I stood between his splayed thighs, not saying a word, as I stripped. Oaken’s throat worked. Beneath his trousers, his cock swelled.

Now naked, I let my fingers fall to that place. I worked his belt apart, and he sat back and let me.

I didn’t wait for foreplay. I didn’t give Oaken a chance to touch me. I needed him now. Badly. Even if it hurt. I straddled his hips and took him in my hands, guiding his tip to my entrance.

His breath hissed between his fangs as I lowered myself, rocking as I went, taking him as far as I could. I was so wet already. And that helped.

But it was still tight, hard, difficult.

And perfect.

I breathed through the stretching ache. Chasing pain was pleasure, pleasure I desperately wanted to latch onto. I moaned, grinding hard, and Oaken let out a guttural sound.

“Jaya,” he rasped. He palmed my hips, fingers digging into my ass as he helped hold me up. “You’re so blasted beautiful.”

A raw, tearless sob tore from me.

Beautiful.

He’d said that to me once before. When he was pretending to flirt with me. Using me as practice.

I didn’t think he was just pretending now. He responded to every arch of my back, every squeeze of my pussy, every lurch of my hips, like it was a revelation to him. His cock throbbed and jerked inside. His cock tail flickered and writhed over my clit. His breathing was hard and fast and punctuated by hoarse groans and growls.

His searing white eyes never left me.

“Jaya.” My name was a moan in his mouth. “Jaya, I-”

“I know,” I whimpered in response. “I know. I’m coming too.”

Oaken fell over the edge a split second before I did. His face went slack with pleasure, his hips driving helplessly up, shoving himself deeper as he sank into his release. I watched him come undone beneath me, and I came so hard it almost felt like cramping.

Even my body didn’t want to let him go.

I slumped forward, letting my chin come to rest against his shoulder. We breathed together for a long time, our fronts sealed together. When my gaze finally focused, it landed on something on the kitchen table. It was a long, tapered set of needles, yarn, and…

A pair of socks.

“What’s that?” I asked, gently prying my breasts away from where they’d been crushed to Oaken’s chest. I put my full weight on to my legs, and, gasping at the sweetly bruised sensation inside me, pulled myself out of Oaken’s lap. He inhaled sharply when his cock slipped out. He set to work tucking himself back into his trousers, then stood, looking more than a little unsteady on his feet.

“That is something I’ve been working on when I’ve had the time. I’d hoped to have made more than just these, but I forgot how long knitting socks takes.”

“You’re knitting some new socks?” I asked. I collected my clothes from the floor, quickly pulling them back on. “They look pretty small.”

“Too small for me,” he agreed. “But they’re for you.”

Someone tell me why that felt like a fucking gut punch?

“Oaken…”

“I worry,” he said, stepping in close behind me. So close that I felt the heat of his chest through the shirt on my back. “I worry that… That you might get blisters one day, out on some other world without me. And I won’t be there to carry you home when you do.”

Ten fucking years and I hadn’t cried once.

Until now.

“I can’t,” I gasped. “You shouldn’t… You should give these to your next wife.”

A sigh behind me. Then the saddest, quietest laugh I’d ever heard.