Pressure.
Need.
“Penn,” he warned.
But it was a threadbare warning.
A surrender wearing armor.
I dragged my lips up his chest, tracing the script, the lines, the art. My body moved over him, a slow grind that made his breath punch out of him.
“Tell me what this one says,” I whispered, kissing the line over his sternum.
His hand cupped the back of my neck, pulling me down until our mouths were a breath apart.
“It says,” he murmured, “that I have wanted you my entire life.”
The world shattered.
His mouth crashed into mine—hungry, reverent, desperate in a way that rewired me from the inside. He rolled us, pinning me beneath him. His hands slid up my thighs, spreading them wide as his hips settled between them.
“You’re mine,” he whispered against my throat. “I don’t care how long it took. I don’t care how much we lost. I’m not letting anything steal this again.”
I arched into him. “Then take me.”
Oh, God, he did.
It was slow at first—long, deep strokes that felt like they carved pieces of him into me. Then harder, desperate, our bodies colliding in a rhythm that felt ancient. Fingers digging. Lips bruising. His forehead against mine while we breathed each other’s lungs.
I didn’t know where I ended or he began. Didn’t want to. We were one impossible, tangled shape—need and memory and rebirth tied into a knot that neither of us could untangle even if we tried.
When we came, it wasn’t quiet.
It was a falling.
A breaking.
A becoming.
His body trembled against mine. My fingers gripped his back, nails catching on ink and heat and skin I now knew by heart.
He stayed inside me until the tremors faded, until our breaths synced again, slow and steady, two hearts learning the same rhythm.
After, he kissed my shoulder. My cheek. My mouth. Soft now. Tender.
“We should shower,” he whispered.
I nodded, unable to find words.
He carried me to the bathroom, set me gently on the counter, and started the water. We washed each other quietly. Warm hands. Quiet smiles. His fingers tracing my hips like he was reminding himself I was real.
We dressed slowly. He dried my hair with his hands. I buttoned his shirt for him, one button at a time. He kissed my forehead after each one like it was some old ritual only we knew.
Then we left the house—locking the door behind us, the morning sharp and bright—and stopped at the little café on the corner.
He ordered a flat white. I ordered a warm peach tea. Our hands brushed as we waited. He didn’t pull away.
We walked back to his car with steaming cups, the world humming awake around us.
