“Adam.” Cooper held up a hand to stop him. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I should have years ago.”
“I could have, too.”
“But you didn’t,” Adam said.
“And neither did you.”
“So, can I do it now?”
Cooper let out a long and loud breath, his shoulders going weak under the weight of Adam’s request.
“You don’t have to,” he said, shaking his head. “Sometimes things only last for a season and then run their course.”
Adam shifted his weight and the bed creaked beneath him, shattering the silence between them. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Of course I do,” he rasped.
“Can I be honest with you?”
Cooper huffed. “It’s not like you to ask for things, Adam.”
Adam’s cheeks flushed a dark red, tracing down his jawline to his throat before disappearing behind the neckline of his shirt.
“You’ve always taken what you want,” Cooper went on. “You’ve always been clear about what you need.”
“No,” Adam interrupted, shifting his body to face Cooper. Their knees touched, and Cooper could feel the heat of him through his pants. “I haven’t been clear. Not in a very long time.”
“I remember you being implicitly clear, Adam.”
“I was wrong. I was scared, and I was wrong.” Adam cleared his throat and grimaced, turning his attention to the place where their knees touched.
“I don’t know what that means,” he said gently. “I don’t know what to make of that.”
“I’ve never knelt for another man,” Adam said.
“You did a lot more than kneel.”
The flush on Adam’s face impossibly darkened. “I know. And the point stands. It was…it was only for you.”
“Before then, yeah.”
“Ever,” Adam snapped, his voice demanding to be heard. “Ever, Cooper. It was only ever for you.”
“That makes sense.” His heart battered his rib cage. “You hated it, so I don’t know why you would want to try again.”
But even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. Adam knew it was a lie, too. His face betrayed him. Adam had told Cooper he hated it. He told Cooper it felt wrong, and that he liked to be the one making demands and taking concessions, but there was no denying how hard Adam got when he crawled across a room with his plugged ass in the air and his entire body restrained. Cooper could see the memory flash against Adam’s face as well, the flare of his nostrils reminding him of his lie.
“I didn’t hate it,” Adam admitted out loud, nearly jumping off the bed. He paced the room, coming to stop at the window where he gave Cooper his back. “I didn’t hate it, andthat’swhat I hated.”
“I never meant to make you question your whole world, Adam.” Cooper stood and followed, slow and calculated steps around the room that left him a few feet shy of where Adam had stopped.
“Didn’t you, though?”
“It was a side effect,” he said.
Adam turned sharply, that delicious blush still coloring his face, but his eyes had gone dark and hooded. He raised his hands and flexed his fingers like he wanted to claw at something, like he wanted to hit something. It was a feeling Cooper was intimately familiar with from both sides.
