บททั้งหมดของ Irresistible Sins (An erotica collection): บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 60

The bathroom was small. She’d never thought much about it before, sink, tub, the fixed patch of ceiling she’d stopped looking at, but with Dom in it the room became something else entirely. Smaller in a way that wasn’t uncomfortable. Just close. Unavoidably, deliberately close. He turned the shower on. She watched him do it, watched him reach past her to twist the handle, felt the warmth of his arm near her face, smelled his skin, and understood he wasn’t in a hurry. That was somehow the most disarming thing about him. He was never in a hurry. Steam started to rise. He turned back to her and reached for the waistband of her jeans, still undone from the kitchen, and pushed them down. She stepped out of them. Stood in front of him in nothing and held his gaze because looking away felt like losing something. He looked at her the same way he had in the kitchen. Unhurried. Thorough. Like he was deciding where to start. “You’re still dressed,” she said. “I know.” “That’s not fair.”

The car died at six-forty-seven PM on a Tuesday. Jonah knew the exact time because he’d been watching the dashboard clock the way you watched a bad movie, not because it was interesting but because there was nothing else to do on a two-lane Tennessee highway with nothing on either side except pine trees and the particular orange light of a sun that was done for the day. The engine didn’t sputter or cough. It just stopped. Like it had made a decision. Jonah pulled onto the gravel shoulder, turned the key three times achieving nothing, and sat looking at the steering wheel. “Okay,” he said to no one. He got out. Looked at the car. Looked at the highway. Looked at the trees which had no useful information to offer. He popped the hood the way men did in movies when their car broke down despite knowing nothing about engines, stared at the engine for ten seconds, closed the hood again. He googled mechanic near me. One result. Four miles back the way he came. Closed at six. It

Reed made eggs. That was the first thing Jonah registered when he walked through the door of the house at the end of Miller Road at seven-fifteen the next morning, the smell of eggs and toast and coffee, Reed standing at the stove in a grey t-shirt and work pants, barefoot, Carl stationed hopefully at his feet. The house was small and exactly what Jonah would have predicted. Wood floors, worn smooth. A bookshelf with actual use on it. Tools on a rack by the back door hung in the same order he imagined they’d always been hung. Clean without being curated, the home of someone who didn’t think about it because they didn’t need to. Reed had met him at the garage at seven, handed him a key, and said house is at the end of Miller, breakfast in twenty in the same tone he said everything, and driven off before Jonah could respond. Now Jonah sat at the kitchen table and Reed put a plate in front of him and sat across with his own and they ate. Carl gave up on Reed and came to sit on

Jonah woke before the alarm he hadn’t set. Five-fifty-three. The room still dark, the pines outside the window black against a sky going slowly grey at the edges. Reed’s arm across his chest, Reed’s breathing slow and even beside him. He lay still. Listened to the quiet, the kind of quiet that had felt suffocating in Chicago and now felt like something he’d been thirsty for without knowing it. The house settling. Carl breathing in the hallway. The very distant sound of a bird starting early. He didn’t reach for his phone. Just lay there. Reed woke at six-fifteen. No alarm, just a shift in his breathing and then he was awake, the way Jonah imagined he’d always been. He didn’t move for a moment either. Just lay with his arm still across Jonah’s chest, looking at the ceiling. “You’re leaving today,” Reed said. Not a question. “Yes,” Jonah said. Reed nodded slowly. He got up. Made coffee. Jonah heard him moving through the house, the specific sounds of him, already fam

Chapter 2: The elevator was slow. Jade watched the numbers climb and held the room key in one hand and her heels in the other, she’d taken them off in the lobby, marble floors, no apology, and tried to organize her thoughts into something useful. Cal had walked them to the elevator. Said goodnight with that same unhurried quality he brought to everything, hands in his pockets, eyes moving between them once more before the doors closed. That once more was the thing she was trying to organize. “He’s dangerous,” she said to the elevator doors. Beside her Priya was smiling at the floor numbers. “Dangerous how.” “The good kind.” “Mm.” Priya’s smile didn’t move. “He was looking at you.” “He was looking at both of us.” “Yes,” Priya said. “That’s what I mean.” The doors opened. They found the suite at the end of the corridor, it was, as promised, very nice. High ceilings, city view, a king bed with more pillows than two people could use, and a couch that was genuinely large enough