The Bigger Bed
A Deep End, No Labels Bonus Chapter
by Chase Power
18+ ONLY. This bonus chapter contains extremely explicit sexual content. Intended for adult readers who have completed Deep End, No Labels. Contains spoilers.
This scene takes place approximately eight months after the epilogue. Ren and Malcolm have moved into a new apartment in Silver Lake with a California king bed.
The Bigger Bed
Ren
The bed is enormous.
A California king. Seventy-two inches wide, eighty-four inches long. For the first time in our relationship, my feet do not hang off the edge.
Malcolm spent three weeks selecting this bed. He created a spreadsheet with columns for “spinal alignment,” “motion transfer,” and “edge support,” which I told him sounded like the scoring criteria for an Olympic event.
We’ve had the bed for three days. We have not yet had sex in it.
Tonight is different.
I made dinner. Malcolm sat at the kitchen island with a glass of red wine, watching me cook wearing athletic shorts and nothing else.
“You’re staring,” I say.
“I’m appreciating the composition. Shirtless athlete, steam rising, golden hour light. It’s practically a Caravaggio.”
“Caravaggio didn’t paint men making penne.”
“Caravaggio would have killed to paint you making penne.”
“You’re objectifying me using art history terminology.”
“I’m aesthetically appreciating you using the only vocabulary I have.”
“Malcolm.”
“Mm.”
“We haven’t christened the bed.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to notice,” he says.
I lift him off the couch. “You know I can walk,” he says, his legs wrapping around my waist.
“You can. You’re not going to.”
I carry him to the bedroom and deposit him in the center of the California king with enough force to bounce.
“There’s so much room. What are you going to do with all this space?”
“Everything. I’m going to do everything.”
I strip off my shorts and stand at the foot of the bed wearing nothing. I crawl onto the bed, position myself over him — my shoulders extending past his on both sides, casting him in my shadow.
I undress him with the methodical attention of a man conducting a consecration. Each nipple receives specific, focused attention — tongue flat, circling, then the edge of my teeth, then suction firm enough that his hips buck off the mattress.
I have learned Malcolm Voss the way I learned butterfly — through obsessive repetition, constant refinement, and the absolute refusal to accept adequate when excellent is available.
Malcolm is naked on the California king. His dark skin against white sheets. His cock hard and curving toward his stomach, the head flushed and slick.
“I want to hear you say it,” I tell him.
“I want your mouth.”
I lower my head and take him in. Full depth on the first stroke. His hand finds my hair and grips hard enough that the pull stings.
I edge him. Four times. The first three, I bring him close and pull back. He swears creatively, in combinations that suggest a man whose vocabulary expands in proportion to his desperation.
“That’s what you taught me. In the shower in Colorado. Remember?”
“I remember. I’m regretting teaching you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No, I’m not.”
The fourth time, I don’t stop. “Come for me,” I say against him, and the vibration of my voice around his cock is the final input his nervous system needs.
He comes with a shout. I swallow everything. Because this is the christening and I am thorough.
“That was square footage one through twelve. We have a lot of bed left.”
“I need a minute.”
“You have thirty seconds. Athlete’s rules.”
“I’m forty years old, Ren. I know what my body needs. And right now, my body needs to make you scream loud enough that the new neighbors file a noise complaint.”
I get on my back.
Malcolm rolls on top of me. “My turn,” he says.
He begins at my throat. Not gentle — confident, proprietary. His mouth finds the spot below my ear that sends voltage straight to my spine.
“There he is,” Malcolm murmurs against my chest. “There’s the sound I wanted.”
He strips my boxer briefs. “You’ve been hard since you carried me from the couch,” he observes, wrapping his hand around me.
“I’ve been hard since you called me a Caravaggio.”
He goes slower. Because Malcolm does the opposite of what I demand when the demand is motivated by impatience, and because he knows that slower makes me louder.
“Good,” Malcolm says. Quiet. Specific. Aimed. The word that has been rewiring my nervous system since Colorado. “You’re so good, Ren. Look at you. The way your body responds. The way you let me see you.”
“I want you inside me,” I say. “Now. Malcolm, please.”
His fingers work me open. One, then two, then three. “You know where. Don’t play innocent.”
“I’m never innocent.”
He enters me slowly. The California king doesn’t creak, doesn’t shift. It holds us with the silent structural integrity of a mattress purchased for exactly this purpose.
My hand finds the headboard. This is new. In the queen, the headboard was too far to reach. In this bed, the grip gives me leverage I’ve never had before. I push back against him as he thrusts forward, and the counter-force doubles the depth, doubles the impact.
“The headboard was a good investment,” he manages.
“Shut up and fuck me harder.”
He does. Each thrust hits the angle that turns my vision white. My nails drag down his spine hard enough to draw welts.
“Tell me what you feel.”
“Full. I feel full. I feel you, and it’s — Malcolm, it’s everything, it’s always everything—”
“You’re everything. You don’t know what you look like right now.”
“Tell me.”
“Like you’re not holding your breath anymore.”
He reaches between us. His hand wraps around my cock and strokes in time with his thrusts. The compound pressure detonates the orgasm I’ve been building since the kitchen.
I come with his name in my mouth. My body clenches around him in contractions that pull his orgasm seconds later — the specific devastated sound of a man who has lost every layer of composure and found something better underneath.
We lie in the California king. Both of us fit. The headboard has a handprint on it that I will notice every morning for the rest of our lease.
“The bed works,” Malcolm says.
“The bed is the greatest purchase of your life.”
“The Leica.”
“The Leica is a camera, Malcolm. It doesn’t see anything. You do.”
He presses his hand over my heart. “I see you,” he says.
I pull him closer. In this bed, there is room on both sides of us. Space that belongs to the future.
In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
Not because I’m afraid.
Because he’s here. In the bigger bed. In the bigger life. And I am done holding my breath.
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