“Got it. Your brain’s going kaboom over my lips. So I guess I’m a pretty okay kisser, then?” I whispered, tugging his lower lip between my teeth in a teasing nip.
“You know, I might need another sample to say for sure.”
I answered him with my mouth. The kiss carried the exhale of every moment I had swallowed my feelings, every night I had silenced the ache in my chest. I poured every unsaid moment into it.
A feral sound rumbled from deep in his chest, vibrating against my sternum like a tremor of thunder wrapped in lightning. Luke absorbed my quiet confessions, my long-buried want, and redefined my longing, turning it into a promise.
“Sample sufficient?” I asked, when we broke apart.
“Barely scratched the surface. We’re gonna be doing that a lot. Kissing is... yeah, I love that part.”
I chuckled. “Noted. More kissing on the agenda. Do your fantasies only involve kissing?”
“There are others,” he murmured. “My head’s kinda been filled with you. Of all the ways I can be close to you.”
“Do tell. Are we talking soft-focus daydreams from cozyland or... . something else?”
“Cuddles and soft stuff are my home base,” he admitted. “But I have definitely wandered into steamy territory.”
“Define steamy.”
“Let’s just say some of the fantasies involve your mouth. And your hands. All over me. And me maybe losing my ability to form complete sentences because of you.”
“Tell me.”
He ran the pad of his finger along my lower lip. “I think about your lips, these pretty lips, and how good it would feel to have them on me, likeon meon me. Wrapped around my dick.”
My cheeks burned, but I held his stare, emboldened by the honesty in his. “That can be arranged. I love giving head. Anything else?”
“Yeah. The one that’s been on repeat lately is where you’re inside me. Thrusting into me, slow, fast, desperate, gentle, doesn’t matter. What matters is the way you claim me, how you being inside me would write yourself onto me forever.”
This had to be a dream, right? Or some weird alternate multiverse where Luke was telling me everything I wanted to hear. “You’d... you’d bottom for me?”
“I told you, I’d yield for you if you asked.”
“I wasn’t sure if you realized how that could’ve been interpreted.”
“That, surprisingly enough, had been intentional. Okay, maybe not entirely. I hadn’t been talking about sex at the time, but now that we are, I find it applies.”
“You really do defy every expectation. Vincent never let me top. He said that a real man, a man with a body like his, didn’t bottom. He made it sound like something degrading. Like something to be ashamed of.”
“Vincent’s an asshole. Probably overcompensating for a micro-dick and an ego the size of a molecule.”
“Did you just growl?” I said, entertained and a bit endeared.
“I did not growl, I grumbled. There’s a difference. A technical distinction, mind you, and one I will defend. Ezra already calls me a bear often enough, I don’t need you joining the chorus.”
“Ez calls you a bear?” I asked, half teasing, half curious, because the word arrived preloaded with the glossary of queer connotations, and my brain sprinted there first. By certain metrics, Luke qualified, but I doubted Ezra had meant it in that sense.
“On occasion,” Luke answered. “He jokes that beneath my intimidating exterior, I’m just an oversized, overgrown snuggle-bear.’”
Ah, that too, apt in its own lane. Luke could be a terrifying damaging force when the situation called for it, but in his den, with his people, he was nothing but gentle power, playful, warm, and cuddly. “He isn’t wrong. You’re basically a giant teddy bear.”
“That’s Lukie bear to you. I don’t see any Theodore’s around.”
“You’re such a dork.”
“Maybe. But I still say my grumble was totally valid. Even I—in all my obliviousness and with my brand-new ‘wow, I’m bi’ badge—know you can’t look at someone and guess what they’reinto. That’s just toxic-masc brain rot. The kind of garbage controlling people like him buy into. A real man doesn’t waste a second on that crap. What you like in bed doesn’t make you weaker or less of a dude. It doesn’t define your value or your strength. It’s just one part of you.”
