He pulls out. Flips me on my belly. Slams back in, fucking his way into me, and it’s so agonizingly good, I see stars.

“Menace,” he growls in my ear, and when he starts moving, the rest of the world recedes, his thrusts so hard that I’m sure he’ll finish before me, but his hand reaches around, his fingers find my clit, and this is so beyond the realm of good, I’m not sure what to do with my own body. I claw at the pillow, say nonsensical things that only amount to please, don’t stop, if you stop—please don’t stop. The pleasure blasts through me with the force of an earthquake. I press my palm against my mouth to muffle my scream.

“No.” Conor yanks my hand away, laces his fingers with mine, pins it to the mattress. “No. You’re going to fucking scream it. I want to hear it. I want to hear you and you’re going to let me.”

I do. And I dissolve.

It’s not until much later, his arms wrapped around me like safety ropes, that it occurs to me to say, “Conor?”

“Yeah?”

I squeeze my eyes shut. Smile into the pillow. “Welcome home.”

Chapter 43

It’s early days.

Between the two of us, there’s a lot of love that had nowhere to go for a long while.

We’re making up for lost time.

That’s what I tell myself when we can’t seem to carve time or space for anything but each other.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he suggests a few days after coming back, running his fingers through my hair. “Just you and me.”

“Like, where?”

“Anywhere Seb can’t find me.”

I laugh. “To go somewhere, we would have to leave the house. Are you willing to do that?”

No. He isn’t. He acknowledges it later that night. Slow rhythm. Steady breeze blowing the curtains apart through the open balcony door. I’m too boneless to do anything but lie there, feeling that warm pressure building inside me, so happy, I can see the shape of it on the ceiling.

I love you, I think, closing my arms around his neck. I don’t say it, but he hears it anyway, and smiles against my neck.

The dinner happens about two weeks after Conor gets back.

He’s not nervous about it. “It won’t change anything,” he reassures me, and I believe it. I’m not worried, either, but I have little tolerance for awkward moments, and I’m grateful when Minami asks, “Should we just…acknowledge it?”

I’m still chewing the first bite of Eli’s risotto. It’s my favorite of his dishes, and he knows it. “Coaxed you here like an ant into a sugar trap,” he whispered at me when I let myself in. “Don’t worry, the Trivial Pursuit is locked away.”

“What is it that we should acknowledge?” Rue asks, looking up from her food, and god bless her for being who she is.