His hand moved between my legs, stroking withknowing fingers, and I arched into the touch. He wasn’t rushing. He was savoring. Each deliberate stroke was a conversation, a reassurance, a promise. The pleasure built slowly, exquisitely. Heat rose in my core, the tension coiling tighter and tighter, but just as I was beginning to teeter on the edge, he slowed. His fingers gentled, and he kissed me deeply instead.
“Not yet,” he murmured against my mouth. “I want this to last.”
I pulled back and looked at him, understanding dawning. He wanted to linger in this space where we were just us, finally together, finally certain, under this vast, open sky.
I rolled the condom onto him, my hands steady despite feeling like my entire body was trembling. He watched me in a way that made me feel like the only person in the universe.
Then I straddled him. This position, this power filled me with confidence as I imagined my silhouette framed against the constellations. I positioned myself and slid down slowly, letting him fill me completely. The sensation was exquisite—the fullness, the sense of rightness that went beyond the physical. His hands found my hips and thighs, steadying me but not controlling me.
“Christ, Tessa.” His head leaned back against the blanket, his eyes watching me. “You’re perfect.”
I moved slowly at first, finding our rhythm, watching his face as pleasure washed over him. A warm breeze whispered over our sweaty skin, a counterpoint to the heat building between us. The pleasure built steadily, no longer slow and measured but urgent now, the tension coiling tighter with each movement. I braced my hands on his chest and leaned forward, changing the angle, driving him deeper inside me.
“That’s it,” he whispered, his hips beginning to move beneath me, matching my rhythm. “Take what you need.”
The world narrowed to just this—the slide of him inside me, the heat of his skin, the sound of our ragged breathing against the chirping of crickets. Pleasure was cresting, building toward that moment of inevitability when everything tightens and holds and waits.
“Let go,” he said, his voice urgent now. “I’ve got you.”
I erupted with a cry I didn’t try to stifle, a sound that felt as vast and open as the sky above us, waves of pleasure radiating through my body. Moments later, he followed, his body going rigid beneath me, the pulse of him inside me as he found his release. I stayed with him through it, watching his face, witnessing the moment he let go completely.
When it was over, we collapsed into each other, tangled and breathless on the blanket. We lay like that for a long time, not moving, barely breathing. His fingers traced lazy patterns on my back. My head rested on his chest, right over his heart. I could hear it slowing, returning to normal, and I anchored myself to that steady beat.
His arms tightened around me, and he pressed a kiss to the top of my head. After a while, in the comfortable darkness of his backyard, the conversation shifted. He tossed the side of the blanket over us as we talked about small, domestic things. Sentences that carried new weight now.
“Where do you want your bookshelf?” he asked, his voice drowsy but warm.
I lifted my head. “You’re thinking about my bookshelf?”
“You’re bringing books from California, right?” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “If I know you, lots of books. You need a place for them. And this cottage needs books. It needs you.”
My chest cracked open at that. He understood thatbooks were home for me, that my library was an extension of myself. “That blank space next to the kitchen. I want them where I can reach them in the morning.”
He smiled, his eyes already half-closed. “Then that’s where we’ll put them.”
“You’re going to have to clear some bathroom space for all my toiletries.”
He laughed, then opened his eyes fully to look at me. “I’ll build you a whole cabinet just for you. Even though I know damn well you’re a pretty low-maintenance kind of girl. Whatever you want, baby.”
The simplicity of it undid me. Lying here on the grass, naked under the stars, we were planning the most mundane, most beautiful future. He was already making space for me, rearranging his orderly life to fit mine alongside it.
We talked about when I’d move my things in. We discussed the conservation center and the McGregor property, about his brewery and my research, and how both could coexist instead of being in opposition.
Every word was a building block. Every decision was another piece of the future we were constructing together.
Eventually, a cooler breeze swept over us, and he shivered slightly. “Come on. Let’s go inside. I want to wake up with you in my bed.”
After gathering our clothes and the blanket, we walked back into the cottage. We didn’t bother with clothes, just fell into his bed and pulled the covers over us. By the time the conversation faded into comfortable silence, my eyes grew heavy. I wasn’t thinking about the morning or what came next. I was thinking about the way his arms felt around me, and the way his chest rose and fell beneath my cheek.
Braden shifted, settling more fully against the pillowswith me tucked against his side. He pressed another kiss to my hair, and then his breathing deepened, evening out. I stayed awake a while longer, listening to the sound of his sleep, the gentle rustle of the ocean breeze. I was taking it all in, anchoring it in memory, because this moment felt sacred. This sensation of coming home.
This certainty that I’d finally made the right choice.
The restless girl who’d left Dove Key twelve years ago had spent over a decade chasing ambition and trying to prove her worth. But the woman I’d become in the past few months—one who had found her voice, reclaimed her dreams, and chose love not from fear but from certainty—she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Wrapped in Braden’s arms in his cottage on Dove Key, a future stretched out that was uncertain and absolutely, completely ours.
I let myself sleep.
