“Of what?”
“Of this being too good. Of it not lasting. Of fucking it up somehow.” He paused. “Of you realizing I'm more trouble than I'm worth.”
I tightened my arm around him. “Not possible.”
“You don't know that.”
“I do.” I pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “You're stuck with me, Vale. Better get used to it.”
He huffed out a laugh, and I felt some of the tension bleed out of him. We lay there in the dark listening to the ocean through the open window, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, the future felt like a thing I could reach for instead of just survive.
“Babe?” I said after a while.
“Yeah?”
“I love your siblings too. Talia and Micah and Poppy. Just so you know.” I smiled against his hair.
“I know.”
“Good.”
He shifted closer, tucking his face against my neck. I held him until his breathing evened out and I thought he'd fallen asleep.
But then his hand started moving. Slow at first, tracing patterns across my chest, fingertips dragging through the hair there before sliding lower. My pulse kicked up, and I felt him smile against my skin.
“Thought you were tired,” I said, my voice coming out rougher than I'd intended.
“I am tired.” His hand kept moving, palm flat against my stomach now, fingers splayed wide. “Doesn't mean I don't want you.”
He pushed himself up on one elbow and looked down at me, his eyes dark in the dim light from the hallway. Then he swung a leg over my hips and straddled me, and that's when I realized what he was wearing under the loose shirt he'd borrowed from me.
The thin black lace underwear. The ones that barely covered anything, sitting low on his hips and doing absolutely nothing to hide how hard he was getting.
“Fucking hell,” I breathed, my hands coming up to grip his thighs automatically. The lace felt delicate under my palms, and I could feel the heat of his skin through the fabric.
“I put them back on while you were in the shower,” Soren said, grinding down against me slowly. “Thought you might like the surprise.”
“You're going to fucking kill me.”
“That's the plan.” He leaned down and kissed me, deep and filthy, and I groaned into his mouth as he rocked his hips again. The friction was already making my brain short-circuit, and we'd barely started.
I slid my hands up his thighs to his ass, squeezing hard through the lace, and he made a sound that went straight to my cock. When I pulled back from the kiss, he was breathing hard and his pupils were blown wide.
“I want to ride you,” he said bluntly. “And then I want to fuck you.”
My brain stuttered to a complete stop. “What?”
“You heard me.” He sat back slightly, his weight settled on my hips, and looked at me with an expression that was pure heat and challenge. “I want inside you, Rook. Want to know what you feel like. But first I'm going to make you lose your fucking mind.”
I'd bottomed before. Once, with a girlfriend who'd been curious and I'd been drunk enough to say yes even though the whole thing had felt awkward and uncomfortable and nothing like what I wanted. I'd written it off as not being my thing, filed it away under “tried it, didn't work,” and moved on.
But the way Soren was looking at me now made my whole body respond in ways that had nothing to do with that half-forgotten fumble in the dark.
“Yeah?” I managed, my voice wrecked already.
“Yeah. If you want.”
“I want.” The words came out too fast, too honest, but fuck it. “I want you inside me. Want to know what that feels like with you.”
