I come so hard on and around Brendan’s fingers that I have to squeeze my eyes shut against the black voids where my peripheral vision should be. Sight is overrated, anyway, because the only thing that matters is this feeling, this astonishing pleasure whose flames are licking at every last inch of my body, inside and out. I ride his hand so damn hard I’ll probably dislocate the poor guy’s fingers.

As my orgasm floats away and I open my eyes, Brendan’s face is a picture. Never have I seen a man look more awe-filled.

‘Take me out,’ he says, and I oblige, harnessing whatever shambolic remnants are left of my fine motor skills to undo the rest of his shirt buttons and fumble with his belt buckle and get his trousers open. His dick, huge and angry and weeping precum, is making a break for freedom over the waistband of his boxer briefs when I unearth it.

Honestly, my main coping mechanism these past few weeks has been studiously not thinking about what Brendan’s packing, but holy fuck.

The damn thing is even bigger than I remembered.

BRENDAN

‘Wait,’ I bark gruffly, attempting to reach past Marlowe to my desk drawer so I can grab a condom. I’ve scooted my chair back too far, and I can’t—quite—reach⁠—

She stops me with a hand on my arm. ‘No.’

‘No?’ I stare up at her stupidly. Her nakedness, and gorgeousness, and declaration of love, and her orgasm, that fucking orgasm, have all addled my brain to the point that I’m officially more chimp than man right now. Has she changed her mind, or…

‘No condom,’ she says. Her face is flushed, her eyes are still glassy, that blonde hair of hers is tumbling over her spectacular tits, and I’ve never in my pathetic life seen anything so perfect.

And—no—she wants to⁠—

‘I had a coil put in when I started working for you.’ She smiles at me, but it’s not the smile of bashful disbelief she used to give me after I made her come in the early days. This one is powerful. Knowing. Like she’s fully aware of how much this revelation will slay me. ‘I don’t want anything between us.’

She wants me to go bare.

That she trusts me with this after all my fuckwittery is almost too much for my heart to handle. She knows I didn’t do anything with Fernanda. She knows I went to Alchemy but didn’t—couldn’t, if we’re being technical—do anything. She’s aware of it all. I divulged every pathetic detail to her one night in the US.

An unsheathed dick as a clean slate.

This is—this is the ultimate gesture of trust. It’s the mother of all invitations, and my dick twitches at the thought.