Bonus Chapter: One Year

A Good For Me bonus • by Milo Hart

⚠️ Reader Note

This bonus chapter contains the most explicit content in the entire Good For Me project. Set on Marc and Dave’s first wedding anniversary in a cabin upstate. Praise kink, light verbal D/s, hand-on-throat as presence (never pressure), edging across an entire bath and bed sequence, mutual pleasure across a long unhurried evening. No plot, no complication — total trust. If that’s what you came for, you have, in fact, arrived.

If you haven’t finished the novel yet, come back to this after the epilogue — it sits one year later and references key beats from the main book.

— MARC —

The cabin was on a small lake in Columbia County, two and a half hours up the Taconic from the loft, in the slow careful country of the western edge of the Hudson Valley where the small old farmhouses still sat on the small old back roads and the cell service became, in places, suggestive at best.

Dave had rented it in February.

He had rented it in February without telling me. He had told me, on a Sunday morning over breakfast at the kitchen island in May, that he had rented us a cabin upstate for the second weekend in June. I had said, Dave. He had said, husband. We are going. Three nights. June eleventh through fourteenth. We are going to spend our first anniversary in a cabin on a lake in Columbia County, with no phones, no agenda, and no people. The discussion is closed.

I had said, yes.

I had not, on the morning at the island in May, fully understood that he had been planning the weekend for four months.

I was about to.

We drove up Friday afternoon in the small dark blue used Subaru Outback we had bought together in March — our car, our first one — with my hand on his thigh on the highway and his hand on the wheel and the playlist Joon had made us for the wedding the previous June playing low on the stereo. We arrived at the cabin at five thirty.

The cabin was — I want to put it on the page — a small one-room cedar place on the south shore of a small lake that had, on the late afternoon of June eleventh, the kind of slow gold light that came off New England water in early summer. There was a small wooden dock. There was a small fire pit. There was a hammock between two trees. There was a small kitchen at one end of the cabin, and a queen bed at the other, and a small claw-foot tub in the small bathroom, and on the small wood table by the bed, when we came in, there was — in a small clean glass jar — a single white hyacinth.

He had — I would learn later — driven up Wednesday morning while I had been at work, set the cabin, and driven back, so that the hyacinth would already be there when we walked in.

He had not told me.

I saw it when I came in.

I set down my bag.

I looked at him.

He smiled.

He said, very quiet, welcome home, husband.

I said, welcome home.

We did not, in the first hour, do anything elaborate.

We unpacked. He had already, on the Wednesday trip, stocked the small refrigerator and the small pantry. There was a small bottle of the same Spanish red we kept on the kitchen island at home, and a small loaf of bread, and a small wedge of cheese, and a small dish of olives — the small portable kit of us, exported into a one-room cabin on a lake — and we sat at the small table by the south window in the slow gold light of the late afternoon, and we drank a glass of the Spanish red, and we ate the bread and the cheese and the olives, and we did not, for the first half hour, talk much.

I had — across the previous year, the year of being his husband — gotten used to not having to talk much.

He looked at me over the rim of his wine glass.

He said, very quiet, husband.

I said, yes.

He said, one year.

I said, one year.

He said, anniversary.

I said, anniversary.

He said, we have, by my count, three nights here. And no clock. And no phones. And no one in three miles who knows our names.

I said, yes.

He said, I want to take a long bath with you, and feed you a small dinner, and take you to bed, and stay in that bed for as long as the bed will hold us. Yes?

I said, yes.

He said, I have been thinking about tonight for four months.

I said, I know you have.

He laughed.

He said, was it that obvious.

I said, Dave. You have been adjusting your cuff three times a day at the kitchen island since February.

He laughed harder.

He said, fair.

He stood up.

He held out his hand.

He said, bath, husband.

— MARC —

The small claw-foot tub in the cabin was bigger than the one in the loft.

I want to put it on the page, because the small claw-foot tub in the loft had been — for the entire previous year of our marriage — the small specific tub I had been bathed in by my husband on Saturday afternoons whenever the week had been the kind of week that needed a Saturday afternoon bath, and the small claw-foot tub in the loft was — by careful design of the building’s prior owners — barely big enough for me alone, and decisively not big enough for the two of us.

The claw-foot tub in the cabin was different.

It was a deeper, longer, wider model. Some careful prior tenant of the cabin had put it in for exactly the use the two of us were about to put it to.

Dave drew the bath.

He drew it slowly.

He drew it the way he did things, which was to say carefully, with attention, with the small added exact dose of bath salt he always added, and with the small white candle from the dresser brought into the bathroom and set on the small wooden stool beside the tub and lit.

He came out of the bathroom.

He came over to me at the small table by the south window, where I had been finishing my wine.

He took the wine glass out of my hand.

He set it down.

He put both of his hands at the sides of my face, and he said, very quiet, husband. Take your clothes off. Slow. I am going to watch.

I —

I looked at him.

I said, Dave.

He said, yes.

I said, you are —

He said, I am.

I took my clothes off.

I took them off slowly.

I had — across the previous year — gotten very comfortable being looked at by him. The man who had, in his prior life, never let any other person watch him take off clothes had become, by June of his second year of marriage, a man who could undress in a slow gold light of a south window of a cabin on a lake in front of his husband, with the husband standing three feet away with his arms crossed, watching, without flinching.

I undressed.

I took off the shirt.

I took off the slacks.

I took off the undershirt.

I took off the boxers.

I stood, naked, in the slow gold light of the south window, in the cabin, with the cross of my grandmother on the small chain at my throat and the ring on my left hand and the small white scar on my right knee from a fall off a bike at nine and the tattoo over my sternum and the small line of dark hair below my navel and — by his face — a man visibly already half-hard from having been told to take his clothes off slowly while his husband watched.

He looked at me for a long moment.

He said, very quiet, Marcus Rivera-Chen.

I said, yes.

He said, qué bueno, mijo.

I said, hoarse, Dave.

He took his own clothes off.

He took them off in front of me, the same slow way, with the same small unhurried attention, and the gold cross of his grandfather’s at his throat — wait. I am going to put this on the page properly because the noticing of it, for me, on the night, was the thing.

He had — at some point in the previous month, on a quiet Sunday afternoon in May, in the small careful private way he did things — had the brass key from the original lock of his office, the one he had given me on a Sunday in October two years earlier, and which he had been wearing on a leather cord at his throat for the previous year and a half — he had had it set into the back of his grandfather’s gold cross. The cross now had, on the back, the small brass Threshold tag soldered into a small careful inlay.

He wore both of them, together, at his throat, on a single chain.

He had, accordingly, on the night of June eleventh, in the small gold light of the south window of the cabin, the small brass Threshold of his original office and the small gold cross of his grandfather’s family in the same single piece of jewelry, against his bare chest.

I had, until that night, not seen him wear it.

He had — I would learn after — only put it on for the first time that morning, in the loft, before we left.

I said, hoarse, Dave.

He said, yes.

I said, you — the cross —

He said, I had the key set into the back of it. In May. On the morning of the second Sunday. I have been waiting to wear it. I — sweetheart, I wanted you to see it tonight. For the first time.

I —

I went to him.

I came across the cabin, naked, in the slow gold light, and I came into him at the small table, and I put my arms around his neck and my face against his collarbone, and the small piece of jewelry — brass and gold, the original lock of his office and his grandfather’s cross — was warm against my own chest, between my own gold cross and his bare sternum.

He held me.

He said, into my hair, husband.

I said, husband.

We stood like that for about a minute.

He pulled back.

He said, bath.

We went in.

— MARC —

He got into the tub first. He sat at the back. I came in after, and I sat between his knees, with my back against his chest, in the slow exact way we had been bathing together for two and a half years, and the warm water came up to the line of my collarbones, and the small candle on the wooden stool flickered, and the south window of the cabin, in the slow gold of late afternoon turning into the early gold of evening, was a long bright pane of gold above us.

He held me.

He spread his hand on my belly under the water.

He had been spreading his hand on my belly under the water for two and a half years.

He said, into my hair, husband.

I said, husband.

He said, I am going to make this take a while.

I said, take all of it.

He took all of it.

He washed my hair. He did it slow. He did it with the small attentive surgical attention I had been receiving in baths from him since the second weekend after I had met him, and which had been, in the previous year of our marriage, the ritual that had — by June twelfth — accumulated into the sixty-third occurrence of having my hair washed by my husband. I had been counting. I had been counting because somewhere in the second month of our marriage I had, in the small private notebook on the bookshelf, started a small accounting of small repeated rituals. The hair-washing was on the list. The number on the night of the eleventh, going into the cabin tub, was sixty-two. Going out of it would be sixty-three.

He washed it.

He rinsed it with the small ceramic cup from the edge of the tub.

He kissed the back of my neck.

He said, into my wet hair, welcome home.

He said it three times.

He said it once on the wash. He said it again on the rinse. He said it a third time, very quiet, when his hand came around and spread on my belly under the water for the third time of the bath, and the third welcome home was the welcome home I had — across two and a half years — come to understand as the welcome home that meant the small specific we are about to make love now welcome home. The first two had been ritual. The third was the small clear signal.

His hand, under the water, moved.

He spread it lower.

He said, against my throat, very low, easy, husband. Slow.

I said, yes.

He took his time.

I want to put on the page that the small attentive deliberate slow under the water of the cabin tub, in the slow gold of late afternoon turning into the early gold of evening, with my husband’s hand at me from behind and his cross-and-key against my back and his other hand spread on my belly above the water — the small attentive deliberate slow was — by my own honest accounting, after two and a half years of being his — the most controlled application of his hand on me in the entire history of our being together. He worked me. He worked me unhurriedly. He worked me without rushing the rhythm. He worked me in the patient way of a man who had been planning the night for four months and had, at the start of it, in the bath, decided to begin the night with the smallest, slowest, most exact application of his hand he could possibly produce.

He brought me to the edge.

He brought me to the edge with one hand under the water and his other hand spread on my belly above the water and his mouth at the side of my throat and his low slow voice in my ear.

That’s it. Look at you. There. Stay with me. Look at how you want it. Yes.

I said, hoarse, Dave —

He said, not yet, husband. Not in the bath. You hold it. Yes?

I said, yes —

He said, good boy.

He pulled his hand back.

He let me sit, in the warm water, against his chest, with the small bright pulse of an unfinished orgasm in the lowest part of my body and his hand spread again on my belly above the water and his other hand returned to the back of my head, and he stroked my hair for about a minute, and the body — the body that had, by June twelfth of the year of being thirty-six, been built across two and a half years to be held on an edge and brought down and held again — sat in the warm water and let it.

He said, into my hair, that’s right. Stay with me.

I said, yes.

He said, I am going to bring you twice tonight. The first one is going to be in the bed in about an hour. We are not, this time, in the cabin tub, on the night of our anniversary, on a Friday in June, going to do it in the bath. The bath is for the slow build. You are going to be on the edge for the rest of the bath. Yes?

I said, hoarse, yes, Dave.

He said, good boy.

He held me.

We stayed in the bath for another twenty minutes.

He washed the rest of me. He washed himself. We rinsed. The candle on the stool burned down by an inch. The light through the south window, by the time we got out, had turned from slow gold to early evening rose.

He got me out of the tub.

He dried me with a small clean towel. He dried himself.

He took me to the bed.

He laid me down on the bed.

He said, don’t move, husband. Stay there. I am going to feed you.

I said, Dave —

He said, I told you. Long night. Eat first. Stay there.

He brought, from the small kitchen, a small wooden tray with the rest of the bread and the rest of the cheese and a small bowl of the strawberries he had bought at the small farm stand near the cabin on the way in. He sat on the edge of the bed in his pajama pants. He fed me. He fed me strawberries one at a time. He fed me bread. He fed me a small piece of cheese. He fed me, exactly, the small ritual meal of the kitchen island in February of two and a half years ago, on the night of the silk and the throat — only, on the bed, in a cabin, on the evening of our anniversary, naked under the duvet with my husband’s pajama pants brushing my hip.

I ate.

I let him feed me.

I had — by June twelfth — been letting him feed me for two and a half years.

The discipline of letting him feed me had become the small ordinary baseline of being his.

When the small wooden tray was empty, he set it aside.

He took the gold key-and-cross off his neck.

He set it on the small wood table beside the hyacinth.

He took his pajama pants off.

He came onto the bed.

He came over me.

He said, very quiet, now, husband.

— MARC —

I am going to give you the next two hours on the page.

I am going to give it on the page without flinching at the language because the next two hours were — by my own honest accounting, across the entire two and a half years of being made love to by David Chen — the longest, slowest, most exact, most fully orchestrated single act of being-made-love-to of my entire conscious life, and the night belongs in the record of this small private bonus chapter in the way it is going to belong to the rest of our small private accounting forever.

He started with the slow.

He took his time on me. He took me back to the edge in the bed, with his mouth, in the unhurried way he had taken me to the edge in the bath. He brought me there. He pulled off. He brought me there again. He pulled off again. The third time, he came up from where his mouth had been, and he came up the bed to me, and he kissed me on the mouth, slow and full, and he said, against my mouth:

Husband. The first one. Now. Yes?

I said, yes.

He said, in your throat, and your chest, and your face. The whole way. The slow way. I want to watch you go.

He came back down on me.

He took me back in his mouth.

He worked me — the third time, the unhurried way, with the patience of a man who had been holding me on the edge for almost two hours in the bath and the bed — and the third time, when he brought me there, I went.

I went hard.

I went into his mouth and I went with my back arched off the bed and my hands fisted in the duvet and his free hand spread on my belly through the entire orgasm, and I made — I am going to put it on the page — the long open sound that he had, by then, learned to expect from me on the slow ones, and the orgasm went through me in a long unbroken wave that went on, by some small mechanism of the body, for what was longer than my orgasms had previously been on any night of being his.

He stayed.

He stayed all the way through.

He came up afterward. He came up over me. He kissed me — slow, full, with the taste of me still on his mouth — and I caught the kiss, and I held him to me by both sides of his face, and I said, hoarse, into his mouth, Dave. Dave. Dave.

He said, I know. I know, husband. Look at you.

He pulled back.

He looked at me.

He said, that was the first.

I said, yes.

He said, the second one is going to take longer.

I laughed, a small wet laugh.

He laughed too.

He said, take a minute.

I took a minute.

I lay under him on the bed, in the cabin, in the early evening rose light through the south window turning into the small purple of the early dark, and I let my body come back from where it had been, and his hand stroked the inside of my forearm with his thumb, and his other hand was spread on my chest over the cross of my grandmother and the tattoo of her name, and after a minute or two I said, very quiet:

Husband.

He said, yes.

I said, I am ready.

He said, good boy.

He kissed me.

He took the small things from the small drawer of the bedside table. He had, on the Wednesday trip up, set the small drawer of the bedside table the way he set the small drawer of the bedside table at home. The small drawer at the cabin had, in it, exactly the same small careful supplies as the small drawer at the loft, in exactly the same configuration.

He prepared me slowly.

He did it the way he had been doing it for two and a half years, which was to say slowly, with care, with one hand at my hip and the other on me and the talking through the entire process, and when he came into me — and he came into me face to face, this time, the way we mostly did the slow ones now, with my legs around his hips and his hands at the sides of my face — he came in slow, all the way in, and he held there, with his forehead against mine, for the full minute he always held there, while my body adjusted around him.

He said, against my mouth, husband.

I said, husband.

He moved.

He moved slow.

He moved, at the cabin, in the small bed, on the night of our anniversary, the way we had agreed two and a half years ago to move in the slow ones — with care, with patience, with the long unhurried rhythm of two bodies that had, by then, completely learned each other.

He talked.

He talked the whole time.

I am going to put on the page, because the talking was the talking, that the talking on the night of our anniversary in the cabin was different from the talking on any prior night.

The talking on the night of our anniversary was — by his choice, by some small orchestration he had been preparing for four months — a slow careful sequential walk, in his low voice, through the small specific inventory of every Friday and Saturday and Sunday morning of the previous two and a half years.

He started with the night of the speech.

He said, low, against my mouth, with his hips moving slow against mine: Marc. The night I came up here in October two and a half years ago. The kitchen. Your coat still on. You said the sentence about the geometry test. You were thirty years old. I — I was thirty-six. I had not, until that night, decided what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I decided that night.

He said, I have, every night since, been confirming the decision.

He said, the third Thursday in October. The first time. You cried about your grandmother. I — sweetheart, I went home that afternoon and I sat at my own kitchen island and I said that is the man. I knew. I — I knew at three thirty PM on the third Thursday in October. I — I have been knowing every single day since.

He said, day one twenty-one. The kitchen. The four-second hand. Welcome home. The first night.

He said, the asking, in May. The rain. The long table. The chuppah. You said all three.

He said, the night your father had the heart attack. The morning I put you in the cab. The way we got through the next month.

He said, the kitchen. The fair-weather sentence. The recovery. The trip to New Jersey. The seven sentences. Your father saying I love you, son. The empty place at the table.

He said, the rooftop. The brass key. The ring.

He said, the wedding. The chuppah. Qué bueno, mijo in Joon’s gold thread. The cross at your throat. The line of your father walking you up.

He said, the morning after. Marc Rivera-Chen. The first time.

He said, the move-in. The carne guisada. The carne guisada has gotten better, husband. We are at acceptable now. By next year we will be at almost as good as your mother’s.

I laughed against his mouth.

He laughed too.

He said, I am — I am running through them, husband. The whole year and a half. While I am inside you. I want — sweetheart, I want this orgasm, the second one tonight, to be the orgasm in which the whole sequence of every small night we have had together comes through your body in one piece. Yes?

I said, hoarse, yes —

He said, good.

He kept moving.

He kept talking.

He went slower. He went deeper. He brought me, with his free hand, to the edge — and then back off — and then to the edge again — and then back off — and the slow careful sequence of every Friday night and Sunday morning of the last two and a half years was, in his voice at my ear, walking through my body, sentence by sentence, while my body was — for two hours, for the longest single piece of being made love to of my entire life — held in the most controlled most loving most exact set of hands I had ever, in my conscious experience, been held in.

He said, on the fourth time he brought me to the edge — his hand spread on my throat now, the way I had asked him to put it, the way it had stayed there for the previous twenty minutes — husband. Now. The whole thing. All of it. Now.

I came.

I came under his hand on my throat and his other hand on me and his cock inside me and his voice at my ear running through the sentences of every important night of our life together, and the orgasm went through me — I am going to be precise on the page — for what was, by my own count, almost twenty seconds. The orgasm did not stop the moment my body finished. The orgasm sat. The orgasm sat in me. The orgasm did the thing his orgasms had been doing to me for two and a half years and had never, on a single night, done quite this hard. I shook. I made the long open sound. He held still inside me. He held the hand on my throat. He held the other hand on me. He stayed there with me through the entire twenty seconds, with his forehead against mine, his breath open on my mouth, his eyes on my eyes.

When the wave finally finished, he kept me there for another minute.

He did not, immediately, move.

He kissed me on the mouth.

He kissed me on each closed eye.

He kissed me on the bridge of my nose.

He kissed me, exactly, in the small specific sequence he had been kissing me in for two and a half years.

Then he started to move again.

He moved, this time, for himself.

He moved for about forty seconds, and he came inside me with his forehead against mine, and his hand on my throat sliding up to spread on the side of my face, and he said into my mouth, very quiet, husband. Husband. Husband.

He stayed.

He stayed inside me afterward for a long minute.

He pulled out, finally, slowly, the small careful exit.

He cleaned me up the way he always cleaned me up, with the warm cloth from the small bowl on the dresser. He cleaned himself. He came back. He pulled the duvet over both of us. He pulled me to him. I put my head against his chest. The cross-and-key was on the wood table by the hyacinth. The candle was burning low. The window over the lake was a small purple square of post-dusk going into dark.

He held me.

He said, into my hair, very quiet, one year, husband.

I said, one year.

He said, qué bueno, mijo.

I said, qué bueno.

I cried, briefly, into his collarbone, in the small quiet way I cried after the very long ones.

He let me.

He stroked the back of my head.

After a long while, when I had stopped, he said, into my hair, very quiet, Marc.

I said, yes.

He said, I want to say a thing.

I said, say it.

He said, I have been thinking about — sweetheart, I have been thinking about — children.

I said, very quiet, yes.

He said, we said eighteen months. From January first. We are — we are at eighteen months as of last week.

I said, I know.

He said, I — sweetheart, I want to begin the process. I want — I want us to start the calls on Monday. I want — Marc, I want a daughter. I want her in our long table by the time she is one.

I sat with that.

I had — by June twelfth of the year of our anniversary — been, in the small parallel private way he had been, also waiting to bring it up.

I said, Dave.

He said, yes.

I said, yes. Monday. We start. Yes.

He said, good boy.

I laughed, a small wet laugh against his chest.

He laughed too.

He said, we are going to be — we are going to be parents.

I said, we are going to be parents.

He held me tighter.

We slept.

We slept in the cabin, on the small bed, with the cross-and-key on the small wood table by the hyacinth, and the candle burning out at some point in the middle of the night, and the small lake outside the south window going into the small black of late June.

I slept the rest of the night through.

In the morning — June twelfth, our anniversary — at six fifty-five, the small early light through the south window of the cabin came in, and Dave stirred against me, and he kissed the back of my neck.

He said, into my hair, very quiet:

Good morning, husband.

I said, very quiet:

Good morning, husband.

He pulled me tighter.

He said, anniversary.

I said, anniversary.

He said, we are going to spend the rest of the morning in this bed.

I said, yes.

He said, and then — we are going to swim in the lake. And we are going to eat lunch on the dock. And we are going to come back to bed in the afternoon. And tonight, in the small fire pit, I am going to grill us a steak. And we are going to drink wine. And we are going to come back to this bed at eight, and I am going to make love to you again, slower, smaller, the easy way, and we are going to sleep.

I said, yes.

He said, and Sunday we are going to drive home.

I said, yes.

He said, and Monday we are going to start the calls.

I said, yes.

He said, husband.

I said, husband.

We did, in fact, do all of it.

We drove home Sunday afternoon at four.

On Monday morning, at eight, in the kitchen of the loft, with the second-best mug already by the espresso machine and Dave at the stove in his pajama pants, he turned when I came in, and he handed me the coffee, and he said, very quiet, good morning, husband, and I said, good morning, husband, and we both — for the first time, after two and a half years, on a Monday morning of the third week of June of the year I was thirty-six — sat down at the kitchen island together and made a list of three names of agencies we were, by the end of the week, going to call.

By the end of October of that year, we had begun the process for our daughter.

By October seventeenth of the year after, she was born.

But that part — that part — is in the chapter you have, at this point in the book, already read.

This part — the cabin, the bath, the bed, the long unbroken talk through the small careful inventory of two and a half years of being his — was the small private night that started it.

It is, in our private accounting, the most important night of the second year of our marriage.

It belongs to us.

I have, on the page right now, given it to you anyway.

Qué bueno, mijo.

Qué bueno.

— M.R.-C.

Thank you for reading.

If you enjoyed Marc and Dave’s story, the best gift you can give an indie author is a review on Amazon and Goodreads. Even one or two sentences makes a difference.

— Milo Hart

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