I stilled.
His dark eyes locked onto mine, unblinking. “I want to see you.”
Something twisted in my chest. I didn’t argue.
I braced my hands on either side of his head, my cock nudging him, and pushed in slowly. The head breached him first, the resistance giving way with a wet heat that made my vision blur. His breath hitched, his fingers digging into my hips, nails biting into skin.
“Caleb—” The word tore out of him, his back arching, his cock jerking against my stomach.
I bottomed out with a groan, my hips flush to his ass, my balls tight. He wastight, even stretched, clamping around me like a fist. I stayed there, buried deep, our chests heaving.
His face was the most expressive thing I’d ever seen, and I was so used to his impassive mask.
Every inch I gave him, his lips parted. Every slow drag out, his eyelids fluttered. When I thrust back in, his breath stuttered, his fingers flexing on my skin. I couldseeit—see the way his body took me, the way it registered in the clench of his jaw, the tremor in his thighs.
I fucked him like that. Slow. Deep. My cock dragging over his prostate every time, his cock leaking between us, his nails scoring my back. His mouth was open, silent now, his breath coming in sharp little gasps every time I hit that spot inside him.
“Caleb—” My name was a prayer and a curse. His hips lifted, trying to take me deeper, his heels digging into the mattress.
I gripped his thigh, hauling it up, changing the angle. His eyes rolled back, his head tipping into the pillows.
“There—” His voice cracked. His cock pulsed, a thick bead of pre-come spilling over my stomach.
I snapped my hips, grinding in deep, and his entire body bowed off the bed. His come painted stripes up his chest, hisabs, his tattoos glistening with it. His hole clenched around me, milking my cock, and I groaned, my orgasm tearing through me.
My hips stuttered, my cock pulsing inside him. His name tore out of me, raw and broken, and he answered with a groan, gripping my shoulders. I collapsed against him, my face buried in his neck, his come sticky between us. His heart hammered against my chest, his breath hot against my ear.
For the first time since I’d met him, I’d seen something in Novak that was real.
I’d seen Leon.
I cleared my throat, breath still uneven, and rolled onto my side. The sheets stuck to my skin where sweat had dried, the room heavy with heat and sex. Beside me, Novak didn’t move. He lay flat on his back, one arm loose at his side, the other bent slightly, his expression already settling back into something unreadable as he stared up at the ceiling.
As if nothing had happened.
“Tell me about your tattoos,” I said. The words were out before I could stop them.
He didn’t look at me. “No.”
I huffed out a breath and pushed up onto one elbow, studying him. Up close, the marks were impossible to ignore—ink layered over old scars, some deliberate, some not. The cross on his sternum. The scripts over his ribs. The fresh black lines on his biceps were slightly raised.
“Don’t shut down now,” I said, quieter. “That’s not how this works.”
“I don’t care how it works.”
“I get that. But you got off, you’re all growly and shit over some owning me crap, and you owe me some answers in the after-fucking glow.”
A pause. Then his jaw flexed.
“They’re not decoration,” he said finally. His voice had gone flat again, stripped of everything. “They’re records.”
“Of what?”
He turned his head then and his eyes were clear. Cold. Back to baseline.
“Survival,” he said.
I held his gaze. “Even that one?” I reached out, not quite touching the newer ink on his right arm.
