Page 22 of Ever Mine

“I want to feel you come on my cock,” he says. “But I don’t know if I can wait any longer.”

“You can come inside me,” I say.

“Addison, love, oh fuck,” he groans.

The first pulse of his hot release inside me pushes me over the edge.

The orgasm shudders through me. I see his own climax rocking through him. There’s something so miraculously intimate about staring into each other’s eyes while it happens.

chapter

ten

Thorne

The morning after is oddly quiet.

I half expect the world to look different, but of course it doesn’t. The sky is the same pale blue. My house is still immaculate. The coffee still tastes bitter.

Addison’s hair, though—her hair on my pillow looks like a promise.

She left early, murmuring something about deadlines, gathering her things with the nervous efficiency of someone pretending last night was a perfectly normal, educational experience. I’d pretended too. Offered her coffee, a smile, and a light quip about successful research outcomes.

And then she was gone.

Now I’m the idiot sitting at my desk, trying to convince myself I didn’t just change the trajectory of my life over the course of a single night.

I make it through three contracts, two emails, and one very confused call from our distributor before I decide I need to talk to someone. Unfortunately, the only someone available is Ford.

He’s in his office, feet on the desk, tossing a stress ball in the air when I walk in.

“Morning, Thorne. You look like you wrestled an existential crisis and lost.”

“Good to see you too.” I drop into the chair opposite him. “Do you have a minute?”

“Sure,” he says, still tossing the ball. “What’s up?”

I hesitate. I can’t exactly lead with So, I may have just slept with the woman who thinks this is a research project about her virginity.

So I circle around it. “Hypothetically speaking, if a man… found himself in a situation where he may have become overly involved in, say, an extracurricular mentorship⁠—”

Ford lowers the ball. “Mentorship?”

“Research partnership,” I amend. “Very academic.”

“Right. And this… academic partner… is a woman?”

“Presumably.”

He smirks. “You’re being weird, which means this is definitely about a woman. Who is she?”

“No one,” I say too quickly. “Just… someone who deserves better guidance than she’s likely to get.”

Ford leans back. “You’re worried you crossed a line.”

“I’m worried I might have drawn the line in the wrong place,” I admit. “And that moving it now would only make things worse.”

For once, Ford doesn’t laugh. “So what’s the actual problem, Thorne? You like her?”