When I set her down, my hands trace her arms, her shoulders, searching for fractures, for cuts, for proof she’s really here. Inour house.
“I’m okay. A little banged up, but wow…Aiden…”
She pulls me forward, toward the living room, a two-story, rounded area with floor-to-ceiling windows that cost me almost as much as the house itself. But the serene feeling of living in a treehouse? That was priceless.
“It’s a bit bare,” I tell her as she studies the space, jaw unhinged.
“It’s perfect… I can do things here?—”
“That was the plan.”
With a tiny hop, she skips around the room, hands gliding over the buttery sofa fabric. The walnut slab of wood that makes up the coffee table. The jagged stones of the fireplace. I kneel to build a fire.
She hesitates, as if waiting for me, bouncing on her toes, hands in the pockets of my suit coat. Beautiful train of her dress pooling at her feet.
“Go on. Explore,” I tell her with a smirk. “I’ll catch up.”
Her face illuminates with radiance, and it soothes some anxiety I was holding on to.
“The kitchen! This isperfect!Oh my gods, thebathroomin here! It’s gorgeous! The pantry, Aiden! Did you see this? Come look!”
I laugh hard because I already know every detail of this place—every bolt, every grain—but I let her pull me from room to room, let her awe rebuild something inside me that I thought was gone.
Her joy is medicine.
Her wonder,redemption.
When she reaches the master bedroom, she falls silent. The world stills with her. She slides her hand into mine and presses it to her chest, kissing each knuckle as if to promise forever.
“This is the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen.”
“You designed it,” I tell her with a showcase wave of my hand around the circular room. It’s all glass walls. Trees lining everywhere you can see out. Low, intimate ceiling. Large white bed in the middle, looking out into the forest. Green. Natural. Warm.
With a shrug, she drops my coat off her shoulders and glances up at me with a look. That look—holy, devastating, inevitable—undoes me.
I help unzip her dress as she unbuttons my shirt.
We shed our clothes like they’re the last of our armor. My belt hits the floor with a hollow clang.
Carefully, I gather her up against my chest and press my lips to hers. Her legs wrap around my waist as I walk toward the bed, then kneel on it. She settles on my lap, studying me in the soft glow of the moonlight—our only witness. The silver light spills over her skin like anointing oil.
As if I could break her, I brush my thumbs over her mottled cheeks. “Are youokay?”
She nods too fast.
“No. Tell me.”
“I will be.”
“We don’t have to?—”
Before I can finish, she lifts off my lap, wraps her fingers around my cock, and strokes until my breath falters. My face buries into her neck, the fruity scent of her overwhelming me to the point I’ll die if she doesn’t sit down.
Head cast back, she lowers herself slowly. Breaking us both open as she sinks, inch by trembling inch. We groan out in unison, releasing the frustration of not being together. And the satisfaction that we finally are.
When she’s seated fully, she exhales a shuddering sound that borders on a prayer.
“I needed this,” she whispers, pressing a kiss to my forehead.