Buried deep.
We both stilled, breathing hard. She was velvet heat around me, clenching in a way that made my vision blur.
"You okay?" I asked, voice strained.
"Yes," she whispered. "Move. Please."
I did. Slow at first—pulling out almost completely, then thrusting back in, building a rhythm. She met me, her hips lifting, nails digging into my back.
"Faster," she breathed.
Fuck.
I picked up the pace, driving into her harder, the bed creaking under us. Her moans grew louder, breathless, and I captured them with my mouth, swallowing every sound like it was mine to keep.
She came first—her body arching, walls pulsing around me, pulling me over the edge with her. I thrust deep one last time, spilling inside her with a groan that felt ripped from my chest.
We collapsed together, sweaty and spent. I rolled to the side, pulling her against me, my hand stroking her back as our breathing slowed.
She nestled closer, her head on my chest. "That was ..."
"Yeah," I agreed.
We lay there in the quiet, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on my skin. I should've felt regret. Shame. The usual shadows that followed moments like this.
But with her warm against me, all I felt was peace.
For the first time in years.
And that scared me more than anything.
13
JOY
Sunlight was still on the floor when I came back to myself.
Not bright, morning sunlight—this was the late-day kind, softened by the angle of it, turning the dust motes into glitter and making my wood floors look warmer than they had any right to. Outside the front windows, King Street hummed the way it always did—footsteps, distant laughter, a car horn that sounded more impatient than angry.
And downstairs, the bakery was still going.
I could smell it through the floorboards, that steady pulse of sugar and yeast and heat. Someone was definitely pulling something out of an oven. A tray clattered. A bell rang. A man’s voice carried up through the old building like it had always lived inside the walls.
Normal life.
Ordinary life.
The kind I’d built my whole world around.
Except I wasn’t ordinary anymore.
Micah lay beside me in the narrow strip of space my bed allowed, his body turned slightly toward mine like he’d chosena direction and then refused to change it. One arm was thrown above his head, the other heavy across my waist—casual, possessive, unthinking. He looked like a man who didn’t sleep often and didn’t sleep deeply when he did, but right now he was still, breathing slow, as if my tiny condo had convinced his body it was safe.
That thought alone made my throat tighten.
Because it wasn’t just my body that felt different.
It was my space.
