The Penthouse — One Year Later

Bonus Chapter — Fake Fiance, Real Fiasco
by Jace Wilder

⚠️ This bonus chapter contains extremely explicit sexual content. It takes place one year after the events of the novel. Spoilers ahead.

The Penthouse — One Year Later

Julian had a plan.

This was not unusual. Julian always had a plan. What was unusual was that the plan involved champagne, a blindfold he’d purchased from a shop in the Village that he’d entered with the concentrated focus of a man on a tactical mission, and the absolute certainty that Theo was going to ruin the entire itinerary within the first ten minutes.

The penthouse was ready. He’d sent Theo out for the afternoon — a fabricated errand involving a book pickup at the Strand that would keep him occupied for at least two hours, because Theo in a bookstore was a man in no hurry to leave — and had spent the time transforming their living room into something that was, by Julian’s standards, romantic.

Candles. Not the scented kind — Theo had opinions about scented candles that bordered on ideological — but plain white tapers in glass holders, arranged along the window ledge so the flames reflected off the glass and doubled against the skyline. Champagne in an ice bucket. Two glasses. A playlist he’d built over the course of a week, which contained exactly zero songs that Theo would recognize because Julian’s taste in music was, as Theo frequently noted, “aggressively European.”

And the blindfold. Black silk. Sitting on the coffee table like a dare.

One year. They’d been together — actually together, not arranged, not contracted — for one year. The brownstone was home. Dr. Theo Callahan had a published dissertation and a fiance who still couldn’t make congee without setting off the smoke alarm.

Julian heard the key in the lock at 6:47 PM. Thirteen minutes early. Theo in a bookstore for less than two hours meant he’d been thinking about Julian instead of browsing.

The door opened. Theo entered carrying a tote bag from the Strand and wearing Julian’s gray cashmere sweater — stolen, as usual, without negotiation or apology — and stopped when he saw the candles.

“What’s this?”

“Happy anniversary.”

Theo set the bag down. Looked at the candles. The champagne. The skyline. Then his gaze found the blindfold on the coffee table, and his eyebrows rose.

“Julian Ashford. Is that a blindfold?”

“It’s silk.”

“I can see that it’s silk. I’m asking about its intended purpose.”

“Its intended purpose is to prevent you from seeing what I’m about to do to you, so that every sensation is a surprise.” Julian crossed the room. Stood in front of Theo. Poured two glasses of champagne with steady hands. “You’ve spent the last year teaching me to let go of control. Tonight, I want you to let go of yours.”

Theo took the glass. Sipped. His eyes didn’t leave Julian’s face. “You planned this.”

“I made an itinerary.”

“Of course you did.” Theo drained the glass. Set it down. Picked up the blindfold. Ran the silk through his fingers. Then he looked at Julian with an expression that was equal parts trust and challenge. “Put it on me.”

Julian set down his own glass. Took the blindfold. Stepped behind Theo. The silk settled over Theo’s eyes, and Julian tied it at the back — snug, not tight, the knot resting against Theo’s curls. He pressed his mouth to the side of Theo’s neck, just below his ear.

“Can you see?”

“Nothing.”

“Good.”

Julian walked to the front of Theo. Stood there. Looked at his fiance — blindfolded, trusting, standing in the candlelit penthouse with his lips parted and his chest rising with each breath. He unbuttoned the cashmere sweater — his sweater, on Theo’s body — one button at a time. Slowly. Theo’s breath changed with each one.

The sweater fell open. Julian pushed it off Theo’s shoulders. Underneath: bare skin. Theo hadn’t worn anything beneath the cashmere.

Julian placed his mouth on Theo’s collarbone. The spot where he’d rested his fingers in the library at Havenfield a year ago — the collar touch, the beginning, the three seconds that started everything. He kissed it now with the deliberate attention of a man revisiting a site of historical significance.

Theo shivered. His hands came up, reaching for Julian —

“No hands.” Julian caught his wrists. Guided them to Theo’s sides. “Not yet. I’ll tell you when.”

“Julian —”

“Trust me.”

“I trust you. I also want to touch you, and those are not mutually exclusive.”

“They are tonight. Tonight, you receive.”

Julian kissed down Theo’s chest. Slowly. Each kiss a sentence in a language they’d spent a year perfecting. Theo’s sternum. The ridge of his ribs. The muscle at his side that twitched when Julian’s tongue traced its edge. Theo’s nipple — Julian circled it with the tip of his tongue, then sucked gently, and Theo made a sound that started in his stomach and escaped through clenched teeth. Julian gave the other nipple the same treatment while his hands traced the lines of Theo’s waist, thumbs pressing into the grooves of his hips.

Theo’s breath was coming faster now, his hands fisted at his sides, his body straining toward Julian’s mouth with the specific tension of a man being denied the one thing he wanted most.

Julian sank to his knees. Unfastened Theo’s belt. Drew the zipper down. Eased his trousers and boxer briefs over his hips with a patience designed to devastate. Theo was hard — had been hard since the blindfold — his cock straining upward, flushed and thick, a bead of precome already glistening at the tip.

Julian leaned forward and licked the bead away. Just his tongue — flat, slow, a single stripe from base to tip that made Theo’s entire body jerk.

“Fuck —” Theo’s hips stuttered forward. His hands flew up — reflex, instinct — and Julian caught them again, pressed them back against his thighs.

“I said no hands.” Julian’s lips were an inch from the head of Theo’s cock, his breath hot against the wet skin. “You can have them back when I’m done.”

“When you’re — oh, God —”

Julian took him in. Not gradually — all at once, his mouth opening wide, taking Theo deep in a single motion that buried Theo’s cock in the tight heat of Julian’s throat. Theo cried out — a raw, desperate sound that bounced off the penthouse windows — and his knees buckled. Julian gripped his hips, steadying him, holding him upright while his mouth worked.

He pulled back slowly. Torturously slowly. His lips dragging along the shaft, tongue pressed against the underside, tracing the thick vein that ran the length of Theo’s cock. At the head he paused, sucking hard, his cheeks hollowing, his tongue swirling the sensitive ridge until Theo was shaking — full-body tremors that he couldn’t control and wasn’t trying to.

Julian took him deep again. Pulled back. Again. Establishing a rhythm that was relentless in its patience — each stroke designed to build the sensation higher without letting it crest. His hands roamed Theo’s thighs, his ass, his hips, gripping and releasing, the touch unpredictable because Theo couldn’t see where Julian’s hands were going next. The blindfold turned every contact into a surprise — a squeeze of his ass, a scratch of nails along his inner thigh, a sudden grip at the base of his cock while Julian’s mouth worked the head with devastating focus.

“Julian — I’m going to —”

Julian pulled off. Theo made a sound that bordered on anguished — a wrecked, desperate groan that was the sound of a man who’d been brought to the edge of a cliff and yanked back by his belt.

“Not yet.” Julian stood. Kissed Theo’s mouth — wet, filthy, letting Theo taste himself on Julian’s tongue, the salt and musk of his own precome. Theo groaned into the kiss and surged against him, his naked body pressing against Julian’s clothed one, the friction of Julian’s shirt against Theo’s bare chest adding another layer of sensation that the blindfold amplified into something maddening.

“You’re still dressed,” Theo said against his mouth.

“I’m aware.”

“That’s not fair.”

“It’s not supposed to be fair. It’s supposed to be good.”

“It’s going to be very good when I get this blindfold off and destroy you.”

“That’s section two. We’re still on section one.”

Julian guided Theo to the bedroom. Naked, blindfolded, hard and leaking, walking with the careful trust of a man who knew the person leading him would never let him fall. Julian laid him on the bed — their bed, the one they’d chosen together — and finally, slowly, undressed himself. Shirt over his head. Belt unbuckled. Trousers dropped. He climbed onto the bed and lowered himself over Theo, and when their bodies met — skin to skin, chest to chest, cock to cock — the sound they both made filled the room.

Julian kissed Theo’s jaw. His throat. The hollow behind his ear that made Theo arch off the mattress. He worked his way down Theo’s body again — but differently this time, slower, mapping territory he already knew but approaching it with a scholar’s attention, as if Theo’s body were a text he’d been studying for a year and was still finding new meanings in. The inside of his elbow. The ridge of his hip bone. The soft skin of his inner thigh, where Julian pressed his open mouth and sucked a bruise that Theo would feel tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.

“Turn over,” Julian murmured against his skin.

Theo turned. Face down, arms folded under the pillow, his back a landscape of muscle and warm brown skin that Julian intended to cover with his mouth. He started at the nape of Theo’s neck and kissed down — each vertebra, each muscle, the valley of his spine, the dimples above his tailbone. Theo pressed his face into the pillow and made sounds that were low and continuous and completely unguarded, the vocabulary of a man whose last defense — sight — had been removed and who was feeling everything at double intensity.

Julian’s mouth reached the curve of Theo’s ass. He kissed one cheek, then the other, then spread them with both hands and licked a slow, deliberate stripe over Theo’s hole.

Theo’s reaction was violent and beautiful — his hips bucked, his hands fisted the sheets, and the sound he made was a shattered moan that was louder than anything the bedroom had produced in weeks. “Julian — fuck — please —”

Julian didn’t answer. He answered with his tongue — circling, pressing, working Theo open with a patience that was devastating. He ate Theo out with the same focused attention he applied to everything — thorough, relentless, cataloging every response. Theo was grinding against the mattress, his cock trapped beneath him, seeking friction, and the dual sensation — Julian’s tongue inside him, the sheets against his cock — was pushing him toward an orgasm that Julian had no intention of letting him reach. Not yet.

Julian pulled back. Replaced his tongue with a slicked finger — when had he gotten the lube? Theo hadn’t heard it, hadn’t felt it, the blindfold turning every transition into a surprise — and pushed inside. Slowly. One finger, then two, crooking them forward, finding the spot that made Theo’s spine arc and his mouth fall open.

“More,” Theo gasped. “Julian, I need —”

“Tell me exactly what you need.” Julian’s voice was rough. Wrecked. He was as far gone as Theo — his cock hard and aching, neglected, leaking against his own thigh — but he held the line. The itinerary demanded it. “I want to hear the words.”

“I need your cock inside me. Now. I need you to fuck me until I can’t think. I need — God — I need you to stop being so fucking composed and just take me —”

Julian snapped.

The itinerary went out the window. The careful pacing, the strategic edging, the patient architecture of a man who planned everything — it all dissolved in the face of Theo’s voice saying take me with a desperation that bypassed Julian’s control and went straight to the part of him that was animal rather than architect.

He rolled Theo onto his back. Hooked Theo’s legs over his shoulders. Lined up and pushed inside in one long, steady stroke that drew a cry from both of them — Theo’s high and broken, Julian’s low and ragged, the sound of two people who’d spent a year learning each other’s bodies and still found the initial connection devastating.

“Take the blindfold off,” Theo gasped. “I want to see you. I want to see your face when you’re inside me.”

Julian reached up. Pulled the silk away. Theo’s eyes found his — dark, blown wide, bright with everything they’d built — and Julian looked at him and started to move.

Not slowly. Not this time. The patience had been the foreplay. This was the payoff — Julian driving into Theo with deep, powerful strokes that made the headboard knock against the wall and Theo’s body slide up the sheets. Theo’s legs tightened around Julian’s shoulders, changing the angle, and Julian hit the spot on the next thrust and Theo screamed.

“There — don’t stop — right there — fuck, Julian —”

Julian didn’t stop. He gripped Theo’s hips and drove into that angle with a relentless precision that was the one piece of his control he kept — not restraint, but accuracy, hitting the same spot on every stroke while Theo fell apart beneath him. Theo’s cock was trapped between their bodies, slick with precome, the friction of Julian’s stomach against it adding a maddening secondary stimulation that Theo couldn’t escape and didn’t want to.

“Touch yourself,” Julian said. His voice was raw. “I want to watch you come while I’m inside you.”

Theo’s hand found his own cock. Stroked fast and tight, matching Julian’s rhythm, and the sight of it — Theo spread beneath him, eyes wide and locked on Julian’s, one hand gripping the sheets and the other working his cock while Julian fucked him deep — was the most erotic thing Julian had ever seen. In a year of erotic things. In a lifetime that had, before Theo, contained nothing that qualified.

“I’m close,” Theo said. His voice was shattered. “Julian — I’m —”

“Come for me. Let me feel it.”

Theo came. His body clamped down around Julian — tight, rhythmic, pulsing — and the sensation ripped through Julian’s nervous system like a current. Theo spilled across his own fist and stomach and chest, his back arching off the bed, Julian’s name tearing out of him in a voice that was barely recognizable as human. Julian watched every second of it — the face, the body, the abandon — and the sight of Theo coming undone pulled Julian over the edge three strokes later.

He came buried deep inside Theo, his hips pressed flush, his forehead dropping against Theo’s shoulder as the orgasm rolled through him in long, devastating waves. He said Theo’s name. He might have said other things. He wasn’t tracking language anymore. Language was for men who had composure, and Julian’s composure had been annihilated somewhere around the point where Theo said take me and meant it.

They collapsed. Tangled. The candles flickered in the living room. The champagne was going flat. The European playlist was still playing something that Theo would later describe as “aggressively Icelandic.”

Theo’s head was on Julian’s chest. Julian’s hand was in Theo’s hair. The blindfold lay on the pillow beside them like a silk flag of surrender.

“Happy anniversary,” Theo murmured.

“Happy anniversary.” Julian kissed his forehead. “Your itinerary review?”

“Section one was a masterpiece. You should teach a course.” Theo lifted his head. His eyes were lazy and warm and deeply, permanently satisfied. “What’s section two?”

“Section two involves the champagne. And the kitchen counter. And a position Caroline described in a book she gave us as a housewarming gift, which was either a joke or a challenge, and I’ve chosen to interpret it as a challenge.”

Theo studied him. The look was warm and wicked and profoundly in love. “You know what, I have a counter-proposal for section two.”

“A counter-proposal.”

“My turn. You wore the blindfold once, at the boathouse — metaphorically. When you couldn’t see what was happening and you just had to feel it. I want you to wear it for real. I want to take you apart the way you just took me apart and I want you to not be able to plan a single second of it.”

Julian’s cock twitched. Which was physiologically ambitious given the orgasm he’d had four minutes ago, and which told him everything he needed to know about the power of Theo Callahan’s voice when it dropped into that register.

“Give me fifteen minutes and the champagne,” Julian said.

Theo grinned. The grin was predatory and tender and absolutely devastating.

“I’ll give you ten.”

Ten minutes later, Julian was wearing the blindfold.

The silk was warm from Theo’s skin. It smelled like Theo — the shampoo, the sweat, the specific scent that Julian associated with safety and home and sex. He lay on the bed with the blindfold over his eyes and his hands at his sides and his heart hammering with a velocity that would have concerned him if he’d been monitoring it.

He heard Theo move. Heard the champagne cork — a soft pop, the hiss of carbonation. Then Theo’s weight on the bed. Then Theo’s mouth on his hip bone, and the cold shock of champagne poured directly onto his stomach.

“Jesus —” Julian’s abs contracted against the cold. Theo’s tongue followed immediately — warm, lapping the champagne from Julian’s skin, tracing the lines of muscle, chasing rivulets of fizzing wine down into the creases of his hips.

“Waste of good champagne,” Julian managed.

“Nothing that ends up on your body is wasted.” Theo’s mouth moved lower. Julian felt the warm exhale against his cock — half-hard already, recovering with the determination of a man whose fiance had just promised to dismantle him — and then Theo’s tongue, flat and hot, licking a long stripe from base to tip.

Julian’s hands flew off the mattress.

Theo caught them. Pinned them above Julian’s head. One hand holding both wrists, the grip firm, and Julian — Julian who controlled everything, who built binders and managed foundations and ran a family empire — let himself be held down by a man from Worcester, Massachusetts, who’d arrived in his life through a loading dock and a business card and had dismantled every wall he’d ever built.

“Keep them there,” Theo said. “My rules now.”

Julian kept them there.

Theo took his time. He explored Julian’s body the way Julian had explored his — methodically, reverently, with the attention of a man who’d spent a year learning every response and was still finding new ones. He bit Julian’s neck hard enough to leave a mark. He kissed Julian’s ribs one by one. He sucked Julian’s nipple until Julian’s hips came off the bed, then switched to the other one and did it harder. Every touch was a surprise because Julian couldn’t see it coming, and every surprise sent a bolt of sensation through his body that was twice as intense as it would have been with sight.

Theo worked his way between Julian’s legs. Pushed his thighs apart. Julian felt exposed in a way that the blindfold magnified exponentially — naked, pinned, spread, blind, his cock now fully hard and straining, his body offering itself to Theo’s hands and mouth with a surrender that would have been terrifying a year ago and was now the safest thing he knew.

Theo prepped him slowly. Fingers slicked and careful, one and then two, crooking forward, finding the spot that made Julian’s vision white out behind the blindfold. He added a third finger and Julian groaned — low, guttural, from somewhere in his chest — and Theo’s mouth found his cock at the same time, taking him deep while his fingers worked, and the dual stimulation was so intense Julian had to bite his lip to keep from coming right there.

“Don’t hold back,” Theo said, pulling off just enough to speak. “I want every sound. Every one.”

Theo pushed inside him. Slowly. The stretch was exquisite — Theo thick and hot, filling him inch by inch while Julian’s body opened for him with the ease of long practice and the intensity of something that never stopped being extraordinary. Julian gripped the headboard — Theo hadn’t told him he couldn’t grip things, just that he couldn’t move his hands from above his head, and Julian Ashford could find a loophole in any set of rules — and held on as Theo bottomed out.

“Feel that?” Theo’s voice was rough. Close. His forehead against Julian’s temple, his breath hot against Julian’s ear. “That’s me inside you. Your fiance. The bartender from the loading dock. The broke grad student you made a binder for.”

“Theo —”

“The man you knelt on a hardwood floor for. The man you took the F train for. The man who’s going to make you come so hard you forget your own name.” He pulled back. Thrust in. Hard. Julian cried out. “Say my name.”

“Theo.”

“Again.” Another thrust. Harder. Deeper.

“Theo.”

Theo fucked him. Not gently — the gentleness had been earlier, had been Julian’s section, had been the slow, devoted worship of a man taking his partner apart with patience. This was Theo’s section, and Theo’s version was fierce and consuming and built on the specific knowledge of exactly what Julian’s body needed: deep strokes that bottomed out on every thrust, a hand gripping Julian’s hip hard enough to bruise, his mouth on Julian’s throat leaving marks that Julian would see tomorrow morning and touch with his fingertips and remember.

Julian was loud. Louder than he’d been in months — the blindfold eliminating his last inhibition, the darkness behind the silk freeing him from the awareness of being watched, so that his body produced sounds his composure would normally filter. Groans and gasps and Theo’s name spoken in registers he didn’t know he could reach. The headboard slammed against the wall. Neither of them cared.

Theo wrapped his hand around Julian’s cock. Stroked fast, tight, perfectly synced with his thrusts, and the combined sensation — Theo inside him, Theo’s hand on him, Theo’s voice in his ear saying “come for me, Julian, let go, I’ve got you” — was an avalanche.

Julian came with a sound that he would deny for the rest of his life and that Theo would remember for the rest of his. His back arched off the bed, his hands white-knuckled on the headboard, his body clenching around Theo’s cock as the orgasm tore through him with a force that obliterated every thought except Theo, Theo, Theo.

Theo followed him — burying himself deep, his hips stuttering, coming inside Julian with a groan that was muffled against Julian’s neck. They shook together. Held each other through it. Came down slowly, the way you descend from an altitude that changes the pressure in your ears.

Theo reached up. Pulled the blindfold off. Julian blinked in the candlelight — the room golden and warm, the skyline glittering through the windows, and Theo above him, flushed and sweaty and looking at him with an expression that contained every word they’d ever said to each other and several they hadn’t.

“I knew I kept you for a reason,” Theo said.

“You kept me because I make excellent congee.”

“You make terrible congee. I keep you because you try.” He kissed Julian. Soft. Real. The kiss of a man who had all the time in the world. “And because the trying is the sexiest thing about you.”

Julian pulled him closer. The candles burned. The city glittered. The penthouse held them in its warm silence, and the silence was full — full of books and coffee cups and assembled bed frames and the accumulated evidence of a life that neither of them had planned and both of them had chosen.

Julian traced the ring on Theo’s finger. The sapphire caught the candlelight — blue-green, the color of the sky above the place where they’d first told each other the truth.

“I love you,” Julian said. Not because the moment was perfect. Because it was ordinary. Because ordinary was what they’d fought for, and ordinary was what they’d won.

“I love you too.” Theo’s smile was warm and real and cost him nothing. “Now pour me some of that champagne before it goes completely flat. Section three starts in twenty minutes.”

“There’s a section three?”

“I’m improvising.”

“The binder would be horrified.”

“The binder is retired. We established this.”

Julian laughed. The real one. The full one. The one that Theo had unlocked a year ago in a penthouse kitchen over congee that tasted like spackling compound, and that Julian no longer tried to suppress.

He poured the champagne. They drank it naked in candlelight. The bubbles were mostly gone but neither of them noticed.

Some things were better flat.

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