I sigh. “Not yet. But I want to tell them tomorrow. They’ll back us up. If you don’t want to come out to your parents yet, okay, I get it. That’s fine. I’ll be your roommate, if that’s what you want to tell them. But my parents will welcome you into the family.Ourfamily. Because I love you, that means they’ll love you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that, because they raised me, and they’ve always been supportive. Your father is the exception, not the rule. He’s on the far end of the scale in terms of assholes. And if you want to run for office after all, you can do that in Massachusetts just as easily as you can in Georgia. Only you can be your real self with me. We can be out, and we don’t have to live in fear.”
His gaze drops to our hands, where I’m still holding him. I’m terrified that if I let go right now I might lose him.
“You really think we can do that, don’t you?”
Hope surges through me. “Yes, I do. Iknowwe can. I want to marry you, Ward. I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you. I promise, no one but you. Ever. Just like you promised me.”
He slowly nods. “No one but you, Master.”
I cup his head again and kiss him, slowly, sweetly, loving this man and for the first time since meeting him finally feeling like I’ve secured him for good.
I press my forehead to his. “I can’t lose you, baby,” I whisper. “You’re the love of my life. We can have a fantastic life together. I’m not saying it’ll always be perfect, or that it won’t be difficult sometimes, but we’ll always have each other and our love. You deserve to be happy and not a tool to stroke your father’s ego because he’s washed up.”
He softly snorts. “He’s far from washed up.”
“He won’t stay angry at you forever. He can’t. At some point you can approach him and talk and mend fences. Let him stew for a while over losing control of you—that’s what narcissists do. Eventually, he’ll move on to another target, once he realizes he can’t control you.”
He doesn’t look convinced.
Except I cannot imaginenothaving this man in my life. I am convinced we can be happy and successful if we have each other.
“I can be brave enough for both of us,” I assure him. “I love you. All I need is for you to trust me and let me take care of you.”
There’s doubtful hope swirling through his blue gaze. “I do trust you. And I love you.”
“That’s all I need, baby.” I coax him into the shower with me and start making love to him there. We shower together a lot. In the beginning, he was always tentative and nervous, until he grew comfortable being tended to.
Loved.
There are some things he won’t talk about but I suspect he didn’t get a lot of hugs growing up. Once he opened up to me it was like he suffered from skin hunger he always felt desperate to quench, always cuddling with me when we were alone in our room.
Snuggled tightly against me every night.
I have him turn away from me so I can scrub his back and I take my time with that. He loves even small things like this, being taken care of without judgment or need to be anything he’s not.
All he needs to be is my sweet boy. That’s all I want him to be. I’ll help him face the rest of the world and kick ass. I can be strong enough for both of us in that regard.
I finish washing him, and he washes me. I pull him into my arms and kiss him, caress his body, play with his cock and slowly draw him deep into that sweet, needy place where he loves to let go to me and exist in the moment, in the pleasure and pain and release.
We move from the shower to bed and I imagine tomorrow night we’ll be asleep in my room in my parents’ house before we head to Boston on Monday. Our lease on this apartment doesn’t run out for two days, but I want to go back to Massachusetts as soon as possible and move into our new place. I already put a deposit down on the studio apartment and can’t wait to tell him that tomorrow.
He’s overwhelmed right now, though. I feel it. I don’t want to dump everything on him.
I’m going to marry him and make him totally mine, and his father can go fuck himself.
I’m going to spend the rest of our lives together building him up and showing him what true love is.
I’m certain that with the pressure of performing like a trained seal for his father off his shoulders, Ward will blossom into the man he’s meant to become. I’ve already seen glimpses of that man in our seven years together. Hell, we’ve been together longer than a lot of marriages last.
Putting him on his back, I kiss my way down his body while imaging doing this to him tomorrow night in my bed in my parents’ house.
And after that, in our bed in our apartment.
With no one able to split us in two or destroy our happiness. I can’t wait to make him smile every morning and start his day with a loving kiss when we wake up, without him struggling to survive.
