I kept my face still. Professional. Whatever the fuck that meant with my dick pressed against my trousers just from the smell of her skin. Her voice. Because my body still remembered how it felt the first time I slid inside her—tight, wet, warm as sin. Like she’d been waiting for me. That night, she didn’t ask questions. Just handed me her wine glass and walked into the dark like she already knew what we were about to become.
And we were something. For a while.
Until life started piling up and I didn’t know how to be what she needed. Until I made silence feel like rejection. Until she took her things and left—and I let her.
Now we were here.
I crossed the scene, stepping around what used to be the front porch. Jaw tight. Trying not to look at her walk—but fuck, she still had that sway. Hips like punctuation. Back straight like she was carrying legacy and daring the world to say something.
“Tariq,” one of the techs called from the edge of the site, snapping me out of it.
“Yeah?” I dragged my eyes off her ass—bent over now as she examined a pile of charred frames.
“Pulled the security cam from across the street. No movement until early morning. Looks like the system had a blackout window.”
“On purpose?”
“Could be. We’re digging.”
I nodded. But my focus was already gone. Back on Sanaa—near the edge of the tape, arms crossed, jaw set. She was dressed to be seen, not touched. Same as always.
The wind lifted her dress just slightly. Her legs looked the same—smooth, toned, perfect. Like the last time I had them locked around my waist. That night in our old apartment. Lights off. Me buried deep, thumb pressing into her ass while she whispered things that fried my goddamn brain?—
“Tariq… you’re so thick. So perfect. Fuck me, Daddy.”
Shit.
My dick pulsed. I had to breathe. Focus. Get her out of here before I lost the thread entirely.
I turned back toward the wreckage. Fire. Debris. Paintings gone. Insurance mess. That’s why she was here. Not for me, maybe.
But shewashere. And the second she showed up, my body betrayed every lie I’d told myself since the day she walked away.
I remembered the taste of her. The way she bit her lip when she rode me slow. The way she looked me dead in the eye and came so hard she forgot her name.
And I was still that man—still in love with her power. Still wrecked by her passion. Still one breath away from falling if she ever looked at me the way she used to…
Like I was hers.
2
Ididn’t leave with a suitcase. Just a weekend bag and my pride.
He was on shift the day I walked out—twenty-four hours of straight tension, engine noise, meals eaten standing up. That’s the rhythm of a firehouse: hurry up and wait, then racetoward the worst day of someone’s life. But that day… the worst belonged to me.
I’d waited until he was gone because I knew if I looked him in the eye, I wouldn’t do it. I’d fold. I always folded for Tariq. Even when he was pulling away from me. Even when the heat between us cooled so much I started waking up cold in our bed.
It hadn’t always been that way.
There was a time when he came home full of stories—high off adrenaline and soot, dragging his gear through the door and peeling off his sweat-soaked shirt with that grin he didn’t show anyone else. He used to hold me with urgency. Eat like the world was ending. Fuck like I was his only relief.
Then came the fire.
The one that didn’t kill him, but killed something inside him just the same.
Afterward, his hands got gentler. His voice quieter. I’d wake to find him already sitting on the edge of the bed, face in his palms, body tight with something I couldn’t reach. He stopped laughing. Stopped letting me in. And no matter how many times I asked,What are you dreaming about, baby?, he’d just kiss my forehead and saynothing.
But it was something.
