He stops.
I choke on the sound, and my eyes fly open. He’s watching me with the face of a man who is in complete control of a situation in which I have none.
“No,what?” he repeats.
The silence stretches. My body shakes.
“No. Don’t stop,” I concede.
He doesn’t move. His hand is still. His eyes are on mine, waiting.
Fuck, he is going to make me beg?
“Please.” The word comes out cracked. “Please don’t stop.”
He watches me for one more second. Two.
“That’s what I thought.”
Then he moves, adding another finger, stretching me, filling me, and the rhythm is no longer patient.
His thumb finds the spot that makes my vision white, and my breath catches in my throat. My hands leave the counter and grip his forearm. The muscle underneath is iron, and his skin is warm.
He takes me apart.
The edge arrives, and this time he doesn’t stop. He drives me over it, and the fall is not graceful — it’s a detonation. My body convulses around his fingers while a moan rips from my mouth that I will never, for the rest of my life, be able to pretend didn’t happen.
It lasts longer than it should. Longer than my body has the right to sustain, wave after wave, his hand still moving, still drawing it out, until I’m empty and shaking and my forehead drops against his chest.
His chest is warm. Solid. The shirt is soft against my skin. I feel his heartbeat — faster than his face suggests, faster than the calm exterior would allow. The idea that his body is not as controlled as his expression sends a final tremor through me.
His fingers slide out of me. The absence is sharp, sudden. A loss I feel in the center of my body.
I’m still breathing against his chest.Still holding his forearm. Still shaking.
“You’re forgiven,” he says.
Then he steps back.
His hands leave the counter. He adjusts his cuff and turns, walking out of the kitchen.
No word. No look. No indication that anything happened,
The kitchen is empty.
I don’t move. I can’t. My hands are gripping the counter’s edge, and my breath is still ragged.
What happened?
What did I justlethappen?
After what feels like an eternity, I finally manage to slide off the counter, my legs barely holding me upright. I shakily pick up my shorts from the floor and step into them. The fabric against my skin is a shock, a return to the normal world.
The chocolate is almost cold by now.
Why did he leave?
That’s the question that breaks through the static. Notwhy did he do it— I don’t have the capacity for that question yet. Butwhy did he leave?He was hard. I saw it — thick and insistent and undeniable — when my forehead was against his chest, when the distance between us collapsed to zero. He was as affected as I was. And he left.
