But despite all of that, in here, in the starry glow of my fairy lights, in this tiny world inhabited by just the two of us, something goodcouldhappen.
I straddled Jonah, knees on either side of his hips. I laced the fingers of my right hand through his left and brought it to my lips, kissing the second cheap wedding ring that I’d put on his finger just that morning.
‘Do you know why I asked you to marry me, Jonah?’
He was barely breathing. ‘Tell me,’ he rasped.
‘I didn’t know it, when I asked you.’ I took his cock in my free hand, rubbing myself against the head of him, feeling him quiver beneath me. ‘I didn’t know it, when I was fighting with Chess about why marrying you was actually a good and sensible and reasonable and not completely insane plan. I didn’t even know it when Fiona said it straight to my face. Like, literally, she said it to me, and my brain skated right over it, like it was obscure French theory.’
Jonah’s face was so white and bloodless he looked like he was about to faint.
‘I don’t know when I figured it out. What is it that Darcy says to Elizabeth inPride and Prejudice? “I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun”?’
Jonah made a choked sound that might have been a laugh. I slipped the head of his cock inside me and he made a choked sound that was definitely a gasp.
Thank you, Fiona had said to me, that day in Tsundoku.Thank you for loving my brother enough to do this.
‘I don’t know who I am without you beside me, Jonah,’ I said, sliding all the way down onto him, feeling him long and hard and solid inside me. ‘I love you too.’
He tugged at my right hand, pulling my face down to his. I rocked my hips against him as he kissed me, the fingers of his other hand tangled in my hair. ‘Sadie,’ he murmured into my mouth, ‘fuck, Sadie… Sadie, darling.’
The endearment made me smile. He made another choked sound as I rocked against him again, and I drew back slightly.
Then I paused. ‘Jonah, are you crying?’
‘No!’
I dipped my head and kissed the tears off his cheeks.
‘It’s because I’m inpain, Shaw,’ he insisted. ‘I’m so hard it feels like I might die.’
I laughed. ‘I think we might be able to collaborate on solving that problem.’
I rose up, but he grabbed at my thigh. ‘Wait, wait, wait. Can you give me my glasses again?’
His cock slipped out of me as I reached over for them, but he guided me straight back onto it the second they were on his face. ‘If my beautiful bride is going to ride me,’ he said, fingers digging hard into my hips, ‘then it would be rude not to watch.’
I braced my hands against his chest. ‘Are you ready?’
‘I hopeyou’reready,’ he replied, ‘for the fact this might last about nine seconds.’
‘A whole nine?’ I ground down into him and was rewarded with an almost agonised cry. ‘I need to work a bit harder, if you can hold out that long.’
He shifted one of his hands. His thumb brushed across my clit, and every nerve ending in my body sparked to life again.
‘Don’t think,’ he panted, thumb moving against me as I started moving against him, ‘that I’m going to let you do – oh my God, Sadie, holy fucking hell you feel incredible – all the work.’
‘Shut the fuck up, Jonah,’ I managed to say, third orgasm already starting to build with the perfect dual pressures of his thumb on my clit and his cock thrusting up to meet me, matching my rhythm, ‘and let me do some of it – oh fuck, yes, yes, there, like that.’
Later, afterwards, when he’d finally managed to get up and get rid of the condom, we lay snuggled in my bed together in the soft glow of the fairy lights, his head on my shoulder. ‘Don’t let me forget to change the sheets before Thursday,’ I murmured, carding my fingers through his hair. ‘We absolutelycannotlet the girls sleep in here otherwise.’
He chuckled. ‘You’d better change themonThursday, because I plan on messing them up several more times before then.’ He glanced up at me. ‘If that aligns with your plans. Obviously.’
I pressed my lips to his temple. ‘I made my best argument for why we should split up tonight,’ I said, ‘and you dismantled it.’
‘In that case, we better add condoms to the grocery list, because that box isn’t going to get us very – oh God, Sadie, I love you so much.’
He turned his head suddenly into my shoulder. His voice was breaking when he spoke again, directly into my collarbone. ‘I loveyou,’ he said. ‘I love you, I love you, I have always loved you, I don’t entirely understand how we ended up here but I love you so fucking much.’
