Chapter 26: The Insomnia Pact
Mia swam up from a deep, dreamless sleep, not to light or sound, but to touch. A single point of warmth tracing the topography of her hip, following the ridge of bone just above the waistband of her underwear. His touch was lighter than breath, a ghost of sensation.
The room was dark, the moon a bleached bone behind the sheer curtains, casting the bedroom in monochrome. Ethan’s bookshelves were jagged silhouettes; her own charcoal sketches, tacked to the wall, were just smudges in the gloom.
She didn’t open her eyes. Just let herself feel it. The calloused pad of his index finger, moving in an absent, looping pattern. Over her hip, down the curve of her ass, back again. A question mark written on her skin.
“You’re awake,” she murmured, her voice scratchy with sleep.
The touch stilled. A long silence stretched, filled only with the distant hum of the city and the sound of their breathing. Then his whisper, cracked and rough, cleaved the quiet.
“I can’t sleep.”
There was a world in that admission. The fear for his father, banked but still glowing. The aftershocks of what they’d done, raw and recorded. The sheer, terrifying weight of having everything you’d ever wanted laid bare before you, naked and begging to be touched.
She rolled onto her back beside him. In the faint light, his profile was a stark landscape of worry, his eyes open and fixed on the ceiling.
She didn’t ask why. She didn’t offer empty comfort. Instead, she found his hand where it rested on the sheet between them. She picked it up, his fingers lax and warm, and brought it to her lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. Then, slowly, deliberately, she guided his hand down, past the hem of her worn t-shirt, over the flat plane of her stomach, lower.
She placed his palm flat against her, over her cotton underwear. The heat of her was a brand even through the fabric.
His breath caught, a sharp, quiet sound.
A sleepy, knowing smile touched her lips. Her eyes stayed closed. “Then don’t sleep.”
For a suspended moment, he didn’t move. His hand was a heavy, warm weight against her, his fingers splayed. She could feel the faint tremor in them. Then, with a patience that shattered her, he began to move. Not frantic, not like in the car. This was a different language. A slow, swirling pressure through the cotton, a thumb finding the exact centre of her and pressing down in a gentle, maddening circle.
A soft sigh leaked from her lips. She arched into his hand, her own hands fisting in the sheets.
He shifted then, rolling onto his side to face her. His other hand came up to cradle her jaw, his thumb stroking her cheekbone. His eyes, wide and dark in the near-darkness, searched her face. He was memorizing her like this, she realized. Soft and sleep-rumpled, yielding under his touch.
He hooked a finger into the waistband of her underwear and drew them down her legs. The night air was cool on her exposed skin, a fleeting contrast to the furnace building low inside her. He tossed the garment aside, a pale flutter in the dark.
He kissed her then. A deep, slow kiss that tasted of shared toothpaste and the lingering echoes of the evening’s coffee. It was a kiss without desperation, full of a solemn, aching focus. His hand returned to her, and this time, there was no barrier.
His fingers slid through her folds, already slick with want. He explored her with a writer’s curiosity, tracing every contour, learning her. His touch was reverent, almost clinical, until his middle finger found her entrance and pressed inside, just to the first knuckle.
She gasped into his mouth, her hips lifting off the mattress.
“So quiet,” he whispered against her lips, his finger pushing deeper, then withdrawing, glistening in the thin moonlight. “So fucking perfect for me.”
A second finger joined the first, stretching her gently. He began a slow, relentless rhythm, curling them inside her, finding a spot that made her vision bleach white at the edges. She bit down on her own lip to keep from crying out, her hands coming up to claw at his bare back.
He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his breathing harsh against her skin. “I want to hear you,” he growled, his voice thick. “I want to hear every fucking thing.”
He added a third finger, and the stretch bordered on pain, instantly transmuting into a pleasure so acute it was frightening. Her control snapped.
A low, broken moan tore from her throat. “Ethan… god, please…”
“Please what?” He was driving his fingers into her now, his pace increasing, the wet, obscene sound of it filling the silent room. His thumb pressed down on her clit, circling in time with his thrusts.
Her words dissolved into nonsensical sounds. She was fracturing, coming apart under his hands, her legs falling open wider in silent surrender. This wasn’t the frantic, competitive passion of the car. This was him taking her apart, piece by delicate piece, because he could. Because she’d given him the keys.
“Come on my fingers,” he commanded, his voice guttural and dark. “Do it. Let me feel it.”
It was the permission she didn’t know she needed. The orgasm roared up from her core, a tidal wave of sensation that locked her muscles and stole her voice. She shook, a silent, violent convulsion, her inner walls clamping rhythmically around his invading fingers. He worked her through it, gentling his touch as the waves subsided, leaving her boneless and gasping.
Before she could float back down, he was moving over her, his body slotting between her thighs. He was bare—he must have shed his own clothes sometime in the night. The hard, hot length of him pressed against her, nudging at her soaked, sensitive opening.
He didn’t enter her. He just rested there, his forehead pressed to hers, both of them panting, sharing the same frantic air. Sweat dotted his upper lip.
“Look at me,” he whispered.
Her blue eyes fluttered open, meeting his green ones. In the dark, they were black pools, bottomless.
“This,” he said, the words raw, unedited. “This is what I think about. When I’m scared. When the world gets too loud. It’s you. Under me. Like this.”
He pushed forward, just an inch, a slow, burning invasion that made her suck in a sharp breath. He stopped, his whole body trembling with the effort of restraint.
“Mine,” he breathed, not a question, not a boast. A simple, devastating fact.
She answered by wrapping her legs around his hips, heels digging into the small of his back, and pulling him the rest of the way in.
He sank into her with a ragged groan, filling her utterly, a perfect, airtight fit. They stayed like that, joined to the hilt, motionless. The intimacy of it was more profound than any frantic coupling. He was inside her, and she could feel his heartbeat in the pulse of his cock.
Then he began to move. A slow, deep, rocking cadence that had nothing to do with frenzy and everything to do with possession. Each withdrawal was a sweet agony, each sheathing stroke a homecoming. He held her gaze the entire time, his eyes never leaving hers. It was unnerving, unbearably vulnerable. She wanted to look away, to hide, but she couldn’t. He was seeing her. All of her.
His pace gradually quickened, the bedframe beginning a soft, rhythmic protest against the wall. The tender agony built again, coiling tighter and deeper than before. She could feel her own slickness coating them both, could hear the wet slap of skin on skin as he drove into her, over and over.
“Touch yourself,” he grunted, his voice strained. “Let me watch you come while I’m inside you.”
Her hand slipped between their sweat-slicked bodies, her fingers finding her clit, swollen and throbbing. The added pressure, the visual of her own pleasure, tipped him over the edge. His rhythm fractured, his thrusts becoming erratic, punishing.
“Fuck, Mia, I’m gonna—” His sentence ended in a choked curse as he slammed into her one final time, his hips jerking as he emptied himself deep inside her with a guttural, helpless sound.
The feel of him pulsing within her, the heat of his release, was the final key. Her own climax detonated, a silent, blinding supernova that squeezed him tight, milking him until he shuddered and collapsed on top of her, his weight a welcome anchor.
They lay tangled, spent, the only sound their synced, slowing breaths. The moon had moved, a silver blade now cutting across the floor.
After a long while, he shifted, rolling to his side and pulling her with him, keeping them connected. He tucked her head under his chin, his arms a cage of safety around her.
In the solid darkness, with the scent of sex and salt and his skin in her lungs, she understood. This was the silent vow. Not in the words, but in the act. In him claiming her in the quietest hour, in her offering herself to his sleepless demons. It was a promise scrawled in sweat and whispers, a treaty written on skin.
Outside, a siren wailed in the distance, fading into the hum of the city. Inside, in the honeyed dark, Ethan’s breathing evened out, deepened. Sleep, finally, pulled him under.
Mia stayed awake, listening to it, her hand spread over the steady, sure beat of his heart.