Every part of me was screaming two things simultaneously.Yes—do this, take him in, stop being afraid.And underneath:what if it hurts, what if you can't, what if this is the one thing you can't control and you fall apart in a way you can't reconstruct.
His hands found my hips. Steadied me. Not pulling me down. Not pushing forward. Just holding—the warmth of his palms against my hip bones, firm and grounding.
"Hey," he said. "Hey. Look at me."
I looked at him. And I could feel it on my own face—the nervousness I was trying to bury under bravery, the fear I was trying to override with desire. Written in a language I couldn't edit. I'd spent my entire life being unreadable. Liam could read me in a second.
"Have you done this before?" he asked.
"No."
"Me neither."
Something cracked. I don't have a better word for it. The wall I'd been pressing against—the one that said you have to be ready, you have to be competent, you have to know what you're doing at all times—developed its first real fissure. Because Liam had just admitted he didn't know either. We were in the same place. The same uncertainty. The same vulnerability.
And then the relief hit.
I'd been bracing for him to push forward. That was what people did, in my experience. When you offered something, they took it. My father took my choices. Kingswell took my identity. The scouts took my performance and measured it against a standard I hadn't set. Everyone took. That was the transaction. You offered, and they took, and you reconstructed yourself from whatever was left.
But Liam didn't take.
He stopped.
"I want to," I said again. Softer this time. Meaning it. "I really do."
"I know." He pulled me down against his chest. His weight warm and solid beneath me, my face finding the space in his neck where it fit. Where it had always fit, since the first night in his dorm room when he'd held my wrist and said not like this. "I want to too. So bad."
"But?"
"But not tonight. Not in a hotel room. Not when we have a race in—" He turned his head toward the nightstand. "—eleven hours."
I exhaled against his neck. The breath shaking on the way out.
"When?" I asked.
"When I can make it good for you. When we're not worried about getting up at four-thirty."
When I can make it good for you.
He was protecting me.
I propped myself up on my elbows. Looked down at him. Water from the shower still drying on his skin, his hair dark and damp against the white pillow, his face open in a way that Liam's face rarely was—without the sarcasm, without the anger.
"Come here," he whispered.
He kissed me. The kind of kiss that said I see you instead of I want you.
Though he wanted me. I could feel it—still hard against my hip, the evidence impossible to hide. But he was choosing something over want. Choosing patience. Choosing me over his own need.
I wasn't sure anyone had ever done that before.
My hips settled against his. Our cocks still pressed together—still hard, still slick—and the contact sent waves of warmth through my stomach. But the energy had shifted. Not less intense, just deeper.
"Touch me," I said. Against his lips. "Just like this. I want to feel you."
He reached between us. Took both of us in his hand—his cock and mine pressed together, his fingers barely reaching around both. The sensation drew a gasp from my chest that I didn't try to contain.
"Yeah," I breathed. "Just like that."
