Chapter 7 #2
I keep the pace slow on purpose, reading every signal she gives.
The tightening of her thighs, the way her back arches off the bed. The broken sounds she stops trying to quiet. Her fingers dig into my shoulder and she starts to tremble. I hold everything steady, keep the rhythm exactly where she needs it, watching her face. I don't want to miss a second of it.
Her release breaks over her hard and long, her whole body pulling tight before it lets go, and I stay with her through every wave of it, hand still moving soft and slow until she finally grabs my wrist and presses it still.
She lies there a moment, chest heaving, eyes closed, looking wrecked in the best possible way.
Then she opens her eyes, looks straight at me, and something shifts in her expression, something deliberate and unhurried and entirely in charge.
"My turn," she says.
She pushes me onto my back and takes her time dismantling me.
Her mouth drags down my throat, my chest, my stomach, and I stare at the ceiling with my jaw clenched.
She is not rushing and she knows exactly what that's doing to me. When her mouth finally closes around me I stop staring at anything.
She works me slow and thorough until my hand finds her hair and my breathing goes ragged.
Only when my hips start to move without permission does she pull back, rising over me, and sinking down in one long, smooth motion.
The sound that leaves me is not quiet.
She sets the pace and it's merciless in the best way. Deep and rolling and perfectly controlled, her hands flat on my chest, her eyes on my face like she wants to watch every second of what she's doing to me.
I let her. My hands grip her hips, not steering, just holding on, nails probably leaving marks neither of us will mind.
"Riley." Her name comes out wrecked.
She leans down, mouth at my ear. "I've got you."
When the pace builds it builds she decides it, harder, faster, deliberate.
I match every shift, one hand sliding between us to give her something back, watching her head drop and her rhythm stutter when I find the right spot. We push each other the rest of the way, neither of us quiet about it, the whole world outside the barn gone entirely.
When I finally break it's with her name on my lips and both hands gripping her like she's the only solid thing left.
She rides it out with me, steady and present, slowing only when I've gone still beneath her and my lungs remember how to work.
She collapses against my chest.
I wrap an arm around her and hold her there, both of us breathing hard into the quiet.
Outside, the evening goes on without us. Crickets. Wind through the barn boards. The ordinary world doing ordinary things.
In here, nothing feels ordinary at all.
Her hand finds mine in the dark and holds it. I tighten my fingers around hers and don't say anything. There's nothing that needs saying yet.
We've got time.
After, the quiet settles, heavier and softer at the same time. I lie back, catching my breath, feeling her beside me, close but not crowded, and for once I don’t try to fill the silence.
She doesn’t either.
I can feel the shift in her, the way she’s already thinking ahead, trying to make sense of something that doesn’t fit into clean lines yet.
I don’t push her for words.
This isn’t something you rush.
This changes things.
There’s no way it doesn’t.
The quiet doesn’t last as long as I want it to.
She shifts beside me, not drifting off the way I thought she might, but pulling back just enough that I feel it before I see it, like she’s already putting distance back where it belongs.
“I can’t stay,” she says, her voice low, steady, but there’s something under it that tells me this isn’t easy. “I have to go get Hadley.”
I nod once. I knew that was coming even if I didn’t want it to, and I don’t make it harder by asking her to do something she’s not ready for.
“Yeah,” I answer. “You should.”
She studies me for a second, like she’s waiting for pushback that never comes, then exhales quietly and sits up, reaching for her clothes without rushing, but not lingering either.
I sit up with her, giving her space while she gets dressed, the living quarters feeling different now. Not empty, but shifting back toward something real, something that exists outside this one moment.
When she turns back to me, there’s a pause, like we’re both aware there’s more to say and neither of us is quite ready to say it yet.
“This doesn’t change what I said,” she adds, softer now. “About taking it slow.”
“It doesn’t change what I said either,” I reply.
Her gaze holds mine a second longer, then she nods once, like that’s enough for now, and heads for the door.
I don’t follow her out.
I let her go.
By the time morning comes, the light pushing through the window feels sharper than it should, and I wake alone, the quiet settling back in around me without her in it.
I lie there for a minute, staring up at the ceiling, letting everything from last night line up in my head without trying to smooth it out or make it easier than it is.
Last night wasn’t a mistake.
But the way she walked out right after to go and get our daughter…
That’s what’s going to make this complicated.