Page 76 of The Art of Drowning

“I’m vers, so it wasn’t like I never had sex. I just… there were certain things I didn’t do with other people.”

“Like bottom.”

“Like bottom.” Like fall in love. Like dream of a future, even when it terrified me. And that’s how I knew it was real. Because the thought of staying in this bed with Callum was as terrifying as it was necessary. I needed him in my life like I needed blood in my body, and yet I was scared shitless of what might happen if we didn’t work out.

I was terrified of what might happen if we did.

“Your turn,” I rasped.

The way Callum looked at me made me feel effervescent and barely contained in my skin. He looked at me like I was the answer to questions he never dared ask.

The kiss was as sweet as it was inevitable. I couldn’t be sure who initiated it, only that I could kiss him forever. It started off like a slow dance, a gentle motion that quickly heated up the more we kissed. His tongue teased its way into my mouth and I answered back with mine.

Callum’s weight settled on top of me, and I groaned. Eventually, we’d have to deal with the real world again. With his parents and what we were to each other and what we wanted from each other. It wasn’t rational of me, but I knew all he had to do was give me the word, and I’d abandon my life for a chance at one with him. I didn’t care. I’d lived without him and that wasn’t an existence I wanted anymore.

Callum pressed his body against mine and then he moved, undulating his hips as he deepened the kiss. His hands roamed my body, slid up my arms, and pinned them to the bed over my head. I was at his mercy. Right where I wanted to be.

“Damien,” Callum’s voice cracked as he dragged his mouth up my jaw.

I turned my head and captured his mouth with mine again. I was done talking because if I said anything else, I’d tell him that I’d do anything to keep him. I’d tell him that I never stopped wishing for this. And maybe I didn’t have to tell him because he whimpered against my mouth.

He released my wrists and I wrapped my arms around him as he continued to rut against me. Our kisses grew deeper, matching the energy of our bodies as they ground against each other.

The confession lived on the tip of my tongue. I’d dreamed of this, I wanted to tell him. But I didn’t have to because Callum knew. He understood what it had been like. But another admission broke free. “I thought you hated me.”

Callum stilled, then his hands settled on either side of my face. They swept down to my neck. He rested his forehead against mine.

“Never. I could never hate you.”

“I walked away. I thought—he made it seem like the only option. Like you’d lose everything if I stayed. It was agony, but I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“We both thought that.” Callum sighed and tugged me into another kiss. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”

His hands skated down my body. “Okay?”

Callum kissed my neck, then moved lower. The hollow of my throat. His hands mapped my body, leaving trails of heat wherever he touched.

“Okay,” I panted, unable to get my brain to hold a single thought.

We’d lost so much, and yet we were here. Together. It felt like we won.

Callum’s mouth closed over my nipple, his tongue flicking at the piercing there, and my cock twitched, violently throbbing as the ache inside threatened to tear me in half. He did it again.

“I like these.” He breathed against my skin, then teased the other one with his wicked tongue. Callum tortured me with his mouth, tugging at the barbell until my cock was leaking on my stomach, hard and angry that it was being ignored.

He looked up at me with a grin, then shimmied lower on the bed, his open-mouth kisses blazing a path down to my needy cock. He situated himself between my legs. His hands smoothed up my body, then down again, and he parted my thighs more.

Then, with no warning, he licked a stipe up the underside of my cock. Reaching down, I buried my hands in his hair, not to grip him or hold him down or steer him. But I needed to anchor myself to him. I needed to touch him, to prove to myself that this was real.

“Callum—” I didn’t know what to ask for, what I wanted. I wanted everything, but I didn’t know what this nebulous everything was. I wanted to stay, to be kept by him. Loved by him. I wanted him inside me. I wanted to be so entwined with him and his life that there’d be no separating us ever again.

“I know, baby. I’ve got you,” Callum said and then took me deeper, swallowing every last inch of me.

I was a fucking goner.

THIRTY-SEVEN

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