I carefully slipped past him, then rushed as fast as I could into the empty room. I was under the covers with the quilt pulled up to my neck by the time he returned.

He walked in wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs, which was bad. Terrible, in fact. He was still built like a tattooed god. I noticed that he’d added more and more of them over the years. But we hadn’t had the kind of relationship that had allowed me to get a good look at him in the clear light. So I took all the tattoos in, noting the ocean waves that now covered his abs underneath his chest dragon.

However, my gaze stopped scrolling down before I reached the new tattoos covering his legs. There was something underneath his black briefs, standing at attention and raring to go.

“What happened to no sex?” I signed to Victor.

His gaze followed mine down to the very obvious tent in his boxer briefs.

“I can’t control that part of my body,” he answered with an amused shrug.

Then he switched off the light next to the door, turning the room to black. It should’ve been a reprieve. It meant I didn’t have to see him get into bed. Or look at the other monster between his legs.

But you didn’t have to see something to know it was there.

Like the moon hiding out in the daytime, I could sense his erection. It pulsed the same as the secret he had once given me inside a ninja star. And made waves crash inside of me.

No sex was supposed to ensure that I got a good night’s sleep instead of a sex hangover the following day when I needed to be at my best. But I ended up tossing and turning because my body felt so weird. My core was swollen, warm, and clenching at air just like it did on our anniversaries.

This was not our anniversary. But my body didn’t seem to believe me when I told it that…

Eventually, I gave up and walked out to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

To my surprise, when I returned to the bedroom, Victor was sitting up in bed. With the nightstand lamp turned on.

“You couldn’t sleep?” he signed.

“No,” I answered.

I wanted to leave it there. But my eyes inevitably dragged down to the covers, and yep… I could still see the clear outline of his erection. God help me.

I set the water on my nightstand and forced myself to act like I didn’t notice him or it as I got back into bed.

But it was like climbing into bed with a ticking bomb. Impossible to ignore.

“Don’t you think you should take care of…” I ended up signing before he could turn off the light.