Page 130 of Bonetide

I come hard on his fingers with him buried in me, the orgasm tearing through me, sharper, deeper, the angle making it different than anything before, and I cry out his name which echoes across the kitchen. He fucks me through it, talking through it, taking what he wants.

His pace breaks. His hand goes from between my legs to my hip and he grips, fingers digging in to hold me place. He fucks me harder, his hips like pistons, pumping so hard that my ribs are bruising against the counter with each slam, and I feel him going, the rhythm shortening, the breath at my ear coming faster⁠—

He comes inside me with a low, long sound that isn’t entirely human at the end of it, his damp forehead pressed to the back of my neck, his fingers still digging in, as if he’s afraid to let go, while the rest of him is pulsing, spurting into me, lodged in deep.

He stays in me a long beat, his hand stroking down my back, a little unsteady, his voice at my ear gone soft again.

“My love.”

I make a whimpering sound.

“Look at what you let me do to you.”

He pulls out slowly and I feel him leaving me, the pressure inside me suddenly gone and the slick, wet trail of him down the inside of my thigh. He doesn’t move away; he stays behind me with his hand at the small of my back, waiting for me to lift my head from the counter.

I don’t lift it yet. I can’t. I’m so thoroughly ravaged I’m not even sure who I am anymore.

I lie with my cheek on the counter and stare absently at the bottle of olive oil with his cum cooling on the inside of my thigh.

Eventually, everything quiets, my lungs and my heart returning to normal.

I lift my head.

He helps me up, his hand at my elbow, his other at my waist. I’m wobbly. He’s steady. He pulls my underwear up gently and the leggings after, then turns me to face him and kisses me on the forehead the way he always does, the same kiss he’s been giving me for weeks, the one that fools me every time into thinking he’s some tender gentleman when he’s anything but.

“So…” I manage to say, clearing my throat.

“I know.”

He goes to the sink and washes his hands and dries them on the tea towel, then turns and leans against the counter and looks at me, his trousers still undone at the waist with his cock barely tucked in, his dark hair fallen forward over his face, his eyes that blue that no paint pigment can describe.

“Sit down, love. I’ll make you coffee.”

I sit at the kitchen table, carefully. He makes me coffee.

The afternoon light through the back window has shifted while we did what we did, the bay outside the dull blue it goes before dusk. I sit at the table with my legs uncertain under me and my body still feeling him, and I watch the monster I live with make me a perfect cup of coffee, just the way I like it.

He sets it down in front of me, kisses the top of my head, goes back to the sitting room, and picks up his book.

A few nights later, he comes to bed, which is to say he doesn’t sleep in it so much as occupy it, keeping me company. He lies with his arm over my waist, his chest at my spine, his breath moving slow and silent against the back of my neck. The cold of him has stopped being a thing I flinch from and started being a thing I burrow toward, especially since I naturally run hot. The fire’s banked, and the radiator’s on, and I’m as cozy as can be, considering the circumstances. I fall asleep quickly in his presence, despite the fact that when I was married, there was no way in hell I could fall asleep with Ryan touching me.

I wake at 3:17, the alarm clock glowing red.

And I am alone in bed.

This isn’t new. He does this on most nights, somewhere in the small hours, the weight of him lifts off me and I surface just enough to know he’s gone and then sink again. In the morning he’s back—at the window, at the stove, the wet at his collar, the coffee going—like he never left. The first time it happened, I laid rigid till dawn, wondering, worrying. By now I’ve half-trained myself to read it the way you read a partner getting up to use the bathroom. He’ll go, but he’ll come back. Nothing to pay attention to.

He goes to the loch, I figure. He’s a thing made of cold, dark water, and he can’t be out of it forever any more than I could hold my breath all night. So he goes back to it in the dead hours because he can’t sleep anyway, then returns to me before the light. That’s the story I tell myself; and most mornings the story makes total sense.

Tonight, I don’t move as usual. I keep my breathing long and even. I’ve gotten good at performing sleep, and through my lashes I watch the room in the near darkness.

He’s at the foot of the bed, dressing. He’s already got the trousers on, and he’s pulling the dark sweater down over his head, and he does all of it quietly, not a single rustle of fabric or creak of the floorboard.

And it’s odd, not the lack of noise, because he’s always so quiet, but that he’s getting dressed. That’s why I figured he goes to the loch every night, because he leaves totally naked. Why put on clothes if you’re just going for a swim?

But tonight he’s putting on clothes. Perhaps he’s heading to the castle. He goes there sometimes to bring back some books and supplies.

He pauses at the window, the one I’ve stopped salting because we both know what the salt is and isn’t, and he stands there looking out at the bay with his back to me.