I took him back in and this time I let him move, let his hips roll up in small controlled pulses that he kept measured and careful, and the trust in the restraint of it did something to my chest that had nothing to do with technique. His cock was heavy on my tongue and I worked him with my hand at the base and my mouth taking the rest and his breathing above me had abandoned any pretence of steadiness.
“That's—” He stopped. His hand pressed flat against the back of my skull, not pushing, just warm and heavy and there. “Fuck, Rook. You're?—”
I hollowed my cheeks the way he'd done for me and felt his whole body go rigid.
“Fuck,” he said, through his teeth.
I did it again. His hips stuttered and his hand tightened in my hair and the groan that came out of him was the most unguarded sound I'd heard from him since the night before, stripped of the easy charm and the deflection and everything he used to manage rooms and people. Just Soren, undone, in my hands.
“I'm close,” he said, rough and honest. “You don't have to—if you want to stop before?—”
I took him deeper in answer and heard him lose the rest of the sentence entirely.
He came with both hands in my hair and my name in his mouth, and I stayed with him through all of it, learning that too — the pulse and the heat and the specific intimacy of being trusted with this particular moment. His thighs were shaking on either side of me when it finished. I pulled back slowly and pressed my lips to the inside of his thigh before moving back up his body.
He pulled me down and held on. Neither of us said anything for a while. His heartbeat was loud and fast against my ear and gradually, over the next several minutes, it slowed.
“Okay?” I asked, eventually.
He laughed, and the sound came out wrecked and warm and entirely real. “That's the wrong question.”
“What's the right question?”
He lifted his head and looked at me, and the expression on his face was the most undefended thing I'd ever seen there. “Are you okay?”
I thought about it honestly, the way he deserved. “Yeah,” I said. “More than.”
He made a quiet sound and pulled me back down, and his hand started moving in slow aimless circles on my back, and the city outside had shifted gear into full morning noise by the time either of us spoke again.
“Okay?” he asked, into the air above my head.
“Yeah,” I said. “I really am.”
The panic arrived quietly.
It didn't announce itself. One minute I was lying there feeling the warmth of his chest under my cheek and his heartbeat against my ear, and the next the weight of everything that had happened in the last twelve hours landed on me all at once and my chest went tight.
I'd been with a man. I'd wanted it and I'd done it and I'd loved every second of it, and I had absolutely no framework for what that meant about me or what it meant about us or what I was supposed to do with it now that the room had gone quiet and my brain had come back online.
Soren felt the shift before I could say anything.
“You got quiet,” he said, and his hand stopped moving.
“Just thinking.”
He propped himself up on one elbow to look at me, and the warmth in his eyes made the panic worse because I didn't deserve it right now, and I knew I didn't deserve it, and I was about to make that fact visible.
“Rook, if I pushed too far?—”
“No. That's not—you didn't do anything wrong.” The words felt inadequate for what I was trying to say. “I just—this is a lot.”
“What is?”
“This. Us. Everything.” I sat up, needing distance even though moving away from him felt like ripping off a bandage. “I don't know what I'm doing, Soren. I've never done this before. Never been with a guy. Never wanted anyone the way I want you. And I don't know if I'm ready for whatever this is turning into.”
I watched his expression shift from concern to hurt to anger so fast I almost missed the transition.
“Are you seriously doing this right now? After everything we just?—”
