked her until she couldn’t think straight. A soft, involuntary sound escaped her throat. The water shut off. Olivia froze. “See anything interesting?” Damien’s deep voice came from just on the other side of the door, low and amused. Her entire body went rigid. She hadn’t noticed the shower stop. She’d been too lost in the sight of him — and in the filthy images flooding her mind. She straightened up immediately. The door swung open. Damien stood in the doorway with a towel slung dangerously low around his waist, water still glistening on his shoulders and chest. That almost-smile was on his face — the one that said he knew exactly what she’d been doing. She opened her mouth. Closed it. He leaned against the doorframe, completely unbothered, droplets tracing paths down his abs toward the edge of the towel. “Morning,” he said. “I was—” she started, cheeks burning. “Yeah?” His eyes darkened with quiet amusement. “I was looking for the kitchen.” “The kitchen,” he repeated, clearly not believing her for a second. “Yes.” He glanced slowly down the hallway toward the very obvious kitchen, then back at her. “It’s that way.” “I know where it is.” “Do you?” He tilted his head. Then, deliberately, he reached up and unwrapped the towel from his waist, letting it drop just enough for a split second before grabbing the smaller towel from his shoulder to dry his hair. In that brief moment, Olivia saw everything again — up close. The thick, heavy length of him. Her imagination went wilder: her on her knees, taking as much of him as she could into her mouth, his hand in her hair, his low groans filling the bathroom. She snapped her mouth shut, mortified. “Coffee?” he asked casually, as if he hadn’t just given her a full view. “Yes,” she managed, voice slightly hoarse. She followed him to the kitchen, pulse still racing, thighs pressed together as she tried to ignore the slick heat building between her legs. He knew. He absolutely knew what she’d seen and what she’d been imagining. And he wasn’t going to let her forget it. End of chapter 4It was an ordinary Wednesday.She had been home an hour. Changed into his hoodie — the greyone, the one she had taken somewhere around week two and whichhad quietly stopped being his and started being hers without either ofthem acknowledging the transfer. Wine she had been promisingherself since her three o'clock. Feet up. The particular comfortabletiredness of a day that had gone well.Damien was cooking. She could hear him in the kitchen — hismusic low, something sizzling, the occasional sound of him openingthe fridge and closing it again. The apartment smelled like garlic andsomething warm and she was in the middle of deciding whether to tellhim it smelled good or whether she would just let him figure out fromher expression at dinner.She was halfway through her wine when the buzzer went.He came out of the kitchen wiping his hands on a cloth andlooked at the intercom screen and something changed in his face. Notdramatically. Just — a stillness that was different from
It was an ordinary Wednesday.She had been home an hour. Changed into his hoodie — the greyone, the one she had taken somewhere around week two and whichhad quietly stopped being his and started being hers without either ofthem acknowledging the transfer. Wine she had been promisingherself since her three o'clock. Feet up. The particular comfortabletiredness of a day that had gone well.Damien was cooking. She could hear him in the kitchen — hismusic low, something sizzling, the occasional sound of him openingthe fridge and closing it again. The apartment smelled like garlic andsomething warm and she was in the middle of deciding whether to tellhim it smelled good or whether she would just let him figure out fromher expression at dinner.She was halfway through her wine when the buzzer went.He came out of the kitchen wiping his hands on a cloth andlooked at the intercom screen and something changed in his face. Notdramatically. Just — a stillness that was different from
She noticed it on a Tuesday.Not that it started on a Tuesday. It had been coming for a while — she knew that, she was a therapist, she understood the mechanics of denial better than most people — but Tuesday was the day she ran out of road.She was sitting across from a client. A woman in her early thirties, good job, complicated interior life, the kind of patient who came in every week and said something that sounded like progress and then dismantled it in the last five minutes. Olivia liked her. She was good at her job and the session was going well and somewhere in the middle of it, while her client was describing the particular exhaustion of wanting something you have decided you cannot have, Olivia thought about the way Damien had looked at her over breakfast that morning.Not vaguely. Specifically. The angle of him at the counter. The thing he had said that made her laugh before she was properly awake.She thought about it in the middle of someone else’s session.She wrapped up
It was his idea.She was on the sofa on a Saturday afternoon with nothing scheduled and the particular restlessness that came from having nowhere to be and too much to think about, and he came out of his room in a jacket and looked at her and said come on like it was already decided.“Where?” she said.“Out.”She looked up from her book. “That’s not an answer.”“It’s enough of one.” He picked up his keys. “You’ve been in this apartment for two weeks. You need air.”“I get air.”“Walking to the kitchen doesn’t count.” She looked at him for a moment. He looked back, patient and certain, jacket on, keys in hand, already decided. She had learned by now that this particular version of him — calm, immovable, quietly certain — was not something she was going to talk her way around.She put her book down.“Give me ten minutes,” she said.“You’ve got five,” he said, and she threw a cushion at him on the way to the bedroom.He took her to an arcade in Shoreditch.She stood outside it for a mome
She had a perfectly good reason to go back to her own bed that night.Her apartment was ready. Her keys were at reception. Her sheets were clean and her pillows were hers and her routine — the one she had spent three years perfecting — was waiting for her exactly as she had left it, patient and undisturbed, twelve steps across the hall.She stood in the bathroom brushing her teeth and looked at herself in the mirror and had a very reasonable internal conversation about all of this.Then she spat, rinsed, turned off the light, and walked past her own door without slowing down.She did not knock. She just opened his door — it was unlocked, it was always unlocked, she had stopped thinking about what that meant — and he was already in bed, one lamp on, reading something on his phone that he set face down the moment she came in.He did not say anything. Neither did she.She crossed the room and got into his bed and he reached over and turned off the lamp and that was that.Except it wasn’t
She woke up and knew exactly where she was. No foggy confusion, no blinking at strange walls. Just the solid weight of Damien’s arm across her waist, the unfamiliar slant of light through his curtains, and that smell—his smell—that she’d stopped pretending she didn’t like days ago.She stayed still for a while, letting herself just be there.Outside, London was already awake. Traffic grumbled past, a distant alarm kept beeping, the usual low hum of the city carrying on like nothing had changed. It was strangely comforting.Damien was still asleep, breathing slow and deep. She turned her head carefully and looked at him. Really looked. He was on his back, one arm around her, the other relaxed at his side. His face was softer in sleep, all that quiet intensity switched off. She let herself stare longer than she probably should have.Then she studied the ceiling.Okay, she thought. Not a big revelation. Just… acknowledgement. Something real had happened. And here she was, lying in his be







