Terms and Specific Conditions - Chapter 10

The Sex Dimension

They don’t make it two floors.

The elevator doors slide shut and she’s already in his space–one hand on the rail, the other curling in the neck of his shirt, backing him into the corner. His chair bumps softly against the wall and then her mouth is on his, hot and not sorry about it at all.

He makes a low, wrecked sound that lands straight in her spine.

His hand finds her hip, fingers digging in like he’s trying to anchor himself while the floor numbers climb. She kisses him harder, thumb dragging along his jaw, then pulls his bottom lip between her teeth just to feel him shudder.

“Pen,” he manages, but it’s not a protest. It’s a curse, a problem, the way he says her name when he’s already gone.

The little catch of his breath. The way his fingers tighten. Every reaction is a hit and she wants more of them.

The elevator hums. The world shrinks to the thud of her heartbeat, the warm press of his chest against her, the faint squeak of his wheel as she crowds closer.

The doors ding open and she doesn’t even look. She pulls back just enough to breathe, both of them panting.

“Apartment,” she says, voice rough.

He licks his lips, eyes dark and dazed. “Right. Okay.”

The hallway feels unreal–thin carpet, soft lighting, someone’s TV muffled through a wall. Jack pushes fast beside her, shoulders flexing under his shirt. The back of her hand skims his arm as she walks and he cuts her a look that says: I know exactly what you’re doing.

By the time he’s getting his keys out, she’s practically vibrating. He fumbles the lock once, laughs under his breath, then gets it open. They’re barely inside when the door clicks shut behind them and she’s on him again–straddling his lap, hands in his hair, kissing him like the hours at work had been one long, stupid obstacle to this.

He grabs the sides of her shirt and pulls her in closer. The kiss turns messy, desperate. She feels his chest heave against hers. One wheel bumps the wall and they both laugh against each other’s mouths, breathless.

“Bed,” she whispers against his lips.

He spins for the bedroom, fast, not even pretending to tell her to get off this time. Her mouth is back on his as he pushes them down the hall. The chair clips the doorframe because she will not stop kissing him, and he laughs into her mouth, all breath and teeth like, yeah, that one’s on you.

His room is familiar now–the unmade bed, the crooked lamp, the way he angles his chair up beside the mattress–but all of it feels sharper, more electric.

He looks up at her, hair a little wrecked, mouth flushed. There’s that split-second pause–habit, logistics–before the transfer. His hands slide to her thighs and he squeezes, a quick, wordless give me a sec.

“Right,” she breathes, like she’s been caught doing something she absolutely has been doing. She slides off his lap onto the edge of the bed, hands planted beside her, chest tight as the air shifts.

One fist on the bed, the other gripping the curved bar of his frame. That calm, efficient focus drops over him–the mode she’s seen a hundred times and still finds unfairly hot. Then: the shift, the lift, the drop–all arms and shoulders, legs following loose and unassisted, the bed dipping under his weight with a soft thud.

It’s quick, practiced, absolutely him.

She doesn’t even pretend to be cool.

She’s on him immediately. Hands on his ankles, tugging his legs straight, and he laughs on an exhale, startled, as she manhandles him.

“Penelope.”

His thighs are skinny under her hands, all bone and skin through worn fabric. His hips don’t fill the curve of his boxer briefs the way some part of her expects. Something about that hits her low and sideways, and wildly turned on.

This is him. His body. It’s weird and different and somehow makes everything feel more, adding a layer she doesn’t have language for. She can feel it–the outline of something huge in the dark, something she’s still finding the edges of. Intensity, gravity, something that drops her stomach clean out and makes her want to climb him like a tree.

There is no chill left in her body; those reserves have been permanently reassigned. Her brain has quietly switched to the Jack channel, twenty-four-seven, no commercials, just this dizzy, addictive loop that makes her feel like she could genuinely throw up from how much she wants him, especially like this.

She spreads his knees just enough to make room and crawls into it, into him.

Everything after that drops straight into the sex dimension, that warped pocket of time where the rules don’t apply. Later she’ll honestly have no idea if it was five minutes or five hours. The only proof is the wreck of the sheets and the way her muscles ache like she ran uphill in a storm.

They’re everywhere.

On their backs, side by side, not even fully undressed, kissing like it’s the only thing they know how to do. Then she’s half over him, thigh hooked high across his waist, his hand splayed over the small of her back, dragging her down into every shiver he gives her.

Every time it starts to slow–when their breaths even out, when a laugh slips in, when she thinks they might actually stop long enough to speak–something tips them back under. His mouth finding that spot under her jaw. Her fingers sliding under his shirt and tracing up his ribs. One quiet sound from him that detonates all her good intentions.

At some point they end up sideways, facing each other on the bed, the room dim except for the glow from the hall.

He glances down, then back at her like he’s thinking ahead. “Hang on,” he mutters.

He catches his knees with his hand, hauling his legs up. It’s all arms and leverage, no help from below, and she watches the focus in his face as he arranges himself. Legs folding the way he had last night. Her brain quietly files it under logistics–one more thing he’s learned, a way to give himself leverage. To move the way he wants to move. That pang hits again, sharp and too big for the moment.

“There,” he says. “Better.”

He’s right there now–braced on one hand, legs folded under him–and she understands the geometry of it immediately. How it frees him to move around her. How it lets him shift over her instead of just lying beside her. The realization lands in her chest, heavy and bright. Oh.

“Hi,” she says softly.

He smiles, slow and wrecked. “Hi.”

Then he leans down, and his mouth lands on her stomach.

Her breath punches out. He kisses the curve of her waist, the dip above her hip, lips dragging over her like he’s memorizing texture. His hand hooks under her back and tugs her closer, letting him follow the line of her body up and down. It’s not rushed; it’s obsessive.

He moves lower, then higher, then back again, like he can’t decide which part of her he wants more. Every exhale is hot against her skin. Every sound she makes seems to fuel him.

He trails lower, deliberately avoiding where she wants him most. She feels the warm drag of his breath up the insides of her thighs, his fingertips tracing lines just behind the heat of his mouth. That quiet rasp of stubble catches along skin that’s way too sensitive for this kind of detour. It’s slow. Agonizing. He hums low against her skin, like he knows exactly what she’s trying not to beg for.

His hands grip her hips and he kisses further up her thigh–so close–and then he changes direction again. Mouth dragging back down, hot and open and slow.

“Oh my god, what are you doing?” she gasps, wrecked and furious about it.

“Mapping,” he says, hoarse. “This feels like… I don’t know. Peak discovery.”

She huffs something between a laugh and a moan, twisting under his grip as he kisses back up the inside of her thigh, letting his hand slide between them this time. One slow pass with his fingers. Light pressure, easy. Testing.

“Jack.” It’s a warning and a plea.

He cuts her off with another slow pass of his hand, deliberate now, thumb nudging against where she’s already soaked for him. Her hips jerk again and he smiles against her thigh, then moves back up to bite gently at the softest part of her skin–just to hear the sound she makes when he does.

Then he does it again.

Her whole body flinches, hips jerking like they’re trying to correct his aim.

He doesn’t answer. Just breathes out again–right there.

“Oh my god–no,” she mutters.

His mouth drifts, barely, like he’s thinking about it. Like he’s deciding how long to let this stretch. Her fingers curl hard into the sheets.

“I will push you off this bed.”

He laughs–low, delighted–and his grip on her hips tightens.

Fine.

She shoves her hand into his hair and pushes him down.

He goes easily, exhaling like her desperation is doing something for him too. The second his mouth lands where she actually wants it, her hips jolt off the mattress and her vision goes white at the edges.

He makes a sound against her–low, involuntary, like it surprised him too. It vibrates through her skin and scrambles something in her nervous system.

Her hips jerk, legs twitching like she’s trying to both get away and get closer at the same time.

“Oh my god,” she gasps. “You can’t–fuck–you can’t just do that.”

She scrambles up onto her elbows, like getting higher on the bed will help her survive it.

It will not.

His hands catch her hips and drag her back down like it’s nothing.

“Pen,” he says, laughing–low, wrecked–like it’s a warning without saying it.

She whines, breath catching sharp in her chest. She pushes up again, instinctive, like she physically cannot stay still under this. The sheets are half-twisted under her hands. Her legs twitch.

He laughs again, breathless against her skin, and grabs her hips harder, holding her in place.

“Stop moving,” he murmurs into her, barely audible. “Just–let me.”

Her laugh breaks in the middle and turns into something else entirely.

Words start falling out of her, like they always do when she’s losing her mind–like someone turned the tap on her brain and forgot to shut it off.

“You’ve been capable of this the whole time?”

He groans against her–amused and wrecked simultaneously.

“No, seriously,” she babbles, hips twitching, voice climbing. “You were out here acting normal? Saying words at me? Sitting in meetings? While this was just–available?”

“Penelope,” he says, half-laughing, his grip going tighter.

She doesn’t stop. Can’t.

“Are you kidding me,” she gasps. “This is actually so rude–”

He does something with his mouth that short-circuits the sentence entirely.

Her hips jerk again. He makes a sound in response–low, wordless, like he’s unraveling right along with her.

She shoves herself halfway upright, elbows locked, just trying to breathe, to see, to anchor.

From here she can see the whole line of him working–back curved over her, shoulders tight, arms braced, everything above his waist pulled taut, holding him steady. And then there’s the cut-off. Hips. Legs. The rest of him lying loose and still. One clean inch where all that work just… stops.

She’d felt that drop-off before–her fingers finding it last night in the dark, skimming over the place where everything in him went from engaged to slack–but seeing it is different. Seeing the exact point his body cuts out while he’s doing this to her hits like stepping off a curb she didn’t know was there and hanging weightless in that split second before she hits the ground. Her stomach drops clean out; something in her chest tips over with it.

Her hand slides to the back of his neck. Not pulling. Just holding.

“This is insane,” she breathes, thumb pressed into the tense muscle.

Her other hand drifts down his back, over that band where everything goes slack. He shudders–hard. It moves through him like something got knocked loose.

She does it again, deliberate this time. Same shudder.

Oh.

He doesn’t lift his head, but his mouth pauses for half a second, his breath stuttering against her skin.

“Come here,” she says suddenly, voice scraped raw.

She hooks her fingers in the back of his neck and he gets it. He breathes in and pushes up, leveraging off her body and the mattress, arms shaking by the time he reaches her. She meets him halfway, hands on his face, pulling him up to her mouth.

The kiss is messy and overheated and tastes like sweat and everything they’ve just done.

“Hey,” she says against his lips, “Roll over.”

He pulls back to look at her. “I just crawled all the way up here and you’re rehousing me?”

“Trust me,” she says, already pushing at his shoulder.

He gives her the look–suspicion and zero self preservation–then shifts. Controlled lean, careful slide of his hips, legs following in that loose delayed drag. One foot half-hooked on the other.

She reaches down and untangles them without thinking.

“Penelope,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like a warning at all. It comes out low and wrecked, like her name is the only thing he’s still sure of.

She kisses him once, soft, then drops her mouth to his jaw. His throat. The hollow of his collarbone.

Her palm slides down his side and finds that invisible border. She follows it with her lips–slow, deliberate–pressing her mouth to the exact line where all that effort and control just falls away.

He jolts like she hit a live wire.

“Fuck,” he chokes, head dropping back. His hand grips her waist. “Yeah. That’s–god, Pen, that’s it.”

She does it again, softer, just to feel him shiver.

“Is this okay?” she asks, voice gone very small and very focused at the same time.

“Yeah,” he manages. “Don’t stop.”

She doesn’t. She maps it with her mouth–slow passes back and forth, lips and the light edge of her teeth–and every time she crosses it he reacts. Chest rising sharp. Fingers clenching. His breath catching on her name.

One last lingering press of her lips to that line. Then she pushes herself up, braces on either side of his ribs, and looks down at him. His hair is messed, his cheeks are flushed, and there’s a thin sheen of sweat on his chest. This is so completely unfair.

She nudges his shoulder. “On your side.”

He doesn't argue. Just grabs the side of the mattress–shoulders doing the work, a controlled lean–and she helps where she can, straightening his legs once he’s settled.

He catches her eye, mouth tipping into a tired half-smile that’s way too close to self-conscious.

“Don’t,” he starts.

“I’m not saying anything,” she says.

“Your face is saying something.”

She kisses him instead of answering.

The angle is completely different now. More of his weight over her, chest pressing her back into the mattress as he moves. Her arm ends up trapped under his ribcage, pinned there, and the weight of him–solid, inescapable, fully committed–sends her spinning.

She wriggles, trying to get closer, chasing friction. He notices.

“Can you not,” he murmurs into her throat. “I’m trying to maintain a shred of composure here.”

“Funny,” she says, breathless. “I’m trying to do the opposite.”

She shifts again–and stops.

Her breath catches.

She adjusts slightly, deliberately, just to confirm.

Yep.

She grins–slow, delighted, and not even remotely subtle.

“You took something,” she says.

His forehead drops to her shoulder.

“Jack.”

“Don’t make it a thing,” he mutters into her skin. “It was just… I didn’t know if I’d be wrecked again or if I’d need a minute or–”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“You were already climbing me,” he says, voice rough and muffled. “I wasn’t gonna announce it.”

She laughs, giddy and completely undone. “This is so hot.”

“Penelope.”

“You’re just–here,” she whispers, tilting her hips up into him, slow and exploratory. “And I can just–”

He groans, deep and unhelpful, grip tightening on her wrist.

“God, please keep doing that.”

She does. Slow and precise, using his body like she’s making a point. Her freed hand drifts between them, finds the waistband by feel, slides beneath. He doesn’t stop her. Doesn’t move.

The breath he pulls in is sharp enough that she feels it in her own chest.

Her eyes snap up to his. “You feel that?”

He meets her eyes. “Not directly,” he says, rough and honest. “Not like… before.”

Her hand stills.

“But it’s–” he exhales, pulling a sentence together through obvious effort. “It’s you. Doing it. Watching you. The pressure. The way everything above it reacts.” He swallows. “The context is the whole thing.”

She looks at him for a long moment.

“You’re watching me,” she murmurs.

“I mean–” He manages something like a laugh. “Yeah. Where else am I supposed to look?”

She can’t help it. The sound he makes, that specific ruined quality in his voice–it undoes something in her.

She presses her palm flat against that line on his stomach, still tracing the border where his sensation shifts. His skin jumps.

“Okay,” she whispers.

And guides him in.

He exhales sharp–a stunned, wrecked sound right against her ear.

“God,” he chokes. “You–”

“Already there,” she confirms.

He swears, soft and reverent, and shifts his weight. The pressure pins her to the mattress, the whole length of him flush against her, one hand curling under her knee to hold her open.

“Okay,” he says, voice low and uneven. “Okay. I can work with this.”

And he does. It’s less thrust, more–arms pulling tight and pushing forward in a slow uneven rhythm. Every angle grounded. Every movement deliberate. She arches up, fingers splayed on his back, trying to pull him even closer.

“Still watching,” he murmurs against her cheek.

“Good,” she breathes.

Her hands slide on instinct–down his back, along his sides, settling at that band where everything in him changes. She means it as an anchor. Just something to hold.

Then he pulls forward again and the movement drags his skin beneath her palms, raking her nails straight across that invisible line.

He jolts.

Not a twitch. A full-body jolt, above the line, like something got yanked.

She goes very still.

Then–carefully, watching his face–she does it again.

The sound he makes is half-groan, half-swear, right against her throat. His next movement is sharper, deeper, like his body just overrode his plans entirely.

Oh.

She keeps her hands exactly there and feels every pass: the tense pull of muscle, the drop where it goes quiet, the way he jumps each time she crosses it.

“Penelope,” he says, wrecked. “Do not move from that spot.”

She drags her nails a little more deliberately.

He groans–loud, unguarded, not even trying to play it off. His rhythm stutters and comes back harder, whole upper body pulling taut.

“Dig in,” he gets out. “God–dig in, Pen–”

She does. Not cruel–but not gentle either. Her nails scraping that line every time he moves, like she’s tracing it into memory. Each pass pulls another sound from him, his body pressing forward like he’s chasing the contact now.

Somewhere in the chaos his hand leaves the mattress and finds the headboard, fingers wrapping around the top edge like he needs something else to hang onto. The arm under her leg tightens, forearm locked around the back of her thigh, using her as leverage to haul himself in and out of that same devastating angle. It isn’t graceful. There’s no real rhythm left–just raw, uneven pulls, his body jerking forward like each pass short-circuits his control and he’s recovering on the fly.

It shouldn’t work. It’s a mess. It’s so obscenely hot she sees actual stars.

“Jack,” she gasps, nails biting a little harder into that band of skin. “Tell me–what is this doing to you?”

“This–fuck–this is so hot,” he gets out, voice breaking. “Your nails–right there–every time you drag them over that line I can’t–”

His next thrust stutters. “Am I still hard?”

“Yes,” she gasps.

“Feels like I’m short-circuiting.” His hand slams harder into the headboard.

She realizes with a jolt that she’s right there with him–climbing fast, balance gone, and they are nowhere near coordinated. She never gets here like this. Not on her back, not with someone over her, not from this angle that usually feels like a compromise at best.

But with him–like this, with his weight pinning her and his body pulling tight under her hands and that line firing every time she drags her nails–it’s all stacking. Every stuttered thrust, every wrecked sound, every twitch of his muscles under her palms.

The edges start to smear. Her thoughts stop arriving in full sentences. Just flashes: his shoulder under her mouth, the salt of his skin, the tremor in his arm where he’s holding his weight, the way her name sounds when he has nothing else left.

He gasps once more, right in her ear.

After that it’s pure free fall.

She clamps down on that line at his back at the exact moment everything in her lets go. He slams forward, body seizing above her, and they tip over the edge together in one long, tangled, heart-stopping rush.

When the world knits back in around the edges, they’re a collapsed pile of limbs and heat and wrecked breathing. His weight is still half on her, forehead tucked into the curve of her neck, chest heaving against hers. Her hands are slack now, palms still resting over that band of skin that will live in her head for months.

Neither of them moves.

She stares up at the ceiling, vision slowly sharpening, heart pounding so hard she can feel it in her fingertips.

“Okay,” she says eventually, voice rough and small and a little stunned. “That was… a lot of data.”

His chest huffs against hers–half laugh, half aftershock.

“Yeah,” he manages, muffled into her skin. “Gonna… need a minute to process that.”

They lie there in stunned silence, the only sound their breathing and the distant hum of the fridge.

After a while, Penelope squints over at the alarm clock on his nightstand.

Her eyes widen. “Jack.”

“Mm.”

“We’ve been in here for four hours.”

He turns his head a fraction, like that might help him process time. “No we haven’t.”

She lifts a hand and points. “Clock doesn’t lie.”

He peers, blinks, then laughs in disbelief. “Oh my God. We lost an entire quarter.”

“We’ve entered a sex dimension.”

“Okay, but,” he says, sounding genuinely curious, “do you regret it?”

She thinks about her legs, which feel like overcooked noodles. Her throat, which is still recovering. The deep, contented ache in her chest that has nothing to do with any of that.

“Absolutely not,” she says. “I do, however, regret abandoning the dumplings.”

“Oh shit,” he says slowly. “The DoorDash. You think someone stole it?”

Both of them turn their heads toward the open bedroom door, as if they might see through it to the hallway and the sad little paper bag they abandoned out there.

“If they did, they earned it,” she says. “But also, no, because I will actually die.”

“Pen,” he says, already starting to laugh. “We forgot food existed for four hours.”

“We have to go rescue them,” she says solemnly. “They died for our sins.”

“Oh my God,” he groans, but he’s grinning as he slides his arm out from under her and reaches for the edge of the mattress. “Okay. Hold on, I gotta…”

He shifts, taking his time, skilled movements even with the post-everything tremor in his muscles. She pushes herself up on her elbows, watching him swing his legs over the side and reach for his chair, parked where he left it. The transfer back is slower but still sure, hands gripping metal and mattress, body moving with the kind of ingrained pattern that makes her chest go warm and tight all over again.

Once he’s settled, he glances down at himself, then at her. “Do we put clothes on to retrieve the fallen takeout,” he asks, “or do we accept that we’ve already given up on dignity ton–”

She rolls out of bed and does not reach for a single item of clothing.

“Penelope,” he laughs, instantly alarmed and amused. “I was kidding. You cannot be naked in my hallway.”

She’s already padding toward the door. “I absolutely can.”

“That’s not–okay, that’s not the point at all,” he says, rolling after her. “I have neighbors. At least use the door as a shield, you feral little–”

She cracks the front door open, tucking her body behind it so only one bare arm and one bare leg are visible to the outside world. The hallway is quiet. The paper bag sits slumped against the doorframe like it has given up on them.

She stretches her arm out, fingers scrabbling blind until they catch the handle. “Got you,” she mutters, dragging the bag inside and nudging the door shut with her foot.

When she turns back, victorious, he’s just staring at her like he can’t decide whether to laugh, lecture her, or drag her straight back to bed.

“See?” she says. “Stealth.”

“That,” he says, “was the most stressful DoorDash recovery of my life.”

“Oh, please,” she says, brushing past him, very on purpose, so his knuckles graze bare skin. “You're such a square.”

The kitchen light is off; she flicks it on. The counter is clean, weirdly innocent considering everything that’s just happened. She sets the bag down and opens it. Inside, the cartons are slightly askew, one lid bent, sauce clinging to the edges, chopsticks trying their best.

She makes a small, distressed noise into the container of dumplings. “My children.”

Jack rolls in beside her, bracing his forearm on the counter as he surveys the contents. “This is… shameful,” he says. “We did them dirty.”

She pops another lid and sticks a finger in. “Still warm-ish,” she declares. “We’re fine.”

He snags a carton and a fork; she grabs another. They eat crouched over the containers in companionable, exhausted silence, occasionally bumping shoulders, occasionally laughing at nothing.

At one point she drops a noodle on his bare thigh.

“Oh my God, I’m sorry,” she blurts, reaching out automatically–then stops herself mid-reach, her hand hovering, brain lagging three seconds behind her body.

“Huh?” he asks, genuinely confused, and follows her gaze down. “Oh, don’t worry,” he says, amused, registering her face. “That’s a very low-stakes emergency in the grand scheme of leg issues.”

Her face goes hot. “Right. Sorry. Brain is still catching up to…”

“It’s okay,” he says, bumping her hip with his forearm. “You’re good. I like that you forget and then remember and then make that face.”

“What face?”

“That one,” he says, smirking. “The ‘oh God, am I being weird about it’ face.”

She huffs a laugh in a busted, yeah-okay way. “Rude. And also… fair.”

He looks at her exactly the way he always does when he wants to underline something without making it a Thing–just a quick, steady look and his hand dropping to squeeze the side of her knee. We’re good.

They finish off the food like that: half tangled, half propped, fully ravenous.

When the last dumpling disappears, she tosses the empty carton into the trash and looks down at him.

“So,” she says. “What’s the plan now?”

“Want to completely ruin my ability to form words for another four hours?”

She laughs, feeling it fizzle all over her skin. “Okay, Darcy,” she says, sliding sideways across his lap, arms looped around his neck. “Take me back to the sex dimension.”

“Gladly,” he says, voice dropping.

They make it exactly long enough to regret nothing and absolutely ruin tomorrow.

– –