Page 54 of The Marriage Blunder

It was not a first kiss. We had done that. This was something else: an affirmation, a closing of a circuit, a silent transmission of intent. His mouth was warm. His beard scratched. The taste was coffee and garlic and the thing I was starting to call home, but only in the safest part of my brain.

When he pulled back, his hand was still on my knee.

I said, “Is this okay?”

He laughed, low. “Do you really have to ask?”

I didn’t, but I liked the way it sounded.

We sat, the two of us, knees touching, hands overlapping, the city outside dark and endless. The evidence was all there, but I didn’t have the energy to work it anymore.

He said, “You can stay, if you want.”

I thought about my apartment, about the box of records waiting for me, about the empty fridge and the pile of laundry and the fact that, for the first time since Las Vegas, I didn’t feel like the world was about to end.

I said, “Yeah. I want.”

He nodded. He stood, pulled me up with him, and led me down the hall.

The bedroom was quiet, sheets pulled tight, the city noise filtered out by the thickness of the glass. He pulled off his shirt, and the salt-and-pepper of his chest hair caught the lamplight. I stood there, awkward, not sure what to do with my hands, until he reached for me and, with the same unhurried confidence, took my face in both hands and kissed me again.

We made it to the bed without a word. He pulled my shirt off, traced the line of my back, and held me there, chest to chest. It was not like last time. There was no hurry. No edge. Just the slow, methodical confirmation that this was real, that it was happening, that we were both still here.

He undressed me, slow, kissing along my collarbone, my jaw, my mouth. I wanted to reciprocate, but every time I tried he steered it back, until I just let him.

He pressed me down onto the mattress, hands sliding up my sides, then braced himself over me, arms on either side of my head. I stared up, and he looked down, and for a second all the data points in my brain went offline.

He said, “You’re beautiful.”

I rolled my eyes, but only a little. “You’re a liar.”

He grinned. “Am I?”

“You’ve seen me naked,” I said. “You know the truth.”

He lowered his head, kissed my throat, then my shoulder, then said, “I have a weakness for men who don’t know how attractive they are.”

“I have a weakness for men who make good coffee,” I said.

He laughed, then shifted lower, mouth to my chest, licking and biting until I squirmed. He worked down my torso, hands everywhere, and when he took my cock in his mouth, I gasped.

He was good at it. Not just technically, but in the way he paid attention to every reaction: the twitch of my hips, the catch in my breath, the way I fisted the sheets when he sucked harder. He milked it, slow at first, then fast, then back to slow again, never letting me predict the pattern.

I came harder than I had in weeks, maybe months, the world going white for a second. He swallowed, then licked the head clean, then kissed back up my body, mouth gentle now, hands anchoring me to the bed.

He held me until I caught my breath, then climbed in beside me, arm across my chest, legs tangled up. He didn’t pull away, not even when his own cock pressed hard against my thigh.

I reached for it, wrapped my hand around, and stroked, slow and deliberate, the way I would if I wanted to memorize it. He groaned, low and deep, and buried his face in my hair. He came with a shudder, hot against my stomach.

I didn’t care. I liked the mess.

We lay there, not moving, for a long time. He kept his arm around me, fingers tracing circles on my chest. The city was quiet. The only sound was our breathing, slowing together.

I thought, for the briefest second, that if the world ended right now, I wouldn’t mind.

He kissed my temple and said, “You’re really something, Jude Thomas.”

I said, “So are you.”