He’s so fucking beautiful.
Sweat makes his skin dewy, his pale face flushed a deep rose while his lips part on ragged breaths. He bites them when he loses himself, and it leaves them puffy and half-bruised.
For a moment, the eyepatch jars me, and rage flares hot in my chest at what was taken from him. But then Xeni stares down at me in quiet wonder, and the crippling heaviness he carries seems to lift.
He’s light and free, and happy in a way that makes it feel like he never left. The tiniest smile tilts his lips as he catches his breath, and for just a moment, I forget I’ve spent the last four years angry.
Instead, I justfeel.
Everything I’ve tried to bury comes rushing back, and my protective armor strips away as memories flood in.
Xeni’s smile from across the room when we had to hide our relationship, and the ache in my heart because I couldn’t touch him. The way he’d catch my pinkie in passing or lean his knee against mine under the table, and how it had to be enough until we were behind closed doors.
How he’d collapse into my lap at night, crying over what he’d been forced to do, and how I felt like the most powerful man in the world because I somehow always managed to make it better.
The way he made me love like I never thought possible.
The words hover on my lips.
That I love him, and that I never stopped.
But Xeni scoots lower and drops his hands on either side of my head, and his kiss saves me from baring my heart when we don’t know what our future holds. He protects me from my impulses that want to pretend these past years didn’t happen.
They did.
They happened, and they broke us.
But he kisses me with his entire body, and it weakens my defenses further. We’re desperate for that lost connection, both of us shoving at my clothes to remove every barrier. The elastic of my shorts bands around my thighs as Xeni loses patience and reaches for me, fingers wrapping around my cock.
He pauses, fingertips trailing along my length before tracing the curved barbell at the tip. It’s a feather-light touch, but it sends sparks shooting up my spine.
“That’s new,” he mutters, his eye snapping to mine with a different kind of heat—dark, possessive, and edged with something sharp.
A teasing grin tugs at my lips. “Don’t like it?”
“I don’t like that you got it for someone other than me,” he admits, the words clipped. His jealousy flares hot in his gaze as his thumb circles the piercing again, like he’s claiming it now.
I arch a brow, letting my hips lift into his teasing. “I got it forme, princess. And besides… three months without sex? You could’ve never lasted that long without breaking.”
He grunts, the sound wavering between frustrated and amused, even though we both know I’m right.
His fingers linger, dancing over both ends of the barbell once more before he hooks his panties and holds them aside as he lines us up.
“It is maybe a little sexy,” he concedes, voice dropping to a husky whisper as he leans forward. His lips find mine in a kiss that’s all heat and challenge while he sinks down slowly, taking me in inch by torturous inch.
My brows furrow as he cries out against my lips, and I pull back, noting the tremble in his limbs.
“Easy,” I murmur, despite the burning need to drive upward and bury myself in him.
“I can take it,” he breathes, voice damn near gasping as he slips another inch inside. “I’m wet… I’m ready.”
Slick slides down my cock as his body fights to accept me, but when I try to slow him down, he shakes his head frantically.
“Ineedthis, Bash,” he begs.
My heart pounds as I push his hair from his face and nod. “Then you’ll have it.”
He’s so fucking tight, and he moans again as he takes more. I grip his hips, but despite his lean, willowy frame, he’s stronger than me.
