Jake’s leaving was awkward, and Owen’s leaving was more so. Really, I’d wanted to talk to them about the talk Penelope and I had had, but I didn’t know how. Nor did I know if it was even best. I mean, of course they would try to make claims about how it was going to work, what else would anyone in their position do?

I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about this position or us or anything else.

Penelope leaving after them was an actual relief. While she was my best friend, still, sometimes being around her required a gargantuan effort that left me drained later on.

Like now. All I had the energy to do was half-collapse on my bed and check my phone. And then fling it to the foot of the bed.

No messages. No nothing. Looks like sleep, it was.

The rest of the weekend, which I had off by some miraculous cruel trick of fate, was more of the same. Radio silence from either twin.

Stupid of me not to text them, but, stubbornly, pointlessly, I wanted them to text me. I wanted to know that sleeping with both of them hadn’t changed things. And by Tuesday night – four whole days of zero contact, after over a week of practically nonstop, I had my answer. Penelope had been right. I’d been kidding myself that this could ever actually work.

And that was why I was so shocked when, just as I was turning into bed at 11:15 pm, I got a call.

“It’s Owen. I’m at your door.”

“Why’d you call me then?”

“I don’t know, so you didn’t think I was some apartment murderer or Amazon guy.”

“Amazon guys don’t come in the middle of the night.”

“Are you going to let me in or not?”

He had a point. Really, I wasn’t sure I wanted to, the way my heart was flapping against my rib cage hard enough to fall out. These past four days had been an exercise in determination, in steeling myself against despair. Sure, I’d devoured the token Cherry Garcia, but I hadn’t missed a day of work, hadn’t even let myself fully despair that the first time I’d fallen for anyone since Brent, I got my heart ripped into a thousand pieces.

But still, that feeling of my insides corkscrewing into a dead pile at the base of me, of being emptied out, gutted entirely, that had followed me these past few days – there was no denying that. Or the danger of it returning – even worsening – after this latest visit of Owen’s.

“Cin?” he said, and I knew I wasn’t going to just let him stand there.

Not when all of me burned to see him, to hear what he’d say – if anything – as to the reason behind the twins’ disappearing act.

“Ok,” I said, opening the door.

Phone still at his ear, he said, “I’m sorry.”

I nodded.

“I’ve just, been dealing with some crazy work stuff and I wanted to see you, I just wanted to solve everything first.”

“And did you?”

Smiling gently, Owen held out a hand, lowered my phone. “No. But I couldn’t spend another hour not with you.”

I looked at him. Sentence fragments, question openers were all clamoring against each other in my head.

When he stepped inside, his body pressing to me, the door slamming behind him, none of it was a question. It was an answer to the main one, the one I hadn’t even thought to ask.

Yes, yes of course Owen wanted me – badly.

When his mouth claimed mine, I let him. There was something still itching at the edge of my consciousness, all the strings and unknowns still half-unravelled, but I left them there, there at the edge of things, while Owen’s hands proved the truth of his words.

They were shedding my clothes, layer by layer. And then his hands were on my breasts, claspin and claiming.

My head dipped back, and his mouth accepted the offering of my neck.

“You really missed me, huh,” I managed to groan.

His fingertips glided straight down my front. “You have no idea.”

My gaze shot to his, my eyebrows snapped up. “Tell me.”

The thoughts that remained in me were still uncertain and tremulous and I wanted him to put them to rest. Put all doubt to rest, leave nothing but this force of a feeling, this all-encompassment of an attraction.

His teeth bit into my ear and I jolted. “I jerked off to you yesterday, and the day before that.”

Butterflies were exploding in me as I ground my pelvis into him. “Not the day before that?”

He cupped my ass, squeezed it hard. “Didn’t want to overdo it.”

“Why not?”

Owen peeled back, freezing suddenly, his smile caught unawares. “Do you really not get it? How I can’t screw this up?”

“What are you talking about?”

For a moment there, his gaze was snagged on mine, his lips mouthing out what he wanted to say. But then he shook his head, shook it all away. And took me in his arms.

The way he kissed me, touched me, was like falling into butter. Smooth and sublime and were my knees actually buckling right out from under me?

It didn’t matter. Owen had his hands on my leggings, peeling back the last layer, taking his sweet time with it too.

After a few seconds, his reflective voice came over, “You have a damn fine ass. You know that?”

Without giving me a chance to respond, his lips suctioned onto a cheek and I squealed.

“Owen!”

Next second, his pants were joining the heap of clothes on the floor, although that wasn’t where he was looking. I turned to see that his gaze had never left me.

“Come here,” he rasped.

As if my feet were a magnet to his words, they obeyed. We kissed our way to the couch, him on top of me. He pinned one arm down and then another, smiling deliciously at me.

“Want me to stop?”

I glared at him. “You like teasing me?”

He smeared a kiss into me before pulling away, smiling naughtily. “It does have its appeal, yeah.”

With one sure thrust, Owen entered me.

“Finally,” he breathed.

“Finally,” I echoed, though there was no need.

As he dipped into my wet further, all of me was rejoicing with the word, the realization. Owen’s dick inside of me. Thrusting, pulsing into me. Finally.

It was a dance that had no real beginning or end, no moves but only actions and reactions, playing and exploring. Dipping and gliding and piercing and clasping. A shaking soundtrack, a groaning tapestry.

And, as our bodies moved from one position to the next, legs splaying, pulsing unceasing, shaking extraordinarily, it occurred to me what this was.

The perfection of body on body ecstasy, of my coming once and again, it was nothing short of sublime.

And the way Owen was looking at me. I thought there’d been adoration in his chestnuts of eyes before but turned out I had no idea. Not the slightest idea.

No, now, this, as we were joined and he spasmed into me, aiming for yet another orgasm, the half-lidded, hardly stirring fixated way he was looking at me – now that was adoration.

It was only fitting that, as the tidal wave of my third and most powerful release crested and threatened to crash, that Owen let out a muffled roar, his lips snapping open.

“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Funny and – unexpected – and– oh fuck yes, Cin!”

And then, we came.