I swallowed hard, my body responding with a throb that felt delicious and dirty all at once. I was too old for him. He was helping me take care of my daughter.
And yet I couldn’t stop remembering how his thick thigh had slotted between mine, how my hips had tilted up for more without thinking. I’d been soaked for him. Aching, open, and desperate. My pussy clenched at the thought, traitorous and slick just from the memory.
I’d been one look away from losing every boundary I’d spent years reinforcing.
And he—he had been the mature one.
He’d left when we heard Winnie upstairs.
That was the part that wrecked me the most.
It wasn’t just that he hadn’t pushed, but that he’d read the fear on my face and stepped back with enough restraint for both of us. He was level-headed while I had stood there, mouth swollen, pulse racing, knees weak, and ready to undo every rule I’d ever made.
I rubbed a hand over my face, willing the heat in my cheeks to fade. I wasn’t this woman. I wasn’t careless. I didn’t do reckless anymore.
Not since Winnie.
Not since everything fell apart and I was left to put it back together by myself.
It was just an attraction. Physical. Hormones and proximity and the fact that he looked like a goddamn thunderstorm made of muscle and slow smiles.
Surely that was all it was.
But even as I tried to rationalize it, I knew I was lying, because it wasn’t just lust that had tangled me up.
It was the way he’d tucked Winnie’s stuffed unicorn under her blanket when he thought no one was watching. The way he’d listened when she talked about her imaginary fairy kingdom like it was as important as any adult problem. It was how he noticed things without making a show of it—how he saw me.
Not just the mother. Not just the provider.Me.
That was what terrified me the most, because deep down I wanted that. I wanted to be seen like that. Touched like that. I wanted the press of his mouth against mine again, the rough scrape of his stubble across my throat, his cock inside me, filling me until I forgot every name that wasn’t his. I wanted to arch for him. To come on his fingers, his tongue, his?—
I groaned and turned over, burying my face into the pillow, this time allowing a scream to burn in my throat. My thighs were still pressed together, tightly enough to feel the wet heat that had gathered there.
I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
Because the second I stopped thinking with my head and started thinking with my body, I risked losing everything I had worked for—our routine, our safety, the quiet, stable life I had built one brick at a time.
I didn’t get to have a flirty fling—at least not the way other women did.
Not the sex, not the heat, not the magnetic pull of a man who made me feel like a woman instead of a checklist.
Not the way he made me ache to be ruined.
So I swallowed it down, again, like I had a thousand other times since I became a mother. I pushed away the burn in my chest and the wetness between my thighs and reminded myself of all the reasons I couldn’t afford to want him.
And still, somewhere deep in the marrow of me, a voice whispered:
Maybe just this once you could want him ... maybe you already do.
Saturday mornings usedto be my favorite. No alarms. No school lunches to pack. Just me and Winnie and the loose, cozy rhythm of a day that didn’t demand too much, but this morning felt off-kilter.
The sun filtered in through the kitchen blinds, casting long golden bars across the counter like a watercolor painting that had lost its vibrancy. I moved through the motions like I was underwater—filling the coffeepot, setting out two bowls, pouring cereal into one of them without even asking which kind she wanted.
Behind me, Winnie hummed under her breath, still in her pajama set with the faded mermaid print, perched cross-legged at the kitchen table, a spoon clutched in one hand and her unicorn stuffie in the other.
“Mama?” she asked, her mouth full of cereal. “How come Austin’s not here today?”
At the mention of his name, my hand froze on the coffee canister.
