Best Man’s Curiosity — Bonus Chapter

The Boathouse — One Year Later
by Jace Wilder

An exclusive bonus chapter from Best Man’s Curiosity by Jace Wilder.
This scene takes place during Chapter 19, when Ethan and Ryan return to Lakewood Lodge for Adam and Sophie’s first anniversary.

The Boathouse — One Year Later

Ryan POV

The boathouse hadn’t changed.

Same weathered wood. Same salt-crusted window. Same workbench that I couldn’t look at without my whole body going hot, because the last time I’d been bent over that workbench, Ethan Cole had been inside me with his hand over my mouth and a hundred wedding guests drinking Chardonnay fifty yards away.

That was a year ago. We’d been together twelve months now. We shared an apartment, a bookshelf, a cat named Gerald who technically belonged to the laundromat. We’d said I love you in a car on a highway on Thanksgiving night.

Ethan was standing in the boathouse doorway, backlit by the afternoon sun, his jacket off, his tie loosened, and he was looking at me with the look he got when he’d made a decision and the decision was me.

“No,” I said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“We are not having sex in this boathouse again.”

He stepped inside. Closed the door. Flipped the latch. The click of the lock echoed and my cock twitched because apparently my body had been Pavlov’d by the sound of this specific door latching.

“One difference this time,” he said, walking toward me. “We’re not a secret anymore.”

“If I get splinters again, I’m billing you.”

“Deal.”

He undressed me like he had all the time in the world. Jacket first, folded — because even in a boathouse, Ethan Cole folded clothes. My shirt next, button by button, his mouth following each reveal.

“A year,” he murmured against my skin. “A year and this spot still makes you shake.”

“Did you just call my erogenous zones known variables?”

“I have a spreadsheet. Column A: location. Column B: response intensity. Column C: optimal technique.”

“Column D: verbal response. Usually some variation of ‘I’m going to kill you’ followed by ‘don’t stop.’”

I grabbed his tie and yanked him forward and kissed him. A year hadn’t dimmed the electricity of kissing Ethan Cole. I fisted my hand in his hair and pulled, and his whole body arched into mine.

He turned me. Walked me backward until my hips hit the workbench. He lifted me onto it. I wrapped my legs around his waist.

He sank to his knees on the boathouse floor. The sight of him — this broad-shouldered, binder-carrying man, on his knees with his eyes dark with want — was a view I would never get used to.

“A year ago, I was terrified to do this,” he said. “I’m not shaking now.”

He took me in his mouth with focused precision, and the Ethan of today knew exactly how to use his tongue and his hand and the sounds he made — the low hum of pleasure that vibrated through me like a bass note.

“Fuck,” I breathed. “Fuck, Ethan, your mouth —”

He pulled off long enough to say, “Column B: response intensity — high,” and then took me again before I could throw something at him.

He worked me to the edge and then stopped. Stood, wiped his mouth, and reached into his jacket pocket. A small bottle. A foil packet.

“You packed.”

“I planned for the contingency of the boathouse. There’s a difference.”

“Turn around, Ryan.”

I turned around.

He opened me with his fingers the way he did everything — thoroughly, attentively. One hand inside me, the other flat on my lower back, his mouth pressing kisses along my spine.

“You’re so responsive,” he said, and the praise hit me like a drug. “You open up for me like —”

“If you say ‘like a well-organized spreadsheet’ I am leaving.”

“I was going to say ‘like you were made for me.’”

He pushed inside me and the stretch was familiar and devastating and right. No hand over my mouth this time. Just sound — mine, his, ours.

He moved. Slow at first, then faster, deeper. His hand slid around to my chest, pulling me upright, my back flush against his front, and I cried out because he’d found the spot.

“Right there. Don’t you dare — Ethan, right there —”

“Because I love you,” he said, and the words landed in the middle of the heat and turned it from physical to something holy, and I came with his arm around my chest and his name in my throat, and he followed me over the edge with a sound I’d heard a hundred times and would hear a thousand more.

After. Leaning against the workbench. Both half-dressed, breathing hard, grinning like idiots.

“Splinters?” Ethan asked.

“None. The workbench has aged well.”

“So have we.”

“Same time next year?”

“Same time every year. I’ll put it in the calendar.”

“Column A: location — boathouse.”

“Column B: frequency — annual.”

“Column C: outlook — extremely favorable.”

“Column D: love of my life — yes.”

I pressed my face into his chest and laughed, and he held me, and the boathouse held us both, and outside the sun was setting on the lake where everything had started and nothing was ending.

— THE END —

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