And that’s what kills me.
Because I have been with women. Dozens of dozens. Easy. Forgettable. Bodies with no consequences.
This is consequences.
This is the kind of sex that rearranges the shape of a man’s life and makes him lie to himself afterward about how it does not mean anything.
Pulling out, I follow her over the edge with a harsh groan, forehead pressed to her shoulder, breathing like I just ran from a fire. I stay over her for a long second, shaking, forcing myself not to crush her with the weight of what I just did as I cum on her belly instead of in her eyes.
Then I roll to my back and stare at the ceiling like it can give me answers.
She curls into my side like it is instinct. Not calculated. Not claimed. Just natural.
That’s worse than everything else.
I rest my hand on her back, feeling the rise and fall of her breath under my palm, and I try to convince myself this is temporary.
Just a man blowing off steam before he rides back to Hell and handles real problems.
But my chest feels tight in a way it never did with Kara. Or any of the others.
Brittany traces a lazy line across my ribs like she’s mapping me.
“What happens tomorrow?” she asks softly.
Reality. That’s what.
“The club keeps searching,” I say. “Pearly Gates keeps circling. Bethany keeps scheming.”
“And us?” she asks.
There it is.
The question I can’t outrun. The one that turns this from a night to a choice.
I stare at the ceiling a second longer.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
That’s the most honest thing I have said in my life.
She lifts her head to look at me, eyes sharp even through softness.
“You didn’t sound like a man who doesn’t know.”
I huff a quiet laugh, but it dies fast.
“I’m trying to fuck you out of my system,” I say.
Her brows lift.
“And?” she asks, like she already knows the answer too.
I meet her eyes.
“And it ain’t working.”
She smiles slowly, satisfied and terrified at the same time.
