4 #2
He worked the finger deeper, slow and thorough, curling until he found the spot that made my vision white out for a second.
“Ryder—”
“I’ve got you.” A second finger joined the first. The burn sharpened, then melted into a thick, overwhelming pressure as he scissored and stroked. “Breathe. You’re doing fine.”
I breathed. My hands fisted in the couch cushion.
He stretched me open with the same focused patience he gave his drawings, adding more lube, twisting his wrist, rubbing that spot inside me until my thighs trembled and unbroken sounds spilled out of my mouth.
When he added a third finger I arched hard and came without being touched—thick ropes striping my stomach and chest, hole clenching rhythmically around his fingers while the orgasm tore through me in waves.
He worked me through it, voice low and steady. “Good. That’s good. Let it happen.”
I collapsed back against the cushions, shaking, oversensitive. He eased his fingers free and wiped them on his own discarded shorts. Then he slicked his cock, lined up, and looked at me one more time.
“Still with me?”
I nodded, words gone.
He pushed in.
The head stretched me wider than his fingers had.
The burn returned, bright and insistent, and for a second I thought I couldn’t take it.
He stopped halfway, breathing hard through his nose, giving me time.
One of his hands found mine and laced our fingers together against the cushion.
The simple contact grounded me. I exhaled, forced the muscle to soften, and he slid the rest of the way home in one long, controlled thrust until his hips pressed flush against me.
I felt every inch.
He stayed still, buried deep, forehead dropped against mine. Rain hammered the windows. My body adjusted in slow increments around the thick invasion. When the worst of the stretch eased into a deep, aching fullness he started to move.
The first strokes were careful. Measured.
Each retreat and return dragged across the spot inside me that made my spent cock twitch and start to fill again.
Wet sounds filled the room—lube and skin and the soft creak of the couch.
He watched my face the entire time, adjusting angle and depth until every thrust pulled a broken noise out of me.
“Fuck, you’re tight,” he gritted. Sweat dripped from his temple onto my collarbone. “Taking me so well.”
I reached up and gripped the back of his neck, pulling him down into a messy kiss that was more breath than technique.
He growled into my mouth and started fucking me harder.
The careful rhythm broke into something deeper, more claiming.
The couch shifted under us. My legs wrapped around his waist without conscious decision.
Every snap of his hips drove him against that spot until pleasure built again, sharper this time, layered on top of the oversensitivity.
He reached between us and stroked my cock in time with his thrusts. The dual sensation—thick cock stretching me open, rough hand working my shaft—shoved me toward the edge fast.
“Gonna come again,” I gasped.
“Do it.” His voice was wrecked. “Come on my cock. Want to feel it.”
I did. The second orgasm hit harder than the first, hole clamping down around him while I spilled over his fist and onto my own stomach.
The rhythmic squeezing pulled a raw sound out of Ryder’s chest.
He drove in deep, buried to the hilt, and came with his forehead pressed to mine—hot pulses flooding me, hips grinding through every spurt until he had nothing left.
We stayed locked together, breathing hard.
Rain still lashed the windows. The air in the apartment smelled like sex and sweat and the clean ozone that always followed a Miami downpour.
Ryder’s weight pinned me to the couch in a way that should have felt heavy and instead felt like the only solid thing in the room.
After a long minute he eased out. The slow drag left me sensitive and empty; a trickle of come followed and slid down onto the cushion.
He watched it happen with dark eyes, then reached for the discarded towel from earlier and cleaned me with surprising care.
When he finished he dropped the towel on the floor and settled on his side next to me, one heavy arm draped across my waist.
I stared at the ceiling. My body felt used and loose and still humming. Outside, the rain settled into a steady rhythm against the glass. Inside, the only sound was our breathing slowly syncing.
Ryder’s thumb moved once across the skin just above my hip.
“You good?” he asked, voice low and rough.
I turned my head on the cushion and met his eyes. The pretending was gone. Whatever came next would have to be built on whatever this was.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m good.”
He held my gaze a second longer, then closed his eyes. The arm across my waist stayed where it was, solid and warm.
I listened to the rain finish itself against the glass. His arm stayed where it was.
I woke to the sound of rain still going, softer than before, and the weight of an arm across my waist.
For three full seconds I didn’t remember.
Then the night came back in a single, brutal rush—Ryder’s mouth, the stretch of him inside me, the way I had come undone twice while the storm hammered the windows.
My body registered the evidence before my mind finished sorting it: the dull ache low in my ass, the dried come on my stomach, the solid heat of another man pressed along my back on the narrow couch.
I went rigid.
Ryder’s breathing changed. He was awake. Of course he was. He shifted just enough to put a few inches of space between us, but the arm stayed where it was, heavy and warm across my bare skin.
“Morning,” he said. Voice low, rough from sleep, completely calm.
I sat up too fast. The room tilted. Morning light filtered through the half-open blinds in pale gray stripes.
My T-shirt and shorts were in a heap on the floor.
Ryder lay on his side watching me, still naked from the waist down, the tattoo shifting as he propped himself on one elbow.
There was no triumph on his face. No smugness.
Just quiet attention, the same way he looked at a half-finished sketch.
“I—” My throat closed. I dragged a hand over my face. “Fuck.”
“You want space, take it.” He sat up slowly, reached for his discarded shorts, and pulled them on without hurry. “I’m going to make coffee. You can stay here or go to the bedroom. Door’s open either way.”
He stood and walked into the kitchen like nothing irreversible had happened on the couch six hours earlier.
The ordinary sound of the grinder starting up felt surreal.
I stayed where I was, knees drawn up, staring at the place on the cushion that was still slightly damp.
My pulse hammered in my neck. Every muscle felt oversensitive, as if the night had stripped a layer of skin off me.
I got up, found my clothes, and pulled them on with hands that weren’t steady.
The bathroom mirror showed a version of myself I barely recognized—mouth still faintly swollen, a small bruise forming on the side of my neck where his teeth had been, eyes too dark.
I washed my face in cold water until the worst of the heat left my cheeks, then forced myself to walk into the kitchen.
Ryder stood at the counter pouring hot water into the French press. He had put on the black tank top. Two mugs waited on the scarred surface. He didn’t look at me when he spoke.
“Sit if you want.”
I sat at the small table by the window. Rain streaked the glass.
The sky was the color of wet concrete. Miami after a storm always looked rinsed and temporary, like the heat was only pausing before it came back harder.
Ryder brought the press and the mugs over, poured for both of us, and sat across from me.
He pushed one mug in my direction. Black, no sugar.
I wrapped my hands around it for something to do.
We drank in silence.
The only sounds were the rain, the occasional tick of the cooling press, and the soft scrape of ceramic when one of us set a mug down.
My mind kept replaying fragments—his voice asking if I was sure, the thick stretch of him pushing inside, the way I had begged without words.
Shame and want sat side by side in my chest and refused to cancel each other out.
Under the table, Ryder’s bare foot shifted and came to rest against mine.
Not aggressive. Not even deliberate in an obvious way.
Just the side of his foot aligned with the side of mine, warm skin against warm skin.
The contact was so small it should have been nothing.
Instead it sent a current straight up my leg and into my stomach.
I stared at the surface of my coffee. My first instinct was to pull away. I didn’t.
We stayed like that while the coffee cooled.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t press his advantage.
He simply left the point of contact there and let me decide what to do with it.
Every second I left my foot where it was felt like another quiet admission.
The silence between us thickened until it felt almost physical, heavier than any of the words we had exchanged the night before.
I could hear my own pulse in my ears. I could feel the exact shape of his foot against mine and the fact that neither of us was moving.
When he finally stood to rinse the mugs, the loss of contact left a cold spot on my skin that had nothing to do with temperature.
“I’m going to shower,” he said. “There’s eggs if you want them.”
I nodded without looking up. He disappeared down the hallway. The bathroom door closed. Water started to run. I sat alone at the table with the empty mugs and the rain and the knowledge that I had not pulled my foot away.
I spent the late morning in the bedroom with the door closed, laptop open to the same job boards I had already exhausted.
The ache in my body was a constant low reminder.
Every time I shifted on the bed I felt it—a dull, intimate soreness that made concentration impossible.
I answered two emails with careful, professional sentences and deleted three others without reading them.
Outside, the rain slowed to a fine mist and then stopped.
The light changed from gray to the hard white of clearing skies.