Bonus Chapter: Five Fifty-Eight

An exclusive Top of the Chain extra — by Jace Wilder

An extended scene set fourteen months after the wedding. Dominic and Mason. The cabin. The dock. The last edge of an October sun. Established couple, full power exchange, full praise, no clothes, no neighbors. Approximately 4,500 words.

We had been married for fourteen months when I asked him to take me on the dock.

We were at the cabin. Karina’s cabin. The first weekend in October, exactly one year and four months from the morning he had walked through the door of my gym at five fifty-eight on a Monday, and exactly twelve months from the day I had stood at the end of this same dock in a soft dark blue suit and said yes, Mason in front of forty-three people, and the lake was — and I noted this for the small clean part of myself that was, against all odds, still doing the noting at six oh four on a Friday evening — the kind of glass-flat the lake got at the very last edge of October before the wind came up.

The cabin was empty.

Karina and Margot and the small Theo had been at the cabin from Friday afternoon until Sunday. They had left at noon. Karina, on the front step in her sweater, had put both her hands on the side of my face — both hands, palms warm against the cool of the early afternoon — and she had said, Don. The cabin is yours through Thursday. The fridge is full. The dock is dry. The sheets in the master are clean. Do not — Don — clean anything before you leave on Thursday. Margot will come up next weekend to do it.

She had kissed me on the cheek.

She had gotten in the car.

She had driven away.

We had been alone since twelve oh four.

It was now six oh four on Friday evening.

We had had the cabin to ourselves for twenty-eight hours, and we had — and I am going to be honest about this — used twenty-six of them in the bedroom and the kitchen and the porch and the small sunny corner of the living room with the rug and the fireplace, and we had eaten all of the things Karina had put in the fridge that did not require cooking, and we had drunk one of the two bottles of red Margot had left on the counter with a small note that said for the boys, love M, and we had walked Whitman around the lake at noon, and we had — by the count Mason kept of these things, which was more meticulous than mine — taken each other six times in twenty-six hours.

I was, at six oh four on Friday evening, standing at the end of the dock in the soft late-October light with a glass of red wine in my hand, in jeans and a soft grey sweater Karina had given me for my last birthday, with the small specific weight of two bands at the base of my left ring finger, looking out at the water.

He came up behind me.

I felt him before I saw him — the small specific way the boards of the dock shifted under boots that weighed two-sixty, the small specific shape of him in the cool air behind me, the small specific smell of him, clean cotton and the woody thing — and he stopped behind me, and he put one hand flat on my hip, and he pressed his face into the back of my neck.

He said, into the skin, very quietly: “Hi.”

I said: “Hi.”

He said: “Whatcha doin’.”

I said: “Standing on the dock.”

He said: “Yeah.”

I said: “Drinking your wife’s wife’s wine.”

He said: “Yeah.”

He said: “Sweetheart.”

I said: “Yeah.”

He said: “What are you really doing.”

I held very still for a count of about three.

I said, very quietly: “I want you to take me on the dock.”

He held very still against my back for a count of about three.

He said, into the back of my neck, very quietly: “On the dock.”

I said: “Yeah, Mason.”

He said: “Outside.”

I said: “It’s seventy-one degrees, Mason. The thermometer on the porch said seventy-one at five thirty. The water’s still warm. There’s no wind. The sun is going to be down in about thirty minutes. We have the lake to ourselves until Thursday. There is no neighbor on this side of the lake until the bend, and the bend is half a mile around. The two cabins across the lake are empty. We are alone.”

He said: “You have been thinking about this.”

I said: “Since this morning. When I looked out the window from the bed and the dock had the morning sun on it, the way it had on the morning I asked you to take me on the cabin morning a year ago. I have been thinking about it all day. I have been thinking about it since you went into the kitchen at four to make us drinks and I came out here and stood on the dock and decided I was going to ask.”

He said, very quietly: “I love that about you.”

He said: “I’m gonna take you on the dock. I’m gonna go inside. I’m gonna get the blanket Karina keeps on the back of the couch. I’m gonna get the small bottle of oil from the bedroom. I’m gonna get a towel. I’m gonna get the second glass of wine. I’m coming back in three minutes. Don’t move.”

He went.

I stood at the end of the dock with the wine glass in my hand. I did not, in the three minutes, do anything else.

He came back with the wool blanket Karina kept on the back of the couch — the one her grandmother had made, the one that had been on every couch in every place Karina had lived since she had been twelve — and a towel, and the small dark bottle of oil from the bedside drawer, and the second glass of wine. He had taken off his boots and his socks. He was barefoot on the dock at six oh seven on a Friday evening in October, and his face had on it the patient unhurried face he had been wearing for fourteen months, except the smile that had stopped going away a year ago was on his face again.

He set the blanket down at the end of the dock with the towel folded under it. He set the oil at the corner. He set the second wine glass at the other corner.

He came to me. He took the wine glass out of my hand and set it on the boards. He pulled me against him. He bent his head and he kissed me — slow, dry, with one hand at the back of my head and the other at the small of my back — the way he had kissed me in the cab of the truck in a gravel lot on the Pennsylvania Turnpike fourteen months and one week ago, and he held it for a count of about thirty.

He pulled back about an inch.

He said, into my mouth, very quietly: “Take off the sweater.”

I took off the sweater. I dropped it on the boards.

He said: “Take off the t-shirt.”

I took it off.

He said: “Jeans.”

I unbuckled. I unzipped. I pushed them down. I stepped out.

He said: “Boxers.”

I took them off.

I was standing at the end of my sister’s dock in the soft late-October light naked. The light was on me. The light was on the small wedding band and the small first band at the base of my left ring finger. The light was on every part of me.

He looked at me. He stood at the end of the dock fully dressed, in his jeans and his soft black t-shirt and his bare feet, and he looked at me, and his face did the thing it did when he was looking at me, which was the small private patient unhurried thing that was, by every measure I had, the only face I had ever seen on a person looking at me that I would, for the rest of my life, never need to perform for.

He looked at me for a count of about ten.

He said, very quietly: “Lie down.”

I lay down on the wool blanket on the boards at the end of the dock, on my back, with my hands flat on the wool at my hips. The wool was warm against my back. The boards were warm under the wool. The October sun was coming down across the lake from the southwest and it was on my chest and my stomach and my thighs and my face.

He stood at the end of the dock for a count of about three.

He said: “Look at you. Look at you. Look at you, sweetheart.”

He said: “I have been looking at this for fourteen months and I am still not done looking.”

He pulled the soft black t-shirt off over his head, slow. He undid his belt. He pushed the jeans down. He pushed the boxers down. He stepped out of them and he kicked them aside, and he stood at the end of the dock naked above me with the late October sun on him, and his cock was hard and heavy at his stomach, the way it always got when I gave him this.

He said, into the air, very quietly: “I’m going to take a long time.”

I said: “Yeah.”

He said: “The sun is going to be down in twenty-eight minutes. I have looked at the watch. I am going to take twenty-five of them with you. Then I am going to take you inside. Then I am going to take you again on the floor by the fireplace. Then I am going to feed you. Then I am going to take you again in the bed. Yes?”

I said, very quietly: “Yes, Mason.”

He said: “Good boy.”

I closed my eyes for one second.

He came down beside me on the blanket, on his side, on one elbow, with his face above mine, and he put his other hand flat on my chest, spread, over my sternum.

He said, into my face, very quietly: “Open your eyes.”

I opened them.

He said: “There you are.”

He bent. He kissed me slow, with the hand on my sternum and the other at the side of my face, and he held the kiss for a long time.

He moved his mouth down. He kissed the side of my throat. He kissed the hollow at the base of it. He kissed the line of my collarbone. He kissed the small silver scar at my left pectoral that had been there since I was seven, the small scar he had been kissing for fourteen months at the count of about every third time he took me, the small scar that I had not, in the thirty-four years before him, ever had kissed.

He kissed the hollow of my sternum. He kissed the dark hair at the center of my chest. He kissed the line under it down to my navel. He kissed the inside of each of my hipbones.

He took his time, and the late October sun was on the side of his face, and the lake was glass-flat behind him, and the smell of the woody thing was on him, and the wool was warm under my back.

He moved between my thighs. He pushed them apart, slow, with both his hands. He bent his head. He took me into his mouth.

I made a sound I did not, until I made it, know I was about to make.

He held me on his tongue for a long count, slow, with one hand on my thigh and the other spread flat on my stomach, and he worked me, slow, and he kept me on the edge for a long time, and at the count of about ten minutes he pulled off, slow, and he kissed the inside of my left thigh.

He said, into the skin, very quietly: “Look at me.”

I lifted my head. I looked at him.

He had his eyes on mine.

He said, into the skin: “I’m going to fuck you now. On the dock. In the last of the light.”

I said: “Yeah.”

He said: “I love you.”

I said: “I love you, Mason.”

He came up. He picked up the small dark bottle of oil. He poured some on his fingers. He warmed it between them — slow, the way he warmed it every time, because he had decided in October a year ago that he was not, ever, going to put cold oil on me.

He prepped me slow, with his other hand spread flat on my stomach over my sternum, and his eyes were on my eyes for the entire count of it, and at the count of about three minutes I was fully open for him, with his hand on my sternum and the small specific weight of two bands at the base of my left ring finger and his eyes on mine.

He bent down and he kissed me.

He pulled back about an inch.

He said, into my mouth, very quietly: “Yes?”

I said, into his: “Yes.”

He pushed in slow. He pushed in with one hand under my hip and the other hand spread flat on my sternum, and he held still inside me at the bottom, with his face pressed against the side of my throat, and he held there for a long count.

He started to move.

He moved slow.

He moved at the slow steady old pace he set every time he took me. He kept one hand spread on my sternum. He kept the other under my hip. He bent down and he kissed me, on the mouth, slow, in between the slow strokes, and he said, into my mouth, in pieces, across the long count: sweetheart. look at you. look at you. look at you on the dock. look at you in the sun. look at you for me. you take it so good. you take it so good for me, sweetheart. you take it so good. I love you. I love you. I love you.

He took his time for what was, by my count later, twenty-two minutes — the longest count he had taken with me at the cabin in the year we had been married, and the sun was, by the time he started to speed up, in the last fingers of itself.

He sped up by inches. He sped up the way he sped up — small, controlled, a hand’s-breadth-faster, two hands’-faster, and then the hand moved from under my hip up to my throat — and he put his hand at the side of my throat the way he had put it at the side of my throat the first time on the floor of his office sixteen months ago and the way he had been putting it there since, and his thumb pressed at the line of my jaw.

He said, into my mouth, very quietly: “Come for me.”

I came.

I came under him, on the wool blanket, on the boards of my sister’s dock, in the last edge of the October light on the lake, with his hand at the side of my throat and his hand spread flat on my sternum and his eyes on my eyes and the small specific weight of two bands at the base of my left ring finger and the heavy slow steady old pace of him not slowing through the orgasm, and I came shaking and quiet and clean in a way I had not, in thirty-five years of having an orgasm, come, and he held me through it, and he came inside me a count of about forty seconds later with his face pressed against the side of my throat and a small low broken sound and his hand still spread on my sternum.

He held me there for a long count.

He said, into my throat, very quietly: “Look at the sun.”

I lifted my head a half-inch off the wool.

The sun was, on the far side of the lake, the very last quarter of itself behind the line of pines. The lake was the color of red gold. The boards of the dock were the color of red gold. The wool blanket was the color of red gold. His face, above mine, was the color of red gold.

The small wedding band on his left ring finger, where his hand was spread on my sternum, caught the red gold of the last of the sun, and the inside of the band — the inside that nobody but us knew said 5:58 — 10/1 — was at this moment, by the very small specific way his hand was spread on me, pressed flat against the place where the small silver scar was on my chest.

He said, into my throat, very quietly: “Five fifty-eight. October first.”

He said: “It is six twenty-nine. October third. Two years and two days from the morning I walked through the door.”

He said: “I am going to do this with you for a long time. And then a long time after that. And then a long time after that.”

I said: “Yeah, Mason.”

He pulled out, slow. He picked up the towel from the corner of the blanket. He cleaned me up. He pulled the wool blanket up over both of us. He pulled me against him on the boards of my sister’s dock with my face on his chest and his arm across my back and his hand spread on my sternum with the small wedding band catching the very last edge of the gold, and we lay there until the sun was down. We lay there until the lake was the soft dark blue it got after the sun was down. We lay there until the first star.

He said, into my hair, very quietly: “Inside. Floor. Then dinner. Then bed.”

He stood up. He pulled me up. He picked up the wool blanket, the towel, the oil, both wine glasses, his clothes, my clothes — all of it, in one armful, slow, the way he carried things — and he held out his other hand. I took it.

We walked, naked, across the boards of the dock, in the soft dark blue of the early evening, with my hand in his, with the small specific weight of two bands at the base of my left ring finger and the small specific weight of the same bands at the base of his, and we crossed the small lawn to the cabin.

He held the door open. I went in. He came in. He locked the door.

He turned to me. He looked at me in the soft yellow lamplight of the cabin’s living room, naked, with the wool blanket and the rest of it in his other arm, and he did the half-second smile.

The smile, this time, did not go away.

He said, very quietly: “Floor.”

I went to the floor. I went to the small sunny corner of the living room with the rug in front of the fireplace, and I lay down on the rug.

He came to me.

He took me again on the rug — slow, with his hand on my sternum, with his eyes on mine, with the small wedding band at the base of his ring finger pressed flat against the small silver scar at my chest — and he took me again, an hour later, in the bed in the second bedroom, slow, with the soft yellow lamplight off the bedside lamp, and at the end of the second time, when he was holding me against his chest with my face on his collarbone and his hand spread on my back, he said, into my hair, very quietly: “I’m gonna do this with you for the rest of my life. On the dock. Every October. For the rest of our lives. Five fifty-eight.”

I said: “Five fifty-eight.”

He kissed the top of my head. He held me through the night.

When I woke at four oh six on Saturday morning he was awake. He was on his back. He had one hand under his head. His other hand was open on my back where it had been all night.

He said, very quietly: “Coffee?”

I said: “Yeah.”

We made coffee. We drank it standing at the kitchen counter in the soft pre-dawn grey of a Saturday morning in October at my sister’s cabin on the lake.

The cabin was ours through Thursday.

We had a long time.

We were going to take all of it.

The End.

Want the rest of the story?

Top of the Chain — the full novel of how Dominic and Mason got from a Monday morning at 5:58 to a wedding at the lake.

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