"Tell me," he commands.
"No one else gets to see this," I manage between breaths. "This version of you."
His hand finds my throat, thumb resting on my pulse point. "Again."
"I've marked your soul, Gabriel. The way you've marked mine."
He rewards me by fucking me harder, his cock hitting that perfect spot with each thrust. The wet sounds of our coupling fill the room, obscene in the morning quiet. I can feel myself dripping, coating his balls every time he bottoms out.
"Stay with me," he commands, forehead against mine. "Right here. Don't close your eyes."
The eye contact is almost too much, too exposed, but I keep my gaze locked on his. His cock swells inside me, and I know he's close.
"I need to feel you come on my cock," he says, thumb finding my clit again. "Come for me, Sera."
The combination of his cock hitting deep and his thumb on my clit sends me over the edge. My orgasm builds like a tide, my pussy clenching rhythmically around him. When it crests, I hold his face, eyes locked on his, and the sound I make is quiet and real and completely without artifice.
"Fuck, I can feel you," he groans as my pussy milks his cock. "So fucking tight."
He follows immediately, his cock pulsing inside me as he fills me with cum. The control he maintains everywhere else dissolves entirely, and in that moment I understand something about intensity and freedom, about how the right person makes even surrender feel like power. I feel every pulse, every hot spurt, his cum mixing with my wetness until we're both soaked with it.
After, still buried inside me, he traces my face like he's memorizing it, fingers following the curve of my cheek, the line of my jaw. His cock is softening but he doesn't pull out, like he can't bear to separate yet. I can feel his cum starting to leak out around him, coating my thighs.
"What are you doing?"
"Learning you. In case…" He doesn't finish, but I hear it. In case this is temporary. In case tomorrow brings regret. In case the world outside breaks this open.
"I'm staying," I tell him, catching his hand. "But you already know that, don't you?"
"I'm starting to believe it." His fingers tighten on mine. "Give me time. I've been running so long, standing still feels like falling."
"Then fall," I say. "I'll catch you."
17 - Gabriel
The bed is empty when I reach for her.
Not gone — I can hear her in the kitchen. The tap running, a cabinet clicking shut, the particular quality of someone making themselves at home in your space. I lie still for another minute, listening to her exist in my rectory, and try to remember the last time silence felt this inhabited.
Afternoon light cuts through the blinds in long amber bars across the sheet. Not dawn. Not the grey morning discipline I’ve run on for three years. The whole day has happened without us.
I find my jeans on the floor. Pull them on. Come to the doorway.
She’s at the counter in my shirt — nothing else, her hair loose and wild — frowning at the contents of my refrigerator with the expression of someone confronting a moral failing.
“You have eggs,” she says, without turning around. “And a heel of bread. And something at the back I’ve chosen not to investigate.”
“I eat at Alma’s mostly.”
“Past tense,” she says. She closes the refrigerator and turns to look at me across the kitchen.
We look at each other.
The strangeness of it, no crisis demanding action, just afternoon light and her in my shirt and time, sits between us.
Her finger finds the scar on my side, tracing the raised line. “You never said how you got this.”
“Childhood stupidity.” I catch her hand, bring it to my lips. “Marisol dared me to climb this wall behind our house. Said I was too scared.”
