“Then what is? I’m exhausted and more than a little drunk. What’s the point, Aiden? What’s the point of any of this? I’m losing the plot.”
Aiden’s rough cheek rubbed against Thomas’s, then he kissed his closed eyelids. “The point is, your sons—all of them—love you in the only way they know how. They will never lay the blame at your feet, even if you do. This martyr complex you’ve been carrying around with you is useless.”
“You can’t know—”
Aiden cut him off with another hard kiss to his lips. “You’ve wasted so much of your life on a fairy tale where you’ve told yourself you’re the fucking monster. Shane was the monster.”
“But I created that monster. It’s like Frankenstein. Who was the real monster? The doctor.”
“You weren’t the architect of Shane’s disease. His mother was. His family was. You were a little kid from a fucked-up family, and you were coerced and brainwashed into a relationship you were in no way ready for. You know that. Deep down, underneath all those layers of guilt, the pragmatist I love fucking knows that.”
The pragmatist he loved. Aidenlovedhim. Aiden loved him more than Thomas had ever deserved. This was when he usually pulled away. When he would find a way to ruin everything. Instead, he pulled him closer until Aiden was in his lap, his thighs on either side of his, their mouths crashing together in a kiss that never seemed to end.
He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, mouths meeting and parting until Thomas didn’t know if it was the alcohol or desire clouding his judgment. It was enough, having Aiden in his arms was enough. He didn’t need more than this. But Aiden clearly did. He broke their kiss to pull Thomas’s sweatshirt over his head, tossing it aside, before his mouth found his collarbone, then his ear. “I’m taking you upstairs. Don’t say no.”
For once in Thomas’s life, it hadn’t even occurred to him to say no to Aiden. He was too far gone to say much of anything at all.
He let him lead him upstairs, he let him undress him without so much as a word, and when they were both naked, he kissed him again and Thomas let him. He just let Aiden take control.
This was how it should be. Thomas was in no condition to make decisions. He’d been making the wrong decisions for so long that maybe the best thing he could do for the both of them was just surrender—to let Aiden do the heavy lifting when it came to the two of them. Thomas was so tired of fighting it, fighting Aiden. Just once, he wanted to know what it was like to have everything he wanted.
Aiden pushed him back on the bed and laid on top of him, settling between his open legs. There was fire everywhere they touched and they touched everywhere. Thomas didn’t even know what to do, what to think. So, he didn’t. He concentrated instead on the burn of Aiden’s beard as he dragged his lips across his chest to capture his nipple in his mouth, and the way he licked and bit and sucked at it until Thomas was bucking beneath him, his brain a fog of want and pleasure.
“Aiden…”
“Don’t move,” Aiden demanded, switching his focus to his other nipple. “Don’t talk unless it’s to saypleaseoryesormore. Understand? We’re doing it my way now. You’ve said no to me for too long. We both want this. We both fucking need this. Don’t we?”
Aiden’s last question was more of a plea.
Thomas nodded. “Yes,” he said, voice raw.
Aiden made a sound that was something like a growl or a rumble against his skin. “Then just let me do this. Let me have you. Please. Everything else can wait.”
Thomas swallowed the lump in his throat. “Okay,” he managed.
“Close your eyes. Don’t think. Just feel. Just let me touch you. I’ve wanted to do this for so long.”
This time, Thomas couldn’t bring himself to form the words, he could only nod, letting his lids fall closed. Without his sight, his other senses were on high alert. The raw scrape of Aiden’s face on his skin made him throb, the way his fingers squeezed at his hips, the feel of his hard cock pressed against his hip. Thomas was leaking already.
When Aiden’s lips traced the large tattoo on his side, he shivered, and when Aiden slid lower, Thomas shook.
The moment Aiden’s mouth closed over him, he groaned, his hands threading in Aiden’s hair and pulling him off. “Don’t. I won’t last two seconds like that.”
He thought Aiden might get mad, but he gave what sounded like a low laugh, then the weight of him disappeared entirely. Still, Thomas didn’t open his eyes, he just laid there, naked and vulnerable. He didn’t want to know what Aiden was doing or even if he was coming back. But when the bed sank again, something unknotted inside him. Aiden wasn’t abandoning him—wasn’t abandoning this, whatever it was.
Thomas was grateful for the alcohol in his blood. It made it easier to relax. When Aiden’s mouth found his, he just opened for him, letting his tongue explore. Not just his tongue. His hands were moving, too, sliding between his legs, his now slick fingers probing his entrance. He hissed when Aiden breached him, invading his body in a way he’d imagined for longer than he’d ever admit to anybody.
“Can I?”
It took far too long for Aiden’s simple request to penetrate his alcohol-soaked brain.“Can I?”Could he what? Fuck him? Love him? Have him? Thomas buried his face in Aiden’s throat. He was tired of saying no. Tired of refusing himself the one thing he wanted more than anything in the world.
“Yes.”
“Thank God,” Aiden said in a rough whisper.
Then he was settling on top of him, forcing his legs apart with his body, putting Thomas where he wanted him. When the head of his cock pressed against his hole, Thomas had to force himself not to resist instinctively. It had been fucking years since he’d let anybody inside him. Shane had ruined that for him. Somehow, it seemed right that it was Aiden who changed it now.
Still, he couldn’t stop the pained grunt that escaped as Aiden entered him, so much bigger than Thomas had anticipated. But when he stopped halfway inside, Thomas found himself wrapping his legs around his hips, his heels trying to spur him forward despite his discomfort.
