Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
February
ANNA
The evening light filters through our bedroom windows, casting everything in a golden and amber glow. Connor is finally asleep—really asleep, not that fake sleep that lasts exactly twenty minutes—and the house feels wrapped in a rare, precious quiet.
Domhnall stands at the dresser, removing his cufflinks with those precise movements I’ve watched a thousand times.
His shoulders are tense from another long day, the weight of responsibility he carries so naturally but never easily.
When he catches my reflection watching him in the mirror, his mouth curves into that soft smile reserved just for me.
“Come here,” I whisper, and there’s something in my voice that makes his hands still and his eyes darken with interest.
He turns, taking in the sight of me curled on our bed in the silk nightgown he bought me for my birthday—the ivory one that makes my skin look like moonlight.
The way he looks at me, even after all this time, still makes my breath catch.
Like I’m something precious he can’t quite believe he gets to keep.
“Anna,” he says, my name a prayer on his lips as he moves toward me.
I rise to meet him halfway, my bare feet silent on the hardwood. When I reach for the buttons of his shirt, my fingers tremble slightly. He covers my hands with his own.
“You sure, love?” His voice is rough with want but gentle with concern. “You’ve been tired lately.”
Instead of answering with words, I stretch up to kiss him, pouring everything I feel into the connection of our mouths. Love and need and the desperate gratitude that we’re here, safe and finally together. His arms come around me immediately, pulling me against the solid warmth of his chest.
The kiss deepens to become something hungry and urgent. His hands find the small of my back, pressing me closer, and I can feel his heart racing against mine. When we break apart, we’re both breathing hard.
“I need you,” I whisper against his lips. “All of you. I need to feel alive.”
Something flickers in his eyes—understanding, perhaps, or recognition.
He knows what I mean. In this world of sleepless nights and endless responsibilities, sometimes we need to reconnect to who we are beneath all the roles we play.
Sometimes we need to remember that we’re more than just parents and partners and protectors.
Sometimes we need to remember we’re lovers, first and always.
His hands move to the straps of my nightgown, sliding them down my shoulders with reverent slowness.
The silk pools at my feet, and I stand before him bare and vulnerable and completely unashamed.
The way his gaze travels over my body—possessive and tender and hungry all at once—makes heat bloom low in my belly.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs, his accent thickening the way it always does when he’s aroused. “So fecking beautiful.”
I help him with his shirt, my fingers tracing the familiar landscape of scars and muscle and warm skin.
Each mark tells a story—some I know, some I’m still learning.
The raised line across his ribs from a knife fight when he was seventeen.
The burn on his shoulder from protecting me.
The tiny scratches Connor’s fingernails leave when he’s fussy—the marks from learning to be a father.
When he’s finally naked, I press my palm flat against his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heartbeat.
“Touch me,” I breathe. “Please.”
His hands are gentle as they map my body, relearning every curve and hollow. He traces the line of my collarbone with his fingertips, then follows the slope of my breast with his palm. By the time he’s moved to skim the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, I’m trembling with need.
I can barely contain the feelings he awakens in me. I’m learning to reconnect to my body like never before. Every one of his exquisite touches is deliberate and worshipful, like he’s memorizing me all over again.
It’s been so wild learning how to allow the physical connection to finally tie in to the burning emotional connection that’s always been there between us, and, oh god, it sears me from the inside out.
“I love watching you respond to me,” he murmurs, his voice thick with emotion.
“The way your breath catches when I touch you here...” His thumb brushes across my nipple, and I gasp, arching into his touch.
“The way your eyes go dark when I do this...” He cups my breast fully, his mouth finding the hollow of my throat.
My hands tangle in his hair, holding him close as he lavishes attention on my neck. My shoulders. Then the sensitive spot just below my ear that makes me shiver. I can’t help the noises that escape my throat at the mounting pleasure.
He knows my body so well, every secret place that makes me come undone, and he uses that knowledge like a symphony conductor drawing music from his orchestra.
“You’re everything to me,” I whisper, the words tumbling out before I can stop them. “Everything good in my life starts and ends with you.”
He pulls back to look at me, his eyes bright and jaw working with unspoken emotion. “Anna...”
“I know we don’t say it enough,” I continue, my own voice thick. “How grateful we are. How miraculous this all feels. But I need you to know—we both need you to know—that you saved us. Not just from the bad things, but... you taught us how to live.”
His thumb traces my cheekbone, catching a tear I didn’t realize had fallen. “You saved me, too, love. Both of you. Made me more than I ever thought I could be.”
The tenderness between us builds like a physical force, wrapping around us until the rest of the world falls away. When he guides me back to the bed, his hands never leaving my skin, it feels like a sacred act. Like we’re making promises with our bodies that our words could never capture.
He settles between my thighs, his weight a comforting presence above me.
When he enters me, slow and careful, I feel complete in a way that has nothing to do with physical pleasure and everything to do with soul-deep connection.
This is home—not the house around us, not even our bed, but this joining of bodies and hearts and futures.
We move together slowly, finding our rhythm and letting the pleasure build gradually. He watches my face constantly, reading every expression, adjusting his angle or pace based on what he sees there. His consideration and attention to my needs make me love him so fiercely it’s almost painful.
“More,” I breathe, my nails digging into his shoulders. “I want to feel everything.”
Oh, oh—I dig my nails into his shoulder as the wave rises even higher. It’s so close to cresting. Oh god.
Domhn responds by deepening his thrusts, hitting that spot inside me that makes stars burst behind my eyelids. But even as the physical sensations intensify, I feel something else building—that familiar shifting inside my head, consciousness flowing like water between vessels.
Let me feel this, too, comes the whisper from deep inside, and I smile because I know what she needs. What we both need.
“Switch with me,” I tell Domhnall, my voice already changing subtly. “Let her have this, too.”
His movements slow but don’t stop, his eyes searching my face for the signs he’s learned to read. The shift is gradual this time, like sinking into warm water, and I let myself drop back willingly, knowing I’m not losing anything but gaining everything as she and I learn to work together.
MADS
The change is like waking up inside a dream of pleasure. Every nerve ending is already alive, sensitized by Anna’s careful preparation, and when I fully surface into consciousness, Domhnall is still moving inside me with that gentle reverence that makes something twist in my chest.
“There she is,” he murmurs, his voice full of wonder and heat. “Hello, beautiful.”
I grin up at him, letting all my hunger show in my expression. “Miss me, Donny?”
“Always,” he says, and there’s such honesty in it that I have to look away for a moment, overwhelmed by the depth of feeling.
This is what I’ve always struggled with—not the sex, not the pain, not even the surrender, but this.
The naked emotion.
The vulnerability that comes with being truly seen and loved.
Anna’s better at accepting it and believing she deserves it. But Domhnall’s patient with me, the way he’s always been patient, and slowly I’m learning to let him love the broken parts of me, too.
“I want more,” I tell him, my voice rougher than Anna’s, more demanding. “I want everything you can give me.”
His eyes darken, pupils blown wide with arousal, and I feel his cock twitch inside me in response to my words. “You sure about that?”
Instead of answering, I bite his lower lip, just hard enough to sting, and roll my hips in a way that makes him groan. “Stop treating me like I’m made of glass,” I challenge. “I want to feel owned.”
Something shifts in his expression—not just desire but recognition. He knows what I need. What only he can give me. The complete surrender that quiets the chaos in my head and makes me feel real. Grounded. Here.
Without warning, he pulls out of me completely, leaving me empty and wanting. Before I can protest, he’s hauling me upright, his grip firm on my upper arms.
“You want it rough?” he asks, and there’s something dangerous in his voice that makes my pulse race and my cunt clench around nothing. “Then we do this properly.”
He leads me from the bedroom, naked and eager, down the hall to the room we keep locked when Connor’s awake. Our playroom. Our sanctuary. The place where we can be our truest, darkest selves without apology or shame.
The dungeon is dimly lit, all dark wood and leather and gleaming metal.
The familiar scent of leather and expensive wood oil wraps around me like an embrace, and I feel my shoulders drop as some internal tension releases.
Here, in this space we’ve created together, I don’t have to be anything but exactly what I am.