The phone buzzes against the wood of the nightstand, a hard little rattle that gets into my sleep before I know what's waking me. I peel one eye open. Grey light through the blinds, the ceiling fan ticking its one bad rotation, David's arm heavy across my hip like a seatbelt. The screen lights up the whole corner of the room. It buzzes again. Then again.

I reach across him to grab it, and my shoulder pops, and he grunts but doesn't wake. Karen's name is at the top, and there's a voice note, and I press it before I've decided to.

Her voice fills the bedroom, tinny and loud. "Jesus, Jodi. That man deserves a medal." She's laughing through it, that low smoker's laugh she does when she's had too little sleep and too much coffee. "I'm not saying which one. I'm just saying he earned it."

David's arm tightens around my waist. "What," he says. Not a question, the words sanded down to almost nothing.

"Karen," I say.

"At this hour."

"It's not that early." I tilt the screen. "Look."

The group chat is a mess. The video I sent last night sits there with its little thumbnail, and under it the thread has gone feral. The girls are piling on — laughing emojis, a string of them, then Deb: the AUDACITY of that camera angle, and Lisa: i need a cigarette and i don't even smoke, and then another voice note from Karen that I don't play, because I can guess.

David shifts up onto one elbow. His brown hair is flat on one side, standing up on the other. He looks at the screen, and the little frown he gets when he's reading something small and close. Then his mouth does the thing — the corner of it, the one that's half a smile and half something hungrier — and I feel his cock move against my thigh. Just a stir. A thickening. He hasn't even looked at me yet.

"Bring the cooler, but leave the phone," he reads out loud. Slow, like he's tasting it. "She actually typed that."

"She's been up all night with Deb and Lisa and a bottle of something." I scroll. "There's forty-one messages."

"Forty-one." He shakes his head against the pillow. "Jesus. What did Deb say?"

"She said the audacity of that camera angle."

"She's not wrong."

"You're famous."

He makes a sound low in his chest. His hand slides from my hip down over the bare cheek of my ass, not grabbing, just resting there, heavy, warm from the sheets. "You sent it," he says. "You're the one who sent it."

"I sent a preview."

"That was not a preview, Jodi. That was a whole feature film."

"You weren't complaining when I was filming it."

"I was busy." His thumb moves, a slow half-circle on my skin. "You had me by the—"

"I know what I had you by."

I put the phone face down on the nightstand with a click. The buzzing has stopped, for now. The room goes back to the fan and the birds outside and the sound of his breathing, and I can feel the heat of him through the sheet, the whole length of him, that early-morning thing his body does.

"You're doing it again," he says.

"Doing what."

"Looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you're deciding something."

I roll on top of him.

He's not expecting it. His hands come up automatically and I catch his wrists and press them down into the pillow on either side of his head, and I'm straddling him, my knees on the mattress, my hair hanging down around his face. He blinks up at me. The stubble on his jaw is going silver at the corner. His eyes are still puffy from sleep and already dark.

"What are you—"

"They're not the only ones who get a preview," I say.

He tries to lift his hands. I hold them. He could get out of this — he's stronger than me and we both know it — but he doesn't. He goes still under me, and something in his face changes, opens, the way it does when he decides to let me have it.

"Yeah?" he says.

"Yeah." I lean down close, my mouth near his ear. "You're going to lie there and take it."

"Is that right."

"That's right."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I'll get off you and go make coffee." I sit back up. "Your call."

His throat moves. "I'm lying here."

"Good boy."

"Don't—" He huffs. "Don't call me that."

"Why not? You liked it."

I sit up and reach behind me and take him in my hand. He's hard already, thick and warm, and my fingers don't meet around him, and he sucks in a breath through his teeth when I drag my palm up the length of him. "Oh, that's—" His hips twitch. "Jodi."

"Shh."

"I'm not going to last if you—"

"Then don't last." I'm wet. I've been wet since the voice note, since his arm came around me, maybe since I woke up. I lift up on my knees, hold him steady, and slide down onto him.

God. The stretch of it. My body takes him slow, inch by inch, and I feel every one of them, the way he fills me up and pushes everything else out of my head. I get all the way down and sit there with him buried to the root, my hands still pinning his wrists, my thighs spread wide over his hips.

"Fuck," he breathes. "Fuck, you're—"

"I'm what?"

"Tight. You're so—"

David's jaw is tight. His eyes are on my face and his hips want to move and he's holding still, waiting for me, and that's the thing about him, that's always been the thing — he'll wait.

"You feel that," I say.

"I feel it." His voice is scraped raw. "I feel all of it."

"Good."

"Jodi—"

"Say please."

He's quiet. His fingers curl into the pillow. Then, low: "Please."

"Please what?"

"Please move."

I start to move. Slow. A roll of my hips, forward and back, grinding down on him, and the wet sound of it is loud in the quiet room. The grey light comes through the blinds in stripes across his chest. His tank top is somewhere on the floor. I can see the hickey on his neck, the one I don't remember giving him, faded now to a yellow-brown smudge. I put my hand flat on his chest and feel his heart going under my palm.

"You're so fucking—" He cuts himself off, jaw working. "You're doing this on purpose."

"Doing what?"

"Torturing me."

"It's not torture if you like it."

"I didn't say I didn't like it."

"Jodi," he says. Warns me. His hands flex under mine.

"Not yet."

"Come on—"

"Not yet."

I go slower. That's the game. I lift up until he's almost out of me and then sink back down, and I do it again, and again, and I watch his face the whole time. His mouth is open. There's a line between his brows. He's trying to keep still and he can't quite, his hips lifting a little to meet me, and I press his wrists harder into the pillow.

"You're going to leave a mark," he says.

"Maybe I want to."

"On my wrists?"

"On your everything."

He laughs — a short, broken thing — and then it's not a laugh anymore, because I sink down on him hard and grind, and his head goes back into the pillow. "Come on," he says.

"Come on what."

"You know what."

I lean down, still moving on him, my mouth at his jaw. "Say it."

"Jodi—"

"Say it, David."

He's quiet for a second. Then, rough: "Fuck me. Please. Fuck me faster."

There it is. I let go of his wrists and put my hands on his chest and ride him, really ride him, and he gets his hands on my hips and drags me down onto him harder, and the room fills up with the slap of skin and my breath coming short and the fan ticking.

"That's it," he says. "That's it, right there—"

"Shut up."

"You love it."

"I said shut up."

His thumb finds my clit and I make a sound I don't mean to make, and he does it again, circles it, and my thighs start to shake.

"Don't stop," I say.

"I'm not stopping." He's got that mean little smile going. "You want to come? Ask me."

"I'll kill you."

"Ask me."

"Please," I grit out. "Please, David—"

"Was that so hard?"

I'm close. Right there. And then he moves — fast, the way he does, a surge of strength I forget he has — and he's got me by the waist and turned and I'm on my back on the mattress with him over me, and he pushes back into me before I can catch my breath. The angle is different. Deeper. He fucks me hard and slow at the same time, pulling all the way out and driving back in, and every thrust pushes a sound out of me that I can't hold back.

"God," I gasp. "God, David—"

"You had your turn," he says. His mouth is at my ear. "It's mine now."

The phone buzzes again on the nightstand. Neither of us looks at it.

"You hear that," he says, breathless, his face close over mine. "They're still going."

"Let them."

"They're going to know."

"Know what?"

"That you're in here getting fucked." He pushes deep on the word and I feel it in my teeth. "That's what they're texting about. That's what they're picturing."

"Good."

"You like that."

"I like you," I say. "Shut up and—"

He hooks my knee up over his elbow and gets deeper, and I feel the whole length of him sliding in and out of my soaked cunt, the wet drag of it, and his hips are slapping against my thighs and the headboard is knocking the wall. I grab at his shoulders, at his back, my nails digging in, and I'm saying his name, just his name, over and over, and he's saying mine back like it's the only word he knows.

"You're going to make me come," I tell him. "David, I'm going to—"

"Yeah?" His voice is wrecked. "Say it."

"I'm going to come."

"Say it again."

"I'm going to come, I'm—"

"Do it. Come on my cock."

And I do. It rolls up through me and my back arches off the mattress and my cunt clenches hard around him, and I hear myself, the long broken sound of it, and David groans and drives deep and stays there, buried all the way, and I feel him come — the hot pulse of it inside me, one and then another and then another, and his whole body goes rigid over me and then heavy, and he lets his head drop to my shoulder.

"Fuck," he says into my neck. Just that. His breath is hot and ragged on my skin. "Fuck, Jodi."

We lie there. The fan ticks. His weight on me is warm and the sheets are a wreck and I can feel his cock still inside me, softening, and the slow leak of him starting to slip back out.

"We're disgusting," I say.

"Mm." He doesn't lift his head. "You started it."

"You were hard before I touched you."

"I was hard because of the forty-one messages."

"Liar."

The phone buzzes again.

I turn my head to look at it. Face down on the nightstand. The light leaking out around its edges. Somewhere in that thread, Karen is still typing, and the girls are still laughing, and the cooler is still waiting for next weekend.

David lifts his head enough to look at me. His hair is a disaster. He's breathing hard.

"You going to answer that?" he says.

"Not yet."

"It's going to keep doing that."

"I know."

He shifts his weight off me, careful, and I feel him slide free — that wet pull, then the cool of the room where he was. His cum goes with him, a warm streak down the inside of my thigh. I don't reach for the sheet. I lie there and let it dry.

He flops onto his back beside me, arm over his eyes, chest still going. The grey light has moved. It's off the blinds now and lying across the foot of the bed in a bright bar, and the dust in it is turning. Somewhere down the road a dog is barking at nothing.

"Six-forty," he says, without looking.

"How do you know that."

"Because I woke up at six-fifteen and you were already breathing on my neck." He lifts his arm off his eyes. "And because I can hear the coffee maker from here. You set it last night."

I listen. He's right. The low rumble of it through the floor, the little hiccup at the end of the brew cycle. I didn't hear it until he said it.

The phone buzzes again. Three short ones, back to back. Not Karen this time — Karen's a one-and-done texter, she says her piece and goes quiet. This is Lisa, or Deb, working herself up to something.

I reach over and pick it up. David doesn't stop me. He just turns his head on the pillow to watch.

Lisa has sent a screenshot. It's a still from the video — the thumbnail, grainy, dark, but not so dark that you can't see the shape of me bent over the arm of the couch with my hair down my back. Under it she's typed: frame it. Then Deb: i'm framing it. Then Deb again: jodi your ass in that light. Then a string of emojis I don't bother to parse.

"What," David says.

"They're screenshotting the video." I turn the screen so he can see. "Lisa's framing a still. Of my ass."

He looks at it for a long moment. Then he laughs — that low, cracked, morning laugh that comes out of him before he's got his voice back. "That's a good frame," he says. "I'd frame it."

"You're an animal."

"You sent it."

"I sent a preview." I put the phone down again, but I don't put it face down this time. I leave it screen-up on the nightstand, where I can see it. Let it buzz. Let them all see that I'm not answering, that I'm busy, that I've got better things to do at six-forty in the morning than read my own group chat.

David's hand finds my hip. Not grabbing. Just there, his thumb rubbing a slow circle into the bone, and I feel the last of the tightness go out of my back.

"You know what I keep thinking about," he says.

"Tell me."

"The cooler." He says it flat, deadpan. "Karen's going to fill it with something stupid. She's going to put a watermelon in it and make us carry it up the hill."

"She will absolutely put a watermelon in it."

"And you'll make me carry it."

"I'll make you carry it."

He grunts. His thumb keeps going. The coffee maker hiccups again and goes quiet, and the whole house settles into that Sunday-morning stillness, the one where you can hear the fridge and the clock and your own breathing. I turn my head on the pillow. He's looking at the ceiling, at the fan, at the little wobble in one of the blades.

"David."

"Mm."

"You're going to have to get up and pour that coffee."

"I know."

"I'm not doing it."

"I know you're not." He turns his head. The corner of his mouth is up. "You're going to lie there in my cum and let me serve you."

"That's right."

He gets up. I watch him do it — the long stretch of his back, the way he has to put a hand on the headboard to steady himself, the sheets falling off him. He's got a red mark on his shoulder where I dug my nails in. He doesn't notice it. He pads out to the kitchen naked, and I hear the cupboard open, the mugs come down, the coffee pour.

The phone buzzes. I pick it up. Karen, again, her name at the top of the thread, and this time it's a photo — the two of them, Karen and Deb, sitting on Karen's porch steps with their coffee, both of them squinting into the sun, Karen's hair a wreck and Deb still in her clothes from the party. Under it: the rematch committee is assembled. Then: cooler. one o'clock. do not be late.

I type back, one thumb: we'll be there. Then I look at it. Then I add: the cooler's on david.

David comes back in with two mugs, steam coming off them, and holds one out to me. I sit up to take it, and the sheet falls down to my waist, and he looks at me — really looks, the way he did the first time, back when we were twenty-five and didn't know what we were doing — and then he sits down on the edge of the bed and drinks his coffee and doesn't say anything at all.