Chapter 16 #3
She started to move. Slow at first, rolling her hips forward, finding the angle that sent sparks up through her belly.
His hands tightened on her hips, guiding without controlling, letting her set the rhythm.
She braced her hands on his shoulders and rode him, and each stroke built the pressure higher.
"Harder," she said.
He planted his feet on the floor and thrust up into her, and the depth of it made her cry out.
She locked her arms around his neck and matched his rhythm — hips meeting, pulling apart, crashing back together.
The bed rocked beneath them. His mouth found her breast and he sucked her nipple into the heat of his mouth, tongue circling, and the dual sensation — the fullness inside her, the sharp wet pull of his mouth — made her head fall back.
The orgasm built low and deep, winding tighter with each thrust. She ground down against him, chasing it, and he read her body the way he always had — knew to press his thumb against her clit without being told, knew the exact pressure, the small tight circles that made her thighs shake.
"Right there," she gasped. "Don't stop."
He didn't stop. His thumb worked her clit while he drove into her, and the pressure crested, held, held — then broke.
She came hard, clenching around him, her whole body seizing as the wave tore through her.
She buried her face in his neck and let it take her, and a sob rose in her chest before she could stop it — not sadness, not relief, something with no clean name that held both.
He held her through it. Stayed still inside her until her breathing slowed, until the tremors eased. Then she pulled back and looked at him.
"Your turn," she said.
She pushed him back onto the bed. He went, flat on his back, and she climbed over him and took him inside her again.
This angle was different — deeper, the base of him pressing against her still-sensitive clit with every motion.
She planted her hands on his chest and rode him hard, watching his face break open beneath her.
The composure he wore like armor — gone.
The careful control — gone. There was just Alistair, gasping her name, his hands gripping the sheets because she hadn't told him where else to put them.
"Touch me," she said. "Everywhere."
His hands roamed — her thighs, her stomach, her breasts, her throat. He traced the line of her neck and she shivered. He cupped the back of her head and pulled her down to kiss her, and she tasted salt on his lips and didn't know which of them was crying.
He was getting close — his thrusts losing rhythm, becoming urgent, desperate. She tightened around him on purpose and he swore under his breath.
"Come for me," she said. "I want to feel it."
He came with her name in his mouth. He pulsed inside her, the heat of it, his whole body going rigid and then releasing. She stayed on top of him, her forehead against his, breathing his air.
For a long time, neither of them spoke.
#
Afterward, they lay side by side in the tangled sheets. The city hummed outside the window. The clock on the nightstand read 1:47.
Annabel stared at the ceiling. Her body was loose, warm, still pulsing with aftershocks. Alistair was on his back beside her, one arm behind his head, the other resting against her thigh. Not holding her. Just there.
"I need to tell you something," she said.
He turned his head. She could feel his gaze on the side of her face.
"The separation agreement is still in my kitchen drawer. I'm not throwing it away."
He was quiet for a moment. "Okay."
"Not as a threat. As a fact. It stays until I decide it goes."
"I understand."
She turned to look at him. In the dim light his face was soft, open, more tired than she'd ever seen it. He looked like a man who'd been holding his breath for months and had just been allowed to exhale.
"I'm not moving back in yet," she said. "I'll keep the rental. We go slow."
"However you want."
"I want honesty, Alistair. That's all I've ever wanted."
He rolled onto his side to face her. His hand found hers between the sheets. He didn't lace their fingers — just pressed his palm against hers, matching their hands.
"Then I'll be honest," he said. "I'm terrified I'll ruin this."
"Good. You should be."
"And I'm grateful. More than I know how to say."
"You'll learn."
She looked at him in the near-dark. This man she'd married at twenty-five. This man who had broken the thing she trusted most. This man who had stood in a room of thirty people and told the truth without flinching.
She didn't forgive him. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time.
But she chose him. And the choosing felt like the hardest, cleanest thing she'd ever done.
She closed her eyes. His thumb traced a slow circle on the back of her hand. Outside, a siren passed, faded, disappeared into the noise of the city.
She fell asleep in the bed they'd shared for seven years, in the apartment that didn't feel like home yet, beside the man who'd broken her heart and was learning, slowly, how to be worth the repair.