Chapter 6: The “Just Once More” Rule

Evening settled over the apartment like a secret we were both keeping from the daylight. I’d spent the whole day at the laptop on the couch, pretending the code mattered, but my screen had been mostly blank since noon. Sophie’s texts had started around eleven, each one landing like a match on dry grass.

Can’t stop thinking about your hand on my throat this morning. Every time I bent to make a latte I felt it again. You own me now and you don’t even know it.

By three she’d sent a photo—just the hem of her work polo lifted enough to show the faint bruise her pulse had left against my fingers. Nothing explicit. Everything devastating. My cock had been half-hard for hours, a low, constant thrum that made typing impossible. When the key finally turned in the lock I was already aching.

She stepped inside wearing the tiniest denim shorts I’d ever seen and one of my old black T-shirts, the one with the faded band logo that used to reach her knees. No bra. The thin cotton clung to the soft swell of her breasts, nipples already tight from the walk home. She dropped her bag, kicked off her sneakers, and bent straight over the kitchen counter to grab a glass from the cabinet. The shorts rode up, exposing the lower curve of her ass and the shadowed line between her thighs. She stayed there a second longer than necessary, glancing back at me with a small, knowing smile.

“Miss me?” she asked, voice light but edged with heat.

I swallowed hard. “You have no idea.”

We made dinner on the couch—cheap stir-fry from the freezer, eaten straight from the containers because plates felt too formal now. The pull-out was still made up from the night before, but we sat on the cushions like it was any other evening. Halfway through the meal she set her carton down and looked at me, serious for once.

“We need a rule,” she said. “Movie night only. That’s it. Everything else is too dangerous. Mom could show up, neighbors could hear ... we keep it to the couch, under the lights off, like last time. Just once more. Then we stop.”

I nodded, the words tasting like the lie they already were. “Movie night only. Agreed.”

She smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. The teasing started immediately. She reached across me for the remote, letting her breasts brush my arm on purpose, the soft weight of them dragging warm through the thin shirt. When she settled back she spread her legs just enough that the denim shorts gaped at the crotch, giving me a glimpse of plain white panties already damp at the center. The conversation drifted into dangerous territory, low and filthy.