Chapter 14: The Morning After
The first thing she felt was warmth. A solid, sleeping heat along her back, the gentle press of his morning erection against her hip, and his hands—already moving. Still mostly asleep, his palms roamed the landscape of her torso, sliding up to cup her breasts, his thumbs brushing over her nipples until they peaked even in the drowsy dark.
His lips found the nape of her neck, a soft, sleepy kiss that wasn’t quite a kiss, more like a breath against her skin. “You’re awake,” he mumbled into her hair, his voice gravelly with sleep.
“So are you,” she whispered back, arching into his touch. The fairy light above her bed had burned out, leaving the room in perfect, velvety blackness. It smelled of them, of sex and lavender and the faint, musky scent of his skin.
“Barely.” His hands drifted down again, one splaying low on her stomach, possessive even in half-consciousness. “You okay? Your throat?”
She swallowed. It was tender, a faint, delicious ache. “Fine.” She turned in his arms, facing him. In the absolute dark, he was just a warmer shape, the outline of his glasses on the nightstand, the feel of his messy hair under her fingers. “Better than fine.”
He kissed her then, properly, slow and deep and unrushed. It tasted like last night’s shared secrets and sleep. When they broke apart, he sighed, a contented sound. “We should get up. Probably. I have a coding tutorial at one.”
“Ugh.” She buried her face in his chest. The outside world felt like a hostile, brightly lit invasion. “Let’s not. Let’s just… stay here forever. Or get on a plane. Go somewhere with no tutorials and no thin walls.”
He chuckled, the sound rumbling under her ear. “Where?”
“Anywhere. Somewhere warm. Where the ocean is so blue it looks fake. We could get a cheap hotel room with a balcony and those shitty plastic chairs. And no one would know us. We could just be… quiet.” The image unfolded in her mind, vivid and desperate. Sunshine on her black clothing, salt air cutting through the perpetual coffee-and-ink smell of her life.
“A beach,” he said, considering. His hand trailed up and down her spine. “I’d get a sunburn in, like, seven minutes. You’d have to lather me in aloe gel.”
“I would,” she said, and meant it. The mundane care of it felt intensely intimate. “I’d also make you watch old Godzilla movies on a laptop with terrible wifi. And we could eat fruit from a street cart that gives us both food poisoning.”
“Romantic.”
“It would be,” she insisted, lifting her head. “It would be ours. No Jessica barging in. No Mark giving a running commentary through the wall.” She thought of the sarcastic clapping from last night and cringed, but also felt a weird, defiant pride. They’d won that round.
Danny was quiet for a moment. His fingers traced the curve of her hip. “We could,” he said finally, his voice quieter. “Save up. Skip a few parties. Actually… go.”
The simplicity of the idea, voiced aloud, made it feel shockingly possible. Not a daydream, but a plan. A shared secret with a horizon.
She kissed him again, harder this time, fueled by the sudden, giddy possibility of escape. Of a room where the only soundtrack was the ocean. She pushed at his shoulder until he rolled onto his back. She swung a leg over him, settling into his lap, the worn cotton of his boxers the only barrier between them. The black comforter was a pool around them.
“Prove it,” she said, her voice low. “Prove you’d come with me.”
He grinned up at her shadowed form. His hands came to rest on her thighs. “How?”
Instead of answering, she shifted, turning around so she faced his feet, lowering herself slowly onto him, reverse cowgirl in the absolute dark. The feeling was different this way—deeper, more controlled. She braced her hands on his shins as she began to move, a slow, rocking grind.
He made a choked sound. His hands flew to her hips, then slid down, over the backs of her thighs, to her calves. She’d pulled on an old pair of thigh-high black socks before bed, a silent offering she knew he’d notice.
“These,” he breathed out, his fingers clutching the ribbed cotton. “Fuck, Chloe. You know what these do to me.”
She rocked faster, the pleasure building in a steady, coiling heat. “Tell me.”
“I love you in these,” he groaned, his voice tight. His grip tightened, massaging her calves through the fabric. “I love it so much it’s stupid. I think about them when you’re not around. Just… these socks on your legs while you’re reading, or making coffee. It’s a problem.”
The admission, raw and weirdly specific, sent a fresh shock of arousal through her. It was so him. Not just her body, but the details of her. The uniform she wore in her own sanctuary.
She lifted one foot, bending her knee, and pushed her socked foot backward toward his face. A playful, challenging gesture. “Yeah?”
He didn’t hesitate. He caught her ankle, brought her foot to his lips, and kissed the arch through the cotton. The sensation was electric—the soft brush of his lips, the warmth of his breath, the sheer taboo of it combined with the deep, filling rhythm of her movements on top of him. She cried out, her head falling forward.
“Keep going,” he urged, his voice muffled against her sock. He kissed her foot again, open-mouthed this time, the damp heat seeping through the fabric. She obeyed, riding him harder, chasing the friction, the room filling with the sound of their skin and their ragged breaths.
He pulled the sock off slowly, peeling it down her calf, over her heel. The cool air hit her damp skin. Then his mouth was on her bare foot, his tongue tracing the line of her arch, his teeth grazing her ankle bone. It was intimate in a way that felt more shocking than anything they’d done. It wasn’t about domination or performance. It was worship of a bizarre, perfect kind.
The dual sensations—his mouth on her foot, him inside her—tipped her over an edge she didn’t see coming. Her orgasm ripped through her, silent and intense, a vise-grip of pleasure that locked her muscles and stole her breath. She shook, pressing her forehead against his shin.
Feeling her clench around him, he let out a broken groan. He released her foot, his hands scrambling back to her hips, slamming her down onto him as he thrust up, frantic and chasing his own end. “Chloe—I’m gonna—,”
“Do it,” she gasped, the words spilling out filthier than she planned, fueled by the last waves of her climax. “Come with my foot in your mouth. I want to feel you lose it tasting my skin.”
With a strangled cry, he dragged her foot back to his face. He didn’t kiss it this time. He took her toes into his mouth, just as his hips stuttered and he spilled into her, his whole body seizing beneath her. The hot, pulsing finish inside her seemed to go on forever, matched by the wet, sucking pressure on her toes.
He went boneless, releasing her foot with a wet pop. She collapsed forward, off of him, onto her side, pulling her knees to her chest. She was wrecked, sensitized, floating. He turned, spooning her again, his arm a heavy weight across her waist. They breathed in the dark.
After a long while, his voice was a rasp in her ear. “So. A beach.”
“Yeah.” She couldn’t summon anything more.
“I’ll start looking at flights tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
He nuzzled her hair. “You taste like salt.”
She laughed, a weak, breathy sound. “You’re disgusting.”
“You love it.”
She did. She really, terrifyingly did.
The buzz of his phone on the nightstand was a violent intrusion. He groaned, reaching over her to fumble for it. The screen lit up his face in a blue glow. He squinted at it. “Mark. Asking if we’re alive.” He typed a one-handed reply, his thumb tapping. Alive. Planning a coup. Go away.
A reply came instantly. Mark: Cool. Jess wants pancakes. Café in 30?
Danny showed her the screen. She wrinkled her nose. “We just had brunch yesterday.”
“It’s a pretext. They want the post-game analysis.” He sighed, his breath stirring her hair. “We could hide.”
For a moment, she considered it. Staying in this dark bubble, where the only plans involved tropical escapes and the only touch was his. But the outside world was pushing in, and a part of her—the part that wasn’t shy, the part he’d somehow drawn out—wanted to sit across from them. To see their faces. To own what they’d all heard.
“No,” she said, sitting up. The darkness felt less absolute now, shapes emerging—the outline of her bookshelf, the record player. “Let’s go. I’m starving.”
He propped himself on an elbow. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She swung her legs out of bed, the cool air hitting her naked skin. She found her discarded dress on the floor and pulled it over her head. It smelled like him. She looked back at him, a pale shape in the tangled sheets. “We have a trip to plan. We’ll need allies to cover for us. Or at least, to be jealous.”
A slow smile spread across his face in the gloom. He found his glasses, put them on, and the world clicked into focus for him. “That’s my girl.”
He found his cargo shorts and the slightly-stained retro game tee. As he dressed, he picked up her discarded sock from the bed, balled it up, and stuffed it into his pocket. He caught her looking and shrugged, a faint blush visible even in the low light. “Souvenir.”
She shook her head, but a smile tugged at her lips. She finished dressing, applied a quick, dark slash of eyeliner in the crooked mirror—armor against the daytime—and ran her fingers through her tangled hair.
Hand in hand, they left the sanctuary of shadows. As she locked her apartment door behind them, she heard a door open next door. Jessica emerged, looking similarly rumpled and triumphant in a fluffy pink robe.
“Pancakes?” Jessica asked, her eyes bright with curiosity and something like relief.
“Pancakes,” Chloe confirmed, squeezing Danny’s hand. The hallway was too bright, the world too loud. But he was solid beside her, a sock stuffed in his pocket and a sunburn waiting on some distant, fake-blue shore. It was enough. For now, it was more than enough.