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Reaching out to John was a mistake. A common refrain of his during your relationship was panic leads to poor decisions, which is precisely what happens when your dog-sitter cancels the night before your long weekend away.
You booked the trip one lonely, wine-drunk evening fresh off the break-up. Exclusive Singles Retreat! the flashy ad read, a pathetic lifeline tossed to you by the algorithm. It boasted a packed itinerary, beautiful accommodations, and discreet, no-strings-attached fun with ‘sexy singles’. It was cringy. Funny. You faintly remember alternating between giggling and crying as you booked the reservation and flight. Used the joint card to boot, a final fuck you to the long-term partner that couldn’t commit.
The card is a detail you only recall when John responds to your text, promptly agreeing to watch the dog and the house. Even when moderated by a screen, his earnestness instantly renders you guilty. Here he is, doing you a solid for free while you plan to gallivant off to the beach. You arrange for him to pop by for a check-in and to pick up the spare keys.
The night of, you kill time to stop biting your nails. You shower, tidy, administer Ziggy’s meds, and walk him to the corner and back. Yet the fraught energy lingers with nowhere to go. It’s been months since you ended things, and you haven’t seen John since that night. He was upset but understanding, always so understanding. Consistency and romance are difficult with his line of work, and he couldn’t deny it. Didn’t deny it. The years came and went. You watched your friend’s engagements and weddings, and John changed the subject whenever you hinted at wanting the same. Enough was enough. You broke it to him gently and spent the weekend at your sister’s so he could pack in peace. It was the least you could do.
Now, one desperate text later, the man you once called the love of your life is due on your doorstep.
You’re debating swimsuits when Ziggy alerts. The elderly, dish-eared mutt thinks of himself as the neighborhood watch. He perches awkwardly on the back of the sofa most hours, quietly growling at those who dare to exist outside, but he only yips for two people: the mail carrier and John. You toss the flashy number into your open suitcase and hurry barefoot to the door. Every step buzzes, tickling your ribs with a nervous excitement.
“Back, get back, you oaf,” You order, a hand on the doorknob and leg lifted as a barrier. It’s no use. Nothing gets between your misfit and his dad.
Ziggy bullies you out of the way, suddenly a puppy again, and heaves his front half up to John’s knee with a strained whine.
It’s a chaotic welcome. When you hear John’s familiar, rumbling laugh as he helps you herd the wiggling gremlin to the garden, you don’t know who’s giddier: you or the dog.
“So, as you can see, not much has changed with Zig, other than the meds and softer food.” You break the ice and withdraw into the neutral territory of the kitchen.
“He doesn’t listen to a word you say, does he,” He chuckles, admiring the small plot he landscaped with his own hands.
John looks good. In all the years you’ve known him, he’s never fussed over his appearance beyond maintenance and basic hygiene, preferring comfort and function, which is why your eyes are drawn to his chest. The dark blue cotton pulls taut as he casually stretches and leans against the island. The fit of his sleeves over his biceps and delts is practically sinful. He never liked tight shirts before. He always grumbled when the wash shrank them. Was he lifting more? For work? For someone else?
You turn to the one-pager you’ve compiled as a distraction and slide it across the counter to John. “Here.”
He turns the paper, skims it, and frowns.
“What? Did I miss something obvious?”
“Thought you’d have more f’me to do.” His face lifts, and he stares at you through his brow before slowly straightening. He glances about the kitchen, then takes a few steps to peer down the hall. “Nothing around the house needs doin’?”
Your eyes widen a fraction. “Around the house? No. John, I just need you to take care of Ziggy, get the mail, water the plants…That sort of thing. No projects.”
But it’s as if you’re speaking into the wind. John continues, heading toward the bedroom. “Did you ever oil the door hinges like I told you to?”
“John!” You protest, poised to chastise further as you follow. A quick peek outside and there’s Ziggy, clueless, happy, and already near-comatose on his outdoor bed. John’s halfway into the room when you look back. The steamrolling isn’t something you remember fondly.
This isn’t about the hinges. This is John trying to find a foothold in a place that’s no longer his. To hold onto something—anything—even if it’s a piece of crummy hardware.
He swings the door open and shut on its hinges, head cocked to listen to the sharp creak. “Sounds like you didn’t.”
You smush past him, palms on his ribs and bicep to push him out, face heating with indignation. “John, c’mon, you can’t just barge into my room.”
“Wasn’t too long ago it was our room.” John chuckles, twisting to look down at your feeble attempt to move him, a sly grin on his face and snark on his tongue when his eyes snap past you. You trail his gaze over your shoulder, and your fingers curl slightly in his too-tight shirt. The cut-out swimsuit, one of a few impulse purchases for this trip, sits right where you left it—atop your open suitcase.
“Your swimsuit looks different. Missing some fabric.”
You whirl away with a shaky laugh, shutting your bag with the foolish hope he’ll leave it. “Trying something new.”
“I’d say,” He sounds hoarse, voice dipping somehow lower, and you hear him suck in a breath. “Where did you say you were headed again? Mallorca? With your sister, right?”
“Yep. For an extended weekend.” You don’t dare to turn around and meet his eye.
He huffs, an amused edge to it. “It’s funny. Could’ve sworn she’s visiting her in-laws.”
Beneath your bare feet, the carpet sinks as John steps closer.
“Want to try that again?”
The thought crosses your mind again in a flash, in big bold letters, a flashing marquee. Reaching out was a mistake. How he knows about your sister’s schedule isn’t clear, but if he knows that, he knows—
“It’s clever, I’ll admit, how the charges appear. The travel agency bills under an alias, but with friends like mine, it wasn’t hard to find the real name.” John’s hands skim from your waist to your hips, lightly holding you in place. “‘Exxxcape’, really, sweetheart? Something new, indeed.”
“John,” You stutter at the press of his fingertips on your sides. Contorting in his grip, you push with a palm flat to his chest. “We’re not together. I’m allowed to go on trips.”
His brows raise in question above his half-lidded eyes. They empty, the light and mirth flattening into a stare you assume he reserves for the men under his command. “If you need to get fucked so badly, why not look closer to home?”
Anger, sharp and scandalized, chases the embarrassment right out of you. “I’m not going on this trip just to get fucked.”
“No? Not what the charming website suggests.” His eyes flit to the bed. “If I open that bag, I bet I’ll find something that suggests otherwise, too. Aside from that new swimsuit.”
“John.” You warn.
He reaches around you anyway. The tussle is short, a stupid effort on your part. Despite your struggle, you end up on your stomach beside your suitcase, wrists gathered, pinned, and pushed into your lower back. His hold is firm, and the worst part is that you know, you trust, he’d let go if that’s what you really wanted. If you spat out the words.
But he flips the lid open and clicks his tongue. The sound shoots straight between your legs.
John roots around the packed clothes, making a few smart comments here and there, recalling where and when he’s seen you in them. Sneers at a skirt he deems too short and a front-tying blouse too convenient. His hands squeeze your wrists after unzipping the underwear compartment. ”Don’t recall these.”
Cheek pressed to the bed, you watch him pluck a bundle of cornflower blue lace out to let it unfurl into a poor excuse of underwear. Curiosity and contempt war in his matching eyes.
No, he wouldn’t recognize them. It was admittedly a dramatic gesture, but you discarded most of your lingerie upon returning home from your sister’s that fateful night. Almost all the sets he purchased.
“You were in the middle of packing, weren’t you.”
“Yes,” You snarl indignantly. “And I’m not finished, I still need to decide on a swimsuit, so if you don’t mind—”
John releases his hold immediately, but you’re barely upright when he tosses the cut-out option into them.
“Go on. Let’s see this one.”
It’s beyond inappropriate. A shoddy suggestion spoken by a man who once had the right to make. He knows it, too, hiding an irreverent smirk behind the thinnest veneers of detachment. Like he’s helping you pick a paint color. You waffle. Shouting and shaming don’t work with John when he digs his heels in. There is only one way to get him to leave. Comply.
“Here’s fine.” He rumbles when you take a step toward the door.
You shift from foot to foot. “John, let me change in the bathroom. Or at least wait outside.”
“Here’s fine for me,” He repeats, reclining slightly on the edge of the bed, one hand toying with the blue lace. “Here’s fine for you.”
Frustration swells like the tide. Gritting your teeth, you seethe. “Fine.”
The face he makes when you unceremoniously discard your shirt and shimmy out of your shorts is equally insufferable and endearing. A big, smug grin under his whiskers and a white-knuckled grip on the panties. Yet, since the breakup, you’ve had your fair share of interest, but no other man looks at you with such obvious, all-consuming want. Love—attraction was never the issue.
You don’t dare let your eyes fall to his lap when you unclasp your bra, though the thought alone spurs heat behind your navel.
To his credit, he doesn’t say a word when you’re naked, shoulders back and chin up. Nor does he move when you pluck the offending swimsuit off the bed, glancing down at its construction.
“Need help?” He asks, practically purring.
“No.” you hiss, pulling the material over your thighs, hips, and then your tits. It presses snugly to your frame, hugging you where needed and exposing everything you want. It leaves little to the imagination, not that he doesn’t know every inch of you. John stares, laser-focused, on the ample swaths of skin left bare.
“Christ, sweetheart.”
You keep well out of arm’s reach.
He drinks you in. “That, my dear,” he grumbles, struggling to keep his voice steady, ”is not a swimsuit.” He stands slowly, stalking towards you, his gaze dark and roving freely.
“John—”
“You’d be better off wearing nothing at all.” He stops a hair short, fingers ghosting over the window in the fabric over your abdomen and tracing the shape across your body. He tugs lightly at an edge and runs his finger along it, chest expanding when your own breathing falters. He lets it snap against your skin and smirks at how you squirm.
You cannot deny the flutter of nerves in your stomach.
“You’ve made your point.”
A laugh, low in his throat, sends a shiver to the base of your spine. “I don’t think I’ve begun to make my point.”
“John.”
His eyes harden at the sound of his name, jaw clenching in a resolve he doesn’t voice, and doesn’t need to. The back half of your complaint doesn’t make it out before his hands and arms suddenly and greedily gather and pull you to his chest. His grip is secure, possessive.
“No. I’ll be damned if I let my girl prance around half-naked for a bunch of horny twats on some godforsaken beach.” A hand migrates, fingers hedging the fabric’s cut over a cheek, raising goosebumps. “Not when I can give her what she needs right here.”
Whatever protest claws up your throat, he swiftly smothers it with his mouth, a deep kiss that pulls you from the present and along memory lane instead. Your body reacts instinctively though synapses misfire, colliding violently. He bites off your words whenever your lips disconnect, forcing you to choose between air and arguments.
Somehow, he gets you to the bed, sending your suitcase clattering to the ground. For the laughably thin barriers separating him from his favorite spots, he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to part them from your body just yet. His weight keeps you in place, not that you’re fighting as much as you ought. In fact, your hands grasp at his stupid tight shirt, placing the scantest of pressures on the muscle beneath. He takes it as encouragement, molding himself to you, forcing your wrists to bend and palms to flatten. A hand takes a healthy handful of your hip and squeezes. Finally, he lets you come up for a spell.
While you suck in frantic breaths, he sucks spots into your neck. Thinking of the trip, of prancing around half-naked as he so eloquently put it, you find some fight and futilely push. Your nails dig through fabric, but he merely grunts and scrapes his teeth to the junction of your neck and shoulder. It forces a whimper that crests into a moan when the hand on your hip pulls your leg open to let him in. He slots against you, cock digging through denim and into your thigh.
He’s unrelenting, biting and soothing over and over again until your spine is pulp and arms jelly. His voice rasps, harsh as the metal teeth of a saw on softwood.
“You gonna cancel your trip, or do I need to fuck my point home?”
Your legs nearly spread further at that. Nearly. You’d forgotten how it feels to be wanted by John, to be possessed.
“You-We-We broke up.”
It’s a weak assertion, a hollow declaration that falls flat in the charged silence that follows.
His head lifts. Splotches of red color his cheeks, and his eyes bore into you. See through you, just like they always have.
“No. You kicked me out.” John smooths his thumb over your temple. A flicker of a soft smile. A tiny tilt of his head. He hums. “But it’s alright. You invited me back.”
The earnestness does not match the fervor with which he unwraps you like a gift on Christmas morning.
Ignoring your squeaks, his hands slide under the suit, tugging it down to free your breasts. “This is,” he rumbles, fixated, “the most useless piece of clothing I’ve ever seen.” He lifts your wiggling hips and yanks the gusset of the suit to the side, stretching it from behind, letting the curve of your ass keep it out of his way. Air hits your cunt, but before you can cover yourself, one big hand catches them on your stomach.
“Much better.” His touch is confident, knowing—a testament to the past as he brushes his knuckles up a thigh. He leans closer, face deceivingly soft. “Now, to what I’ve been missin’.”
Your chest heaves, nipples hardening from exposure. “John,” you try again. Memories of nights like this rush full-speed through your head, each one trying to remind you of how this ends: you, well-fucked, but ultimately alone, whether physically or emotionally. “John, please…We can’t.” The words come out as a whisper, a plea even you don’t fully believe.
John’s brows crease, an amused grin pulling at the corner of his lips. “Really, love?” he asks. He glances at the lace panties he fiddled with earlier, a wicked glint in his eyes.
A second, short-lived tussle ensues. Your hands are freed long enough to latch them onto his jaw and cheek, pushing, trying to hold him at bay as he pinches your cheeks and forces your mouth open. The pressure hurts, and when you whine, he freezes, but only to lower his face to yours, so close you feel his breath.
“Say the word this second, y’know the one, and I’ll stop.”
Your heart hammers beneath the frenetic rise and fall of your chest. It’s difficult to discern where the heat of arousal and mortification meet and which one makes you swallow hard. The working of your jaw and throat that John doesn’t miss, but tracks, black eclipsing his blues almost entirely. Whatever drives the decision, it still ends in a nod.
Game over, you silently concede as he gently stuffs them into your mouth. You try to change his mind, the lace tickling the roof of your mouth, thinking you can talk your way out of a gag.
“Don’t want to hear it.” His fingers glide over, then cup your cheek. “If you really want me to stop,” He murmurs, releasing your face to tap your shoulder in demonstration, “Tap out. Understood?”
John lets out a low chuckle at another weak nod, a spark of approval lighting up his eyes. “Good girl.” His hand brushes your arm, nice and gentle, unlike how he got you on your back.
He moves down the bed, his eyes dropping to the expanse of skin now completely unveiled. His gaze is heated, almost reverent, as he looks at your pussy. It’s been months since he’d last seen it, and he stares as if reunited with a long-lost loved one. Talks to it like one, too.
“Missed you.” he murmurs, spreading you open with his thumbs. His eyes flick to yours with a smirk. “Been lonely?” he teases, knowing full well you can’t answer. “Has anyone else taken care of you?” He presses a kiss to your thigh and laughs at the subsequent whine.
“Anyone?” John repeats, beard scratching your thighs, the feeling so bittersweetly familiar it makes your blood sing.
A rush of emotions sweeps over you at his question—embarrassment, indignation, anger, and a strange sense of relief. It feels like your heart somersaults. You haven’t slept with anyone since the breakup. That’s the whole point of the trip, to get out of your slump. Yet, with John between your legs, the thought of another man touching you feels…wrong. Unimaginable. It’s a truth you’ve avoided for months, but now, under his intense scrutiny, it’s laid just as bare as you are.
You shake your head.
Satisfaction crosses John’s face, his thumbs rubbing gentle lines. The gleam in his eyes makes your stomach clench in anticipation.
“No one else.” His breath ghosts over your cunt. “That’s a very good girl. Bet you’re fuckin starved for it, aren’t ya?” He doesn’t wait for confirmation.
John lowers his head, giving a teasing lick to your clit, before indulging in a long, slow drag of his tongue up your slit. It’s muscle memory, how he knows to languish over your nub and then dip to tongue-fuck your hole just right. His free hand moves to hold a hip steady, pressing down, delving as deep as he can until his chin presses flush.
He tells you it’s as good, no, better than he remembers.
A muffled moan weaves through the panties, your heels digging into the mattress instinctively. Back arching, mindlessly pushing your pussy into his mouth. He gathers your hands in one, squeezes them as if to say stay, then lets go to grasp the underside of a thigh. It’s a fight to keep your hands where he left them, gripping the opposite wrist tightly when his hands part flesh.
His tongue laves over the rim of your ass, something he rarely did before, and usually with warning. Several half-panicked, half-desperate gasps dampen into lace, morphing into a muted cry as he eases a finger past the tight muscle. Once it’s down to the first knuckle, he carefully feeds two into your cunt. His first thrusts are experimental and slow, but not for long. The lewd, wet suction as he works both holes draws a deep rumbling from his chest. It renders you stupid, babbling incoherently, and the idea of tapping out flees your mind entirely. He murmurs something, voice sonorous, but the words are lost as his mouth returns and seals over your clit.
The thinnest, sharpest blade of jealousy tries to pierce what legible thoughts still exist in your head. A flickering thought of where and with whom did he practice this—only to be swiftly and brutally usurped by the sudden arrival of your orgasm. Your body winds tight, your breath hitching impossibly high into a gasp. You sink your teeth into lace, the gasp cresting into a wail.
Several long, dizzying moments later, the pressure in your holes relents. The bed shifts.
“Still with me?” John chuckles, shucking his shirt off. The clink of his belt causes your eyes to loll in their sockets in his direction, and his grin turns shit-eating. “If you could see yourself…” His thumbs hook into his waistband, and he rids himself of his jeans and pants in one go. The head of his cock slaps his stomach and bobs as he returns to the space between your legs.
There’ll be marks on your wrists tomorrow. Tiny clusters of crescents. You dig your nails in as he gingerly extracts the panties from your mouth and tosses them.
“Now I want to hear you.” His hand wraps around the thick of his cock and tugs.
The only sound that escapes is a quivery inhale. Words elude you, staring up at your former partner, your cum slicking his mustache and beard. The crackling heat in your chest—the only word that comes to mind is rekindling. The awareness that that is precisely what’s happening, what he’s doing, ought to encourage you to kick him in the jaw. Tell him to leave the key and march his ass out. But beneath his smug look and the thick haze of the comedown, a part of you wants to feed this oxygen.
You mumble something.
He nudges your clit. “Hm? Speak up.”
You repeat it in a whisper, frustration biting each syllable.
“If you’re going to beg me, do it properly.” He chides, apparently content to keep slipping his cock through your wet folds. Idling. “What do you want, sweetheart? You want me to eat your pussy again? Or stuff a few more fingers in you?”
God, you’re fucked, about to be, at least. His tone prickles and pokes a hole in the fog.
“Just–Just fuck me, John. Christ.” You sibilate, exasperated and greedy. “I don’t remember you being so damn chat–”
The abrupt notch of his cockhead chokes both words and air right out of you. He barely gives you a moment of respite before bullying it inch by inch, holding you in a firm grip. You’re speechless, thoughts and complaints vacating the premises as he plunges to the hilt. The two of you share a look, panting, like neither of you can believe it’s come to this point. That you did, in fact, invite him in.
John licks his teeth, face swiftly dropping into an arrogant, implacable expression. “‘M gonna fuck you ‘til you’re swollen, full of me. ‘Til you forget all about this little trip of yours.”
Something else you forgot about John, too. With him, there are no half-measures.
He sets a pace that doesn’t let either of you luxuriate in reunion. In the back of your mind, something as pleased as a cat curls up, basking in the satisfaction that for all of his tough talk, he’s as desperate as you. If not more.
You figure it’s a reckoning for ending things.
Your skin sings from the sharp slaps of his body meeting yours. His gaze is glued to where your cunt swallows him, grunting each time it takes him to the root. At some point, you pull him down, bringing you chest to chest. His forearms bracket your head, fisting the pillow beneath your head. Your hands, in turn, card through his hair and tug, like he always liked it, directing him into a kiss. Between breaths, he whispers, makes promises, and more declarations. Claims dominion. No one else. Not my girl. Mine. Mine. Mine.
His hand slips between your sweat-soaked bodies as he furiously thrusts, thumbing your clit. He goads you on, not breaking eye contact for a moment. Doesn’t want to miss a single twinge or gasp of pleasure. It pins you as effectively as his body, and a second orgasm, with more pressure behind it than the first, sweeps you offshore in a tidal wave. It drags you out until the present is a distant idea, a mirage in the haze of ecstasy, until a series of bitten-off groans snap you back to reality. John’s cum is warm, trapped as he sinks to the hilt and stays. Not letting a drop go to waste.
He sprawls over you, remains buried, and huffs a laugh at what must be a glassy-eyed, somewhat stupefied expression. As if you can’t for the life of you understand what just happened. He lifts off enough to stroke your cheek and kiss your bitten lips.
“Still think y’need to go on that trip?”
“John, I–ah, fuck,” You start, hissing as he pulls out and rolls to his side. “You can’t just–just barge in…”
“I did no such thing,” He says with a wry grin. “You needed me, and I answered. Now. If you still want some time away, we can arrange that. You want to travel alone, I’ll help organize. I’ll watch Zig. But this—”
“Ziggy!” You shoot up, grimacing slightly as his spend dribbles over your thighs. A thick arm drapes itself over your middle, effectively preventing further movement. You snap your head to John, whose smile only grows. “We–I left him outside!”
“I’ll get him, you stay here.”
You let him go with a nod, reasoning it’s easier for him to wrap a towel around and—he rolls off the bed and marches out the bedroom door in the buff. Your cheeks burn at the image of John, in full view of your neighbors, bringing in what’s supposed to only be your dog. Sure enough, the sound of Ziggy’s name echoes through your home, as does John’s voice greeting the creature.
Upon his return, John shuts the door, intentionally letting the hinge squeak. “The old man was drooling and kicking on his lounger.”
Rising to your feet, you untuck the bedding, a little frustrated you’ll need to fit laundry into the next few hours somehow. When John starts to help, you pause.
“John, you don’t need…”
“‘M not sleepin’ in wet sheets, sweetheart.”
John pulls the linens from your fingers and gently taps the bum when he tells you to clean up. As if his staying is a foregone conclusion. A smarter side to you thinks to stick to your guns and send him packing. But another needy, lonely side holds your tongue.
He joins you in the shower after, and if he has any smart comments about the fact his shampoo and conditioner is still in there—he’s wise enough not to say a thing.
The bed’s made up with the spare sheets, an old set you bought as a couple. He spoons you, not putting up with any fuss when you try to scoot away.
In the morning, after John helps you place half a dozen calls to cancel the trip and somehow wrangles a full refund, he takes you and Ziggy to the park. The entire time, you still somehow insist it doesn’t mean you’re back together. That John isn’t your boyfriend.
On the crown of the bridge over the water, he stops you mid-complaint yet again.
“‘Course I’m not your boyfriend.”
You briefly think of diving headfirst into the water when John kneels. He’d take good care of Ziggy and the house. You miss half of his little speech, not that you’d be able to hear it over the oohing and aahing of the small, forming crowd. All you know is that one minute, John is your ex. The man who couldn’t commit, who was already married to his work. And the next? He’s kissing the life out of you for a bridge full of strangers to see.
Later, after celebrating in bed, you broach the conversation about living together again. You might need some time because this is all happening so fast. He waits until you move on to how you will break the news to your family to inform you he hired movers in between helping you cancel the trip. That you’ll need to get some sleep, because they’ll be here bright and early tomorrow morning.
You should be mad. Upset John’s barged into your life yet again. Instead, you swat his chest and tangle your fingers in his chest hair. The ring on your finger catches the light. Your gaze shoots up to his, catching a lazy smile on his face.
“In that case…There are a few things I need done around the house.”
“I’m listening…”