The question catches me off guard with its honesty.
“I tried to,” I admit. “Would have been easier if I could hate him. But I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I saw what his return did to you,” I say. “Not just the shock, but everything after. I understood there was a history there I couldn’t compete with.”
“I was supposed to do his psych eval when he first returned,” Nina says. “Had to recuse myself.”
“Professional conflict?”
“Personal history.” She looks down at her hands. “Hard to be objective about someone who disappeared from your life for ten years after the first time you had sex. To say I had unresolved issues would be an understatement. Wanting to help but knowing it’s not my responsibility, or whether he’d want my help at all. That’s probably why I leaned on you so much. Why you stayed, even after we ended things.”
“What else was I going to do? Abandon you?” The thought seems absurd, even now. “We still saw each other at work every day. You needed someone.”
“So did he.”
“Yeah.” The memory of Chris showing up at Nina’s apartment still holds a strange charge. The surprise of seeing him there, the immediate tension between us. “He came looking for you, found me instead. Not how either of us expected that day to go.”
What I don’t say is how that tension broke—Chris backing me against the table, all desperate hands and bruising kisses. How I took control when he started to splinter. The way his body yielded beneath mine, strong but somehow fragile, like he was both seeking and fighting his own surrender. His eyes when I pushed into him—defiant one moment, vulnerable the next. It was desire tangled with something deeper, more complicated—the need to be taken apart by someone who might put him back together carefully.
“I imagine not.”
The quiet between us shifts as Nina’s expression changes, her eyes darkening slightly. She relaxes her legs and shifts to face me.
“That night after Callie’s wedding,” she says, voice dropping lower. “When I saw you two together... it was intense.”
My skin warms at the memory—Chris arching into my touch, eyes closed, completely vulnerable. Begging me in a way that felt like exorcism.
“Denver was different,” I admit. “Intense, but... I don’t know. Like you were still in the room with us somehow. Like we were both feeling your absence.”
Nina’s gaze drops to where the sheet has slipped lower on my hips, where it’s now tented over them, then back to my face. I can’t hide my body’s response to the memories, to her watching me remember.
She moves closer, tracing her fingertips along my chest. My breath catches when she toys with one nipple. “I wish I could have been there,” she whispers. “Last night was something straight out of my fantasies.”
She straddles my lap in one fluid motion. The sheet falls away as she settles against me, my cock fully hard when her pelvis rests lightly against the base. When she kisses me, there’s no hesitation, no doubt.
“We should be careful,” I murmur against her mouth, already losing focus at the feel of her heat against my sensitive skin.
“I know.” She nods, pulling back to look into my eyes. Morning light bathes her skin in gold as she slips backward a little onto my thighs, then takes me in one hand. I shudder in pleasure when she strokes me, part of me wanting to just let her take care of me. But I also sensed the direction she was going and don’t want to stop her momentum. I reach for another condom from the box we opened last night. She watches me roll it on, then shifts forward to straddle me properly.
“Just like this,” she whispers, settling herself against me, spreading herself over my base. Her clit is a swollen nub protruding from beneath its hood, pressed right against the most sensitive part of the underside of my cock.
The heat of her against me is maddening, even through the condom—slick labia sliding along my length in a deliberate tease. Not inside her, but somehow more intimate for the restraint. Her movements are controlled, precise, finding exactly the angle that makes her breath catch.
I’m transfixed by her expression, the way pleasure transforms her face, the slight furrow between her brows as she focuses on chasing her own release. She takes what she needs so confidently, so openly—more expressive than she ever was when we were together. It’s the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen.
I draw her closer, my mouth finding her breast, tongue circling her nipple before sucking it between my teeth. Her back arches, fingers digging into my hair to hold me there as she rocks against me, her wetness making everything deliciously slick.
“Fuck, I’ve missed this,” I tell her, voice rough with want.
“Me too,” she breathes, a smile playing at her lips as she rocks her pelvis in a way that makes me tighten my grip on her hip. I lift my gaze and her eyes meet mine. “Think he’s wondering what we’re doing right now?”
The thought of Chris imagining us together sends a jolt of heat straight through me. I groan, hands tightening on her hips.
I know I won’t come this way, but watching her use my body for her pleasure is its own kind of satisfaction. She reads my reactions perfectly, gauging exactly how much pressure, how much friction to apply to drive us both higher.
When she finally comes, her nails digging into my shoulders, her thighs trembling against mine, and her juices coating my balls, I’m struck by how much more open she is—how much more herself. Like everything between us has been stripped of pretense.
