“FUCK! MAYA!”
I look down, buried deep inside her, and there’s nowhere else I want to be.
“You feel so fucking good,” I growl, pulling back and driving in again. My palm smacks across her ass. Hard.
She’s lost in it, trying to keep pace, gasping and begging for more.
“You’re so big... I can feel all of you. So good.”
I grit my teeth, fighting not to come too fast, her ass clenching me so tight it’s nearly unbearable.
Leaning over her, I grip her hair tightly, biting down on her shoulder. “You like this, don’t you? Having my cock buried deep in your tight little ass?”
“Yes—yes, don’t stop!” she cries, her voice trembling.
“No—no—no!”
I jolt upright in bed, my heart slamming in my chest, and scan the room until it finally sinks in… I’m not in that hotel in Miami. I’m not that man anymore. That life is behind me.
I stumble to my feet and go straight to Ethan’s room, praying I didn’t wake him with my scream.
The door is ajar, so I push it open. His bed is empty. The clock on the nightstand reads 6:50 a.m., which can only mean he left to avoid me.
I walk into the kitchen and, with shaking hands, pour myself a glass of water.
There’s nowhere else I want to be.
“Fuck.”
I set the glass down hard on the counter, but the nightmare refuses to release me. I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I didn’t say that,” I whisper. “That’s in my head. Just my head.”
I force myself to remember the details... to prove it. To prove it didn’t happen the way my mind keeps replaying it. I cling to pieces of truth, lining them up like evidence in a trial battling my own thoughts.
Get a grip. Think.
In the nightmare, I wasn’t using a condom. I always used one with Maya, except for that day in late October.
What else... I try to pull the real memory forward—the hotel room, the sounds, things I brought to the bed, and the things I said. As the images crowd in, I swallow hard, fighting the wave of nausea rising in my throat.
When the scene I’m dreading finally hits, the same one from the nightmare, it nearly brings me to my knees. I brace myself, gripping the counter with both hands to stay upright.
I started entering her slowly, then slammed all the way in with one brutal thrust.
‘Fuck! Maya!’
I looked down. I remember the feeling clearly... the sheer ecstasy of the moment. But the thought was there, too. Looking at where I was, buried inside her, I thought:There’s nowhere else I want to be.
In the present, I gag, the bitter taste of bile rising in my throat.
Disoriented, I make my way to my office. The room is dark, the city sky barely bruised with early morning on the other side of the glass. I don’t turn on the lights. I just stand there for a moment.
There’s nowhere else I want to be.
There’s nowhere else I want to be.
I retrieve the key from where I keep it hidden inside a book and go straight to the drawer, unlocking it with shaking hands. Pulling out the black binder, I set it on my desk. Just like every single time I’ve opened it these past months, that feeling of dread hits me harder.
I lay my left hand on top of it, the same hand that no longer bears even the faintest sign of the wedding band I wore for nearly two decades, and try to hold myself together.
