"Eight days of watching you pretend." His breath is hot against my neck. "Knowing you were playing me the whole time."
"Cole." I dig my heels into the backs of his thighs and urge him forward. "Shut up and fuck me."
He does.
The first thrust makes my back arch off the mattress. I stop thinking entirely.
"You knew," he says, and it's not a question anymore. Wonder, maybe. Or the particular madness of two people who've stopped pretending.
"I—" The words scatter as he finds an angle that makes my toes curl. "I wanted to see how far you'd go."
"This far." Another thrust, harder. "Mine."
The word settles into my bones like a verdict, not a question or a negotiation, just a claim I could fight if I wanted to. I don't want to.
"Yes." I tug him down for a kiss. "Yours."
He stops talking after that. Which is fine, because so do I.
After, we lie tangled in sheets that smell like him now.
His hand traces lazy patterns on my stomach, over the scar, around my navel, down to the hip bone that's still carrying some post-pregnancy weight. I let him. Don't flinch, don't suck in, don't calculate what he
"I'll admit, part of me was tempted to just... let it happen." The confession slips out before I can stop it.
He goes still next to me. "What?"
"Don't get smug about it." I pinch his side and he flinches. "I saidtempted. Past tense. Momentary insanity."
"How momentary?"
"About three seconds." I pause. "Maybe four."
His chest shakes with silent laughter. "I'll take four seconds."
"You'll take what I give you."
"Always." He presses a kiss to my hair.
I turn my head to study him. The lamp throws warm light across his face, softening the hard angles. He looks younger without the constant tension pulling at his features.
I was serious, though. For way more than four seconds, if I'm being honest with myself, I'd considered just... letting the game play out. Not letting him think he'd won. Letting him actually win.
Dio, what does that say about me? That some part of me wanted to be caught? Wanted to catch him?
I'm not sure I want to examine that too closely.
"Whatever happens next, the trial, the countdown, all of it. This is real now. We're real."
His hand stills on my hip. "Were we not before?"
"Before, we could have walked away." I reach up and touch his face, feeling the muscle twitch under my fingertips. "Now we can't."
"Did you want to? Walk away?"
I consider the question. Consider the man who replaced my birth control with fakes, who's been watching me for seven years, who stopped the moment I froze and asked if I wanted to continue.
Think about the woman who almost wished she hadn't figured it out.