day with him as a blessing and was pretty sure he counted each day as a mild curse. We’d come through so much together—his family pretty much declaring him dead and my father making sure I understood every insult from him was simply another handful of dirt on my grave.
There were also times when it felt like he could read my mind, so I wasn’t completely surprised when Jae whispered softly, “Do you know the exact moment when I knew I couldn’t live without you?”
“Pretty sure it was when you stopped me from eating the raw bitter melon,” I teased with a playful boast. Considering that happened within the first half hour of us meeting, it was a very far stretch.
“No, that was the moment you were trying to figure out how you could get into my pants,” he lobbed back at me. He moved again, and the towel finally gave up its battle and slid to the floor. It was getting harder to think with my dick coming up with all sorts of much more interesting things to do besides me sitting on the edge of the bed getting plasters put on my face. “It was after. When you dug Neko out of my building after it exploded and then you came to tell me she was okay. I hated you so much because I didn’t want to be in love, especially not with a man. And really not with a man who knew everything about me.”
“Everything I found out about you just showed me how fucking strong you are, agi.” The endearment was wrong. One of the many things I’d fucked up in my pursuit of the beautiful, rangy Korean man straddling my lap, but it’d become a thing between us. A stupid, silly misspeak we’d built up into something special, although whenever I slipped up and said it in public in the middle of Koreatown, I got some pretty funky looks. “Are you about done with my face? Because I would really love to move you down my body.”
We’d made love a thousand times before, and with any luck, we would have many more times together before one of us slipped away to join the stars. I treasured the feel of Jae’s mouth on my skin, hissing at the painful pleasure of his teeth nipping at my nipple, then returning the favor, making him gasp. We knew each other’s bodies, explored the familiar landscapes, but it felt new every time.
He had a faint brown mottling on his right hip, more like a cluster of freckles the length and width of my thumb—scarring from when he fell on a briquette fire when he was nine. I liked kissing it, making him squirm. He was ticklish in places, and where my lips made him writhe and buck beneath me, my tongue and teeth made him moan.
And the noises I drew out of him with my fingers were both heaven and hell to my ears.
I longed to bury myself into his heat, lose myself in the clench of his body around mine, but I knew better. Sex is like whiskey, always better sipped and savored, especially when it’s aged, mellowed with affection, and shared with someone you love.
“Cole-ah,” Jae ground out between his clenched teeth, arching in response to my touch. “Now.”
I gave in to my husband’s demands, but on my terms. I was bruised and smarting in some areas, but the stretch of his lean form beneath mine more than made up for any aches and pains. Jae dug his fingers into my shoulders, probably adding to the welts and marks already on my abused skin. We rode each other gently at first, but then the heat we’d built up between us consumed our patience. The tug and twist of Jae’s body around my shaft was exquisite, pulling the tender threads of my climax out from my very core.
There were so many small moments I wanted to hold on to, bits and pieces of sensations I needed to engrave in my memory—the chiming of our wedding rings when our fingers touched, the bite of gold into the webbing of my hand echoing Jae’s tight hold on me, and the familiar sting of being stretched. I knew he was feeling every one of my thrusts.
We were slippery and salty, damp from our exertions and needing even more. His heels dug into the back of my legs, a quick reminder of how flexible he could be. I was wrapped up as