His Brother's Wedding Night by Isla Wilde

Bonus Chapter: The First Tuesday

MF Contemporary Romance by Isla Wilde

🔥 This bonus chapter is set after the events of His Brother’s Wedding Night.

Maya moves in. Jack made the bed. Carl ate a boot. And the christening begins.

The apartment smelled like paint and cardboard and the faintest trace of jasmine, and Jack Russell was standing in his kitchen watching the most organized woman in the world lose her mind over a silverware drawer.

“It’s not alphabetical,” Maya said, which was not a sentence that should apply to silverware, but here they were. “You have the soup spoons mixed in with the teaspoons and the salad forks are in with the dinner forks and there’s a spatula in here, Jack. A spatula.”

“The spatula is a free spirit.”

“The spatula belongs in the utensil crock.”

“I don’t own a utensil crock.”

She looked at him with the expression of a woman reevaluating her life choices. He loved that expression. He’d been seeing it roughly fourteen times a day since she’d started moving in, and each time it appeared — over his filing system (a pile), his bookshelf organization (vibes), his method of storing clean laundry (the chair) — he fell a little more in love with the woman who was horrified by him and chose him anyway.

“I’m buying you a utensil crock,” she said.

“You’re buying us a utensil crock. You live here now.”

The word live did something to her face. The mock outrage dissolved, and underneath it was the other expression — the one he’d first seen on a dock under the stars. The soft one. The one that said: I’m still surprised this is real.

“I live here now,” she repeated. Like she was testing the weight of it. Like the words were a piece of furniture she was trying in a room she’d just moved into.

“You live here now.”

She set the spatula on the counter. Crossed the kitchen. Put her hands on his chest — her palms flat against his t-shirt, over his heartbeat, the way she’d done on the balcony, on the highway shoulder, on every surface where they’d found their way back to each other.

“It’s Tuesday,” she said.

“I know.”

“You said you wanted the Tuesday version of this. At the resort. You said you wanted to make me coffee in a kitchen that isn’t a hotel and argue about what to watch and have it be boring and normal and real.”

“I remember.”

“This is it.” Her eyes were bright. “This is the Tuesday version. The spatula in the wrong drawer. The boxes in the hallway. Your dog sleeping on my sweater. This is it, and it’s better than I imagined.”

He covered her hands with his. “You imagined it?”

“Every night. On the phone. In my apartment with the throw pillows that looked right and felt wrong. I imagined this exact kitchen and this exact argument and your exact face when I told you your organizational system was criminal.”

“My organizational system kept me alive for thirty-four years.”

“Your organizational system is a war crime against cutlery.”

He kissed her. Because she was standing in his kitchen — their kitchen — wearing his flannel shirt over leggings, her hair in a messy bun, no makeup, cardboard dust on her cheek, and she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. More beautiful than the green dress. More beautiful than the balcony. More beautiful than every curated, polished, performing version of Maya Lin he’d met before she’d let him see the real one.

She kissed him back with the ease of a woman who’d stopped asking permission. Her hands went from his chest to his hair and she pulled him down and the kiss deepened and the silverware drawer was forgotten and the spatula watched from the counter with the silent judgment of a utensil that knew where it belonged.

“The movers aren’t coming back until tomorrow,” she said against his mouth.

“I know.”

“The bedroom is mostly set up.”

“I made the bed. Hospital corners. For you.”

“God, I love you.”

She pulled his shirt over his head. He returned the favor — the flannel first, unbuttoning it slowly, letting it fall from her shoulders. Then the tank top underneath, peeled up and over, and she was bare from the waist up in the kitchen light. No bra. She’d stopped wearing one around the apartment three days into moving in and the casual intimacy of it — her body available, unhidden, his to look at whenever he wanted — still hit him like a fist every time.

“Kitchen or bedroom?” he asked. His voice was already rough. His hands were on her waist and his thumbs were tracing the curves he’d memorized and her skin was warm under his palms.

“Kitchen first,” she said. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, then lower, tracking the line of hair from his navel to his waistband. “We should christen it.”

“We’ve only owned it for six hours.”

“Then we’re behind schedule.”

He lifted her onto the counter. Their counter — the counter she’d wiped down twice since the movers left because she didn’t trust the previous owners’ hygiene standards. She sat on the cold granite and gasped, her nipples tightening from the shock of it, and wrapped her legs around him. The position was the kitchen at the resort — the same geometry, the same urgency — but everything else was different. No secret. No hiding. No countdown clock. Just a man and a woman in their own kitchen on a Tuesday night with nowhere to be and no one to perform for.

He kissed down her neck. The collarbone — always the collarbone, the place where everything started, the ridge of bone that would always be the beginning of every road that led to her. He dragged his mouth along it, slow, pressing his lips into the hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse hammered. She tipped her head back and sighed and the sigh was the dock sigh, the first-morning sigh, the sound of a woman arriving somewhere she’d been afraid she’d never find.

His mouth moved lower. He cupped her left breast in his hand — the rough palm against the soft skin, the contrast that made her breath stutter every single time — and lowered his mouth to the other. His tongue circled her nipple, slow and deliberate, then drew it into his mouth. She gasped and gripped the edge of the counter. He sucked gently, then harder, his tongue flicking against the stiff peak while his thumb rolled the other between his fingers. Her hips were already moving — small, unconscious rolls against empty air, her body chasing contact he hadn’t given yet.

“Jack — lower — please —”

He loved that she asked now. The Maya from the wedding — the one who’d never articulated a want in her life — was gone. The Maya on the counter said please and more and right there and don’t stop and the evolution of her voice from silence to demand was the sexiest thing about her.

He dropped to his knees on the kitchen tile. The floor was cold and hard against his kneecaps and he didn’t care. He pulled her leggings down — she lifted her hips to help, the collaborative choreography of two bodies that knew each other’s rhythms — and her underwear came with them, one smooth motion, tossed somewhere behind him.

She was bare on their counter in their kitchen. Legs open. Wet — he could see it, the glistening slickness between her folds, her body’s honest response to his proximity. No warmup required. Three months together and her body still reacted to his nearness like a match to a striker.

He pressed his mouth to the inside of her thigh. Kissed the soft skin there, the skin that was sensitive enough that a single stroke of his tongue made her shiver. Then the other thigh. Then the crease where her thigh met her hip. He was taking his time and she knew it and the knowing was making her desperate — her fingers gripping the counter edge, her hips tilting toward him, a whimper escaping that bounced off the tile and the new cabinets and the walls that were theirs.

“Stop teasing,” she breathed.

“You said you like it when I make you wait.”

“I lied.”

“You didn’t.”

He licked through her folds. One long, flat stroke from bottom to top and her entire body jerked. He did it again — slower, savoring, his tongue parting her, tasting the wet heat of her. She moaned and the sound filled the kitchen, loud and unfiltered, because this was their apartment and the walls were theirs and the sounds were theirs and there was no hallway on the other side with strangers walking past and no hand over her mouth to keep her quiet.

He sealed his mouth over her clit. Sucked gently. Her hips came off the counter and his hands gripped her thighs — those rough, callused hands on her smooth inner thighs, holding her open, holding her steady — and he worked her with the focus she deserved. Tight circles with the tip of his tongue. Then broader strokes. Then back to the tight circles, faster, more pressure, reading her breathing the way he read blueprints — with precision, with attention, with the understanding that every detail mattered.

He slid two fingers inside her. She was so wet that they went in without resistance, her body clenching immediately around them, the involuntary grip that told him exactly how close she was. He curled his fingers forward — finding the spot, the spot he’d mapped on their first morning together and had been visiting daily since — and stroked in sync with his tongue.

“Oh God — Jack — right there — don’t stop —”

He didn’t stop. He built her up with the patience of a man who built things for a living. His tongue on her clit. His fingers inside her, curling, stroking, maintaining the rhythm she needed. Her thighs were trembling against his ears. Her hand was in his hair, gripping, pulling, guiding him without apology because she’d learned that her pleasure was worth asking for and demanding and taking.

She came with one hand in his hair and the other braced on the granite and a sound that was half his name and half a sob and half a declaration of gratitude to whatever real estate gods had found them a first-floor unit with no downstairs neighbors. Her body pulsed around his fingers in long, rolling contractions and he worked her through every one, his mouth gentle now, easing her down, his hands stroking her thighs as the trembling subsided.

He pressed one last kiss to her center — soft, almost reverent, the same way he always finished — and looked up at her. She was flushed from the chest up, her hair half out of the bun, her mouth open, her eyes glazed. She looked like a woman who’d been taken apart on a countertop and had no complaints about the craftsmanship.

She pulled him up. Kissed him deep — tasting herself on his mouth, which she did without hesitation now, which still made his cock throb every single time. Her hands went to his jeans. She was efficient about it — button, zipper, shoved down with his boxers in one motion. She wrapped her hand around him and he hissed through his teeth.

He was hard. Had been since the flannel hit the floor. She stroked him — root to tip, her grip firm, her thumb sweeping over the head where he was already leaking, spreading the wetness, and the sensation of her small, soft hand on his cock in their kitchen made his vision narrow to a point.

“I want you inside me,” she said. No hesitation. No qualification. The voice of a woman who’d learned to say what she wanted and was never going to stop. “Right here. On our counter. On a Tuesday.”

He stepped between her thighs. She guided him — her hand around him, positioning, the blunt head of his cock pressing against her slick entrance. He pushed in slow. One inch. Two. The stretch and fullness and the wet heat of her body opening for him and pulling him deeper.

No condom. They’d stopped using them after the wedding, after the conversation in the dark, and the bare skin-on-skin intimacy was something he would never get used to. Every ridge, every degree of heat, every pulse of her body around him, unfiltered. She was tight and hot and so wet that the sound of him pushing inside her was obscene in the quiet kitchen.

She wrapped her legs around his waist. Drew him deeper until he bottomed out and they both exhaled. Her forehead dropped to his. His hands gripped her hips. For a moment they just breathed — connected, full, the two of them locked together on a countertop in a kitchen that smelled like paint and cardboard and sex.

He started to move. The slow, rolling rhythm they’d found in the bathtub at the resort — the rhythm of two people who had all night, who had every night, who had Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays stretching out in front of them like a road with no exit ramp. He pulled almost all the way out and pushed back in, deep, and the angle on the counter was perfect — she was at exactly the right height, her hips tilted, and every thrust dragged him against the front wall of her in a way that made her gasp.

“You feel so good,” she breathed. Her eyes open, watching him, always watching him now. “Every time. You feel like coming home.”

“You are home.”

His pace increased. The slow rolling gave way to something more urgent — her legs pulling him harder, her hips meeting his thrusts, the sound of their bodies connecting filling the kitchen alongside her moans and his grunts and the rhythmic scrape of her ass on the granite. He reached between them — his thumb finding her clit, still swollen from his mouth, and pressing in tight circles while he fucked her.

“I’m going to come again,” she said. Amazed. Like the capacity of her own body still surprised her. “Already — Jack — I’m —”

“Come. I want to feel it. I want to feel you come on my cock.”

She came. The second orgasm was sharper than the first — a sudden, clenching spasm that gripped him so tight his rhythm stuttered. She cried out — loud, raw, his name breaking apart in her mouth — and the sound and the feeling of her pulsing around him pulled him over the edge. He thrust deep one final time and came inside her with a groan that started in his chest and ended somewhere primal, his hips grinding against hers, the hot pulse of his release filling her while her body milked him through it.

They stayed connected. His forehead on her shoulder. Her fingers tracing his spine. The counter was hard and cold underneath her and neither of them moved. She could feel him softening inside her. She could feel the wetness of them both, slick between her thighs. She could feel his heartbeat against her chest, hammering, slowing, steadying.

“We should do the bedroom next,” she murmured against his ear.

“We just christened the kitchen.”

“The bedroom has hospital corners. I want to destroy them.”

He carried her down the hall. She was slippery and naked and laughing and he was still half-hard and entirely gone for this woman and the hallway was narrow and his shoulder hit the doorframe and he didn’t care. He dropped her on the bed — the bed with the YouTube hospital corners, the bed he’d made for her three weeks ago when he thought she was coming and she didn’t, the bed that had waited for her the way he’d waited for her — and she bounced once on the taut sheets and grinned up at him.

“These are impressive corners,” she said, running her hand along the crisp edge. “It would be a shame if someone ruined them.”

“A real shame.”

“Devastasting, even.”

“Tragic.”

She grabbed his wrist and pulled him down onto the bed and the sheets came untucked immediately because hospital corners were no match for two people who intended to commit crimes against bedding.

This time was different from the kitchen. The kitchen had been urgent, vertical, the first-time energy of christening a new space. The bedroom was horizontal and unhurried and devastating in a different way — the way that slow sex is devastating, the way that being taken apart piece by piece is worse than being taken apart all at once because you feel every single moment of the dismantling.

He started at her feet. Kissed her ankle. The arch of her foot. The inside of her knee, where she was ticklish, where she squirmed and laughed and then stopped laughing when his mouth moved higher. He kissed up her inner thigh — the left one, then the right — slow enough that she could feel his breath on the wet skin between her legs and he could feel her hips tilting toward him, seeking, wanting.

He bypassed where she wanted him. Kissed her hip. Her stomach. The underside of each breast. The hollow of her throat. Her jaw. The spot below her ear that made her eyelids flutter. By the time he reached her mouth she was trembling, her hands fisted in the sheets, her body a live wire.

“You’re being cruel,” she whispered.

“I’m being thorough. There’s a difference.”

He kissed her mouth. Deep, slow, his tongue sliding against hers while his hand finally — finally — slid between her thighs. She was soaked. From the kitchen, from him, from the anticipation of the last five minutes. His fingers slid through the mess of their combined arousal and the slickness of it made him groan into her mouth.

“You’re still wet from before,” he said against her lips. “From me. You’re full of me and you’re still this wet.”

“Does that surprise you?”

“It wrecks me. Every time.”

He pushed inside her. No resistance, no preamble — she was open and ready and the slide of him into the slick, swollen heat of her was so smooth it felt like falling. She arched off the mattress and pulled his mouth back to hers and they found their rhythm — slower than the kitchen, deeper, the full-length strokes that let her feel every inch of him.

She hooked her ankles behind his back. Changed the angle. The new depth made them both curse — her a breathless fuck that she still looked surprised to hear coming out of her own mouth, him a guttural sound that had no linguistic category. He braced his forearms on either side of her head and looked down at her face and she looked up at him and the eye contact was the thing that always undid them. The seeing. The being seen. The unbearable intimacy of looking into someone’s eyes while your body was inside theirs.

“I love you,” she said. Like she was saying it for the first time. Like she would say it every time. Like the words were new and permanent and she would never get tired of the weight of them.

“I love you.” He kissed her forehead. Her nose. Her mouth. “I love the spatula argument. I love the utensil crock I don’t own yet. I love that you organized my life and I love that you chose it. I love you, Maya. On Tuesdays and every other day that exists.”

She rolled them. He went willingly — onto his back, her on top, straddling him, the sheets twisted around their legs. She sat up, sank down onto him fully, and the view from below was the view he wanted for the rest of his life: Maya Lin, hair destroyed, cheeks flushed, riding him in a bedroom that belonged to both of them with the window open and the city sounds outside and no performance, no secret, no hiding.

She rode him slow. Then fast. Then slow again — grinding, rolling her hips in the circular motion she’d discovered she liked, the one that dragged her clit against the base of him and built the pleasure in long, spiraling waves. His hands were on her breasts, her hips, her ass — gripping, guiding, letting her set the pace because her pace was perfect and watching her take her own pleasure was the most beautiful thing he’d ever witnessed.

She came a third time. The slow build, the spiral, the long rolling contraction that started deep and expanded outward. She folded forward onto his chest, shaking, his name a broken whisper against his neck. He held her through it — arms locked around her back, mouth pressed to her hair — and then, when the trembling eased, he tightened his grip and drove up into her from below. Hard. Fast. The controlled restraint he’d been maintaining all night finally breaking, and the sound she made when he took over — the surprised, overwhelmed, grateful cry of a woman being handled by a man who knew exactly what she needed — pushed him over the edge for the second time.

He came inside her with his arms around her and her body clenched around him and the hospital corners well and truly destroyed beneath them.

Later — much later — they lay in the wreckage. Sheets twisted. Pillows on the floor. Carl asleep in the hallway because he’d learned that closed doors meant waiting, and he was a patient dog.

Maya was draped across Jack’s chest. Her finger drawing patterns she couldn’t name. The moonlight through the window — their window — made the room silver and blue.

“Jack?”

“Mm.”

“The living room still needs christening.”

“Tomorrow.”

“And the bathroom.”

“Wednesday.”

“And the hallway closet.”

“That seems structurally challenging.”

“You’re a contractor. Figure it out.”

He pulled her closer. Kissed her hair. Breathed in jasmine and sweat and paint and the particular scent of a life that was finally, permanently, his.

“We have time,” he said.

“All the time in the world.”

“Every Tuesday.”

“Every Tuesday,” she agreed. And she smiled against his chest — the real smile, the surprised one, the one that sounded like waking up — and closed her eyes.

Outside, the city hummed. Carl snored. The spatula remained on the counter, waiting for a utensil crock that would arrive by Thursday because Maya had already ordered one.

And in a bedroom that smelled like cedar and jasmine and the beginning of everything, two people who’d spent their lives performing for others finally rested. Not because they were tired. Because they were home.

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