Chapter 36
David
“You’re welcome,” Dominic says, grinning magnanimously the moment I open my front door.
“Dominic. It’s eight o’clock on the Saturday of a holiday weekend. You’ve shown up unannounced. You’re wearing sunglasses inside. And I don’t recall saying thank you.”
Thanksgiving happened this week, and while both Nora and I stuck to our pre-relationship plans on the day, we’ve dedicated the long weekend to spending time together. I don’t remember sending Dominic an invite.
“You’ll definitely thank me,” he says, shouldering past. “Because I’m taking the monster.”
“Excuse me?”
“Non-negotiable.”
He lowers the sunglasses and looks past me to Nora, who’s standing in my kitchen holding a mug of coffee in one of my T-shirts and a pair of socks, her hair still damp from a shower she took twenty minutes ago, and the sight of her in my apartment on a weekend is something I’m still calibrating my nervous system around.
“Good morning, Nora,” he says. “We’ve met before. I’m sure you remember me—everyone does. You look radiant this morning. David, you look like a man who’s been getting laid regularly for the first time in almost a decade. These observations are related, and I approve.”
“Dominic—”
“Don’t thank me too profusely. I woke up this morning and thought, you know what my dear friend David probably needs?
A day. An uninterrupted, childless, horizontally oriented day where he and his extremely patient girlfriend can do whatever adults do when they’re not being narrated by an eight-and-a-half-year-old.
” He holds up both hands. “Or vertically oriented. I’m not prescriptive. ”
I look at Nora. She’s biting her lip to keep from laughing, which means the battle is already lost.
“That’s very thoughtful, Dominic,” she says.
“It’s entirely self-serving.” He drops onto the couch with the easy sprawl of a man who treats all furniture as communal property.
“I haven’t had quality time with my niece in weeks.
I owe her an ice-cream tour and a trip to that bookshop on Armitage with the cat.
We’ll probably also go to the aquarium so she can stare at the seals and pick out a new plushie. ”
From down the hall, Michaela’s door flies open.
“I heard aquarium,” she says, appearing in the hallway in bright pink leggings and a dinosaur sweatshirt, hair half-brushed on one side and still fully braided on the other. Archie trots out behind her like he’s also available for field trips. “Who’s taking me where?”
Dominic rises like a game-show host revealing a prize package. “Princess, your favorite uncle has arrived to rescue you from the oppressive domestic monotony of your father’s stable home.”
She narrows her eyes. “You’re not my favorite uncle. Uncle Logan lets me win at Mario Kart.”
“Fake news. I let you build character.”
“You drove off Rainbow Road on purpose.”
“I was creating suspense.”
Michaela considers this, then looks at me. “Can I go?”
I cross my arms. “You haven’t asked the important questions.”
She pivots back to Dominic with immediate seriousness. “Will there be snacks?”
“Yes.”
“Will there be structure?”
“No.”
“I’ll get my shoes.”
She vanishes back into her room before I can remind her that basic parental consent should probably precede tactical deployment.
Nora lifts her mug to hide a smile. It doesn’t work. I can still see it in her eyes.
“This is a terrible idea,” I say. “Do you know how busy the aquarium will be this weekend?”
Dominic points at me. “You say that because you’re threatened by my superior childcare instincts.”
“You’re the one who taught her to play poker.”
“She needed a marketable skill.”
“At eight?”
“And a half,” Dominic corrects. “And she was bluffing with remarkable confidence. Frankly, I was impressed.”
“You shouldn’t be saying that like you’re proud.”
“I’m always proud when the next generation shows promise.”
Nora finally loses the fight with her smile. It breaks across her face, warm and helpless, and Dominic catches it like applause.
“See?” he says to me. “She gets me.”
“She absolutely does not,” I say.
“I get enough,” Nora says into her coffee.
Traitor.
Michaela reappears with one sneaker on, one untied in her hand, and a backpack that appears to contain either emergency provisions or a plan to relocate permanently.
“I’m ready,” she announces. “Archimedes also wishes to be considered.”
Archie sits immediately, tongue out, tail sweeping the hardwood with hopeful force.
“No dog,” Dominic says.
Archie’s ears droop.
“This is anti-canine discrimination,” Michaela says.
“This is an aquarium. There are already fish. We can’t bring emotional support competition into the building.”
She seems to consider litigating that, then decides the bigger issue is time. She drops the untied sneaker at my feet. “Help.”
I crouch and take the shoe. “You were prepared to leave with a man who thinks structure is a government conspiracy, but tying your shoes was too much?”
“Yes.”
“That tracks,” Nora murmurs.
I glance up at her and find her leaning against my counter, coffee in both hands, my shirt hanging off one shoulder, bare legs disappearing into those ridiculous socks, and the domestic intimacy of it hits me so hard I nearly pull the knot in Michaela’s laces too tight.
Dominic sees me looking and gives my shoulder a bump. “Happiness looks good on you, man.”
He says it without a trace of his usual irony, and it fucks with my internal settings enough that I fumble the bunny ears and have to redo the laces.
“Ready now?” I ask Michaela, as if I have any authority left.
She grabs her backpack straps and nods with brisk military efficiency. “Ready.”
“I’ll have her back by six.” Dominic salutes. “Ten-hut.”
They’ve got coats on and are out the door before I can attempt to issue a reminder about lunch, sunscreen, or not getting sued by the otter enclosure. The silence that descends is loud and strange—I can almost hear the empty space where Michaela’s commentary usually fills the air.
I close the door and lean against it, watching Archie spin a slow, forlorn circle before dropping to the rug and sighing like he’s just lost the only person who ever understood him.
Nora appears at the end of the hallway. Leaning against the wall. Arms folded. The morning light catching the copper accents in her auburn hair and making her look like a siren calling me home.
“So,” she says.
“So.”
“What do you want to do?”
I close the distance between us in three strides, my hands already reaching for her hips.
“You,” I say, voice low and rough as I lift her onto the entry table, her legs wrapping around my waist instinctively.
Our mouths crash together, messy and urgent, her fingers digging into my shoulders while I shove the hem of my T-shirt up her thighs. No underwear. Christ.
I groan into her mouth, my hand sliding between her legs to find her already wet, slick, ready, and she bucks against my fingers with a sharp, needy cry that echoes off the entry walls.
“David—fuck, yes,” she pants, her nails raking down my back as I push two fingers inside her, curling them just right to make her arch and moan louder.
We’re always so careful and quiet that the sound is filthy, unfiltered, and it drives me wild, my cock straining against my sweatpants as I work her open, thrusting deep and relentless until she’s trembling, her breaths coming in desperate gasps.
She comes apart with a shout, clenching around my fingers, her body shaking as she rides the wave, and I don’t give her a second to recover before I’m yanking my pants down and thrusting into her hard, burying myself to the hilt in one rough stroke.
“Nora.”
We both cry out at the sensation, the tight heat of her gripping me like a vise, and I start moving, pounding into her with a rhythm that’s anything but gentle.
The table rattles under us, banging against the wall, her heels digging into my ass as she urges me deeper, her moans turning into broken pleas.
“Harder, God, David, don’t stop.”
And I oblige, fucking her with everything I’ve got, the wet slap of our bodies filling the room.
Sweat slicks our skin, her hair sticking to her forehead, and when she comes again, it’s with a scream that probably carries to the neighbors, her nails scratching red lines down my chest as I follow her over, spilling inside her with a guttural groan.
“You feel so fucking good,” I growl, my voice ragged as I keep moving slowly, not wanting this over yet.
“God, yes, David. So do you. Keep moving. It feels so good.” She pushes back against me, and the sound of her saying that has me hard all over again.
I brace one hand on the wall behind her head and take her mouth, swallowing the breathless little noises she keeps making while I grind into her slow and deep, both of us still shaking from the first brutal rush of it.
She tastes like coffee, morning, and sin. My shirt is bunched up around her waist, my fingers dug into the soft flesh of her thigh, and there is something so wildly intimate about standing in my own foyer with Nora wrapped around me that my brain keeps shorting out trying to process it.
I reach between us to rub her clit, and the feel of her clenching around me again is almost too much.
Her head drops back against the wall, eyes closed, lips parted and glossy, and the look on her face is so absolutely wrecked and perfect that I want to keep her here forever, held up by my arms, my cock, the certainty that I’m the only one who gets to see her like this.
“That’s it,” I whisper against her neck, “come for me again, my love.”
She sobs a sound that barely has a vowel in it, her body shaking as she rides the second crest, and I follow, my own orgasm violently close, punching through me with such force I go blind for a second.