One Bed, No Rules — Bonus Chapter

Exclusive Bonus Scene
by Jace Wilder

This bonus chapter takes place two weeks after the events of One Bed, No Rules. It contains explicit sexual content and is intended for readers 18+ who have finished the novel.

Two Weeks Later

Caleb

I heard the car before I saw it.

A low hum on the logging road, tires on gravel, the particular rattle of a Subaru engine that I’d know anywhere now. I set down the wrench I’d been using on the generator — new coolant hose, properly fitted this time — and wiped my hands on my jeans and stood on the porch and waited.

Fourteen days. Three hundred thirty-six hours. I’d counted every one of them.

The silver Outback came around the bend. Connecticut plates. Parked crooked in the gravel turnout, exactly the way it had the first time. The engine cut. The door opened.

Ryan stepped out and the mountain got smaller.

He was wearing the beanie. The grey one, slouchy, jammed over sandy hair that was longer than I remembered. Henley under a canvas jacket. Jeans that sat low on his hips. The camera bag over one shoulder, the duffel over the other, and a grin on his face that hit me like sunrise after a week of storms.

“You fixed the generator,” he said.

“I fixed the generator.”

“Did you fix the shower curtain?”

“No.”

His grin widened. “Good.”

He dropped his bags on the gravel. Crossed the distance between us in four steps. I was off the porch and meeting him halfway before my brain caught up with my legs, and then his hands were on my face and my hands were on his waist and we were kissing in the driveway in the cold October air with the taste of spearmint gum and three hours of highway coffee between our tongues.

He kissed the way he photographed — with his whole body, with total attention, like whatever was in front of him deserved to be captured completely. His fingers in my hair. His chest against mine. The sound he made against my mouth — a small, desperate hum that I’d been hearing in my sleep for two weeks.

“Hi,” he said. Against my lips. Our word.

“Hi.”

“I missed you.”

“I noticed. You called me eleven times yesterday.”

“Three of those were pocket dials.”

“They were not.”

“They were absolutely not.” He kissed me again. Harder. His hands sliding down my chest, my ribs, gripping my flannel like he was afraid I’d evaporate. “Caleb. Take me inside.”

We didn’t make it past the kitchen.

The door barely closed before his back was against it and my mouth was on his throat and his legs were around my waist. I lifted him — his weight familiar now, the exact distribution of him against my body something my muscles remembered — and carried him three steps to the counter.

The counter. Our counter. The scratch was still there from the mug.

He sat on the edge with his legs locked around me and stripped my flannel off with hands that were shaking. Not from cold. From two weeks of phone calls and texts and the specific torture of hearing someone’s voice without being able to touch them.

“You look different,” he said, pulling my thermal over my head. His hands flat on my chest, mapping the terrain like he was verifying it matched his memory. “You look — God, Caleb. You grew the beard out.”

“You said you liked it.”

“I said I liked it and you actually—” He kissed my jaw. The scruff. The line of my throat. “You’re going to kill me with this beard.”

“You drove three hours. Let me take care of you.”

I pulled his henley off. The tattoo sleeve, the lean chest, the golden skin that I’d memorized in firelight and was seeing now in daylight for the first time — afternoon sun through the windows making everything vivid and real.

“You’re beautiful,” I said.

His eyes went soft. “Say it again.”

“You’re beautiful. And I’m going to take you apart on this counter and then in the bed and then in the tub with no curtain and by the time I’m done you’re not going to remember what state you’re in.”

“Vermont,” he whispered. “I’m in Vermont. With you. That’s the only geography I need.”

I kissed him until he stopped talking. Unbuckled his belt. Pulled his jeans down while he lifted his hips to help. He was hard — already, since the driveway probably. I wrapped my hand around him and his head fell back against the cabinet and the sound he made echoed off the kitchen walls.

“Two weeks,” he gasped. “Two weeks of my own hand and it was—”

“Not enough?”

“Not even close. Your hands, Caleb. Your fucking hands.”

I stroked him slow. Relearning the weight, the heat, the way he responded to pressure and speed. Every sensation was sharper. Every sound he made was louder. The deprivation had turned us both into live wires.

He pulled at my belt. Jeans around my thighs, his hand wrapping around me, and the dual sensation buckled my knees.

I reached into the drawer beside the stove. Condom and lube, right where they’d been for two weeks.

His eyes widened. “You kept them in the drawer?”

“I kept everything where you left it.”

Something crossed his face — the recognition that I’d been waiting for him in this cabin with the supplies in the kitchen drawer and the generator fixed and the shower curtain deliberately not purchased.

“Caleb,” he said. His voice cracked. “Get inside me right now.”

I prepped him on the counter. Two fingers, then three, while he gripped my shoulders and breathed. When I finally pushed inside him we both stopped breathing — the stretch, the heat, the fullness of being inside him again after fourteen days of nothing but memory.

“Oh God,” he said. “I forgot how you—”

“You forgot?”

“Not forgot. It’s more than I remembered. Move. Caleb. Move.“

I moved. Hard. Deep. Two weeks of distance channeled into every thrust, the counter shaking, his back hitting the cabinet with each impact. This was reunion. Reclamation. The physical declaration that the distance hadn’t diminished anything.

I gripped his jaw. Made him look at me. Our eyes locked while I drove into him.

“I love you,” I said.

I hadn’t planned it. The words came out the way a breath comes out — involuntary, essential.

He stilled. His eyes went wide.

“Say it again,” he whispered.

“I love you. I loved you before you left. I loved you while you were gone. I love you now, in this kitchen, on this counter, and I’m done not saying it.”

His eyes filled. “I love you too. I figured it out on the drive. Somewhere around the Massachusetts border I looked at the GPS and thought — that’s wrong. He’s my destination. He’s been my destination since the first night he pulled me in from the cold.“

I kissed him. Tasted salt. Then I moved again. Slower. Deeper. His forehead against mine. His body around mine like it was the only place in the world he was meant to be.

He came with my name and the word love tangled together. I followed. Deep inside him, the word I’d been holding for weeks finally free.

Later. Much later. We were in bed. Clean sheets — I’d put clean sheets on yesterday.

“I have something for you,” he said.

He climbed out of bed. Naked, unselfconscious, beautiful in the daylight. Crossed to the duffel. Pulled something out.

A t-shirt. Grey. Soft. Well-worn.

“For the drawer,” he said.

The man who’d never put a single item of clothing in anyone’s drawer, standing naked in a cabin in Vermont, offering me a t-shirt like it was a vow.

I pressed it to my face. It smelled like cedar and sleep and him.

“I cleared out the east bedroom,” I said.

“The one with—”

“East-facing windows. Morning light. There’s a desk in there now. Solid oak. Good surface for editing.”

“Caleb Ward. You bought me a desk.”

“I bought the room a desk. You happen to be the person who’s going to use it.”

“You impossible, stubborn, beautiful man.”

He climbed back into bed. Kissed me slow and deep and full of everything.

“Hey, Caleb?”

“Mm.”

“I’m staying. Not for two weeks. Not for the winter. I talked to my landlord. Month-to-month in Brooklyn, remote editing setup here. This is home.”

I held his hand against my chest. Over my heart.

“The bed’s not too big anymore,” I said.

“The bed was never too big. You just needed the right person in it.”

Outside, the mountain settled into evening. The stove crackled. The generator hummed. And in the cabin on the ridge, in the bed that had started everything, two men who’d learned each other by firelight held on and didn’t let go.

The storm was long over. What it left behind was just beginning.

Loved Caleb and Ryan? The full novel is available now.

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