“No,” he murmurs. “But I’d like to hear it anyway.”
I lift my head, rest my forehead against his shoulder, breathe him in. Let the words scrape their way out of me.
“I want you inside me.”
His breath catches. I feel the tremor in his thighs. But when I open my eyes, there’s no hunger in his gaze. Just heat—and something that might be reverence.
“You sure?”
I nod. “I need…”
I trail off. Because the rest is too much.
Wyatt brushes a kiss over my mouth. Stands and takes my hand. Leads me toward the bedroom without another word.
The room smells like her. I almost stop.
But then he squeezes my hand and I remember?—
She was the one who opened this door in the first place when she reached for him in that elevator.
When I kissed her in front of him I was claiming territory, making sure he knew who she belonged to. That I was back to take what was mine all along. But she had other ideas, and the momentum of her desire caught me up, carried me along. She’d been the one in charge from the start, a decade earlier. She was the one in charge that night too.
Now, surrounded by her scent, her belongings, I let go of the hesitation. Strip down to nothing.
Half a beer isn’t enough courage for what comes next and neither is the painful throb of my erection.
Facing this want and knowing it’s coming from me and not the booze is far more difficult.
He takes my hand again, squeezes once. Then he slides his hand up my arm—slow, patient. Every touch deliberate.
He kisses the scars on my chest, tracing each one as if mapping my past to understand where all my triggers are buried.
He presses me back against the sheets like he’s afraid I’ll shatter, but the truth is—I already did.
Maybe in Vicente’s bed, when I learned how to simulate control instead of feeling it.
But this… this isn’t that.
His hand settles flat against my chest. “Stay with me,” he says. “Don’t disappear.”
I nod. It’s all I can manage. Because I want to. Disappear, escape, vanish under the weight of my own needs. Make this about release and nothing more.
But he won’t let me make it impersonal. Goddamn him for making this feel real.
My chest rises and falls too fast, nerves vibrating under skin I can’t seem to settle into. Wyatt’s gaze roams over me, slow and unhurried, like he’s taking stock of something valuable. His hands are warm. Broad. They skim down my arms, over my ribs, before they settle on my hips. He dips his head and brushes a kiss just under my sternum, and I shudder.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, lips ghosting over my skin.
I nod, but the words catch in my throat. He kneels between my legs, nudging them apart with a confidence that doesn’t ask permission but still waits for it. I let my thighs fall open, exposing everything. There’s no hiding the hard line of my cock, flushed and heavy, curving against my abdomen. Wyatt’s eyes darken, and he strokes his palm up my thigh before cupping my balls, rolling them with reverent fingers.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
“Beautiful,” he says, like it’s the simplest truth.
Then he leans down and takes me into his mouth.
I arch off the bed, fingers tangling in the sheets as he sucks me deep. His tongue flicks against the underside of my shaft, tracing the vein there. Then he hollows his cheeks and pulls back slow, letting my cock slip from his lips with a wet sound that sends heat flooding my belly.
