In the Dark

Part 3 – Communion

Over two decades, Michael and Lisa had learned to disappear in plain sight.

It wasn’t an art; it was a habit – and a rational decision. Be boring. Be predictable. Share nothing that could be sold. After the first months of frenzy – the surprise marriage, the breathless backseat photos, the snipe-and-speculate headlines – they leaned into tedium with the stubborn patience of farmers.

And it worked. Slowly, grudgingly, the cameras drifted elsewhere.

It was a different kind of survival than the one they’d known in the nineties and early two-thousands, when their names were currency and their faces carnival masks for tabloids. For him, the cruelty had always been sharpened: freak, oddball, stranger-than-fiction, animal. No matter how much good he did, no matter how human he was in private, the papers made him into a grotesque. And for her, the punishment began the day she chose him. Because she had fallen in love with him. Because she stood next to him. That was enough to make her fair game. Loving him was treated as a crime, and she paid for it in headlines: deluded, reckless, unstable.

The ugliest trick was how often the press pretended their marriage wasn’t real at all: some empty “arrangement,” a white marriage, as if she hadn’t been the worst possible candidate for a beard, with her zero poker face and her refusal to hide anything. The irony was obscene: the more intense their connection, the more the world insisted it was fiction. Yet what they lived in private was profound, raw, unignorable. Emotional to the bone, sexual to the point of combustion.

And it wasn’t only them who took the blows. Their children, faces blurred but stories spun, became collateral in the spectacle. The cruelty was casual, relentless, and it reached into the most ordinary corners of their family life.

So they fought back the only way they could: by starving the machine. No meltdowns, no photo ops, no access. Just a family. A husband, a wife, and their children who had birthdays and school forms and flu seasons. It was a victory, in its way.

Riley, the eldest – Lisa’s daughter from her first marriage – fiercely independent, sweet but dry-witted, already carving her own road. Grace, seventeen, quick with a quip and even quicker to guard her siblings like a small, amused bodyguard. Eva, eleven, a daddy’s girl to the core, schematics in her notebook margins, happiest with a screwdriver and an excuse to take something apart beside him. Gabriel, five, a soft-cheeked shadow at his mother’s hip, an unabashed mama’s boy who followed her voice as if it were a tether.

The children were not the point of the story; they were its daily country. What the world saw, once the cameras lost interest, was ordinary weather: two working artists and their house that stayed lit.

Quiet enough that when the two of them broke apart six months ago, there were no headlines. Just the faint shift that only people who know how to read absence noticed: a light behind curtains that stayed off too many nights in a row.

Tonight, the curtains were open.

The venue was a restored Art Deco theater in Los Angeles. Two hundred chairs, round tables with low tea lights trembling in frosted glass, velvet drapes, the polite hush of a room that asks its guests to listen. Industry faces everywhere: label brass, critics, a few cameras with long lenses, more phones than manners. The stage was a low platform dressed with old rugs and a single parchment-shaded lamp. The band was spare and warm-blooded: guitars, bass, drums, mandolin, keyboards. Nothing glossy. Everything intentional.

Lisa stepped into the light like it was a room she knew.

Black silk cut clean, boots, auburn waves loose at her shoulders, catching the lamp and keeping it. She reached for the mic with the same hand that wore a plain band; the metal flashed once, then vanished as her fingers closed. There was a chipped mug steaming on the monitor wedge, a sweating glass of water drawing a ring into scuffed wood. When she spoke, her voice came low, steady.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. No windup. “Let’s start.”

The first song moved like breath in a warm room. Brushes soft on snare, a mandolin line stepping in and out of shadow, the Hammond blooming and thinning. Her voice rolled out honest, grain and light in equal parts, the kind of tone that doesn’t perform its pain but simply refuses to hide it. You could hear the years. Not as burden, but as weather.

Michael slipped in on the second chorus of the second song.

No announcement. No handlers, no obvious security details. A side aisle in half-dark, a nod at an usher who recognized him without broadcasting it, a seat near the back where the stage glow thinned to shadow. He folded his coat over one knee. Back straight, hands loose on his thighs. Stillness that made space rearrange itself without asking.

On stage, she didn’t see him at first. She was inside the song, and the band was with her. The chord turned toward the chorus, she lifted her face to sing into the room – and the room tilted. He was there.

A tremor touched her throat so small only two people caught it, and one was the man in the last row. The other was the drummer, who’d learned the storms brewing inside her as well as her timing. Lisa didn’t falter. She swallowed the tremor and held the line. The lamp haloed her profile; her breath came a half-second too fast on the next phrase. Six months of screens and silence collapsed in that instant. Not Paris on a laptop, not the flattened comfort of his voice calling home for the children. Him. Whole. Breathing. Watching her. The first real sight of him in half a year and it went through her body like a live wire.

No one noticed; everyone noticed.

From his chair, he didn’t move. He had come here for this: to absorb without taking anything away. The past six months had taught him that there are certain forms of presence that feel like pressure. He would not be that. He let himself look. Her hair, longer than the last time he’d seen her in person, heavier, burning copper under the lamp, kept sliding over one shoulder and then being shoved back, annoyed, so she could see the guitar player’s fingers and stab her own entrance dead-on. Her mouth was painted wine-dark; the years had refined its lines into something that could shape a joke or a wound with equal authority.

The world had never really gotten her. They thought they had, guessed and gossiped, reduced her to daughter, wife, scandal, loss. They never saw this: the force, the wit, the heat in her veins.

But he did. She looked like the woman the world had missed and he had always known. She looked like home.

The third song was the one that startled the room into complete attention. Lisa introduced it without naming it. “This one,” she said, “didn’t want to be written. But I insisted.”

She cued the band into a slow, heavy-lidded ballad, blues in the bones, Americana in the swing. Drums laid down a patient floor; the bass walked, unhurried; the mandolin wrote little constellations in the high air; keyboards swelled and fell like breathing. She gave the lyric without decoration, trusting its cut. A line about craving the thing that burns you drifted out and hummed against the back wall – you know it’s bad for you, but you still want to do it anyway – and he felt it land like a letter addressed in her hand. She hadn’t planned to sing to anyone; she did now. He hadn’t planned to take anything away from her; he took that line in and kept it.

No one in the room knew how close their marriage had come to the cliff. No filings, but words that bruised. No one knew what the health scare two years earlier had taken: a rehearsal room gone still, blue mat, sudden flood of voices, then a white fluorescent quiet while a chest found its rhythm again. Days of monitors, beeps that measured a life in decimals; the slow, humiliating arithmetic of recovery; the appointment where he said, enough – not to art, but to the machine that demanded his body for spectacle.

He had walked off the stage he’d been born on and into a different kind of work: behind glass with headphones, hands on faders, eyes on screens. Two short films – quiet, exact, unnerving – had announced that voice with no apology. Lisa carried pride and ache side by side, learned to miss the man who used to come home smelling like sweat and aftershave and victory, who fell asleep with a script on his chest and a child’s foot pressed into his ribs. She also learned how to let this man exist without asking him to be both. It cost them. They paid, then paid again.

She sang the bridge and every sentence threaded itself through old cloth. She did not look into the back again; she let the light blind her enough to sing the truth without flinching at his face. The phones lifted, polite as fireflies. A critic wrote down spare, unsparing. A junior publicist texted a senior: He’s here! The senior texted up the chain: If he gives us photos, push “solid.”

They hated him – had always hated him, and hated her for choosing him – but the sight of him still worked like blood in the water. They would gnash their teeth in print tomorrow, call him ghost, recluse, fallen king. But in the room, under the soft blue of stage lights, they fed on him the way they always had. His presence was contempt and currency at once, and they were already spending it.

Half the show was gone before she let herself scan for him. There: right side, bottom third. Not detail so much as tone – understatement where there had once been adornment; presence without ornament. The effect on her was the same as twenty years ago and entirely different. Her throat tightened, and the water didn’t help.

They kept their pact with the audience: give everything that mattered and none of what could be sold. She told a story about her grandmother’s records, a funny story about a busted amp in a rainstorm in Atlanta, and then hit them with a song so tender that two of the label guys leaned back like they’d been pushed. The set closed on a prayer disguised as a lullaby; the band faded one by one until only the Wurly pulsed, and then even that was gone.

Standing ovation, of course. The small room made the noise sound bigger; the noise made some people feel like they’d been there for a moment larger than themselves. She endured praise the way you endured rain: face up, eyes open, no shrinking. She took a bow, one hand on the mic stand like it might levitate if she didn’t pin it. She said, “Thank you,” again without embroidery. Then she stepped offstage and let the dark swallow her for three seconds so she could breathe.

Backstage was a knot of bodies and noise: hug, kiss, congratulations, I always knew, wait till the reviews, can you do a quick thing for the livestream, can we grab a quote? Her manager slid in with that smile that hides a machete. “Two minutes of photos, then you can disappear. You look like you want to disappear.”

“I look like I have mascara in my eye,” she muttered, and let someone dab a tissue near her cheekbone. Her hands were steady, her pulse was not.

In the corridor leading to the step-and-repeat, a hush moved like weather in the opposite direction. It touched people before the person arrived. He didn’t cut through with entourage; he parted the bodies by existing. The publicist’s eyes widened, then warmed into calculation. Perfect. The line on the one-sheet wrote itself: Long-married, low-drama, solid as ever. She was already drafting the email blast in her head, already thinking which freelancer would spin it into the soft piece the trades liked best.

They all knew the game. To his face, they smiled with reverence – “such an honor,” “so glad you could make it” – as if they hadn’t grown careers mocking him, selling him as a sideshow. To her, they cooed – “you look radiant,” “the voice of the night” – as if they hadn’t spent years calling her unhinged and combustible, the kind of woman who couldn’t be trusted with her own choices. Behind closed doors, they treated the couple like a bad punchline. But in that theater, with phones in hand and deadlines in mind, they smoothed their voices to velvet. Proximity to him still sold. Proximity to them both still meant clicks, still meant money.

Michael reached the end of the corridor and saw her in the crush. Not a stage now. No lamp to gild her edges. Just the woman, flushed and bright and a little sweat still cold near her hairline. Their eyes met. Six months apart detonated in the space between them, so strong she had to brace her heel against the floor to keep from moving first. You could be forgiven, if you didn’t know them, for thinking they were two people who had seen each other an hour ago and would see each other again in the car home. There was no collision in that first half-second, only the click of recognition when a key finds its lock. Then the impact came.

They did not embrace immediately. He gave her the grace of small steps. She inclined her head like she was meeting him in a green room at twenty-two, careful of her lipstick. Someone said, “Just one for the trades.” Someone else said, “Just one for the socials.” The house photographer raised a hand. Lisa and Michael turned toward the wall where the label’s logo repeated itself and stood in that careful distance long marriages learn: close enough to look like intimacy, far enough to breathe.

“Ready?” the photographer said.

Lisa slid her hand along his sleeve and found the place just above his wrist where she had always liked to hold him. She turned her face up toward his and, with the same decision she had used on the last high note, closed the space. She kissed him on the lips. No hesitation, no theatrical dip, no laugh. Mouth to mouth, brief and unarguable. To the room, it was a headline. To them, it was the first real touch in half a year, too charged to be casual, too brief to satisfy, aching with the force of what they couldn’t do here.

Cameras went off in a white rush. The sound had its own downpour. Somewhere in the second row, the junior publicist, the one with the text, almost dropped her phone.

To the media, it was a confirmation of a story that never got interesting enough to explore further than the usual script: still together, still boring, lovebirds, move along. To them, it was triage. It was a promise disguised as PR. He felt her mouth and the line of her jaw and the old knowledge in the shape of her breath. Her ring touched the inside of his wrist as she withdrew; he felt it like heat.

Up close, two short sentences traded places that the cameras didn’t hear.

“We need to talk,” she breathed, barely moving her lips.

“Neverland,” he answered without turning his head, the syllables hardly a sound.

She nodded like she was agreeing to pose again. He stepped a half-inch back and placed his hand at the small of her back for the walk to the VIP rope. It was a gesture that read as automatic to the room and felt like an oath to both of them.

They did their two minutes. “We’re proud of this record,” he said to someone with a press badge, meaning: I’m proud of her. She laughed at a joke she didn’t hear, scribbled her name on a setlist and handed it to a kid who had gotten into the room by lying about his age to a door guy. A label executive leaned into his ear to say something about a soundtrack placement and he nodded with the polite detachment of someone who still played the game but no longer believed in its stakes. He stayed exactly long enough to make the pictures look easy, then he put a hand on her elbow and the manager stepped aside without needing to be asked.

In the hallway, the noise fell off a cliff. Their bodies adjusted to the absence of it. For a second, neither of them said anything. It wasn’t that there were no words. It was that too many of them wanted to come out at once, and they had learned the cost of letting the wrong ones go first.

Michael broke the silence. His voice was pitched low, only for her. “Your show was beautiful. The songs… they’re knives and prayer. I can’t wait to hear the record you kept from me.”

Lisa’s throat tightened. For years she had hidden those songs from him, afraid of a judgment he would never bestow but that his very name made possible. Now here it was: no flattery, no gloss. Just truth, reverence, and the kind of hunger that came from him recognizing her art as something real. She felt proud and intimidated, and so deeply relieved she nearly lost her voice.

“Thank you,” she whispered at last, the words smaller than she intended. Then, with a flicker of defiance born out of nerves, “You have no idea what that means to me.”

She held his gaze for one second too long before lifting two fingers and pressing them at the center of his chest, a punctuation she couldn’t quite put into words. “Tomorrow,” she said.

“Tomorrow,” he agreed. “At the bungalow.”

She didn’t need to ask which.

Back through the door, the public world opened its mouth again, all appetite and teeth. They entered it like professionals and did not hold hands, because the kiss had already given the room its story and everything after could be dignified. He left first – that had always been their rule. She stayed with the band and the label for exactly nine minutes, then slipped out a side exit to a driver who’d signed too many NDAs to count. In the car, she watched the city braid itself in lights and let her throat burn with effort and something more.

He rode alone, too, back to his hotel room. No music. Hands on his knees. The feeling of her mouth lived on his like a low ember. Tomorrow moved through his blood like a small bright animal finally finding the way home.

At the house that was still their house, the children slept. Michael and Lisa had built a family together, ordinary in its rhythms, extraordinary in its privacy. Excellent parents not because of optics but because they refused to let the big things turn the children into audience and the small things go unnamed. None of that was the point tonight.

The point was the way she had lifted her face into the light and found him in the dark, the kiss that said, for the cameras, we’re fine, and to the two of them, I remember. I want. I can’t wait until tomorrow.

Tomorrow the ranch would be quiet. The oaks would wait. The bungalow, kept ready for no one, for years, would remember how to be a room where things begin again.

The bungalow had been quiet except for the fire. Not sleep-quiet, but the kind of silence that came when both of them were lying still, eyes open, pretending.

Lisa had turned onto her side, the blanket bunched at her hip, staring at the ceiling beams while her body ached in ways she hadn’t let show. Six months without his weight, without his skin, and now he was a room away. She could hear the faint shift of the couch when he moved. That knowledge – too close, too far – was torture. She pressed her thighs together, bit her lip, told herself not to. Too old for this, too much history. But her hand moved anyway, as inevitable as breath.

She tried to keep quiet, but she didn’t have to try very hard: part of her wanted him to hear. Wanted him to know she still burned for him, even like this. Especially like this. When the release finally came, it was sharp and shaking, a knot loosed after months of strain. Relief and ache at once, as if the tension had been an elastic band stretched too thin, and her body had finally let it snap.

Across the bungalow, Michael lay on his back, staring at the ceiling in the dark. His body throbbed with restless need. He’d promised himself restraint. Coffee first. Talk first. But lying there, listening to the small creaks of the house and imagining her on the other side of the wall, he broke. Shame prickled at the edges – fifty-two years old and still undone like a teenager – but the hunger didn’t let him go. He touched himself like he had in the weeks alone in Paris, only this time every nerve sang with the fact that she was near.

If she knew, it would wreck him. And if she knew, it would wreck her in the opposite way. She had always loved this, even begged him for it. She called it the most naked truth between them. His climax came in silence but left him emptied, unstrung, the pressure of six months gone in a rush that felt both pathetic and necessary. Release, nothing more, nothing less.

Neither of them slept.

By morning, the bungalow looked different. Sunlight slanted through the shutters, pale stripes across the wooden floor. The fire had gone cold, leaving only a scatter of gray ash in the grate. Outside, birds made themselves heard, loud in the stillness, as if the land itself was trying to remind them that time had passed and mornings still came.

Lisa padded barefoot across the small kitchen, tugging her sweater down over her hips, hair mussed. She set the kettle on the stove and turned the flame low. The sound of water coming to boil filled the silence she didn’t want to name.

Behind her, the couch creaked. Michael was already sitting up, blanket folded neatly beside him, his plain black T-shirt stretched across his chest, bare arms marked by faint shadows of old scars and new solidity – less like glass, more like oak.

“You’re up early,” Lisa said, not turning.

“So are you,” his voice was still rough with sleep.

She half-smiled at the kettle. “Couldn’t really sleep.”

“I know. Me neither.”

She turned then, catching him watching her. He didn’t look away. Their eyes held longer than either of them meant to, a stretch of silence thick with the knowledge of what neither had said out loud. Maybe it was the restless air between rooms last night. Maybe it was the kind of exhaustion that comes only after release. Whatever it was, she saw it in his eyes – that he knew. And she was certain he could read the same in hers.

Lisa broke it by reaching for the mugs. Her voice was light, almost casual. “Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee,” he said. “Please.”

“Since when do you drink coffee?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Since lately.” He gave a small shrug. “Slows me down less than people think.”

Lisa shook her head, smirking. “Next thing you’ll tell me you eat bacon.”

A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. “Don’t push it.”

She poured the coffee, black, and set the mug in front of him. He accepted it with a quiet “thanks,” their fingers brushing just briefly. The jolt it sent through her was absurd. After twenty years. After everything. Still that same static.

Michael took a sip, eyes flicking back to her. “You’re still bossy in the morning.”

She snorted. “And you’re still impossible before breakfast.”

Silence fell again, softer now, filled with the ordinary noises of coffee and kettle, the faint clink of her spoon against porcelain. She sat opposite him at the little table, tucking one leg under herself. For a few minutes, they drank in near-peace, though the air between them still hummed faintly with what they hadn’t named.

Then Lisa leaned back, crossing her arms loosely. “So. Couch, huh?”

Michael raised an eyebrow.

“You didn’t have to,” she said. “You could’ve taken the bed. I mean, we’re adults. We don’t need to do the whole gentleman routine.”

“I didn’t do it to be a gentleman,” he replied evenly.

“Then why?”

His gaze held hers, steady, and for a moment she swore he knew exactly what she’d done alone in that bed. “Because if I’d laid down beside you last night, Lisa, we wouldn’t be drinking coffee right now. We wouldn’t have made it past the first hour. And maybe we needed to remember how to talk before we remember how not to.”

The words landed between them with quiet weight, carrying more than she wanted to admit. Her throat tightened. She dropped her eyes to her mug, hiding behind a sip.

“Fair enough,” she muttered, almost smiling.

Michael leaned back against the couch, one hand curled around his mug. He studied her a moment, the way the light caught the auburn in her hair, the soft lines around her mouth that hadn’t been there twenty years ago but only deepened her beauty. He still wanted to reach across the space. He didn’t.

Instead, he cleared his throat softly. “You were right, you know.”

Lisa blinked. “About what?”

“Back then. In the studio. Telling me I was burning out. I hated hearing it, but… you weren’t wrong.” He let his eyes fall to his hands, steadier now, stronger than they’d been. “I stopped because I had to. For me. But also for the kids… for you. Because I didn’t want you to look at me again like you did in that hospital. I couldn’t put you through that twice.”

Her breath hitched, caught off guard by the quiet sincerity. She pressed her lips together, fighting the sting in her chest. “You really are impossible when you go all noble on me.”

He gave the faintest smile. “Not noble. Just… learning.”

Silence sat between them a moment, lighter than the one last night. Then he asked, “You still ride?”

Lisa blinked, thrown by the shift. “Horses? Sometimes. Not much lately.”

“We should,” he said. “It’s good out here for that.”

She tilted her head, considering him. “You asking me to saddle up with you, or is that a challenge?”

“Both.”

For the first time all morning, she laughed. Really laughed – short and low, but real. The sound cut through the heaviness of the night, though it carried a spark that reminded both of them of the edge they’d been toeing since they woke.

“Fine,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re on. But don’t think I’m letting you win.”

Michael’s smile was small, but it reached his eyes. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

The kettle hissed as if in agreement.

The stables smelled of hay, leather and dust that had settled in the rafters for years. Some of the horses had been moved off the property long ago, but a few remained, quiet and well-kept, tended by the groundsman who still came twice a day out of loyalty more than duty. Lisa ran her hand along the flank of a chestnut mare, grinning faintly as the animal nudged her shoulder.

“She remembers me,” Lisa said, almost surprised.

“Of course she does,” Michael murmured, tightening the cinch on his saddle. His voice carried that calm confidence she hadn’t heard in months, the same tone he used with the children when they were small, when he wanted them to trust their footing.

He was standing in front of a gray gelding. He didn’t just pat its neck like most men would. He stood close, hand pressed to its muzzle, his forehead almost resting against the animal’s brow.

His voice was low, so low Lisa almost didn’t catch it over the shuffle of hooves. “Hey, boy. Still here, huh? You’ve done good. You’ve stayed.” He smoothed his palm down the gelding’s cheek, movements slow, reverent. The horse shifted once, then stilled, eyes softening under his touch.

Lisa stopped where she was. The sight hit her in the chest before she knew why. Maybe because it was the same way he’d always been. With the animals, with the children and the elderly, with anyone fragile. That quiet patience, that gentleness. Not the tired complacency she had at times spotted, not performance and not act. This was the realest part of him.

She remembered in a flash the first time she’d seen it, decades ago, when he’d crouched on a kitchen floor to coax her daughter’s skittish puppy out from under the table. The way his long fingers had extended, palm up, until the trembling thing had crept into his lap. She’d fallen a little in love with him right then, before she ever admitted it to herself.

Watching him now, head bowed slightly against the horse, she felt it all over again. Not just desire, not just anger, not just the ferocious hunger that lived between them. But this. His tenderness. The way he could pour it into anything living and make it bloom.

Michael finally lifted his head, stroking once more before glancing toward her. Their eyes caught, and he must have read everything she wasn’t saying, because his mouth curved in the faintest, most unguarded smile.

Her throat tightened. She turned back to her own mare, pretending with a laugh, “Don’t you dare tell me you’ve been sneaking out here every now and then to sweet-talk these horses.”

Michael chuckled softly, double-checking the cinch. “What? I would never.”

But the look in his eyes told her that maybe he had. And at his place, she would have done the same.

Lisa swung up onto the saddle with ease. Her body knew the rhythm even after years away, and soon she was guiding the mare down the trail at an easy pace. Michael mounted with less flourish, but the horse responded to him with steady obedience. They rode side by side down the dirt path, sunlight breaking through the oaks in shifting patches.

For a while, neither of them spoke. Just the creak of leather, the hollow thud of hooves against packed earth. Lisa inhaled deeply; the air was sharp and fresh, even cleaner than she remembered.

Then, without warning, she pressed her heels into the mare and let her run. The horse surged forward, Lisa leaning into the motion, her hair flying loose in the wind. She laughed – a raw, unguarded sound that startled even her.

Behind her, Michael urged his horse forward. He didn’t try to beat her, not really, but his body loosened as the gelding stretched into its stride. And then it happened: he laughed. Not the careful chuckle he used in interviews, not the polite breath of amusement he’d given her the night before. A real laugh. Low, boyish, unrestrained. It ripped out of him and carried on the wind, chasing her down the trail.

Lisa’s chest clenched at the sound. It had been so long since she’d heard it. Months, maybe years. It made her want to slow down just to catch more of it, to hold it like proof.

When she finally reined in at the crest of the hill, breathless, she turned back, teasing to mask the ache in her throat.

“What’s the matter, old man? Can’t keep up?”

Michael drew up beside her, his expression unreadable but his eyes still bright from laughter.

“I was letting you win.”

“Bullshit,” she said, still catching her breath.

“Language,” he teased softly.

“Don’t start,” she muttered, rolling her eyes.

The horses walked now, side by side again. Lisa’s hand drifted to adjust the reins, but Michael leaned over before she could, his hand brushing hers as he tightened the strap. The touch was brief, practical, but it jolted them both. Lisa felt it all the way up her arm; Michael felt the pull in his gut, the echo of nights when touch was the only language they needed.

Their eyes met for a fraction too long before Lisa looked away, focusing on the horizon.

They rode down toward the small lake, its surface rippling with early spring wind. The water glinted silver under the sun, bordered by reeds gone pale with winter. Lisa dismounted first, tying her mare to the rail. Michael followed, and soon they were walking along the edge of the lake, boots sinking slightly into damp earth.

“This place feels haunted,” Lisa said, eyes on the shifting surface of the water. Her voice was softer now, stripped of sarcasm. “Not in a bad way. Just… like it remembers everything we did here.”

Michael’s hands stayed in his pockets, shoulders relaxed but gaze intent. “It does.”

“Even the fights?”

A small curve tugged at his mouth. “Especially the fights.”

Lisa gave a dry laugh, shaking her head. “Figures.”

And suddenly she remembered: storming down this very trail years ago, reins clenched so tight they burned her palms, furious at something careless he’d said. She’d tied her horse to a tree and sat right here on this bank, seething, refusing to go back until he came after her. And he had. He always had. Minutes later, it had ended in tears and his hands in her hair, both of them pressed hard against the rough bark behind them, kissing like they’d invented forgiveness.

She could almost hear her younger self laughing in the wind. The echo of it prickled her skin.

Michael stooped, picked up a flat stone and skimmed it across the lake. It skipped four times before sinking. Lisa smirked, bent for her own, and managed only two.

“Showoff.”

“Natural talent,” he said, low, steady. There was no smirk in it, just fact. It made her stomach clench.

The quiet that followed wasn’t innocent. It thickened around them, filled with memory. Lisa shoved both hands into her back pockets, holding herself in place.

“Hungry?” she asked, her tone lighter than she felt.

Michael’s eyes cut to hers. Dark, steady, no disguise. “Always.”

It was the way he said it that made her knees weaken. He wasn’t talking about food, not really. And she knew he knew she knew.

They spread lunch out beneath the oaks, a patch of grass worn soft from years of shade. The air carried the faint smell of clover and dust, the kind of scent that only came from places left alone. Lisa lowered herself onto the blanket, stretching her legs out in jeans that had already picked up smudges of dirt from the ride. Michael settled opposite her, cross-legged, movements unhurried but deliberate, as though even the act of sitting with her needed its own ceremony.

They unpacked bread, cheese, a bottle of water. Simple food, not much to it. Still, it felt almost ceremonial: two people who hadn’t eaten together in six months, pretending it was just lunch.

Lisa tore a piece of bread and handed it across. He took it, their fingers grazing, nothing more than skin to skin, but she felt it everywhere.

“You always eat like a bird,” she said, watching him.

“And you always talk too much,” he countered softly.

Her lips parted, ready with a retort, but he was already pouring water into a plastic cup, holding it steady until she reached for it. A bead of condensation slid down the side and across her wrist. Before she could react, his thumb brushed it away. Automatic, casual in appearance, but far too intimate in effect.

Lisa froze, cup in hand. Her pulse thudded hot in her neck.

Michael withdrew, but slowly, as if he knew exactly what he’d done. His eyes lingered on hers, dark and unreadable, and for a second she thought he’d close the distance between them then and there.

“Thanks,” she murmured, voice thinner than she liked.

He only inclined his head, breaking a piece of cheese.

They ate in silence for a while, though nothing about it felt calm. Every sound – the crunch of bread, the click of teeth against glass, the exhale of wind through the trees – seemed louder than it should. Lisa shifted, leaning back on her palms, the arch of her body unthinking but not lost on him. Michael’s gaze flicked down, then back to her face. She caught it. Smirked faintly. Said nothing.

“Do you miss this place?” he asked finally.

Lisa scanned the meadow, the trees, the endless reach of sky. “Sometimes. Sometimes I hate it, too. Too many ghosts.”

Michael nodded once. “Ghosts don’t bite.”

“But they scratch,” she said quickly, meeting his eyes. “You should know.”

The corner of his mouth tugged, not quite a smile, more a recognition. “And yet you came back.”

“Yeah,” she admitted, softer now. “I did.”

The words hung there, heavier than bread and cheese had any right to be. Lisa looked away first, staring at the line of trees swaying at the edge of the meadow. She could feel him watching her, his gaze like a touch that never landed, and she hated how much she wanted it to.

The sun shifted higher, pressing warmth into her skin. Her chest felt tight, her mouth dry, and it wasn’t the food. She wanted to lean across the blanket, taste him, remind herself of everything she’d been starving for. Six months without his mouth, his body, his weight over hers, and now here they were, sharing bread under an oak tree like it was a Sunday in some normal life. It was unbearable.

So she broke it with humor, the way she always had. “You’re staring, Michael.”

He didn’t look away. “I know.”

Lisa’s breath caught, quick, sharp, and she had no answer for that.

By mid-afternoon the warmth had grown lazy, the kind that pressed against skin until every movement felt deliberate. They wandered back toward the bungalow, the horses returned to the stables, the remains of lunch were packed away.

Lisa found the hammock strung between two oaks, the rope faded but still strong. She dropped into it without ceremony, tugging off her boots and letting them fall into the grass. A book from the bungalow sat in her lap, unopened. She flipped through the first few pages, then leaned back, auburn hair spilling loose around her shoulders.

“You’re really gonna read out here?” Michael asked, settling onto the porch steps a few feet away.

Lisa tilted her head, smirking. “What else am I supposed to do? Let you stare at me until I combust?”

His lips curved faintly. “Worked before.”

She gave him a look, but her smile twitched. “Cocky.”

“Honest.”

The book slid lower on her chest as her eyes closed. “You always think you’re so honest,” she murmured, already drifting.

“I am,” he said quietly. “Even when you hate it.”

Lisa huffed, half-asleep. “Especially then.”

Michael watched her for a long time as her breathing evened, her body softening into the hammock. A lock of hair clung to her cheek, and she shifted with a sigh that went straight through him. He wanted to touch her, to taste her, to remind her of every way she still belonged to him. Instead, he sat still, elbows braced on his knees.

And then the jealousy began to creep in once again. He just couldn’t help it. At first it was a flicker – an intrusive thought, a picture he didn’t want but couldn’t banish. Other men’s hands on her. Other mouths. Six months apart was plenty of time for both of them to try to fill the hollow. He knew she had. He knew because he had, too. Except none of it had worked.

He had tried to forget her with other women – brief encounters, bodies without anchors, kisses that left him colder than when they began. Not one of them had been Lisa. Not one had carried the gravity of her laugh, the weight of her fury, the way her body had gripped his like she’d been made for him. Nothing after her had ever measured up. Nothing ever would.

But had she found someone who came close? Had anyone else drawn that sound from her, the low, soft sigh she gave when she stretched, the one that now leaked into the lazy afternoon air? He hated himself for even thinking it, but the thought curled like a splinter he couldn’t dig out in his chest.

His jaw clenched. He tried to breathe through it, to remind himself she was here now. That she was still his wife. But the idea of her in another man’s arms scraped against him like sandpaper. What a hypocrite he was, wanting mercy for his own sins while choking on the thought of hers.

The hammock rocked gently as she stirred, blinking awake. She stretched, catlike, the sweater pulling taut across her perfect body. Catching his gaze, she smirked. “Enjoy the view?”

Michael leaned back against the step, his eyes never leaving hers. “You know I do.”

Lisa snorted, swinging her legs over the edge. “You’re incorrigible.”

“And you’re territorial,” he countered, his tone deceptively light.

Her eyes narrowed, amused but wary. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t act like you don’t hate the thought of anyone else touching me.” His voice was calm, steady, but the truth in it landed like a stone.

Lisa’s mouth opened, ready to deny it, then shut again. Heat climbed her throat and she hated herself for it. Hated more that he could see it, and hated the way he read her without effort. She wanted to laugh it off, to tell him he wasn’t worth the sweat. But he was. He always had been. And knowing that he knew… that was unbearable.

So she scoffed, sharp, dismissive. “Please. Like you’re any better.”

Michael’s jaw flexed. “I’m not,” he said finally, and the admission felt heavier than any denial. It was the first truth he’d let slip all afternoon, and it left them both raw.

The words were meant to cut, to equalize. But they fell heavy between them, and the silence that followed wasn’t denial. It was confirmation.

Michael let the silence stretch, his gaze unwavering. He wanted to tell her everything he hadn’t in the last six months – that every other touch had felt like ash, that every jealous pang was proof she was still the only one who mattered. But he held it. Let her squirm. Let her feel the same damn burn that was eating through him.

Lisa stood abruptly, brushing her jeans. Her tone came out lighter than she intended, too casual for how her body felt. “Dinner?”

“Sure,” he said, rising slowly, his eyes still locked on her. He knew an olive branch when he saw one.

They walked back side by side, close enough that their arms brushed, not close enough to touch. The rope between them stretched, thin as ever, but it held – for now.

The bungalow glowed warm against the night. Lisa moved easily through the small kitchen, pulling together bread, olives, a pan of pasta she’d thrown on without thinking. Michael laid the table, his movements quiet but deliberate, like he’d done this before, like he belonged in this room as much as she did.

Dinner wasn’t elaborate, but it didn’t matter. They sat opposite each other at the little table, the firelight painting both of them softer than the truth. Conversation flowed in fragments, safe things, memories about the ranch, small updates about the kids. For long minutes they said nothing at all, the silence humming louder than words.

At one point Lisa leaned across him to reach for the wine. Her arm brushed his shoulder, her hair falling across his sleeve, auburn waves catching the firelight, and she didn’t move it right away. She let it linger, just long enough to feel him stiffen beneath it. He didn’t pull back. He didn’t even breathe until she was seated again.

“Sorry,” she murmured, eyes on her glass.

“You’re not,” he said quietly.

She smirked, triumphant in the tiny victory, not denying it.

They finished the bottle slowly, each pour bringing them closer to the edge of tipsy, to that soft blur where restraint thins.

Lisa sat back finally, half-laughing, though her eyes were sharp. “You’re too composed, you know that? Drives me crazy. I’m sitting here…” She gestured at herself, flushed and restless. “And you just sit there, looking like you’ve got it all under control.”

Michael’s eyes darkened, the corner of his mouth twitching. “That’s what scares you?”

“Yes,” she said flatly. Then leaned in, prodding. “Because I know you don’t. I know exactly what’s under there. And you’re making me drag it out of you.”

The silence after that was thick, buzzing.

Lisa leaned forward, elbows on the table, her voice dropping into a rasp.

“God. You spent six months letting other women touch you. I can’t stand it. I can’t even stand the idea of it. Yet I still want you. Now. So are you ever going to stop acting like you’re doing penance and just fuck me?”

The words landed between them like dynamite.

Michael froze, jaw tight, his knuckles whitening where they rested on the table. His breath left him in a sharp exhale, as though she’d knocked it from his lungs. Yes, he had been doing penance, every quiet night, every refusal to reach for her too soon. Trying to make himself worthy again. But in her mouth, the word wasn’t judgment. It was demand. It turned guilt into something hotter, hungrier.

He stood abruptly, chair scraping back. Lisa rose too, snatching at plates as if clearing the table could soften what she’d just detonated. It wasn’t retreat so much as reflex, an instinctive flicker of recoil, the split-second after provocation when the fire gets too close. She had pushed him and pushed him, and now that he was breaking, a part of her braced for the impact. Almost like she wanted to test if he would really follow through.

But he was on his feet before she could move past him, taking the dish from her hands. His fingers brushed hers, lingered, and neither of them moved. For a split second they stood in the firelight, only inches apart, holding onto the same plate like it tethered them.

“Lisa,” he said, low. Warning or plea, she couldn’t tell.

She lifted her chin, eyes fierce, almost daring. “What?”

Michael set the plate down on the counter without looking. His hand came back, closing hard around the back of her neck, fingers sliding into her hair and gripping tight enough to tilt her head back toward him. The suddenness of it stole her breath. No reverence now, no gentleness, just claim.

Her pulse spiked. She should have recoiled, should have pushed him back, but instead her body leaned into the hold, spine arching toward the heat of him. The message in his grip was unmistakable: he wasn’t letting her run, not this time.

He stepped closer, chest brushing hers, his thumb grazing the sharp line of her jaw as if possession and tenderness could exist in the same hands. She felt him against her, solid and unmistakably hard, aroused without question, and the shock was only that she’d missed it so much.

She swallowed against the rush of heat that pooled low in her belly, and something inside her straightened. For all his composure, for all his maddening calm, this was proof: he was hers, undone by her, as much as ever. The power of it left her dizzy, a little savage, almost smiling.

“God, you drive me insane,” she whispered, her voice trembling with both fury and ache.

His grip tightened, his forehead nearly touching hers, his breath hot against her lips. “Likewise.”

It could have gone either way – toward another sharp remark, or toward the old cliff of anger – but instead it went forward. Michael crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss that tried for control and failed within seconds. She answered with a low sound in her throat, her fists knotting in his shirt, dragging him down harder. That was all it took.

Then the restraint snapped.

The table shifted behind them, the bottles rattling as her back hit the edge. His hands spanned her hips, pulling her flush against him, and there was no mistaking what she felt now, the hard, relentless proof of how long he’d wanted this, how much he’d denied himself. The sound she made was half laugh, half moan. Delight at his unraveling, hunger at her own.

“Six months,” she gasped against his mouth, furious at the waste of it, aroused to the point of shaking.

Michael’s voice was rough, stripped bare of calm. “Too long.”

Her laugh broke against his lips. “Then don’t you dare stop now.”

His answer was his mouth, urgent, consuming, his hands claiming her like he was making up for every empty night between.

The rope had finally broken.

The kisses turned reckless, all teeth and heat, his mouth dragging hers open, her hands clawing at his shirt as if she could tear through six months of absence in one go. Relief shuddered out of her in broken gasps – the taste of him, the weight of him, the solid press of his body against hers.

Michael lifted her easily, setting her back against the counter with a soft thud. Her legs parted instinctively around him, pulling him closer, and the sound he made, low, guttural, went straight through her.

For a moment, it felt like they’d tumble headlong, right there on the floor or against the counter, like younger versions of themselves who never cared about where or how. And maybe that would have been enough, once. But his mouth moved on hers like a man erasing ghosts, like he needed to burn out every trace of anyone else who had touched her in the months he’d been gone.

Then he stilled, forehead pressed to hers, chest heaving. His hands stayed tight on her hips, holding her there but not pushing further. She could feel him, thick and straining against the fabric of his pants, and the sheer restraint it took for him not to take her then and there made her shudder. He was about to burst – and still he held himself steady.

“Not here,” he murmured, voice ragged but certain.

Lisa blinked, dazed. “Why the hell not?”

His thumb traced a line along her side, slow, reverent. “Because I’m not wasting this on a kitchen floor. I waited too long to take you like that.”

The control in his voice made her shiver, because she could feel how close he was to losing it, and still he was holding the line.

She stared at him, lips swollen, breath unsteady. Then she smirked faintly, challenge sparking through the haze. “Fine. Lead the way.”

Michael kissed her once more – deep, claiming – before pulling back. Then, in one smooth motion, he swept her up into his arms. She gasped, clinging to his shoulders, the sudden strength of it dizzying.

He didn’t say another word as he carried her down the short hall. The firelight stretched their shadows long on the walls, the air thick with heat, every step promising what neither of them could hold back any longer.

The bedroom waited.

The bedroom was lit only by firelight spilling down the hall, shadows stretching across the walls. Michael set her down on the bed like she was weightless, his hands already sliding into her hair, pulling her up into another kiss. This one wasn’t careful. It was deep, consuming, his tongue tasting, taking, his breath rough against hers.

Lisa clutched at him, dragging his shirt up, desperate to feel skin. He let her pull it over his head, and when she pushed her palms across his chest, her breath caught.

He truly was heavier than before, more solid, broader, the muscles under her hands thickened, matured. The sight of him undid her.

For a moment she remembered the last time she had touched him like this – months ago, when his body had been thinner, his face hollowed, the sharp ridges of his ribs pressing against her palm as she held him. She’d hated it, hated the fear of breaking him, hated the fragility that had never belonged to him.

Now he was weight and warmth and muscle again, every inch of him reclaimed. When she touched him now, it wasn’t fear she felt. It was awe. It was hunger. It was penance made flesh.

“God, look at you,” she whispered, fingers tracing the faint silver at his temples, the strength in his shoulders.

“Look at you,” he shot back, voice low, as his hand took hers and pushed it against the iron-hard length straining in his pants. She gasped at the feel of it, her body jolting like it had remembered something essential.

His control was fraying. She could feel it in the way his breath shuddered against her mouth, in the way his hips pressed forward before he caught himself, pulling back with a ragged growl.

“You drive me out of my mind,” he said, forehead pressed to hers, voice rough with need.

“Then lose it,” she shot back, tugging at his belt.

That snapped him. His mouth crashed to hers, urgent, and his hands made quick work of her sweater, dragging it over her head and tossing it aside. His lips found her collarbone, then lower, teeth grazing the top swell of her breast. Lisa arched under him, clutching at his hair, her cry sharp as his mouth closed over her, hot and wet through the lace.

“Michael…” Her voice broke on his name, half moan, half plea.

He pulled the bra down, baring her completely, his hands reverent even as his mouth was hungry. He lavished her, sucking, biting lightly, until her back arched hard against the sheets. She’d always been vocal, unashamed, and every sound she made only pushed him closer to the edge.

His pants had become a vise, unbearable. When she fumbled with the button, he caught her wrist, holding her still, eyes burning into hers.

“Slow,” he growled, though his body was trembling. “I’m not wasting this.”

Lisa’s lips curved in a breathless, wicked smile. “Then show me.” Her hand slid lower, deliberately, until it closed over him through his pants. “Touch yourself. Please, baby… I want to see you.”

The words nearly undid him. He cursed under his breath, but he obeyed, freeing himself and wrapping his hand around his length, stroking slow, rough, his eyes locked on hers. The sight made her gasp, her thighs squeezing together.

“Shit…” she breathed, then pushed her own jeans down, sliding her fingers between her thighs. She moaned, unabashed, meeting his gaze. “I thought about this last night. You watching me. You wanting me.”

Michael’s breath broke ragged as his hand moved faster, his hips jerking into his own palm. “Lisa – stop, or I’m gone.”

“Then take me,” she demanded, spreading her thighs wide in invitation. “Now.”

For a heartbeat, he froze. The sight of her open for him, her fingers still glistening where she’d touched herself, was too much. His own hand was still wrapped around his cock and he groaned, letting go of himself before he lost everything right there and then.

He grabbed her ankles, yanking her jeans down rougher than he meant to, dragging them past her knees until her legs were bare for him. He pressed his mouth to the inside of her thigh, kissing, biting, marking as he worked his way up. His voice was wrecked when it broke out of him, raw and reverent all at once.

“God, I’ve dreamed of this,” he muttered against her skin, his lips hot on the tender flesh near her hip. “Every night. Every damn night.”

When his mouth finally replaced her hand, the sound she made was ragged, her fingers clamping into his hair. He licked and sucked like a man starved, devouring her until she was arching and cursing, her voice rough with pleasure. She came hard, shaking, her thighs clamped around his head, and he held her down, groaning into her as if her release was his own.

Michael rose over her, chest heaving, his mouth still wet from her. Her release had left her trembling, but her eyes burned up at him, fierce, demanding, like she wanted more already. Always more.

He pushed into her slowly, deeply, all the way until her cry broke sharp and guttural. Her heat gripped him tight, clutching around him, and his self-control almost snapped right there, six months of hunger slamming into him all at once.

“Lise…” His voice cracked low, the sound of a man barely holding on.

Her nails dug into his back, dragging red lines down his skin. “Fuck me. Fuck me hard,” she whispered, then moaned it again, arching up to meet him.

He obeyed, because how could he not? His hips snapped forward harder, faster, each thrust driving her higher, until her head tossed back against the pillow, her throat bare and glistening in the firelight.

Michael’s eyes burned over her – her hair wild, her lips parted, the flush across her chest – and he thought, not for the first time, that she’d ruin him before she ever saved him.

Lisa caught his face in her hands suddenly, forcing him to look at her. “You’re mine,” she hissed, voice breaking, almost a sob. “Say it.”

He groaned, thrusting deeper, his mouth crashing to hers. And for a split second, the ghosts of their distance haunted him – faces, touches, none of which had ever been her. He banished them with the only truth that mattered. “Yours. Always yours.”

She smiled against his lips, wicked and desperate. Then she shoved at his shoulder, rolling them hard until he was on his back and she was straddling him.

He let her. He always let her. Dominance didn’t mean denial, not with Lisa. Her wildness was part of what destroyed him, and he wanted to be destroyed.

She rode him slow at first, teasing, her hips rolling with maddening control. He gasped, his hands clamping hard on her thighs, trying to keep her steady. For a second, she remembered the nights when his body had trembled not from pleasure but exhaustion, when she’d pushed down the fear that he wouldn’t make it through a set, a flight, a night.

But now – God, now – he was surging up into her with force, his body alive under hers, strong enough to pin her, lift her, take her apart. She almost cried with the relief of it, the proof that he was here, whole, and hers.

“I love you. Oh, shit, I love you so damn much.” The words tore out of her, not provocation but surrender. Gratitude, need, love, all of it crashing through her at once.

And then she moved – wild, relentless, her rhythm sultry and punishing all at once. Michael’s composure broke; his head fell back against the pillow, a low groan tearing out of him, his body bowing under the assault of her heat.

“Lisa…” His voice was wrecked now, guttural, as she rode him harder, taking him deeper than he thought he could go. His hands slid up her body, squeezing her breasts, his thumbs brushing her nipples as they peaked under his touch. She moaned, grinding down harder, and he felt her tighten around him again.

The sound he made was animal, torn straight from his chest. He flipped them, slamming her beneath him, pinning her wrists to the bed as he thrust into her with brutal precision.

She screamed his name, over and over, her body shuddering violently under him. And when she came again, clenching hard around him, he followed with a roar, spilling into her so deep it felt like part of him might never leave.

His release tore through him, leaving him shaking against her, buried so deep it felt as though he’d fused with her. He pressed his face into her neck, his breath hot and uneven.

“Christ, Lisa,” he whispered, voice hoarse, still trembling inside her. “You undo me.”

Her laugh came soft and broken, chest still heaving under his. “Good. You deserve it.”

He lifted his head just enough to catch her mouth in a slower kiss, one that lingered, tongues brushing lazily now that the frenzy had passed. His hands roamed down her sides, calming, coaxing, though his body was still hard, still twitching with the echo of her.

They stayed joined, neither willing to pull away. Her thighs locked around his hips, keeping him inside her, clenching lightly as if reminding him that this was hers, always hers.

Michael groaned softly at the sensation, forehead pressed to hers. “You’re not letting me go, are you?”

“Not a chance,” she murmured, eyes half-lidded, wicked smile tugging at her lips. “You move an inch, I’ll make you start over.”

He laughed, low and wrecked, kissing her again. “Don’t tempt me.”

For a long time, they lay like that, tangled and slick, his weight heavy on her but not unwelcome. The firelight flickered across their damp skin, painting them in gold and shadow. Every so often, his hips shifted just slightly, enough to draw a soft gasp from her throat and another groan from his.

The storm had broken, but the hunger hadn’t gone. It never did with them. It only ever folded back into love.

They stayed fused together until the tremors eased, both of them slick with sweat, breath ragged. Michael brushed his lips over her temple, his chest still heaving. She kissed the hollow of his throat, soft, almost absent-minded, like she needed to taste him even in stillness.

But then she shifted under him, a deliberate clench of her body around his length, and his groan rumbled low in her ear.

“You’re insatiable,” he muttered, though he didn’t move away.

Lisa smirked, breath hot against his cheek. “It’s your fault. You made me this way.”

He drew back just far enough to look down at her, eyes dark, swollen with heat. “Sit up, then.”

The roughness in his tone sent heat flooding through her. She obeyed, breath catching as he pulled out of her slowly, deliberately, making her gasp at the drag. He guided her back against the headboard, sitting her upright, chest rising and falling.

He knelt in front of her, his cock still thick and wet against his stomach. He looked down at her, his eyes dark and hot, and she had no doubt who was in control again.

“Open your mouth,” he said, low, steady, commanding.

Her lips parted on a gasp as he brought himself to her. She took him in without hesitation, her tongue sliding hot along his length.

Michael’s groan was guttural, torn straight from his chest. His hand threaded into her hair, not forcing, just holding her in place, guiding her, controlling her rhythm. His breath hissed out through clenched teeth. “That’s it… take it. God, Lise, your mouth… no one else could ever… fuck… no one else can do this to me.”

Her arousal spiked at the words and she moaned around him, the vibration running through his body. She loved this – loved the size of him on her tongue, loved swallowing him down, loved doing things with Michael she had never wanted with any other man. His taste, his sweat, the raw, primal power of him filling her – with him, every act became sacred, trust made flesh. Instinctively, her free hand slid down between her thighs, fingers seeking her own heat. She couldn’t help it. Watching him unravel like this thrilled her, made her even wetter, made her want to give him everything.

Michael’s other hand stroked down her throat, feeling the movement of her swallowing him. His hips rocked, slow but relentless, every thrust deeper, more deliberate. “Look at me,” he growled, voice rough, almost breaking. She let him slip from her mouth, wrapping her hand around him instead. Her grip slid tight, stroking as she lifted her gaze. Lips glistening, eyes molten, she met him head-on.

“Fuck, Lisa,” he gasped, shuddering. “You’ll ruin me. You’ll ruin me right here.”

“See?” she whispered, her movements slow and deliberate. “I love this. I love you. No one else. Only you.”

His body shook, his cock straining in her fist, wet and throbbing. His jaw clenched hard as the words tore out of him, raw and unguarded. “I love you. Do you hear me? I fucking love you. Always.”

She held his gaze, then smiled faintly – wicked, tender, both at once – before lowering her mouth to him again. Her lips sealed around him as her fingers resumed working between her thighs, pleasure surging with every helpless sound he gave her. She wanted to drag him over the edge, to taste him, to take his control and turn it into hers. She moaned harder around him, sucking him deep, determined to take him there.

Sensing it, Michael’s grip in her hair tightened, pulling her closer for just a moment of sheer torture.

“Baby – no…don’t,” he choked out, voice cracking, pleading now. His body was shaking, his cock swelling thick in her mouth, but still he begged. “Don’t make me come just yet… I need more of you.”

For a split second, she thought he might break completely. But then his eyes snapped open, blazing dark, and the plea hardened into command. His hand fisted in her hair, tugging her head back with a suddenness that stole her breath.

“Enough,” he said, low and rough. “Not like this. I’m not finished with you.”

The change in him made her thighs quake. He wasn’t asking anymore. He was taking her back fully, and she adored him for it.

“Turn around, baby. On all fours.”

His tone had shifted – still gentle, but iron underneath. That was his power: he didn’t need to shout, didn’t need to prove a thing. His masculinity was quiet, steady, unquestionable. Strength without ego, authority without noise. And for a woman like Lisa, who’d had to hold the reins with every other man in her life, it stripped her bare in the best way. With him, she didn’t have to control. With him, she could be all woman.

She obeyed instantly, starting to turn. He followed, flipping her onto her stomach with a strength that made her laugh breathlessly, her cheek pressed to the pillow.

“Mike…” she gasped, her voice breaking as his hand slid up her spine, pushing her down just enough to arch her hips back.

He positioned himself behind her, the sight of her bared for him making his control snap all over again. He pushed inside in one deep thrust, burying himself fully, and Lisa cried out, raw and guttural, clutching the sheets in both fists.

“This,” he ground out, pulling back and driving in again, harder, deeper. “This is ours.”

She moaned, rocking back against him, voice wrecked. “Yes. God, yes. Give it to me, baby.”

He set a brutal rhythm then, his grip tight on her hips, every thrust claiming her deeper. The sound of his body meeting hers filled the room, urgent and primal. Her hair whipped wild around her shoulders, her body bowing with the force of him, and still he didn’t let up.

Lisa was sobbing his name now, cursing, begging, every sound torn out of her throat. She’d never surrendered like this to anyone, never let another man take her apart and put her back together again. But Michael wasn’t like anyone else. He didn’t just take; he consumed, and in giving herself to him, she felt more herself than ever.

“Look at you,” he growled, voice breaking as he bent low over her back. His hand slid from her hip to her breast, squeezing, teasing, making her arch harder. His hips moved, touching her everywhere, testing the edges of her surrender. And she knew – whatever he wanted, however he wanted her – she would give it. She would give him everything. “You feel this? You’re mine like this. You love it.”

“Yes,” she gasped, almost crying with it. “Yes… oh God, I do.”

Her body was convulsing around him, but he wasn’t easing. He drove her higher, pushed her past the edge, until she was screaming, sobbing into the pillow as another orgasm ripped through her, violent and consuming.

Her release tore him open. He clutched her hips and pounded into her with a roar, spilling deep, thrusting through the aftershocks until he was empty, shaking, every ounce of him buried in her.

They collapsed together, tangled and sweating, his chest pressed to her back, their breaths syncing slowly in the aftermath. His hand smoothed up her arm, fingers entwining with hers against the pillow.

“I love you,” he whispered again in the calmness of their post-orgasmic glow, the words simple, unvarnished, his voice breaking around them.

Lisa turned her face toward him, eyes wet, lips swollen. “I know,” she whispered back. “And I love you. I always did. Even when I hated you.”

Her free hand lifted, brushing sweat-damp curls back from his forehead, tracing his face, the strength in his jaw, the pulse hammering at his throat. Relief swelled in her chest: he wasn’t fragile anymore. He was here. Hers. Whole.

Michael let out a long sigh, kissed her shoulder, and held her tighter, still buried in her, refusing to let go.

The room smelled of sex and woodsmoke, the fire still crackling faintly down the hall. Their bodies stayed tangled, damp with sweat, the sheet twisted uselessly at their feet. Michael’s weight pressed into her back, still inside her, his breathing slow, measured, as though he’d finally burned the last of his restraint.

Lisa lay still, cheek pressed to the pillow, her body thrumming with aftershocks. She didn’t want him to move. Didn’t want the air to shift, or the spell to break.

At some point, exhaustion dragged her under.

In her dream, she was back on stage. The lights were low, the band half-visible in the shadows, the microphone stand cold beneath her hand. She sang the way she always sang – sharp-edged, honest, a little wounded – but when she looked up, the room was empty except for Michael. He sat in the back, alone, not clapping, not smiling, just watching her with that quiet fire in his eyes.

She tried to finish the song but the lyrics blurred, falling apart in her mouth. And then he stood, walked forward, and the stage dissolved until it was only the two of them in a silent room. Her voice was gone. His gaze was the only sound left.

The dream shifted then, and he was thinner, paler, as he had been during the rehearsals two years ago, when his body had failed him without warning. The memory that still woke her sometimes in a cold sweat: monitors beeping, his skin clammy under her hands, her own voice breaking as she begged him not to leave her.

It had felt, then, like losing him was inevitable. And maybe that fear had been the first crack in their union. Maybe that was when the distance between them began – the six months apart only the final collapse.

Lisa woke with her chest tight, breath shallow.

The bungalow was dark, fire burned low. Her throat was dry. For a second she didn’t know where she was, until she turned her head and saw him.

Michael lay on his side beside her, naked, hair mussed from her hands, stubble shading his jaw. His body was sprawled without ceremony, one arm tucked under the pillow, the other heavy across the mattress where she’d been. He looked different than he once had – not polished, not posed, none of the careful beauty the world still expected of him. This was something else. A rawness. A man stripped to his simplest form, nothing but flesh and breath and the gravity of who he was.

Lisa reached out without thinking, fingers brushing lightly along his cheek. He didn’t stir.

God, he was so handsome.

For months she’d feared this sight was gone for good. Not the body, not the sex, but this: him, close, at peace, letting her be near without armor.

The weight of reality crept in, as it always did. The kids. The house. The facade they’d been holding up these past months. Riley, nearly grown, orbiting in her own world. Gabriel, sullen when he felt deceived. Eva, who would cling harder to Michael the moment he walked through the door. And Grace, too reserved to fully express her unease but quick to sense every shift in the air.

They’d have to decide soon – was Daddy still “away working,” or had the storm truly passed?

And the rules they’d made, long ago, about privacy, about keeping their love boring to the outside world so it could be ferocious inside their walls, still held. The question was whether they could live by them again, together.

Lisa closed her eyes, pressing her face into the pillow, the ache of it all thick in her throat. After all, maybe they’d drifted away bit by bit not because they’d stopped loving each other, but because they had forgotten how to be alone. Every decision had been about the children, about schools, about his health, about their careers. They had been parents, caretakers, artists, figures to the world. Everything except what they truly were: a man and a woman who had chosen to be together day after day.

Now, here, in the silence of this old room, it was finally just them.

And perhaps that was the only way to save it all – and each other.

Lisa shifted closer, sliding her arm around his waist, pressing her face into his chest. He stirred, humming softly, his hand finding hers in the dark. Even asleep, he held on.

For the first time in months, Lisa let herself believe they weren’t finished.

Later, when her breathing steadied into sleep, Michael slipped free. Quiet as he could, he pulled on his jeans, bare feet carrying him through the hall until the screen door clicked behind him.

The porch boards were cool underfoot. The night smelled of oak and damp earth, the hills stretched out black and endless under a sharp scatter of stars. He braced his palms on the railing, chest tight with something he couldn’t name.

It was too easy to imagine losing it again. Too easy to picture waking tomorrow to silence, to her gone, to this house empty all over. The thought hollowed him out, sharper than jealousy ever had, worse than the months apart.

His throat closed. He pressed his forehead to his hands, whispering low, as if the dark might keep the secret: “Don’t let me lose this again. Don’t let me waste her.” He didn’t know if he was talking to God, the night, or himself. Maybe all three.

Behind him, the door creaked. Bare feet padded across the boards. Lisa’s voice came, rough with sleep. “Michael?”

He straightened too fast, trying for steadiness. But when she slipped her arms around his waist from behind, cheek pressing into his back, he couldn’t hold himself up anymore.

He leaned into her warmth, closed his eyes, and let her keep him standing.

He must have drifted back into bed after that, though he couldn’t remember the moment. Morning light spilled across the room, warm and unfiltered. His body felt heavy with the kind of exhaustion that comes after too much wanting and too little rest. No slammed doors. No silence sharp enough to cut. Just Lisa.

She was sprawled on her stomach, hair a tangled auburn mess across his arm, her bare back rising and falling with slow, steady breaths. The sheet covered exactly nothing important, and he was pretty sure she’d done it on purpose.

He grinned.

“Stop staring at me,” she mumbled into the pillow, eyes still shut.

“I’m not staring,” he said, voice low and rough. “I’m appreciating.”

That earned him a muffled snort. “Well, appreciate quieter, then. Some of us got no sleep.”

He stretched beside her, brushing his leg deliberately against hers under the sheet. “That’s your fault.”

Her head turned just enough to expose one green eye, sharp and wicked even half-awake. “Dude! I said, quit staring like you’re about to write a fucking poem.”

Michael laughed into the pillow. “You weren’t complaining last night. Matter of fact, you were begging.”

That snapped both her eyes open. Hair wild, glare blazing. “Begging? Oh, fuck you.”

“You did,” he said sweetly.

Her little fist punched his chest, but not hard enough to sting. “Careful, mister. You’re not too old to get booted out of bed.”

Michael propped his head on his hand, grinning down at her. “You’d drag me back in before I hit the floor.”

Lisa shoved her hair out of her face, scoffing. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Not flattery. Fact.” He leaned closer, kissed her bare shoulder, lingering. “Pretty sure you screamed my name so loud the trees outside heard it.”

Lisa groaned, rolling her eyes. “You’re foul.”

Michael grinned. “I’m just an amateur. You’re way worse than I could ever be.”

Her lips brushed his jaw, wicked smile curving. “Why? ‘Cause I told you to fuck me through the damn mattress? That’s worse?”

His laugh broke open, delighted.

“It is!”

“You’re right,” she purred. “And you fucking loved it.”

Her hand slipped into his hair, idly stroking, and for once she wasn’t teasing. Just touching. Claiming him without a word. He let her, staring at the ceiling, a quiet grin still tugging at his mouth.

“Feels different,” he admitted finally.

Lisa searched his eyes, hair wild, face bare and devastatingly beautiful in the morning light. “What does?”

“Waking up.” He finally turned and their gaze met. “Not sulking. Not pissed at the world. Just… here. With you.”

Her smile tilted, wry but genuine. “You’re welcome.”

He kissed her, slow and unhurried, then pulled back with a smile. “So what now? Breakfast?”

She smirked, a wicked glint in her eye. “Get creative, genius. Feed me or fuck me, those are the options.”

Michael groaned, flopping back against the pillow. “You’re impossible.”

Lisa nestled against his chest, smug. “And you’re still here. Guess that makes us even.”

For the first time in months, he didn’t dread what came next. He just breathed, her weight warm and solid against him.

Epilogue

By midday, the bungalow was a mess that looked like life instead of memory. Sheets tangled, wine glasses abandoned on the nightstand, the fire gone to ash. The place no longer smelled like cedar and dust, but of coffee and them – sweat and perfume and skin. It wasn’t holy anymore. It was theirs again. And utterly, definitely unholy.

Michael drove, Lisa beside him, one elbow propped against the window, hair wild from the wind. Neither spoke much, but it wasn’t silence in the old way – not brittle, not punishing. This was a softer hush, woven with glances, with her hand brushing his on the gearshift, with the small grin he caught at the corner of her mouth when she thought he wasn’t looking. Once, silence had meant distance. Now, it meant ease.

At one point she fiddled with the radio, found nothing she liked, and turned it off again. He left his hand over hers a second longer than necessary. Every mile felt less like leaving and more like arriving.

The gates of the ranch closed behind them, oak trees shrinking in the mirror. By dusk, they were home.

The house opened up like a storm. Riley sprawled on the couch, headphones in, faking disinterest. But her eyes tracked her mother the way only a daughter’s could, sharp and impossible to fool. Michael bent to press a kiss to her hair anyway, and though she rolled her eyes, her lips twitched at the corner. She didn’t pull away. She never did with Michael. Pretending to be annoyed was just part of their game.

Gabriel sat hunched at the kitchen table, arms crossed, jaw tight as if six months of absence had built a wall in his chest. Lisa kissed the crown of his head, and for a moment he stayed rigid – then leaned into her almost imperceptibly. Michael caught it, his own chest loosening as though that single shift gave him permission to breathe.

Eva launched herself into Michael’s arms without hesitation, clinging so hard he staggered back two steps. He buried his face in her curls, blinking against the sting in his eyes. “Don’t go again,” she whispered, fierce as only a child could be. His throat closed around the promise he couldn’t yet speak but would die to keep.

Grace stood in the doorway, arms crossed, watching it all with that quiet, assessing calm of hers. Too reserved to fling herself at him like Eva, too protective to pretend like Riley – yet the small lift at the corner of her mouth gave her away. Reprieve. Acceptance. Maybe even forgiveness.

Lisa’s laugh broke through then, cracked with relief, and the noise was beautiful. It was comforting.

Later, when the kids were down and the house softened into quiet, Michael stood by the bedroom window, shirt half-unbuttoned, staring out at the yard where shadows stretched long. Lisa leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, watching him.

“Back to work tomorrow?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said. “If I feel like it.”

She smirked. “That’s new.”

Michael turned, one eyebrow raised. “Well, I guess I’ve earned it.”

Lisa padded closer, barefoot on the carpet, her voice dropping. “So have I.”

They met in the middle, his hands finding her waist, hers tugging at the open collar of his shirt. For a moment, they just stood there, forehead to forehead, their breaths syncing the way they always had in the quiet.

“Feels different,” he murmured again, repeating the words from that morning.

Her hand brushed through his hair, gentler now. “Because we are.”

He kissed her then, not frantic, not ravenous like the night before, but slow, deep, claiming. She answered with the same fire, her body pressing flush to his, the soft sound in her throat undoing him more than any argument or promise ever could.

When they pulled apart, her lips were swollen, her voice rough. “So… feed me or fuck me?”

Michael laughed, low and warm, his forehead resting against hers. “Always both with you,” he said simply.

He lifted her easily, carrying her to the bed they’d shared for years but hadn’t truly lived in for months. She curled against him, her hand resting flat over his heart, his arm locking her in as though to make sure the world couldn’t pull her away again.

Lisa whispered into the dark, half-teasing, half-pleading: “No more counting days.”

He kissed the top of her head, a quiet vow pressed into her hair: “Nope. No more.”

Outside, the night went quiet, the world chasing someone else’s noise. Inside, their fortress held.

End.