Chapter 30 #2
“Fuck. Condom,” I muttered, my forehead dropping briefly to her shoulder as I tried to catch my breath. We hadn’t used one the last time, but the pill wasn’t one hundred percent effective, and we needed to have a conversation about kids before we chose to go bare every time.
Her arm shifted lazily beside us, fingers brushing over the sheets before closing around what we needed. She pressed it into my hand without opening her eyes, mouth curving like she knew exactly what she’d reduced me to.
A breath of a laugh left me. “Look at you ... What a good girl you are, having it ready for me.” Her body squeezed around me in response. I pressed my mouth to her shoulder blade, then pulled out, sheathed my cock, and settled back inside her.
The moment I did, we both broke entirely.
Air whooshed from my lungs as I buried myself deep. Her body lifted to meet mine without hesitation, like she couldn’t stand the distance either, and I understood suddenly that in my life I’d never felt this type of completeness with anyone else.
There was no rhythm at first. No control. Just blinding need.
My hands found her—one braced beside us on the mattress, one tracing down her side, notating any new reactions. “You feel so fucking good like this.”
The pace built naturally, not forced, driven by the way her body answered every one of my movements. Her fingers dug into me, grounding, pulling me closer, driving me crazy. I shifted within her, adjusting, finding that angle that made her breath catch.
“Harder,” she moaned. “You can go harder than that. And press down on my clit—I’m so close—”
Her reaction was immediate—a sharp inhale, the sound of my name breaking as it passed her lips—and I locked onto that sound. Stayed there, focused, chasing her next response, circling her clit as she’d asked, needing to give her everything.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, her voice tight, almost unsteady.
“I’ve got you.”
Her body tightened, trembling beneath me, everything pulled taut—and when she finally let go, she took me with her. There was no holding back after that. No slowing down. Just the rush of our release, the way everything narrowed to only this moment—her, me, the way we fit together.
We stayed like that—tangled together—our bodies sweaty, muscles tired—breathing uneven.
She laughed—a soft, wrecked sound—that I felt directly in my chest.
I pressed my face to hers, cheek-to-cheek, my front to her back, smiling.
Eventually, my heartbeat slowed, and my breath evened out.
I nipped at her mouth before moving away to deal with the condom.
On my way back, I grabbed two bottles of water from the mini-fridge and a bag of Delaney’s favorite chocolate.
The small things. I was learning all of them.
I wanted to keep her happy for a long time.
She’d pushed herself up to sit against the headboard—hair thoroughly ruined, looking completely unbothered—looking like the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. She did the impatient, gimme-hands gesture with both palms.
I handed over the chocolate. She popped one in her mouth, closed her eyes, and said with complete sincerity, “God, I love you. This is so good.”
The room went quiet.
She opened her eyes and froze—that particular freeze you do when you hear yourself say something you hadn’t meant to say out loud. “I—I—” she stuttered.
I brushed back her bangs and kissed her temple. “Hey—”
“That didn’t come out right,” she said carefully.
“Delaney—”
“No.” She twisted to fully face me, and her lips pursed—as though she decided to say what needed to be said and was nervous. She brought her hand up to my jaw. Her green eyes were direct, clear, and entirely unguarded in a way that was still new enough to stop my heart a little. “Let me finish.”
I waited.
“It didn’t come out right,” she said again.
“But I’m not taking it back.” She held my gaze.
“I love you, Marc Kingsley. What we have—I never could have predicted it was possible, and I absolutely never could have guessed it would be with you.” Her mouth twitched.
“But I am one hundred percent sure. I love you.”
I’d spent my whole life being careful with words. Precise. Saying the right thing in order to be understood. I had a whole vocabulary available to me, and none of it seemed to be what I needed for this moment.
I could’ve said it plainly the way she had.
Instead, I kissed her temple. Her cheek. The corner of her mouth. The curve of her jaw. The tops of her breasts. The soft space below her ear. Her collarbone. And against her skin, quietly, I said it back over and over with each touch of my lips, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
She laughed, a soft, sweet sound, and her arms came up around my neck and held on. I stayed there, my face pressed to her hair, and felt the shape of my life rearrange itself into something better than it had been this morning.
“When did you know?” she asked.
I thought about it. “I think I always did,” I said finally. “Even when I couldn’t name it. It just felt like—you. Like something that had always been true, and I hadn’t found the right words yet. You?”
She smiled. “Yoga. Tonight.” Then quieter.
“And I’d started to wonder, over the past week after we spent time going through my aunt’s stuff.
” She traced a pattern over my chest. “You were the only person I could imagine doing that with. The hard parts. The boring parts.” Her finger stilled.
“You make me feel safe enough to be exactly who I am. Every version of me—the difficult one, the uncertain one. You love the raw, unfiltered version of me that I never have to hide.”
I kissed her again and tucked her into my side as I leaned back against the headboard. I made sure she drank some water as the room settled around us. Outside, the night had fully gone quiet. In here, it was warm and dim, and she continued to draw those abstract patterns.
This is exactly what I want my life to contain, I thought to myself.
“I love ending the day like this with you,” I said.
“Me too.” She snuggled in.
A crash sounded downstairs, immediately followed by an impatient, indignant bleat.
Our small bubble of intimacy burst with those two sounds.
“What the hell?” I was out of bed before I fully processed the noise. Something about the crash tugged at the back of my mind, but the answering bleat had already pulled my full attention. “What has he done now?”