It hurt and made me feel like he didn’t actually want me after all. He used my health as an excuse, but that’s exactly what it felt like. Anexcuse.
I didn’t need him toloveme. I’d accepted the fact that no one would everreallylove me. It sucked, but it was something I’d come to terms with.
However, at the very least, I needed to be able topretendthat Ryan did, and it was impossible to do that when he wouldn’t let me do anything more than kiss him.
I was reduced to following him around the house as he did his uptight Ryan things. He filled his days doing the most boring shit. Like meticulously cleaning every single fucking nook and cranny or going through a metric shit ton of paperwork.
There was one day when I sat with him for hours after he decided he needed to reorganize seven years’ worth of tax files that he had kept in case of an audit.
I couldn’t understand why the fuck anyone wouldvoluntarilydo this shit on their time off. Sure, he was taking a forced vacation, but still. This was time we could have spent screwing each other’s brains out if he wasn’t so goddamn strict. Instead, he seemed to want to spend it going through dusty old files and boxes.
Both of us seemed to grow increasingly anxious as the days went on. Me, because I was bored, and I was jerking it in the shower like four times a day to keep myself from non-conning Ryan. And he… Well, I didn’t really know why he was so anxious.
I was nearing the six-week mark of my healing journey, for which I’d been counting down the days. Considering six weeks was the date Dr. Callahan said I would be free and clear to fuck again (my words, not his).
Wondering if I could convince Ryan to give it up a few days early, I went looking for him. After searching the house top to bottom with no sign of him, I needed to resort to checking the video feeds of the house to find his ginger ass. He still didn’t know about the cameras. I planned on telling himeventually.There just never seemed to be a good time. I knew he was going to be pissed, so I was shamelessly avoiding it.
After rewinding the tapes and watching for a few minutes, I found him disappearing into the attic.
I hadn’t needed to use the shitty crutch for over a week and was feeling fully back to my old self when I popped my head up into the dusty space.
I groaned when I realized he was on yetanotherone of his clean-freak binges, and he glanced up from what he was doing, a small frown on his face.
A beam of sunlight pooled in from the tiny attic window, and it caught in his soft, red hair, outlining his perfectly sculpted body from behind.
My mouth went dry at the sight of him. He looked like some sort of heavenly being, and for a moment, I couldn’t speak or move.
He wasbreathtaking,and he wasmine.I refused to wait another second to have him.
“Hey, what are you doing up here?” he asked, looking up from a picture frame he had clutched in his hands. He was sitting cross-legged in front of an open box labeled ‘Misc 2006’ and seemed to have gotten caught up looking at old photos.
“I came to find you,” I replied, my voice coming out gruffer than I intended. Dropping to my knees before him, I reached out and slid my hands into his hair, grabbing a fistful of soft auburn strands. I pulled him toward me and pressed my lips against his. He let out the most beautiful little groan, and I opened my mouth, greedily swallowing the sound.
“Baby, I need you,” I murmured against his lips. “Please. I can’t wait any longer. Let me in.” I kissed him over and over again, nipping at his plush bottom lip and sucking it into my mouth. He groaned again and slid his hand up my chest and into my hair, slipping his hot tongue into my mouth and kissing me back.
I didn’t want to force him. I wanted him to want me, and when he kissed me like this, it almost felt like someone loved me, and I needed that more desperately than I ever had before.
A rush of warmth flooded my body as my mouth filled with the taste of him, and I was suddenly fisting his T-shirt in the hand that wasn’t tangled in his hair, pushing him backward toward the floor.
All the blood in my body rushed from my head to my cock, and before I knew it, I was dizzy with desire. I was basicallycrawling on top of him when he pressed a firm hand into my chest. Before I could get him beneath me where he belonged, he broke our kiss.
“We should stop,” he breathed, gently pulling away, and I growled into his mouth, shaking my head.
“I don’t want to stop,” I hissed, forcing him down more firmly.
He didn’t understand. Ineededhim. I needed to be touched. It had been too long. The more time that passed without him touching me, the more my insecurities were rising up and taking over.
I was beginning to feel more like his roommate than his boyfriend, and Ihated it.He’d asked me that day after we had been together in the field what we were, and I regretted now not putting a label on it.
“Cal. I saidno.” His tone changed to that firm voice he used that told me there was no arguing with him.
The urge tomakehim be with me rolled through my chest, but I forced myself to let him go. This wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t just about the sex; it was about feeling wanted, and right now, I felt anythingbutwanted.
Maybe he wasn’t attracted to me anymore.
After taking care of me while I had been injured, he had cleaned up my puke, helped me shower like some sort of child, and there had been times in the early days when he had spoon-fed me when I had been half asleep, knocked out on painkillers.
He probably looked at me like some sort of burden now.
