Inoticedhowhereacted when I told him I loved him. I didn’t mean to. It slipped out of me in the heat of the moment. I hadn’t planned on saying it, and I certainly hadn’t meant for it to land like a bullet… but I could tell it hit, and it hit hard.
He had become so still that I could’ve been convinced he was gone. His breath hitched, body freezing for just a second. It was only a brief moment, but I felt something that he had been trying to hold together fracture.
He didn’t fight me anymore when I got up. He didn’t stop me when I turned around to push him down on the mattress so I could climb atop him. His head was hanging almost off the edge of the bed, exposing his throat like a sacrifice on an altar as he arched into the mattress when I settled myself onto the hard length of him.
He seemed stunned for a minute, maybe still wound up in what I had said, even as I moved against him: rolling my hips, taking him as deep and slow as I could. I wanted to tear that numbness off his face and bring him back to me, even if I had to break him down to do it.
Then he snapped back, reaching up to grab both of my hips to pull me down on him harder. He watched where we were joined as he helped me build a rhythm. I could tell he was close, he held me just a little too tight, hands shaking. I built him up to the edge and stopped. He flinched like I had stabbed him, cock throbbing inside me.
I climbed off of him slowly, letting the denial hang heavy in the air between us. Then, on my hands and knees, I slipped him into my mouth. He groaned, a ragged, desperate sound, one hand grabbing a handful of my hair as he pushed my head down andheldit there while he came into my mouth with a frustrated growl.
I didn’t swallow it. Instead, I moved atop him, and he craned his head up to see me. His pupils overtook all but a sliver of those amber eyes. I didn’t have to say anything; I just took his chin with my fingers and he parted his lips at the silent command.
I spit it into his mouth, and he swallowed it without hesitation before rising to kiss me, and I let him. It was questioning at first, as though he didn’t know if I would allow it. When I didn’t deny him, he fell into the passion of it.
I lay back on the bed, and he fell between my thighs. I was reminded of how good he was at this as he chased me to, and then over the edge of ecstasy. He said he didn’t get much action in this line of work, but he’d practiced somewhere. You didn’t just naturally have that kind of… talent. I didn’t know why it surprised me, either, because this man was all precision and method. When he learned something, helearnedit. It was almost clinical, but it was also desperate. Like maybe if he made me come hard enough, I’d forget what he’d done.
I didn’t forget, but I still shattered against his mouth, crying out, hips bucking, fingers twisting into the sheets. My legs trembled beneath him, even after I came down.
He lay across me afterward, panting into my shoulder, our sweat-slicked bodies sticking skin to skin. His breath caught like he wanted to say something but couldn’t form the words.
I should have felt victorious, satisfied that I had taken control. I’d made him feel every ounce of chaos in me, every sharp edge I’d sharpened on the guilt he was putting me through. He’d submitted to my rage, giving me whatever I wanted. He had offered me submission, not just out of lust or a play of power, but something darker. A penance.
And yet now, in the dark with him collapsed on top of me, our hearts drumming against each other, I just felt empty.
“You’re heavy,” I whispered.
“Sorry,” he grunted, rolling off of me and onto his back beside me.
He ran a hand across his face, staring up at the ceiling. The silence between us wasn’t peaceful; it was full of things unsaid.
“Do you regret it?” I asked, voice wrecked from screaming and crying.
He didn’t answer right away, he didn’t look away from the ceiling. “Yes.”
My heart dropped, but then he propped himself up on his elbow and looked at me. “But I don’t regretyou.”
The distinction gutted me. I wasn’t sure why it made it worse, but it did. “You don’t regret me.” I repeated quietly, looking at him as he studied my expression.
His eyes were glued on me, but they weren’t the same cold and glazed facade. He looked like a different person.
“Don’t,” I whispered, voice cracked and sharp. “Don’t look at me like that.”
He didn’t speak for a long moment. Just watched me, breathing like it hurt. “I thought I was protecting you. I just want you to know why I did it.”
“You weren’t protecting me, you were protectingyourselffrom what it would mean for me to know. You were afraid of how it would affect you, what it might cost you.”
His silence was tortured.
“You’re a coward who didn’t want me to see how broken you really are.”
He didn’t flinch but his mouth pressed into that grim, guilty line that he always wore when I hit too close to the bone. “You’re right.”
I hated that he didn’t fight back. I wanted him to. I wanted to scream at him; I wanted to claw at the walls of his apathy until he gave me something again. But now? He was lying there vulnerable and open, and it was somehow worse because now, for the first time, I wasn’t just looking at the man I’d loved… I was looking at thewreckagehe kept hidden behind all that control. I was looking at someone who I wasn’t sure loved me back.
“I don’t think I can forgive you.”
“That’s okay. I’ll still be here, even if you don’t.”
