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Chapter Eleven begins at the threshold—and crosses it.
Maddox stands in Rhys’s doorway, unguarded and honest in a way that immediately unsettles them both. What he admits wanting—distraction, escape—lands with unexpected weight, echoing patterns Rhys recognizes too well. The past and present overlap, and before either of them can step back, Maddox is inside the brownstone.
What follows is physical, urgent, and long deferred. Years of restraint collapse into touch, into need, into bodies finally allowed to take up the space they’ve been circling for decades. This chapter is raw and unfiltered—desire no longer imagined, negotiated, or avoided, but fully acted on.
The intensity doesn’t end with release. In the aftermath, something quieter emerges: connection without pretense, presence without apology. Maddox speaks plainly about the years he’s spent feeling half-alive. Rhys, finally still, asks for something he’s never asked for before—not passion, not reassurance, but continuity.
Chapter Eleven closes not on uncertainty, but on decision. Maddox stays. The silence between them, once empty and unbearable, becomes something shared—and full.
🎧 Content note: Explicit sexual content; emotional intimacy; mature themes.
