The morning light filtered through the sheer curtains in gold ribbons, painting the bedroom in shades of honey and cream. I woke up slowly, my body heavy with the kind of satisfied exhaustion that comes from sleeping deeply in a bed that isn’t yours. The sheets smelled of her — lavender and something darker, something that made my stomach clench with memory.
I sat up and realized I was naked beneath the covers. My clothes from the night before were scattered across the floor like evidence of a crime. A black dress. Heels. A strap that had given up halfway through the evening. I remembered the party. The wine. The way she had looked at me across the room like I was the only person in a crowded gallery. And then… the rest was a blur of touches and whispers and finally, sleep.
I needed to find something to wear. I couldn’t parade around in nothing. I opened her closet — a walk-in space that smelled of cedar and perfume — and found it hanging on a hook. A white button-down shirt. Men’s cut. Oversized. It fell to mid-thigh on me, the fabric soft and worn from washing. I slipped it on, rolling the sleeves up, and left the top three buttons undone. It was all I could find. It would have to do.
I sat on the edge of the bed, my bare legs crossed, the morning air cool against my skin. The shirt gaped slightly at the collar, revealing the curve of my shoulder. I was looking down at my hands, trying to remember exactly how much I had confessed to her last night, when I felt the shift in the room.
She was leaning against the doorframe. Watching me. She wore a black silk camisole that clung to her torso, her hair tousled from sleep, a coffee mug in her hand. She looked like a painting. No — she looked like the artist who had painted the dream I was still living in.
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. She just looked. Her eyes traveled from my face down to my legs, to the way the shirt barely covered me, to the bare skin that was definitely not hidden. Then she pushed off the doorframe and walked toward me. Slow. Deliberate. Each step making my pulse hammer harder.
She set the coffee mug on the nightstand. Then she reached down and lifted my chin with one finger. Her touch was warm. Her eyes were dark.
“You have no idea what you do to me when you wear my shirt like that,” she whispered, her voice low and rough with morning desire. “And nothing else.”
I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. My breath came in shallow gasps, my cheeks burning. The shirt suddenly felt like too much and not enough all at once. She was standing between my knees, her camisole brushing against the open collar of the shirt.
“Last night you told me you wanted me,” she continued, her thumb tracing my jaw. “But you were drunk. And I don’t take advantage.” She leaned closer, her lips hovering over mine. “But you’re sober now. And you’re sitting on my bed in my shirt. So tell me, beautiful… was last night real? Or are you going to break my heart this morning?”
I reached up. My hands found the hem of her camisole. I pulled it up, slow and deliberate, my eyes never leaving hers. She raised her arms and let me remove it. Then she was as bare as I was beneath the shirt, and the air between us turned electric.
“It’s real,” I whispered — the first words I had spoken that morning.
She pushed me back onto the bed. The shirt fell open beneath her, and she looked down at me with an expression that was part reverence and part hunger. “Good,” she murmured, her mouth finding my neck. “Because I’ve been lying awake for an hour imagining this. Imagining you in my shirt. Imagining taking it off you. Imagining what I would do when there was nothing left between us but morning light.”
She took her time. The morning was lazy, and so was she. Her hands roamed over the fabric, teasing through the open buttons, tracing the curves that the shirt couldn’t hide. She kissed every inch of skin she exposed — my shoulder, my collarbone, the sensitive place where my neck met my jaw. When she finally pushed the shirt off completely, she sat back on her heels and looked at me with an intensity that made me want to cover myself and spread myself open at the same time.
“Don’t hide,” she said softly, her hands finding my knees and pressing them apart. “Let me see you. Let me have you. Let me show you what mornings are supposed to feel like.”
She showed me. For hours, while the coffee went cold and the sun climbed higher, she showed me. Her mouth was hot and demanding, her fingers skilled and relentless. She built a fire inside me with devastating patience, bringing me to the edge and then pulling back, whispering promises against my thighs until I was begging with my body, my back arching off the mattress, my fingers tangled in the sheets.
“Please,” I gasped, though I didn’t know what I was asking for. I just knew I needed more. I needed all of her.
She gave it to me. When I finally shattered beneath her tongue, it was with a cry that echoed off the bedroom walls, my body trembling and glowing and completely hers. She climbed up my body, kissing her way back to my mouth, and settled her weight over me.
“Keep the shirt,” she whispered against my lips, her smile wicked and tender. “But know that every time you wear it, I’m going to take it back. And you. Again and again.”
I kept the shirt. It became my favorite thing to wear — not because it was expensive, but because of what it meant. Every time I put it on, she would stop whatever she was doing. Her eyes would darken. Her hands would find me. And the morning would turn into something beautiful and stolen and completely ours.
Some things are worth borrowing. Especially when they come with a promise to never give them back.
