The days until Franco’s dinner felt like a slow, sweet torture. Every nerve in my body was tuned to a frequency only Jemma could broadcast.

At home, Bridgette and I fucked with a frantic, almost violent energy. In the shower, steam so thick I could barely see her face, I had her pressed chest-first against the glass, her nipples flattening against it while I gripped her hips and drove into her from behind, watching the fog smear where her palms clawed for purchase. In the entryway, I’d barely gotten the door shut before I had her against the wall, her legs wrapped around my waist, her heels digging into the small of my back as I pumped into her standing up, her head knocking softly against the plaster with every thrust.

On the kitchen island, I’d bent her back across the cold granite and eaten her until she was trembling and incoherent, her thighs clamped around my ears, and then I’d flipped her and fucked her hard enough that the fruit bowl rattled off the edge. And at work—I lost count of how many times I locked myself in the single-stall bathroom, belt unbuckled, jeans shoved down my thighs, my fist working slow then fast while I leaned one shoulder against the cold metal wall. I’d close my eyes and picture Jemma on her knees, her lips parted and slick, taking the head of my cock into her mouth and looking up at me while she did it—those dark eyes steady, almost daring—and I’d have to bite down on my own forearm to keep quiet when I came, striping the inside of the toilet bowl while the ventilation fan droned overhead.

Then one night, I came home to find Bridgette leaning against the kitchen counter. The overhead light caught the delicate pink lace of her bra and thong, and the silver spoon between her lips. A pint of Half Baked sat beside her hip, already half gone. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes dark with a mix of mischief and hunger. When she saw me looking, she didn’t smile—she just let the spoon drop slightly, her tongue touching its bowl. My cock hardened instantly, straining against my zipper.

She saw it. Of course she did. A deeper blush spread across her chest. “You can have me,” she murmured, voice low and thick like honey, “but this—” she lifted the pint— “stays right here.”

I was on her before she finished the sentence. I hooked two fingers into the lace at her hips and yanked her thong down to her knees in one pull. She was already wet—visibly, embarrassingly wet, her folds glistening in the kitchen light—and when I pressed two fingers inside her she gasped and grabbed the counter’s edge with her free hand, knuckles whitening. I curled them forward, finding the soft ridge that made her hips stutter, and worked her like that until her breath came in short, broken pulls and her thighs were shaking against my wrist.

Then I bent her over the table. She went without resistance, cheek turned against the wood, one hand braced flat on the surface and the other lifting the spoon back to her mouth. I shoved her lace thong the rest of the way down, pushed the hem of her bra up so her breasts hung free and dragged against the table with every movement, and drove into her in one hard stroke.

Her moan came out muffled around the spoon, fogged with breath. I fisted my hand in her hair—not gently, pulling until the tendons in her neck drew taut—and she made a high, punched-out sound that moved straight down my spine and into my cock. Her hips tilted back instinctively, adjusting the angle, taking me deeper, and I felt her clench around me as I started to move. Long strokes first, pulling back until just the tip caught at her entrance, then filling her completely—slow enough that she could feel every inch, slow enough that she kept losing her grip on the spoon. Then faster. Harder. The table legs scraped the floor. Melted ice cream dripped from the spoon onto the wood grain and neither of us looked at it.

I reached around and pressed my thumb to her clit, rolling it in tight circles, and her whole body jolted. She stopped eating. The spoon hovered somewhere near her lips, forgotten. Her fingers spread flat against the table, scrambling for grip, and she started making a low, continuous sound that rose in pitch every time I bottomed out inside her.

I fucked her like I was trying to exorcise something—or invite it in. Her body shook beneath mine, her inner walls tightening, fluttering, gripping me in the rhythmic pulses that meant she was close. I felt it building at the base of my spine, that molten pressure drawing everything inward, and I drove into her harder, chasing it, my hips snapping against hers with a sound that filled the kitchen. She came first—a full-body shudder, her back arching sharply, a broken cry swallowed against the back of her own wrist. The clench of her around me pulled me over the edge a moment later. I buried myself to the hilt and came with a guttural groan, my forehead dropping between her shoulder blades, my whole body locked and shaking as it tore through me.

And behind my eyes, as pleasure ripped through every nerve, it was Jemma’s face. Jemma’s dark amethyst eyes looking up at me from her knees. Jemma’s name sitting in my throat like a coal. For the first time, I didn’t try to push it down. I didn’t care.