The Gloaming Festival was over, the campers and tourists gone, the silk dancers and fire spinners having packed up their gear and left. The part she needed for her car was still on backorder, with no delivery timeframe in sight. She toyed with the idea of doing some kind of miniseries to justify staying…but I was starting to think she already had her justification.
Staying in my bed.
Staying in my arms.
Riding me until we both forgot the rest of the world existed.
It was some morning sometime after she’d arrived, some season blowing in outside—though I couldn’t have told you what day or even what month it was. Her hands were splayed out across my chest, those sharp nails painted sapphire blue, her thighs on either side of my hips. She’d taken me to hilt, sliding down, clamping aroundme, so fuckin’ wet…
I arched and rocked my hips, taking her slow in the early morning light.
“Jesusfuckin’hell…” I muttered. “Every time…just gets better.”
Noelle let out a low, satisfied hum, tilting her hips just enough to drag more friction from the base of my cock. Her eyes fluttered closed, lips parted, breath shallow as she rode me—slow, sensual.
I dragged my hands up her thighs, gripped her hips, and watched her move. She was still flushed from sleep, still soft and loose in the way she only got in the mornings. Her hair was messy, a little wild, with dark, short tufts of hair sticking up where she’d tossed in her sleep. She looked like something out of a dream.
“Fuck, you’re pretty,” I rasped.
She opened her eyes just enough to look down at me, a lazy smirk on her lips. “You always get this sentimental when I’m balls-deep on your cock?”
“Pretty much.”
She leaned forward, hands sliding from my chest to the pillow beside my head, and kissed me like we had nowhere else to be. Like we hadn’t been doing this every morning, every night, every spare hour in between since the festival. Like time had rewound itself to the first time she asked me to fuck her and stayed there, repeating on a loop.
And I didn’t give a single fuck.
Because I was losing myself in her—and it felt so good I didn’t want to fight it.
“Gonna come,” I mumbled, eyes squinting shut. “The way you’re fuckin’ movin’…”
She smiled against my mouth, that smug little smirk she always wore when she had the upper hand—which, lately, was most of the time. “Then come,” she whispered.
I groaned, hands tightening on her hips. But I didn’t speed up. Neither did she.
“Not yet,” I breathed. “Keep ridin’ me, baby.”
We just stayed like that—her wrapped around me, me buried so deep I didn’t know where my body ended and hers began. The light in the room was soft and golden, the kind of light that made dust motes glow and made it feel like the whole house was dreaming. There was no sound but the creak of the bed, the hush of our breathing, and the whisper of wind against the windows.
I didn’t know what time it was.
Didn’t care.
The only thing that felt real was her.
Noelle’s forehead dropped to mine, her hips still moving, just barely. She was quiet, but I could feel her getting close—little trembles in her thighs, the way her breath started to catch. I slid one hand between us, found her clit, and rubbed in slow, lazy circles.
She gasped. “Beau…”
“I got you,” I said softly. “Always got you, baby.”
Something shimmered between us then—some kind of heat that wasn’t just lust. It felt old. Familiar…like the town had folded us into its rhythm and decided we belonged.
She came first, and I followed a second later, pulled under by the way she clenched and shook and whispered my name. The moments after glowed, warmed, drifted…
…I loved her.
I had no idea how long she’d been here—it had to have been no more than a few days—but I fucking loved her. And I knew she kept saying she didn’t intend on staying, but I felt like the town wasn’t going to let her go.
