🔥 The Engagement Night 🔥
An Exclusive Bonus Scene from Common Grounds
Thank You for Reading! ☕
You made it to the bonus content—which means you’ve experienced Brandon and Michael’s journey from strangers to forever. Thank you for giving their story a chance.
This exclusive scene is our gift to dedicated readers like you. It’s too spicy for Amazon, so you’ll only find it here.
✨ BONUS SCENE: The Engagement Night ✨
A Common Grounds Exclusive
This scene takes place immediately after the epilogue—the night of the proposal.
⚠️ Content Warning: Extremely explicit sexual content. This scene is intended for readers 18+ who have finished the main novel.
Brandon couldn’t stop looking at the ring.
They’d made it back to their apartment—their apartment, the one with the good kitchen and the office with a door and two years of memories built into every corner—and Brandon still felt like he was floating. The weight of platinum on his finger was foreign and perfect and absolutely real.
Michael had proposed. In the coffee shop. On the anniversary of the night they’d met.
Will you marry me?
The words echoed in Brandon’s head as Michael closed the door behind them, as Michael took his coat, as Michael’s hands found his waist and pulled him close.
“You’re doing it again,” Michael murmured against his temple.
“Doing what?”
“Staring at the ring like it might disappear.”
“It might.” Brandon held up his hand, watched the diamond catch the light from the hallway. “This could be a very elaborate dream. I should probably keep checking.”
“It’s not a dream.” Michael kissed his forehead, his cheek, the corner of his mouth. “I’m really here. We’re really engaged. And I’m really about to take you to bed and show you exactly how much I love you.”
Brandon’s breath caught. “Is that a promise?”
“It’s a guarantee.”
They made it to the bedroom in pieces.
Michael’s jacket, abandoned on the couch. Brandon’s shirt, lost somewhere in the hallway. By the time they crossed the threshold, they were both shirtless, Michael’s hands mapping the planes of Brandon’s chest like he was memorizing something he’d touched a thousand times before.
“I will never get tired of this,” Michael said, pressing Brandon down onto the mattress. “Never. You could let me do this every day for the next fifty years and I would still want more.”
“Fifty years?”
“Minimum.” Michael kissed his collarbone, his sternum, the soft skin below his ribs. “I’m thinking sixty. Maybe seventy. However long I can convince you to keep me.”
“I already said yes.” Brandon’s voice cracked as Michael’s mouth moved lower. “You’re stuck with me now.”
“Good.” Michael looked up, eyes dark with want. “Then stop talking and let me worship you.”
Brandon stopped talking.
Michael took his time.
He always took his time—that was something Brandon had learned over the past year, something that still surprised him even after all these months. Michael Ashford, the man who’d built a career on efficiency and quick decisions, became someone else entirely in bed. Someone patient. Someone reverent. Someone who treated Brandon’s body like a temple he was privileged to enter.
“You’re beautiful,” Michael murmured, mouthing along the ridge of Brandon’s hip. “Have I told you that tonight?”
“Once or twice.” Brandon’s fingers tangled in Michael’s hair, which had grown out slightly since the corporate days. More silver now. Brandon loved it. “But I’m not opposed to hearing it again.”
“Beautiful.” Michael kissed lower. “Gorgeous.” Lower still. “Absolutely stunning.”
“Michael—”
“Shh.” Michael’s breath was warm against Brandon’s cock, already hard and aching. “Let me take care of you. You spent all night being surprised and emotional and perfect. Now it’s my turn.”
“Your turn to what?”
“To make you fall apart.”
Michael took him into his mouth, and Brandon saw stars.
It was different now than it had been at the beginning.
In those early days, Brandon had been so careful. So worried about being too much, asking for too much, needing too much. He’d held back sounds, swallowed requests, tried to make himself easy and undemanding even in the most intimate moments.
Michael had broken him of that. Slowly, patiently, one night at a time.
I want to hear you, Michael had said. I want to know exactly what you’re feeling. Don’t hide from me.
So Brandon had stopped hiding.
Now, when Michael’s tongue did something particularly devastating, Brandon moaned—loud and unashamed. When Michael’s hands gripped his hips hard enough to bruise, Brandon gasped out yes and more and please. When the pleasure built too fast, too intense, he said stop, not yet, I want this to last.
Michael always listened. That was the miracle of it. Michael always, always listened.
“I need—” Brandon’s voice broke as Michael pulled off, as cool air replaced wet heat. “Michael, please—”
“What do you need?”
“You. Inside me. I need to feel you.”
Michael’s groan was low and desperate. “Yeah. God, yes.”
He crawled up Brandon’s body, pressing him into the mattress with delicious weight. Their cocks aligned, grinding together, and Brandon wrapped his legs around Michael’s waist to pull him closer.
“Lube,” Michael managed. “Nightstand.”
“I know where we keep it.”
“Then why aren’t you—”
Brandon reached over and retrieved the bottle, pressing it into Michael’s palm. “Because I was enjoying watching you try to form sentences.”
“Menace.” But Michael was smiling as he slicked his fingers. “Absolute menace.”
The first press of Michael’s fingers made Brandon arch off the bed.
They’d done this countless times—Michael knew exactly how to work him open, exactly where to press to make Brandon’s vision blur—but it never got old. The intimacy of it. The trust. The knowledge that Michael had spent forty years building walls and Brandon had been the one to finally break them down.
“More,” Brandon breathed. “I can take more.”
“Patience.”
“I’ve been patient all night.”
“You’ve been engaged for two hours.” Michael added a second finger, curling them just right. “That’s not patience. That’s a warm-up.”
“Michael—” Brandon’s protest dissolved into a moan as Michael found his prostate. “Oh god, right there—”
“Here?” Michael pressed again, and Brandon’s whole body shuddered.
“Yes—fuck—please—”
“Please what?”
“Please fuck me.” The words came out raw, desperate, all pretense of composure abandoned. “I need you. I’ve needed you all night. Please, Michael, I want—”
Michael kissed him, hard and claiming, and withdrew his fingers. Brandon heard the crinkle of a condom wrapper, felt Michael position himself, and then—
—finally, finally, finally—
Michael pressed inside.
The first thrust made them both groan.
Brandon clung to Michael’s shoulders, legs wrapped tight around his waist, savoring the stretch and fullness that never stopped feeling like completion. Michael braced himself on his forearms, forehead pressed to Brandon’s, their breath mingling in the space between.
“I love you,” Michael said. “I love you so fucking much.”
“Show me.”
Michael started to move.
The rhythm they found was slow at first—deep, rolling thrusts that hit exactly right with every stroke. Brandon met him movement for movement, hips rising to match, hands roaming the broad planes of Michael’s back. He could feel the muscles shifting under Michael’s skin, could feel the control Michael was exercising to keep the pace measured.
“You don’t have to hold back,” Brandon whispered. “I won’t break.”
“I know you won’t.”
“Then stop being so careful.” Brandon dug his nails in, dragging a groan from Michael’s throat. “I want to feel this tomorrow. I want to remember every second.”
Something in Michael snapped.
The pace shifted—faster now, harder, Michael’s hips pistoning with an urgency that stole Brandon’s breath. Every thrust punched a sound out of Brandon’s chest, every withdrawal left him aching for more. The headboard was hitting the wall and neither of them cared.
“Fuck, Brandon—” Michael’s voice was ragged. “You feel incredible—I can’t—”
“Don’t stop.” Brandon’s nails raked down Michael’s back. “Please don’t stop—”
“Never—I’ll never—”
Michael shifted angle, and Brandon cried out as his prostate took the full force of the next thrust. White-hot pleasure sparked up his spine, and he knew he wasn’t going to last much longer.
“Michael—I’m close—”
“Me too.” Michael reached between them, wrapped his hand around Brandon’s cock. “Together. Come with me.”
He stroked in time with his thrusts, and Brandon felt the pressure building, building, building—
“Now,” Michael gasped. “Brandon, now—”
They came together.
Brandon’s orgasm ripped through him, pulse after pulse of overwhelming sensation as he spilled over Michael’s hand. He felt Michael follow him over—the stuttered rhythm, the broken moan, the heat flooding inside the condom—and held on through the aftershocks as they both trembled apart.
Afterward, they lay tangled in the wrecked sheets.
Michael had cleaned them up—he always cleaned them up, another one of his careful considerations that Brandon had come to cherish—and now they were pressed together, skin to skin, heartbeats slowly returning to normal.
“So,” Brandon said eventually. “That’s what engaged sex is like.”
“That’s what engaged sex is like.” Michael’s voice was rough, satisfied. “I think I could get used to it.”
“Good thing, since you’re stuck with me for at least fifty years.”
“Sixty.” Michael pressed a kiss to his temple. “Maybe seventy.”
Brandon lifted his hand, watched the ring catch the moonlight filtering through the curtains. Still there. Still real.
“I’m going to be your husband,” he said softly. “That’s actually going to happen.”
“That’s actually going to happen.”
“You’re going to be stuck dealing with my anxiety spirals and my terrible cooking and my habit of stealing the covers.”
“I’m fully prepared.” Michael pulled him closer. “I’ve been dealing with your terrible cooking for a year now. I think I can handle the rest.”
“My cooking isn’t that terrible.”
“You once burned toast while it was still frozen.”
“That was one time—”
“And then you set off the smoke detector—”
“Okay, fine.” Brandon buried his face in Michael’s chest, laughing despite himself. “My cooking is terrible. You’re stuck with me anyway.”
“Gladly.” Michael tilted his chin up, kissed him soft and sweet. “I would gladly burn toast with you for the rest of my life.”
“That’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“I proposed to you three hours ago.”
“And yet somehow ‘I would gladly burn toast with you’ is winning.” Brandon grinned up at him. “What does that say about us?”
“That we’re perfect for each other.” Michael kissed him again, longer this time, slower. “Go to sleep. We’ve got wedding planning to discuss tomorrow.”
“Wedding planning.” Brandon’s heart did a complicated flip. “We’re actually doing this.”
“We’re actually doing this.” Michael reached over and turned off the lamp, plunging the room into soft darkness. “Get used to it, fiancé.”
Fiancé.
Brandon fell asleep with the word on his lips and Michael’s arms around him and the future stretching out before them, bright and terrifying and absolutely certain.
They were doing this.
Forever.
The End
(For real this time.)
Thank you for reading!
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