“You okay?”
She opened her eyes and looked down at me. A slow, dazed smile.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I’m okay.”
She didn’t move off me, and I could feel her heartbeat against my stomach, gradually slowing. After a while, her hips shifted—barely anything, just a gentle rocking. Testing. I was so hard it was almost painful, and the movement sent a jolt through me that made my stomach clench. She felt it too. I saw her eyes widen, then darken.
She rocked again, slowly, forward and back, barely lifting—just enough to feel me move inside her. My hands settled on her thighs, and her fingers traced the old scars on my abdomen, her lips kissing the marks on my chest. After a few seconds, she picked up the pace, her palms flat on mychest, and the slow rocking became something more deliberate. I watched her face change—the dreamy post-orgasm haze sharpening into something more focused, more awake.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
I moved with her, matching her rhythm, then pushing faster. I planted my feet on the rug and thrust up into her, and she cried out, bracing herself against my chest. The fire crackling beside us, the room too warm, her skin damp against mine. I didn’t want to be anywhere else, ever.
I was getting close. That tightening heat low in my stomach, spreading outward, building. I reached between us and found her clit with my index finger, brushing lightly at first, then circling it. I felt it swell and harden under my touch, and she made a sound I’d never heard from her before—halfway between a gasp and a sob.
“Liam—oh—”
I kept circling, the small, tight bud pulsing beneath my fingertip, and I thrust harder, faster. The pressure was unbearable now, building and building, and I couldn’t hold it—
I came with a groan that felt like it was ripped out of me, my hips jerking up into her, my cock pulsing deep inside her. And she felt it—felt me coming—my finger still circling her clit, and it tipped her over with me. Her whole body shook as she clenched down hard. The sound she made was quiet this time, breathless, almost surprised, like it had caught her off guard.
We stayed like that for a long time. Her on top of me, my hand resting on her thigh, both of us trying to remember how to breathe. The fire had burned down to a deep orange glow, and the rain still hammered the roof.
She dropped her forehead onto my chest.
“Christ, Andrea,” I said.
She laughed softly against my skin.
“Agreed,” she murmured.
*
“Andrea?” Her eyes were still closed, her chest rising and falling gently in my arms. “It’s stopped raining.”
The fire was almost out, and it was cool again in the cottage. I wanted to take her back, lay her on the hotel bed, and wrap her in blankets. It was late, and tomorrow we were flying home.
Could we take this home with us?What we’d had today, the connection, this sort of intimacy I’d never felt with anyone before?
I knew what I wanted now, with her. Or at least… I knew the shape of it.
Mornings when she was simply there somewhere in the apartment, moving around, talking to herself, probably swearing softly at something that wouldn’t cooperate.
Her things appearing slowly among mine until it stopped feeling like my place and started feeling like ours.
Her laughter floating in from another room and the quiet, stupid relief of knowing I was the reason.
I wanted the ordinary things. Her falling asleep on the sofa with her head against me, and me pretending not to notice so she wouldn’t wake. Long dinners where she talked too much, and I gave her shit about it.
I wanted someone who saw exactly who I was and didn’t step back. Someone who expected more from me than I’d ever expected from myself. Someone who made the future feel… possible.
I wanted her teasing me in public and making us laugh.Rolling her eyes at the money, stealing my clothes, dragging color and noise and life into spaces I’d kept deliberately quiet. I wanted to introduce her without hesitation. No explanations, no consulting a checklist first. Just—this isAndrea.
My Andrea.
And the most dangerous part—the part I hardly let myself name—was how easily I could see it.
How natural it felt.
