5. Sophie #2
He's forty-three, I think — not as a caveat but as information I'm absorbing, running my hands over the body of a man who has lived an interesting life and it shows in the best possible ways.
The solidity of him. The steadiness. He knows who he is in a way I don't fully yet and I feel that in every deliberate motion, in the unhurried way his hand slides down to grip my hip and pull me flush against him, letting me feel exactly how much he wants this against my stomach.
"Bed," he says, voice wrecked in a way that undoes something in me. "Now."
We make it to the bed.
He settles me against the pillows and stays above me, looking. Just looking, for a moment, eyes dragging over every inch of me like he's committing it to memory.
"You're beautiful," he says. Like a fact.
"You don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to." He lowers himself, one hand sliding down my body, over my ribs, my stomach, lower. "I want to say things I've been thinking. You're going to let me."
I make a noise that means yes, I'm going to let you do anything you want, and his hand finds where I'm already wet, and he makes a low, quiet sound, almost a groan, like the confirmation of it costs him something.
"Sophie. You're soaked."
"I told you. I've been waiting five years."
He works me with his fingers while I stop being a coherent person.
He finds what makes me gasp and does it again, adjusts when I shift, pays attention in a way that makes me suddenly, vividly aware that I have apparently been doing this wrong for a while, or rather, I've been doing it with people who were doing it wrong.
For half a second, somewhere underneath all of it, a small cold thought surfaces — this is Chris's brother, this is the boy in the photo on Patty's mantle, this is a line I am currently in the process of erasing — and I let it surface, and I let it go, because whatever this is between me and Chris's family stopped belonging to Chris the day the divorce was finalized, and because nothing about the way Grant is looking at me right now feels like a mistake, no matter what it might look like from the outside.
I push the thought under and stay exactly where I am.
"That's it," he murmurs, watching my face like he's reading a book he doesn't want to put down. "Let me see what you like."
"I like—" I lose it as he curls his fingers. That. "—that. That specifically. Don't stop."
"Baby girl." His voice drops, rougher than before. "I'm not stopping."
The endearment does something to me that I wasn't anticipating. A warm rush of it, all the way down, pooling low and insistent. I hear myself moan and I don't even care.
"How long?" he asks. His fingers are still moving, maddening, curling deep and slow in a way that has my hips already chasing his hand. "Since someone made you feel this way?"
"Over a year." My face heats even while the rest of me is melting. "More than a year."
"A year." He shakes his head like this is a genuine offense, dips his head to press an open-mouthed kiss just below my navel. "That's not happening again. Not while I'm around."
He works me higher and then slows down when I'm close, deliberately, and I make a very undignified sound that he seems to consider a success because he smiles against my hip.
"Patience," he says.
"You have enough for both of us, apparently."
“I really do.”
He proves it. His two thick fingers sliding deeper, slow and exact, the heel of his hand grinding against me so every small movement lands right where I need it.
He watches my face the whole time, learning the precise angle that makes my breath hitch, the pressure that makes my thighs start to shake.
“Please,” I finally say, hips lifting into his hand, voice cracking. “Grant, I need—”
“What do you need, baby girl?”
“You. Inside me. Now.”
He holds my gaze for one more second, then shifts between my legs.
The blunt, heavy head of his cock presses against me—hot, thick, already slick from how soaked I am—and my breath catches hard before he’s even moved.
He’s bigger than I let myself imagine all those nights I shouldn’t have been thinking about him.
“Look at me.”
I do.
He pushes in slow. The stretch is immediate and deep, the thick ridge of him forcing me open inch by careful inch. I can’t keep the sound in. My hands fist in the sheets as my body has to make room for him. He stops halfway, jaw tight, giving me time to adjust around the sheer size of his cock.
“You okay?”
“Yes. Don’t stop.”
He sinks the rest of the way in measured inches, eyes locked on mine, until he’s fully seated and we both go still. The fullness is so complete it steals the air from the room—every thick inch of him buried inside me, stretching me in a way no one else ever has. His forehead drops to mine.
“Fuck, Sophie.” His voice is wrecked.
“Yeah,” I manage.
He starts to move. Long, slow strokes that drag the heavy length of his cock against every sensitive place inside me.
My fingers find the silver in his hair and hold on.
He’s so fucking good at this—better than the late-night fantasies I used to hate myself for having after that dance at my own wedding, the ones where I wondered what his hands would feel like, what his cock would feel like, whether a man like him would take his time or ruin me. He’s doing both.
“More,” I tell him. “Harder.”
His eyes darken. “Sure?”
“I’ve been thinking about this for five years, Grant. I can take it.”
Something shifts in him. The next thrust is sharper, deeper, the thick head of him punching the air from my lungs as the headboard knocks the wall. I cry out—loud, unrestrained—and he does it again, harder, driving that heavy cock into me exactly the way I asked.
“That?” he asks, voice rough against my ear.
“That, ah!” is all I get out before words leave me entirely.
His hand slides between us, two fingers finding my clit, circling with the same focused pressure he used earlier.
The dual sensation—his thick cock filling me deep on every stroke, stretching me open, his fingers working me in tight, perfect circles—builds so fast it almost hurts.
He watches my face the whole time, adjusting the angle of his hips when I gasp, pressing harder when my legs start to tremble.
He’s reading me like he’s been thinking about this as long as I have, and the realization makes everything sharper.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Let me feel you come on my cock, baby girl.”
The orgasm hits hard and sudden, rolling up from where we’re joined and tearing through me. I clench down around the thick length of him, pulsing hard, saying his name loud enough to shame me later, back arching, nails digging into his shoulders.
He follows right after—rhythm breaking, a low broken groan against my neck as his cock throbs deep inside me, hot pulses of him spilling into me while my body keeps milking him through every aftershock.
We hold on until there’s nothing left but the sound of us breathing and the quiet, heavy pulse of his cock still buried deep, twitching with the last of it.
We lie in my sheets breathing hard, tangled together, his heartbeat still hammering under my palm where it's flattened against his chest.
Grant's on his back. I'm on my side, head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat come down slow, then slower.
"Well," I say eventually, when I trust my voice again.
He huffs a laugh, rough at the edges. "Yeah."
"That was—"
"Better than I imagined."
I tilt my head up to look at him. "You imagined it?"
"For five years." His hand moves down my spine, slow and idle now, nothing urgent left in it. "Every time your name was in an email from Mom. Every time she mentioned you in a call. I thought about this. About exactly this."
The admission settles into me, warmer than the sex was, somehow. He's been carrying this as long as I have.
"Me too," I say, and mean it more than I've meant anything in longer than a year.
He goes quiet for a moment, fingers still tracing lazy patterns against my back. Then: "I should probably go. Mom will be home in an hour."
"Right. Yeah." But I don't want him to move. My apartment suddenly seems exactly the right size, and his arm around me feels like the only thing keeping the ceiling where it belongs.
His arm tightens around me. "Or I could stay a little longer."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Just a little longer." His mouth finds my temple, presses there, unhurried, like he has all the time in the world after all.
So we stay. We don't talk about what comes next or what this is or how we're going to navigate three months of this.