After

The drop hit me in the chair, a cold slide under the heat, so Joel got me up before I could pretend I was fine. He walked me the six steps to the sofa in the back. The shop was still locked. He shook out the blanket I keep folded under the tray and put it over my lap, then set a glass of water where I could reach it without sitting all the way up. The lamp was the low one. He left the work lights off.

He sat on the floor with his shoulder against the sofa and his palm on my shin, over the blanket, nowhere near the fresh bites. He asked me to drink before I talked. I did. The water was cold and ordinary and it helped more than I want to admit. I checked the bites with my own fingers. Skin whole. My cunt still felt open from the fuck in the chair. I did not ask him to do that again.

I wanted his weight. I wanted the talking to stay small. He got up on the sofa, boots off, and pulled me into his chest so my face was against his shirt. One arm under my neck, the other loose on my waist, careful of the bite. I cried for about a minute, the useless kind that comes when I have been in charge of other people since noon. He did not flinch. He said I had done well asking, and that he had liked being trusted with it, and then he shut up and let me listen to him breathe.

When the shake left my hands I kissed his throat, just a kiss, and told him he could touch my cunt if he stayed slow. He put a hand over the blanket at first, then under it, two fingers fucking my cunt with no agenda except to keep me warm. I came quiet, almost surprised, a small pulse in my cunt, and laughed into his shirt after. He made me finish the water. He checked the marks again with the lamp tilted down, told me they would fade by the weekend, and stayed until my voice sounded like mine. I fell asleep for twenty minutes with the glass empty on the tray and his hand still on my back.