Oh no, he didn’t.
Murderous rage filled me. I jumped up, pacing away from him so I didn’t wipe the floor with his fucking ass. I turned back to him, my fists clenched to keep from yanking his ass off the couch and beating him to a pulp.
Gritting my teeth, I ground out, “That isn’t your decision to make. I get to choose what I deserve. Me. Not you. Me.”
I shoved my hands into my hair and pulled, trying to let loose a smidgen of the violence I felt.
Taking a deep breath, I continued. “And what I choose is you. Not because of the size of your cock or how good a lay you are. I choose you because I love you, and you make me a better man when your head isn’t fucking lodged so far up your ass you’ve forgotten what daylight is. I deserve to be loved and cared for, and not just sexually, because while that part of our relationship is the best I’ve ever had, I could find great sex elsewhere.”
“Cariño…”
“No goddammit. No. You don’t have the right to make decisions for me without my input. Ever. Do you understand? Never again will you do to me what you did in that hospital.”
He nodded. Reluctantly. But he at least acknowledged he heard my words. Then I remembered Vegas.
“What the fuck happened in Vegas? Because you damn sure had full use of your dick last year. I walked bowlegged for a week afterwards.”
His lips twitched, and I growled as I slung a throw pillow at the fucker’s smug fucking face.
“You best check yourself. I’m in no mood. Now wipe that smug ass grin off your stupid face, and tell me what happened.”
He literally wiped his face, but the look was still there when he finished.
“Explain why you put us through the wringer again.”
“Because I woke up next to you, soft.”
“We fucked for twelve goddamn hours, Hayden! I didn’t get hard for more than twenty-four hours!”
A sheepish look came over his face, and he shrugged. “That hadn’t ever happened to me.”
“Never? You’d never woke up soft? Not in your entire life?”
He shrugged. “No. Every morning, without fail, from my preteens until boot camp. And I chalked that up to exhaustion. Same with missions and training.”
I stared at him. I could feel the shock that I was positive showed on my face.
“And never once since I met you. Rack out for twenty? Wake up hard. In the racks on the ship? Wake up hard. Then I had the accident, and the doc was right, it came back. It wasn’t like it used to be, but it was okay. I’d wake up somewhat stiff, so I thought it would continue improving with time. But that morning in Vegas… I woke up and… nothing.”
I rubbed my face with both hands trying to comprehend, and finally said fuck it. “What did the doctor say?”
“Nothing. I didn’t mention it. Things worked themselves out again.”
“So, why didn’t you call me? Why not talk to me once you knew it wasn’t a setback or whatever?”
“What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey Declan, can you come see me so we can test out my broke ass dick?’ Yeah, vato, I don’t think so.”
“You need to get your ass over the toxic masculinity. It’s kept us a part for… fuck… for years, Hayden.”
He stood, rubbing his palms on his pants as he came toward me. Pissed off didn’t begin to cover how I felt about the shit he’d put us both through. He stopped before me, hesitant as he reached to grasp my hips and pull us together.
“I’m sorry, Declan. I am. You don’t know how much I missed you. Every fucking minute of every damn day. You never left my mind or my heart. You were there beside me as I figured my shit out. During the worst moments of my life, you sat on one shoulder rooting for me and my own negative self-image sat on the other telling me what a piece of shit I was. For being less than a man. For being so fucking scared of not being accepted for… whatever that asshole threw at me that day. For hurting you and throwing away my one chance at happiness. For turning away from the greatest man I’d ever met. From my soulmate.”
“Fuck you.”
All the emotions his words evoked were clear as day, in my shaky, tremulous voice. I pulled him to me, burying my face in his neck. My arms wrapped around his neck so tightly that the muscles from my fingers to my back ached, but I didn’t care. If I could absorb him into my skin, I would’ve. There was no such thing as too close.
And he apparently felt the same way because his arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me into his big body that cocooned me like no one else could. I loved the way he made me feel big and strong while also making me feel loved and cared for. It was the biggest mindfuck of all time.
