Page 34 of Patch

“That’s it. Let me feel it.”

The second one built faster and filthier than the first, and when it broke I said something I don’t remember and clenched around his cock hard enough that his rhythm went straight to hell.

“Maren…”

“Come on. Give it to me.”

He came buried to the hilt with my name half out of his mouth, his whole frame drawing up tight and then coming apart above me. I held on to him through every second of it with both hands flat on his back and my heels hooked behind his thighs.

He stayed right where he was afterward, breathing against my collarbone, his weight on his forearms so he wasn’t crushing me. I didn’t want him to move. I told him so, and he didn’t.

“Okay?” he asked eventually.

The word came out small. Worried.

“I’m going to need a minute before I answer that.”

“Take two.”

I took two.

When he did finally move it was carefully, and he dealt with the condom and came back with a warm cloth from the bathroom. I let him clean me up because it turned out I couldn’t be bothered to be embarrassed about it.

Then he brought me a glass of water I hadn’t asked for.

“You didn’t eat,” he said.

“I’m not eating after midnight.”

“There’s leftovers in the clubhouse.”

“Patch.”

“I’m only saying they’re there.”

I drank the water. He watched me drink the whole glass, which should have annoyed me and didn’t. He took the glass back and set it on the dresser and got into the bed behind me and put one arm across my waist and his hand flat over my sternum, and I understood, somewhere around the point my breathing slowed, that he was counting.

“You’re counting my breaths.”

“No.”

“You’ve done it three times. You stop at ten and start over.”

“Go to sleep, sweetheart.”

That was the first time he called me that. I fell asleep before I could decide what to do about it.

* * *

Later the room held darkness and not much else.

A thin line of yellow showed under the door from a lamp somebody had left burning out in the common room. Enough to outline the dresser, the window, the shape of Patch’s shoulder where it came out from under the sheet. His skin was warm against mine. Our breathing had synced without either of us noticing.

Neither of us named what had happened. The silence did that work for us. It sat between us on the mattress, patient, heavier than the sheet, and neither of us reached for words to break it. Some things survived naming. Some things didn’t. This one wasn’t going to.

My phone buzzed somewhere on the floor, muffled, still in the jeans I’d stopped thinking about hours ago. I was out of that bed and digging through denim before my brain caught up. Late call means something. Answer now, think later.

The number was Tessa’s. My thumb hit the green button.