And in the quiet after, I realize he didn’t just want to claim me. He wanted to cherish me. And that might be the scariest, most beautiful thing of all.
Later, after the rush has quieted and the sun has crept higher across the floor, we sit up in bed, tangled in sheets and half-wrapped in the weight of what we’ve just shared.
It’s not awkward.
It’s something softer than that, like standing still in the middle of a storm and realizing the wind has finally stopped howling.
Will leans back against the headboard, hair tousled, chest bare, and eyes on me like he’s still trying to understand how I’m real. I pull my knees up beneath me, draping the sheet over my lap, but I don’t hide. Not from him.
He reaches out, brushing his fingers down my arm, then trails them lightly over my wrist, my palm, like he’s reading something in the lines of me.
“You’re quiet,” he says.
I shrug. “Still here.”
“Where do you go when you get quiet like that?”
I pause. Then, without breaking eye contact, I answer truthfully.
“Into my head. Trying to decide if this is real or if I’m just gonna wake up and find myself back at square one.”
His fingers still. Then he takes my hand in his, turns it over, and presses a slow kiss to the center of my palm.
“I’m still here,” he says.
We don’t speak for a long minute after that. We just touch.
His hand slides up my thigh, slow, reverent, tracing the curve of my leg under the sheet. My own fingers trail along his chest,over the rougher skin of his shoulder, the dip of his collarbone, the line of muscle along his ribs.
He closes his eyes for a beat, just breathing.
Then opens them again and watches me like I’m a secret he finally wants to learn, not bury.
I shift closer, and he leans in until our foreheads touch. His hand finds my waist. Mine settles over his heart. And in that quiet, unhurried moment, we don’t need to rush. We don’t need to prove anything. We just sit in the space we’ve both been too afraid to reach for, touching each other like we finally belong.
We’ve been sitting like this for minutes. Foreheads touching, hands exploring the quiet geography of skin and breath. Every movement between us is unhurried, almost reverent. But the tension is still there, simmering just beneath the softness. A hum under the surface.
Then his hands slide lower. And I feel the shift.
He eases back just enough to look at me, his eyes searching mine.
“Come here,” he murmurs, voice low, rough.
I don’t hesitate. I straddle his lap, knees sinking into the mattress on either side of him. The sheet slips away from my shoulders, and I don’t reach for it. His hands trace along my thighs, up to my hips, then settle at my lower back as I sink into him—skin to skin, chest to chest.
His mouth finds mine again, slow at first, then deeper, hungrier. He kisses like a man trying to make up for all the ways he failed to speak before. Like every touch is a sentence. An apology. A promise.
His hands roam my back, my sides, my hips. Never pushing, just asking. And I answer with movement, with need, with the way I press into him like I can’t bear a second more of space between us.
When he enters me, it’s different than the night before.
This time, I know the feel of him. The stretch. The heat.
And still, I gasp because nothing could prepare me for what it feels like to fall apart in someone’s arms and then want to do it again.
He moves slowly at first, one hand on my waist, the other slipping into my hair as he guides me. My body adjusts around him, each movement coaxing more of that dizzying pleasure from both of us.
“Look at me,” he says, voice ragged.
