Chapter 32 #2
Quicky, she laps at my nipple and kisses it before tugging again, much softer but still with some force to it. When she meets my gaze, I nod. No pain this time, only pleasure.
“You kissed someone while we were together.” She bites my nipple—hard but not as much as before. “You went on dates with her.” She bites harder, this time into my side. “You had a whole fucking affair.” When her teeth descend again, it’s hard enough that when she lets go, the imprint stays.
It’s not painful in a way I want to stop, my cock as hard as it was at the beginning, but it hurts now that I know what we’re doing. Letting the anger out …
I try to hold her, but the ties are short and tight, locking me in place. “I’m so fuck—”
“I don’t want to hear you’re sorry again.”
She moves so fast it’s dizzying, the sensation overwhelming and unexpected when her mouth finally engulfs my shaft. The heat of her throat and the bobbing of her head make me harder than I was before I came.
“I want to hear it wasn’t worth it,” she says. “I want to hear there’s nothing like my body wrapped around yours.”
She relaxes her throat and takes me as far as she can, having to keep two fingers on my base to massage my whole dick.
I moan as her tongue laps at a drop of precum without pulling me off her mouth. “It wasn’t, Robyn, nothing’s worth losing the right to make love to you.”
She releases my cock with a pop, and while I try helplessly to grab her hips, she rises onto her knees and slides me back home inside her.
She moans. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see how there’s nothing better than this?”
I lean forward as much as the makeshift ties allow while she keeps rocking her hips, letting my cock slide in and out of her. I lap at her neck, her chest, her breast.
“This is fucking great,” I say, breathless, “but there are better things, sweetheart.”
Her rhythm doesn’t falter, but her eyes meet mine like a bleeding wound.
“Untie me, sweet thing. Let me show you.”
She undoes one of the knots, and once my right hand’s free, I loop my arm behind her back and tug her closer to me, then clamp my mouth around her nipple, cheeks hollowing around her breast.
“Your pussy tightening around my cock, your breasts bouncing in my face so close I can suck them—” I moan as she throws her head back.
“Un-fucking-real, Robyn. That’s not all we are, though.
We were always more than fucking and napping.
Reading side by side with you.” I squeeze her hip and drag her up and down my cock.
“Discussing brain facts.” Snaking my hand between us, I press my thumb to her clit.
“Describing impossible cakes. That’s the fucking dream, Robyn. ”
“I’d missed that about us.”
I nod. She’s fluttering around me, so close, but she won’t come like this. She never has. I flick my thumb against her clit, then add pressure to her pubic bone, angling her hips and my shaft so I drag the ridge of my crown against her G-spot.
“What’s that?” she asks.
“Something I read about,” I say, the heat coiling low in my spine—the unmistakable pull that tells me I need to make her come now.
“Watching you in action, Robyn.” I shift my hand so I can apply pressure just above her mound and keep my thumb circling insistently around her clit.
“Knowing you save lives more days than not.”
I kiss her with desperation and greed. She pulls my other hand free, and I bring her closer, my now-released arm firm at her back, holding her to me as her fingers tangle in my hair.
“I’m in awe of you, sweetheart.”
“I’m in awe of you too, Nate.” Her voice breaks. “That’s why it hurt so much.”
“I know, baby.”
The moment crests, and her orgasm washes over her—eyes closed, mouth open, pussy tightening around my cock. And I chase pleasure with her, painting her insides with my cum.
Now that we’ve let the anger out … there’s space for a new love.
The brick streets of Pioneer Square are uneven underfoot, the stones worn smooth by more than a century of footsteps.
Robyn walks a half step behind me, soaking in the details that the guide’s pointing at as if she’s the one into architecture.
Her damp hair curls at the end of her ponytail, and the breeze carries her shampoo—the hotel’s hibiscus—straight into my ravenous senses.
This morning changed everything … and nothing.
When she came out of the shower, we didn’t kiss.
And now we’re not holding hands, but it all feels lighter.
As if it finally put a full stop on the pain we’ve both felt about our past relationship.
Everything we’ve done since I arrived in Bend, hard as it was for me to earn an inch, was steeped in past mistakes.
Now, looking at Robyn’s smooth brows and relaxed shoulders, we’re finding our construction site, examining the options in silence after a storm when the ground is still wet but the sky has cleared.
I drag my hand down the back of my neck.
I’ve gotten very few angry words from Robyn.
Her body, though, had been vibrating demanding answers and true gestures in a way that I finally understand my word had always felt insufficient.
Robyn’s words rattle in my brain. “You had a whole fucking affair,” she’d said.
“I want to hear it wasn’t worth it.” It should feel humiliating.
Instead, I think we finally cleaned the debris of our building lot and can envision what might erect there rather than what was once destroyed.
Robyn slows when the sidewalk narrows, glancing down at the old bricks.
“Careful with your heel.” I point at one of the pebbles. “Some of these shift.”
She looks over her shoulder at me. “I’ve been paying more attention to the roads and buildings than you have.”
I shove my hands in my pockets and offer her my elbow. “Maybe you’re the architect after all.”
She takes it. “Or maybe I’m a bit of a coward.”
I huff a quiet laugh. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Soon,” she whispers.
I nod. Fair.
We pass a row of brick buildings with tall windows and iron columns running along the sidewalk. I run my fingers across the rough surface as we walk.
“What do you think of these?” I ask.
She tilts her head up at the buildings. “They look historic.”
“I guess they are. Big fire wiped most of Seattle out in the eighteen hundreds.” I gesture loosely around us. “Nothing you’re looking at is original.”
She slows and takes another look around. Iron-wrought balustrades, wooden windows, uneven red brick.
“They preserved the footprint,” I say. “Stronger bones. Fire-resistant materials.”
She glances at me sideways.
My mouth curls. “It’s not the worst metaphor.”
She snorts softly. “I don’t want any more metaphors.” After squeezing my elbow, she slides her hand down, brushing the pad of her thumb against the back of my palm. “Let’s give ourselves today, though. Since we didn’t get to Taliesin.”
“You remember Taliesin?”
Her gaze flicks to mine, and she nods. “I’d been looking forward to it. I should’ve done a better job showing you that.”
Warmth spreads through my chest, quiet and unexpected. Is this what happens after you burn through months of anger in one violent, breathless collision of bodies?
For a few steps, we walk shoulder to shoulder. Our arms brush. The contact is brief, but it sends a strange warmth through my chest.
Maybe the pain isn’t entirely gone. The hollow carved into my chest still feels tender, and Robyn measures every touch like she’s testing the ice on a frozen lake. But the sharp edges are gone. Sanded down enough that we can stand next to each other without bleeding.
Robyn stops near a small square where sunlight spills across the brick, and folds her arms loosely, weight shifting to one hip, gaze moving over the buildings like she’s studying the space instead of me.
She feels it too, this fragile shift between us, but she doesn’t trust it yet.
“Hey,” I murmur.
“Hey.”
The faint edge of my bite mark peeks out beneath the hem of her skirt, and I press my palm to my side where she left her own imprint.
We’d never marked each other before, and I’m not embarrassed. Just … a little awed.
Robyn follows my gaze, then looks back up at me. Her mouth curves faintly. “That was …”
“Yeah.”
The corner of her mouth lifts a little more. “Explosive?”
“For sure.”
“Thank you for trusting me to work through that with me.”
I dip my chin, realizing we didn’t hide behind intimacy. We laid it all out, ugly and raw.
For a moment, we just stand there while the city hums around us. A bus sighs to a stop down the street. Someone laughs outside a café. Normal life, continuing like nothing shattered or took root between us.
“I meant what I said earlier,” I say.
Her brows knit slightly.
“It would be different. It could be a lot like before—but better.”
She studies me carefully, testing the structure of words before stepping onto them.
“Sometimes, I believe that,” she says after a moment.
Her voice is warm, but the hesitation in the crease of her brows is unmistakable. And honestly … it should be.
“There’s a lot to figure out,” I admit.
That earns me a longer look.
She lets out a gusty sigh. “Even after this morning … I’m not where we left off.”
“Of course not. How could you be?”
She exhales, shoulders lowering a fraction. “Would you take it very slow?” she asks. “From the very beginning?”
“Robyn, sweetheart, that’s what I’ve been doing.”
We start walking again, slower now. I shove my hands into my jacket pockets, then pull one out and brush against her, and the back of her hand grazes my knuckles as we move.
“It’s the only honest place to start. You know,” I add, nodding toward a building across the street, “when they rebuilt this area, they actually raised the streets. The old city is basically underground now.”
She laughs quietly.
“I don’t think we get to do that,” she says after a moment.
“No?”
“Bury the old and pretend it’s gone.”
I shake my head. “That’s not what they did. Nor what I’d want to do.”
Her gaze lifts to mine just as we reach the middle of the square and stop again.
“I can’t promise it’ll work out,” she says.
The afternoon light catches in her hair. I’m hit with the same feeling I had the first time I realized I was falling for her years ago. She looks steady, but her fingers twist the edge of her sleeve. Her shoulders hold a faint tension, eyes glued to the toes of her shoes.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “I’m fucking scared too.”
Standing here in the rebuilt bones of an old city, I don’t feel like my future’s dead and buried anymore.
It feels like we finally cleared enough debris to pour a new foundation.
It’s not perfect, nor do I need it to be.
I just need it to hold strong enough that maybe, just maybe, we’re brave enough to build again.