she didn’t. Because she was afraid that he would throw her out. Because she wanted to lie there for a while, rocked by the experience between them. By the change that had just occurred. And it was a change.
She was changed.
Made new from the inside out somehow, and she didn’t know how she was supposed to move forward. She just wanted to stay.
He didn’t seem in a rush either. Instead, he turned over, his arm heavy over the top of her.
And it took her a moment to realize he had fallen asleep.
She looked at him, at the lines on his face.
He didn’t look restful, even asleep. The lines on his forehead were still creased, his brows still drawn together.
A man whose heaviest weights didn’t lift from him even when he had passed out of consciousness.
It made her heart hurt. To know that his was a burden that didn’t lift even then.
She could remember that. Being in the thick of grief and having nightmares chase after you as you tried to find some peace. She lay there on her back, staring up at the ceiling. The light was gray. It wasn’t night yet.
But she didn’t want to get up. She’d had sex for the first time.
And she had to face the possibility that it was with a man who had been thinking about someone else.
That made her ache. He had told her about his wife, and then they had kissed. She knew that he hadn’t been with anyone since. That he had turned her away the first time, likely because...
Of course he was still in love with his wife.
He should be. It was... Understandable and reasonable.
It was okay.
She tried to breathe, and found that it was far too shallow. Found that it was making her dizzy.
She slowed down, deliberately.
Of course it hurt her to imagine that he had thought of someone else.
But wasn’t she using him to work out her own issues? To help move her on in her quest for finding that new stage of her life?
She hadn’t thought of any of that when they’d come together, of course. And she didn’t think he’d been thinking anything either.
No. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t manipulative. Or deliberate. They’d both been lost in feeling. She was confident in that.
But if for him it had been a moment to recapture something he’d lost, and if for her it was to find that new piece of herself, that wasn’t wrong and wasn’t less.
And it didn’t mean she didn’t matter at all. At least, that’s what she would cling to now.
Finally, she dozed, and when she woke up it was dark. And she needed a bathroom.
She had deliberately not stayed up here long enough to need to deal with that.
She turned over onto her stomach, wiggling against his hard body. He was hot like a furnace, and still naked. A thrill of erotic desire shot through her, and she frowned deeply at herself.
She rolled over onto her back, feeling aggrieved.
“What is it?” His voice surprised her in the darkness.
“I... Bathroom.”
“I’ll get a flashlight.”
“Oh no,” she said, her cheeks heating up.
“I’m not having you walk out there in the dark by yourself. You don’t even know where it is.”
“But I might die,” she said.
“Of?”
“Embarrassment.”
“I’m not really sure how you could die of embarrassment over me walking you to an outhouse after what we just did.”
“Then you haven’t known very many women.”
He chuckled. “I have, actually.”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” she said, feeling grumpy.
“Get your shoes and a blanket,” he said.
She felt petulant and annoyed. “I don’t want to.”
“Iris,” he said, turning over to face her, pressing his thumb against her chin. She didn’t know how he’d found it so unerringly in the darkness.
And it was dark in here. There was no light pollution at all. “Do as you’re told.”
She huffed. He got out of bed, and found a flashlight quickly in the darkness, shining the beam over to the door by her shoes. The rest of her clothes were littered about.
“Just my shoes?”
“Yes,” he said.
She angrily got out of bed, and he shone the flashlight on her with no regard for her modesty at all. It was different to be naked in front of him now. When she had to pee, and not when they were in the middle of having sex.
But she got her shoes, and then grabbed the blanket from the bed and swaddled herself in it. For his part, he had pulled on his jeans and a pair of boots. But