When the alarm finally dragged us back into the world, it felt almost cruel.
I turned it off and stared at the ceiling.
“Reality is offensive.”
His sleepy laugh warmed the back of my neck.
“Correct.”
Just his body fitting to mine with that now-familiar inevitability, one arm under my neck, the other curved over my waist, both of us clean and sore and drowsy and wrapped in the soft dark.
I tucked myself back against him automatically.
He exhaled against the back of my shoulder.
“Better?”
I smiled into the pillow.
“Dangerously.”
He kissed the place just below my ear.
Then silence settled.
Outside, some far-off bird called once.
A branch moved against glass.
The whole world receded until there was nothing but the cocoon of his arms and the deep, grateful ache of a body finally allowed to stop performing.
I don’t remember falling asleep.
Only waking once later with dusk blue at the edges of the curtains and Tristan still asleep behind me, breathing slow, his hand spread over my stomach like even unconscious some part of him needed to make sure I was still there.
I covered his hand with mine and went back under.
When the alarm finally dragged us back into the world, it felt almost cruel.
I turned it off and stared at the ceiling.
“Reality is offensive.”
His sleepy laugh warmed the back of my neck.
“Correct.”
I turned in his arms just enough to see his face in the dim room—hair a little wrecked, eyes heavy, jaw shadowed, the whole dangerous prince act stripped down to the exhausted athlete underneath it.
But neither of us moved away.
Instead, he drew me closer, my back pressed flush to the warm, solid wall of his chest. His arousal was already evident—thick, heavy, and insistent as it nestled against the curve of my bottom. Years of unspoken desire crackled between us, that slow-burning tension that had simmered for so long finally allowed to surface in the quiet morning light.
He shifted, and the broad head of him nudged my entrance, sliding teasingly along my slick folds. I was ready for him—wet, aching, my body responding to his nearness with a deep, liquid heat that had been building for years.
With a low, rumbling groan, he pushed forward—slowly, so slowly—filling me inch by thick, velvet inch until he was buried to the hilt, stretching me in the most exquisite way. The sensation was sublime, a perfect, breathtaking fullness that made my breath catch and my eyes flutter shut.
“Oh… Tristan,” I whispered, voice trembling with pleasure.
