What Happens After Dark by Jasmine Haynes

sex and more about comfort.
    “What if I say I need to see you and suck you and nothing else?”
    He smiled. “That won’t be a problem.” Though true, he’d made it a problem in the past, wanting more. “Suck me anytime.”
    She laughed, choked it off. “I just don’t feel right about anything.”
    He soothed her with a hand down her arm. “That’s normal.”
    She snorted, a touch of derision mixed with pain. “I am so not normal.”
    He wanted to pull her down into his arms and tell her he didn’t care about normal . He didn’t know what stopped him except that she had never wanted coddling from him. He felt like an ass for pushing so hard for what he wanted when she was going through such a painful time. But then she hadn’t given him a clue. “Screw normal,” he offered. “We just decided we’re great at not being normal.”
    “Sex with you makes me feel better,” she said, her gaze once again on the table in front of her.
    She was trying to explain herself to him. She’d never done that before. She could be seductive and manipulative even as she was submissive. He always had to read between the lines. Now, she was trying to communicate how she felt. They never called what they did making love , but she was acknowledging the importance of what he gave her.
    “Sex makes me feel better, too,” he said, as if somehow he was validating her. It was the oddest conversation, saying little, yet holding so much meaning. This was intimacy. “We’ll do quickies at lunch, too.”
    She laughed, sniffed. “I should have thought of that.”
    “Yes, definitely. You’ll suck me in my office.” There were all sorts of possibilities he hadn’t considered before.
    “We could get caught.” She smiled, put her hand on top of his as it rested on her thigh.
    He felt her mood rising. “I have a lock on my door.”
    She squeezed his hand. “It would be kinkier to do it with the door unlocked.”
    Kinkier. And riskier. Yeah. Perfect. She was giving him so much more than she’d ever offered before. More than sex. Finally, here was something he could actually do for her; offer his shoulder, his strength, his comfort. And a little cocksucking, too.
     
     
    BREE FELT LIKE SHE’D ENTERED A DUNGEON. EVERYTHING WAS SO dark. Her parents’ house had been built in the late sixties. It was a T-shape, with living room, dining room, breakfast nook and kitchen facing the street, and the bedrooms and den along the center part of the T. Though her mother kept the house meticulously clean, dark paneling still covered its walls and the faux-brick kitchen linoleum went too well with the root beer appliances. Bree hated this house, hated its reminders. When would they break down and update, for God’s sake? At least if it was modernized, it wouldn’t carry such a punch every time she walked in the door.
    It was only the memory of Luke’s hand on her thigh this morning that kept her from screaming. He didn’t think less of her, didn’t think she was terrible or even selfish. His words made what she had to do the tiniest bit easier.
    Lunchtime had come and gone. Now her father was taking a nap. The hospice coordinator had arrived an hour ago; her father hadn’t been well enough to attend the meeting. They weren’t putting him in a facility, but at least he’d agreed to allowing hospice in to help. The middle-aged woman gave Bree and her mom pamphlets on the stages of dying and the support services they offered. They’d arrange for an aide to come in twice a day starting tomorrow, Sunday, to help with her father’s personal care. When the time came, they could order a hospital bed—there was enough space for it by the window in her parents’ bedroom—and any other homecare items they needed. A bed pan, IV, catheter, a tray of drugs by his bedside. Morphine for the pain.
    Bree couldn’t take it in. Her father was actually dying.
    Once the visit was over, Bree had made her mother a cup of tea. They sat at the table in the