Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
MYA
T he ride back is a blur.
I know I’m in the truck, I know the roads are winding and familiar, but the only thing I’m truly aware of is the way Fletch keeps glancing at me like he’s one second away from pulling over and wrecking me right there in the cab.
We don’t talk.
We don’t need to.
Because whatever we didn’t say out loud on that porch is still hanging between us—thick and electric and inevitable.
By the time we reach the cottage, my pulse is a steady thunder in my ears. The lights are off in the main house. The twins are with Reese, tucked away in the nursery I haven’t been able to walk into since the day we brought them home.
And the second Fletch closes the front door behind us, I turn.
Our mouths crash together again, desperate and consuming, teeth clashing, hands pulling. He presses me back against the door and groans when I tug at his hoodie, yanking it up and over his head like I need it gone—which I do. God, I do.
His hands find the hem of my sweater, fingertips grazing the warm skin of my stomach, and I shiver under his touch. Not from the cold.
From need.
“I’ve wanted this,” he rasps against my throat, lips brushing skin that’s already flushed and hypersensitive, “for so long I think I forgot what it feels like to breathe without you.”
My breath stutters. My nails scrape down his back.
And then we’re moving again—tripping down the hallway, bumping into walls, tearing at clothes like we can’t stand one more second with fabric between us.
By the time we reach the bedroom, we’re half-naked and half-insane with the need that’s been simmering for weeks—months—maybe years.
He lays me down on the bed with a reverence that doesn’t match the hunger in his eyes. But then he’s on top of me, kissing me slow, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my mouth. His hands roam—palming my hips, my thighs, dragging moans from me like he’s addicted to the sound.
I arch into him, wrapping my legs around his waist, and when I whisper his name, it comes out broken and breathless.
“Mya,” he says, his voice thick and full of ache, “are you sure?”
I answer him with a press of my lips and a barely-there nod, savoring his taste, his smell, the feel of his weight on me. His cock is hard against my belly but he lifts onto his forearms when I reach between his to stroke his hard, thick length. I press the head of his cock through the lips of my sex until he nudges my slick entrance. He rolls his forehead against mine and slides in, slowly and with intent. My back arches off the bed at the feel of him filling me inch by glorious inch. My body stretches to accommodate him, and the fullness is exquisite torture because he’s going slow. Taking his time.
“Fletch,” I exhale breathlessly. “Please.”
He opens his eyes and searches mine, most likely to gauge if I’m okay. But I want him. badly. And God, I hope he sees it because about to beg if I have to. Without warning, he hooks my legs over his forearms, changing the angle, and slams into me, rocking the bed frame. I dig my nails into his biceps and bite my lip to smother the cry that so badly wants to escape. Fletch tucks his face into my neck, and bites the soft flesh on the next thrust, and my body lights up like a beacon. Yes, this is what I want. Fletch grips my head between his big hands, and kisses me through the next thrust and the next, until we’re breathing heavily and in sync.
I pull away and gasp. “Yes. Oh, God, Fletch. Harder.”
With a grunt, he leans back on his haunches and pulls me with him, my ass resting on his thighs. I’m splayed open for him, in all my glory, and I catch a glimpse of his cock before he’s inside me again. God, that’s hot. He must think so too because his gaze stays there, his grip on my hips bruising as he watches himself slide in and out. I slide my hands up my chest and squeeze my breasts, twisting my hard nipples between my fingers. In the next breath, Fletch is leaning over me, pressing my legs as wide as they’ll go. His mouth crashes onto mine, and the sound of his flesh meeting mine fills the room. Heat coils low in my belly and and before I can scream, Fletch catches it with his mouth. My body implodes on the next thrust and I squeeze my eyes so hard I see stars. Without missing a beat, Fletch rolls us over, and keeps thrusting from the bottom until he’s wrapped me in his arms, grunting through his own release. My body quivers from the aftershock, my skin slick with sweat.
I don’t move.
I can’t.
Because I think if I do, the spell might break. This beautiful, blistering blur of skin and heat and him might fracture and slip through my fingers like every other good thing I’ve ever held too tight.
Fletch is still buried deep inside me, his arms locked around my back, his breath warm and uneven against the hollow of my throat. His heartbeat thunders against my ribs, frantic and human and here.
It’s the most alive I’ve felt in months.
And the most scared.
He presses a kiss to my shoulder. Then another. And another. Like he can feel the thoughts spiraling in my head and he’s trying to kiss each one away before it takes root.
“I missed you,” he murmurs, voice hoarse and frayed.
Something cracks open in my chest.
I run my fingers through his damp hair, push it back from his forehead, and rest my palm against his cheek. His stubble scrapes my skin and somehow, it’s exactly what I need—something real. Something grounding.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I whisper.
He leans back just enough to look at me, eyes soft and dark and still a little dazed. “Do what?”
“Not wait for it to fall apart.”
His brows pull together, and his thumb brushes along my jaw. “We’re allowed to be happy, Mya.”
“I don’t know how to be,” I confess. “Not without checking every corner for the fallout. Not without wondering when it’ll all disappear again.”
His eyes search mine like he’s looking for the fracture lines.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says again, softer this time. Like a vow. Like a prayer.
I press my face into his neck and breathe him in—salt and skin and something warm I can’t name.
“I just need time,” I whisper.
“You can have all of it,” he says.
He rolls onto his side, his cock still inside me. He brushes my hair from my face before hooking my leg over his hip. For a moment, I forgot that Fletch had a stamina that was downright frightening when it came to sex, but he also has a sex drive that rivals mine. He starts with shallow thrusts, pressing his hand to the hollow of my back and rotating his hips. The friction on my already sensitive clit makes me jolt. And he fucks me like that, lazily and like we have all the time in the world. I map his body with my hands, shivering when his calloused fingers brush over my soft skin. I roll my hips to meet him thrust for thrust until the rhythm is hypnotic. Until I’m coming apart again because he plays my body like a well-tuned guitar. His release is slower but no less powerful, making his large frame shudder while he kisses me until my lips are puffy and swollen.
“I forgot how annoying your stamina is,” I murmur, voice scratchy and low.
“Annoying?” He grins against my throat and starts moving again—slow, shallow thrusts that make my oversensitive body twitch. “You didn’t seem to mind a minute ago.”
“Oh, I minded,” I breathe, rocking my hips against his. “In the best possible way.”
Fletch presses his palm to the small of my back, anchoring me, and rolls his hips in a slow, deliberate rhythm that’s downright sinful. Lazy and unhurried, like we have nowhere to be, no one to answer to, and a lifetime to burn between the sheets.
His mouth trails kisses down my shoulder as we move together, slower this time—more intimate, less frantic. Like we’re trying to memorize each other skin to skin, breath to breath. I run my hands across his chest, mapping the familiar terrain—scarred and sculpted, soft in places, sharp in others.
He plays me like he always does. With patience and precision and the kind of reverence that has my eyes fluttering closed and my body clenching again around him
My final orgasm sneaks up on me like a thief, stealing the air from my lungs as I moan his name against his mouth. And he follows, groaning into my kiss, hips stuttering, arms tightening like he can’t get close enough.
We’re quiet for a long time after that. Tangled in the sheets, bare and sticky and blissed out.
The kind of afterglow that softens every edge.
I rest my head on his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat and letting the silence stretch. It’s the kind of silence that doesn’t ask anything of you. The kind that’s earned.
And then?—
Knock knock knock.
Fletch doesn’t move.
I freeze.
Then we both hear it. The front door creaks open, followed by a cheerful, familiar voice that makes my blood run cold.
“Hey! I hope you’re decent!” Reese calls out like she didn’t just commit the number one offense in the best friend handbook: entering unannounced while your best friend is probably having post-traumatic mind-blowing sex with her rockstar baby daddy.
“Shit.” I scramble, launching out of bed in a tangle of limbs and sheets, heart pounding.
Fletch bursts out laughing, actually laughing, like this is the best part of his whole day.
“Do you not care that she’s about to walk in here and see more of me than she ever asked for?”
He stretches, arms over his head, not even bothering to hide the smug grin on his face. “She should’ve knocked harder.”
“She did knock!” I hiss, nearly falling over while trying to pull on his t-shirt—which hits me mid-thigh and still smells like sweat and sex and him.
He doesn’t budge. Just props himself up on an elbow, hair a mess, skin flushed, still gloriously naked.
“You’re ridiculous,” I mutter, diving for a pair of his boxers.
“And you’re glowing,” he says, grin widening. “Reese is gonna know exactly what we were doing.”
“Which is why you should get dressed, you Neanderthal!”
Reese’s voice rings out again from down the hall. “Guys? Do I need to bring snacks, or are we still in the awkward, naked recovery phase?”
Fletch groans, finally moving. “She’s too damn comfortable in this house.”
“You think?”
I pull my hair into a haphazard ponytail, cheeks still flushed as I open the bedroom door just enough to peek down the hallway.
Reese stands there with a diaper bag slung over one shoulder, holding a container of cookies like an offering.
“Oh good,” she says sweetly. “You’re alive.”
Barely.
Fletch emerges from the bedroom behind me, shirtless, his hair a tousled mess and a very self-satisfied smirk tugging at his flushed mouth.
He’s wearing nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants that ride low. Unreasonably low. The kind of low that should come with a warning label. He doesn’t even glance at Reese, just pads past us like he didn’t just take me apart with his hands, his mouth, and what I’m now convinced is an unfair advantage gifted to him by the gods of stamina and sin.
“Where are they?” he asks, rubbing the back of his neck like he’s still catching his breath. “The boys?”
Reese doesn’t miss a beat. “Main house. Thorin’s with them.”
Fletch gives a lazy nod. “I’m gonna go see them.”
And just like that, he disappears out the front door, shirtless and barefoot, strutting across the porch like the town’s most casual sex god on a baby mission.
Reese turns to me slowly. Her mouth curls into the smuggest grin I’ve ever seen.
“So,” she says.
I blink. “So?”
“You finally got some.”
I gape. “Would you not?”
She eyes me up and down, from my bare legs in Fletch’s oversized T-shirt to my hair—which is doing its best impression of post-orgasm static. “You’re glowing. You look like you just had the kind of sex that changes your zodiac sign.”
I roll my eyes. “It was not that dramatic.”
Except, she has a point. Not that I’m willing to concede it.
“Babe,” she snorts. “I saw the walk of shame you did from the bedroom to the door. That wasn’t a stroll, it was a wobble. Your knees are mad at you. Your hair’s got that ‘I was just fisted through emotional healing’ vibe.”
“Reese!”
“What?” She takes a sip from her iced coffee and shrugs. “Don’t be embarrassed. I’m proud of you. He looked like he wanted to skin anyone who touched you. Now he looks like he climbed Everest and planted his flag.”
My face is full-on crimson now. “Can we not talk about the flag?”
She cackles, then softens a little as she leans against the counter. “Seriously. You okay?”
I pause. Swallow. Nod once. “Yeah. I think I am.”
A beat of quiet stretches between us. The kind that says she knows I mean it—but also that she’s waiting for me to fall apart if I need to.
“I’m not saying everything’s fixed,” I add. “But… it felt like something good. Real.”
Reese smiles. “So when’s round three?”
I arch a brow, unable to stop the slow, smug grin that spreads across my face. “You mean round four?”
Her jaw drops. “Shut. Up.”
I shrug, biting my lip. “He has… stamina.”
She fans herself with the cookie container. “Jesus, Mya. Leave some serotonin for the rest of us. Also, who knew rockstars had that kind of stamina, right?”
“Don’t look at me. Talk to your sex Yeti of a friend out there playing peekaboo with our kids like he didn’t just rail me through a headboard.”
Reese snorts so hard she chokes on her coffee. “You’re disgusting and I love it. I also hate how smug you are right now. You’ve got that ‘freshly wrecked by a rockstar’ glow.”
I roll my eyes but don’t deny it. Can’t. My legs are jelly, my lips are sore, and I’m still a little dizzy in the best way possible.
She wiggles her brows. “So are we saying the dry spell is officially over?”
“Oh, it’s not just over.” I pull her into a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s been drowned. Buried. Given a memorial and a jazz band sendoff.”
Reese cackles. “God, I’ve missed this version of you.”
I blink. “What version?”
“The one that smiles like she just got her world tilted on its axis in the best way. The one who lets herself have things, even messy ones.”
Her voice is softer now. Real.
And yeah, that lump in my throat is back, but I swallow it down with a tight smile.
“I’m trying,” I whisper.
“I know,” she says. “And I’m really damn proud of you.”
The door opens again, and Fletch steps back inside with one twin on each arm like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He’s still shirtless, the waistband of his sweats riding even lower now, baby Kody’s tiny hand clutching a fistful of his blanket.
“Look who wanted Mama,” he says with a slow grin.
Reese smirks and whispers, “And look who’s still not wearing a shirt.”
“Stop looking at him like that,” I mutter.
“I can’t help it. I have eyes.”
“Reese.” Fletch gives her a warning look, but it’s half amused.
She lifts her hands. “Hey, I’m just here for the cookies and the chaos. My job here is done.”
And with a dramatic spin, she’s out the door.
Fletch watches her go, then glances down at the twins, and finally looks at me.
“You good?” he asks, softer now.
I nod.
And then I cross the room and press a kiss to Kody’s downy head before doing the same with Kingston.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I really, really am.”