Chapter 7: Morning After
The fire had burned down to embers, casting a deep, pulsing glow across the tangled sheets. Clara lay curled into Ethan’s side, her head on his chest, listening to the steady, strong beat of his heart beneath her ear. Her body felt like a foreign country—newly mapped, sensitized, alive in every nerve. A sweet, deep ache thrummed between her thighs, a constant, possessive reminder of him. She shifted slightly, wincing.
“Sore?” His voice rumbled under her cheek. His hand, which had been tracing idle patterns on her bare back, stilled.
“A little.” She smiled against his skin. “In the best way.”
He kissed the top of her head. The tenderness in the gesture made her chest tighten. They lay in silence for a long while, the only sounds their breathing and the occasional pop from the hearth.
“The storm’s passed,” he murmured.
She listened. Only a soft, steady drip from the eaves remained. The world outside was quiet, washed clean. The world inside this room felt quieter still, a sacred, secret space.
“I should…” she began, not moving.
“You shouldn’t.” His arm tightened around her. “Stay.”
The word was simple. An offer. A request. It settled over her, warmer than any blanket. But the practicalities nudged at the edges of her bliss. Her clothes were a soaked heap in the bathroom. She was wearing his. She needed to find her super, get her spare key.
As if reading her thoughts, he sighed. “We’ll deal with the key in the morning. Come on.”
He slipped out from beneath her, the loss of his heat immediate. She watched him move in the dim light, the powerful play of muscle in his back and shoulders as he fetched a fresh towel from a drawer. He was a landscape of strength and scars, a history written on skin she had just learned by touch and taste.
“Shower,” he stated. “It’ll help the muscles.”
He held out a hand. She took it, letting him lead her to the bathroom. He turned the water on, steam beginning to billow, fogging the mirror. The earlier vulnerability was gone, replaced by a staggering new intimacy. He didn’t look away as she let the towel drop. Nor did she when he stepped out of his boxers.
He tested the water, then guided her in.
The hot spray was a revelation. It cascaded over her shoulders, easing the tension there, sluicing down her body. He took a bar of soap, worked it into a lather in his palms. “Turn around.”
She obeyed, facing the tile wall. His hands came to her shoulders first, kneading the tight muscles with a firm, knowing pressure. He washed her back in slow, sweeping circles, his thumbs tracing the line of her spine. It was clinically gentle, caring. Then his hands slid around her waist, over the flat plane of her stomach, moving higher to cup her breasts. The soap made his touch slippery, intimate. He soaped her nipples until they peaked into hard, sensitive buds against his palms.
A low sound escaped her. She leaned back against him, feeling the hard length of his erection pressing against the small of her back.
“Ethan…”
“Shhh.” His mouth was at her ear, his voice a rough whisper barely audible over the water. “Just getting you clean.”
But his hands were moving lower now, sliding over the curve of her hips, down the fronts of her thighs. He urged her legs apart with his own, and his soapy hand found the apex of her thighs. He didn’t go directly to her core, instead washing her inner thighs with a maddening, thorough slowness.
She was panting now, her forehead against the cool tile. Every rational thought dissolved into steam and sensation. His fingers finally parted her, sliding through slick folds that had nothing to do with the shower.
“So wet already,” he growled into her ear. “Still so fucking tight from me.”
One thick finger pressed inside her, a slow invasion that made her cry out. The soreness was there, a bright edge of pain, but it was instantly swallowed by a rush of dizzying pleasure. He worked his finger in and out, a shallow, teasing rhythm.
“You feel that? That’s where I was. Where I am.” He added a second finger, stretching her more fully. The stretch burned, a delicious, full feeling. She pushed back against his hand, needing more.
“Please…”
“Please what?” He scissored his fingers inside her, twisting them, finding a spot that made her legs buckle. He held her up with his other arm banded across her chest.
“I don’t know… just…”
He removed his fingers, spun her around to face him. Water streamed down his face, his blue eyes blazing with a hunger that stripped her bare. He pinned her against the wall, his body hard against her softness. The tile was cool and rough on her back.
“You want me again?” he demanded, his hand sliding between them to grip himself, guiding the broad head of his cock through her wet folds, not entering, just pressing, tantalizing. “Even though you’re sore? Even though you’re so new you can barely walk?”
“Yes.” The word was a sob. She wrapped her legs around his hips, the movement opening her to him completely. “I want to feel it. I want to remember.”
With a feral groan, he drove up into her in one brutal, perfect thrust. She screamed, her head cracking back against the tile. It was a sharper, rawer feeling than on the bed—the water-slick friction, the unforgiving wall at her back, the relentless, pounding force of his hips. There was no gentle pretense now. This was pure, unvarnished need.
He fucked her with a powerful, driving rhythm, each snap of his hips jolting her against the wall. One hand gripped her thigh, holding her open; the other braced beside her head. His mouth was on her throat, her collarbone, leaving marks that would bloom purple by morning.
“This is what you do to me,” he gritted out, his breath hot against her skin. “You make me a fucking animal. Look at you. Taking it. Taking all of me.”
She could only cling to him, her cries punctuating the slap of wet skin, the rush of the shower. The pleasure was a coiled, white-hot wire in her gut, tightening with every deep stroke. He shifted his angle slightly, and the head of his cock began to grind directly against that miraculous, swollen spot inside her.
“Ethan… I’m going to…”
“Come.” It was an order. “Come on my cock. Now.”
His teeth sank into the muscle of her shoulder, a sharp, claiming pain that sent her catapulting over the edge. Her orgasm shattered through her, a violent, blinding convulsion that ripped a guttural scream from her throat. Her inner muscles clamped around him, milking him, pulling his own release from him.
He stiffened, a harsh, broken shout echoing in the small, steamy room. He pulsed inside her, his hips jerking erratically as he emptied himself, his full weight pressing her into the wall.
For a minute, there was only the sound of the water and their ragged, shared breath. He slowly let her legs down, his arms coming around to hold her upright as she trembled. He turned them, letting the water rinse over them both.
He looked down at the red mark his teeth had left on her shoulder. He smoothed his thumb over it, his expression unreadable. “I marked you.”
“I know.” She didn’t mind. She wanted the proof.
Later, wrapped in another of his towels, she sat on the closed toilet lid as he dried her hair with a careful, focused attention that contrasted wildly with the animal in the shower. He found her a fresh t-shirt to sleep in. In his bed, under the cool duvet, she lay facing him. The digital clock on his nightstand glowed 4:17 AM.
“I have to be at the library at nine,” she whispered.
“I’ll call the super at eight. Get your key.” He traced the line of her eyebrow. “Sleep.”
“Ethan?”
“Hmm?”
“What happens tomorrow?”
He was silent for so long she thought he’d fallen asleep. Then he said, “Tomorrow, I make you coffee. We get your key. And then… we see.”
It wasn’t a promise. It was an honest man’s answer. It should have scared her. Instead, the certainty in his touch, the memory of his body claiming hers, the profound, quiet safety of his bed, let her drift into a deep, dreamless sleep before the dawn could break.