Stitches

I don’t know exactly what to make of last night, so I do my best to shrug it off. My handsome husband swallows up my attention, joining me in the shower and getting me off while he soaps me up. I’m weak from my orgasm and he bends me over, shoving his glorious cock inside me and fucking me like a ragdoll.

God, I love him.

I’m weak and fully under his spell when we step out. It’s hard to let him leave in the morning sometimes. I miss him terribly when he’s gone. I think about him on and off all day. I’ve never been so in love in all my life, and I didn’t know this feeling could last. He’s just the most incredible man I’ve ever met. Sexy and generous and elegant. Any given day, he’s dressed so well he might’ve just stepped out of GQ. He turns me to mush.

He knows it, too. Right now, as he straightens his tie and looks at me draped naked and exhausted across our bed, he’s so damn smug.

“Shut up, you handsome devil,” I tell him.

“I said nothing,” he says, with ridiculous innocence. There’s not an innocent bone in this man’s magnificent body.

“You wore me out and now I have to go make cookies.”

His dark eyebrows rise with surprise. “Cookies? For breakfast?”

I manage a nod. “I promised Griff cookies. I’m not sure he’ll even remember, but on the off chance he does, I don’t want to disappoint him.”

Sebastian walks over and smacks my ass. “You couldn’t disappoint a man if you tried.”

“Yes, well, you probably feel that way because we just had shower sex. Given Griff did not just get a morning orgasm, he probably doesn’t feel the same way. I have to give him cookies.”

“If they’re supposed to make up for lack of orgasms, you better be making one hell of a batch of cookies.”

I crack a tired smile, then drag my ass out of bed so I can get dressed.

As it happens, I have an incredible recipe for ginger cookies that may be as good as sex. Not sex with Sebastian, but probably sex with stupid Ashley. What a jerk. Griff is such a wonderful, attractive man; I honestly can’t believe she would do this to him.

I bake them some fresh cookies while I prepare their breakfast. I go for a classic mix—some fruit for starters, scrambled eggs and sausage to go with it, and a slice of toast with a thin layer of grape jelly.

I also make them coffee and get out the orange juice, just in case.

Griff comes in behind Sebastian, but he is not as ready for the day. He did pull his dress shirt back on, but the brightness of the kitchen lights make him squint so I go over and turn them off. I light a candle on the table instead.

“Thanks,” Griff mutters.

“Of course,” I say, brightly. “How did you sleep?”

“Like shit,” he answers, appearing confused that I already made him a plate and put it on the table for him. Nonetheless, he drops into the chair and stares at it for another moment.

“How do you take your coffee?” I ask him, pouring a cup for him and stopping with enough room for cream and sugar.

“Black,” he answers.

I nod and top it off, then carry it over and slide it up next to his plate, flashing him a smile. “Want some orange juice, too?”

“No, thanks.” He frowns at me, like I’m some sort of oddity. “Man, your house is full-service, isn’t it?”

I smile faintly. “I waited tables for years; can’t break the habit.”

Never had a reason to. Sebastian has a traditional streak. He enjoys having me wait on him, and I take pleasure in doing it; it all works out.

I pour Sebastian some coffee—he takes it black, too—and take it over. It’s only natural for me to bend down and give him a kiss afterward, but as I straighten, rest my hands on his shoulders and give them a gentle squeeze, I can’t help noticing Griff watching, his gaze narrowed, almost like he’s annoyed by it. His words from last night come back, but they bring dread with them.

Griff and Sebastian aren’t merely friends—they’re family. When I met them Sebastian told me that, how Griff is really the only family he has. My husband is an orphan, and Griff was half an orphan. He had a mom out there somewhere, but he ended up in foster care alongside Sebastian, and that’s how they met. They didn’t stay in the same house for the duration, but they did stay in the same school system until Sebastian aged out of the system. He’s older by a year, so Griff ditched his foster family and went to stay with Sebastian until he aged out, too.

For half their lives, they’ve been inseparable. Their loyalty to one another is the only thing in the world they never question. I hate to think Griff is going to drift again because of me. I can’t be the thing that comes between them.

I don’t even know how I could be. You wouldn’t know it by his drunken behavior last night, but Griff has never had feelings like that for me. It has to be because of everything that’s going on with Ashley. It has him off-kilter and lonely. He knows how happy I make Sebastian, and he feels like it’s me, like I’m the harbinger of happiness. I’m not, though. Sebastian and I are just really lucky to have found one another. We’re cut from complementary panels, like fabric cut haphazardly that somehow, sewn together, creates something perfect.