Finally, he sunk into me, stayed planted, and I felt his uneven breaths coasting along my skin.

The pads of his fingers gave my jaw a gentle squeeze when he lifted his head, pulled mine down, and kept his other hand cupped to our connection as he took my mouth in a deep, wet kiss.

He ended it, dropped his forehead to mine, his eyes open, mine looking through the early morning dark into his, and he muttered, “Mornin’.”

I lay there, Merry buried inside me, my clit, my tits, fuck, my entire body still tingling from him fucking me, and I stared at him.

Mornin’?

I burst out laughing.

While doing it, he released my jaw and I relaxed my head only for Merry to move his lips to my ear.

“For the record, I love makin’ you laugh too.”

Better than an orgasm.

Christ.

Merry.

I stopped laughing.

He kissed my neck below my ear and slid out of me.

I was in no way over suffering the loss of him when he shifted over me, arm at my waist yanking me with him like I was a human-size doll, and I found myself on my feet with Merry beside his bed. Naked.

He let my waist go, grabbed my hand, and I was being dragged across the room.

I opened my mouth.

“Shower,” Merry said before I could start speaking.

I shut my mouth and hit Merry’s bathroom, naked with a naked Merry, doing it grinning.

* * * * *

Forty-five minutes later, in my dress and shoes from the night before, hair wet, I walked up to my house.

Normally, I wouldn’t care what this said about me.

Right then, seeing as Merry had my hand in his and was walking right beside me, I really didn’t care.

We stopped on the stoop, and when I got my keys out of my clutch, Merry took them from me.

He shifted me out of the way of the storm door as he opened it, then he let us in.

The storm whispered then banged.

Merry closed the front door.

Then he took me in his arms and he kissed me.

I was hanging on tight, slightly breathless, when he lifted his mouth from mine.

“Be here to pick you and Ethan up at five thirty,” he said.

“Okay, gorgeous,” I replied.

He smiled at me.

I memorized that smile in a way I was certain never to forget it, not if I lived an eternity.

Then he gave me a squeeze, let me go, and moved to the door.

At the door, he looked back to me.

“Later, sweetheart.”

“Later, Merry.”

He lifted his chin and disappeared when he closed the door behind him.

I stood where he left me, in my dress and shoes of the night before, hair wet.

“I’m not gonna fuck this up,” I told the door.

Right then, right there, after last night and that morning, I was as intent on that as I was on giving my son a decent life.