Page 125 of Mario
I feel amazing.
I feel rested and sated and boneless and utterly, terrifyingly happy.
There is no other word for it.
This was supposed to get him out of my system.
One night.
One reckless, necessary, professional-disaster-adjacent night to burn through two weeks of sleepless torture and prove that he was just a man.
Granted, a dangerous man. A powerful man.
A sexually devastating man.
But still a man.
Not some untouchable force I had built up in my head because I was overworked and under-rested and prone to bad decisions when deprived of proper meals.
Except now I know.
Now I know exactly what his hands feel like. What his mouth can do. What he sounds like when his control starts to break. What his body feels like over mine, inside mine, around mine.
Now I know he stayed.
Not all night, but most of it.
He had not taken what he wanted and left before I could wake up.
He had cleaned me up.
The memory comes in pieces.
I was not fully awake, not fully asleep.
He used a warm cloth and a careful hand.
Then the mattress dipped again, and his body slid back in beside mine.
His arm pulled me against him.
I had been too exhausted to question it, too sated to be embarrassed, too far gone to do anything but curl into him.
He had stayed.
And then he had woken me to tell me he was leaving.
He didn’t have to do that.
He could have easily ghosted while I slept.
But he hadn’t. He had woken me gently to tell me he was leaving.
Then told me to go back to sleep and reminded me to eat.
I swing my legs over the side and sit there for a second, bracing myself.
My feet touch the rug.
