Page 77 of The Art of Drowning

NOW

I was never letting him go. He didn’t know that yet, but he’d find out soon. Right now I was more concerned with devouring him. I couldn’t let myself focus on anything else or I might fall apart. I’d deal with everything else later—my parents, Sam’s bullshit, all of it. But I’d spent so long being miserable, and I was tired of it. Tired of not having what I wanted. Who I wanted.

Damien writhed underneath me as I swallowed him down. He tasted like salt and skin and him. The sounds he made were music to my ears, each whimper, every moan. They belonged to me. He belonged to me.

If I’d hated Sam before, I despised him now. My heart still felt like it was cracked in half, but I refused to feel guilty anymore for not mourning a brother who never loved me. Who set out to hurt me and those I cared about.

Damien’s fingers slid through my hair, his touch reminding me what was important.

Him.

Nothing else.

I took his cock to the back of my throat and pulled back. My cock throbbed when Damien cried out and his hips thrust, chasing my mouth. I couldn’t stop touching him. Couldn’t keep my hands still if my life depended on it.

Beneath me, he was beautiful. The way he moved. Surrendered to me. His cock was heavy on my tongue, thick in my mouth. He was hot and ready and so fucking alive. I pulled off of him, taking a deep breath. My gaze rose to meet his and even in the dim light, I could see nothing but my future all across his face.

I’d walked away once. I wouldn’t again. Not for anything.

Damien must have seen something in my expression because he pulled me up toward him. Our lips crashed together, and he whimpered as I settled against him, pressing my own throbbing cock up against his. As much as I loved this kind of thing, this wild closeness, this unabashed grinding of bodies, I needed more.

His confession that I’d been the only one inside him had ruined me a little bit, but it healed me too, in some weird way. Never would I have expected or demanded that he wait for me, or save that for me, or not give that part of himself to anyone else. In the back of my head, I’d just assumed that he did with other people what he used to do with me.

Something feral awoke in me when I learned that wasn’t the case. Maybe it was because he hadn’t found someone to trust the way he trusted me, or maybe it was for a thousand reasons that had nothing to do with me. But the idea that he’d saved himself for me wouldn’t unlatch from my lizard brain.

If I had known before, I’d have made sure his first time in years was spectacular.

I slowed down, kissed him languidly, unhurried. Kissed him like we had a thousand years. Like we had a lifetime. Kissed him until he trembled and begged, squirmed as he groped at me, pulling me closer.

“Please,” Damien begged, already sounding wrecked, and I hadn’t even gotten started yet.

“Okay, love. Don’t worry.” I rolled off him long enough to grab the supplies from the nightstand. I coated my palm with lube and stroked his cock as I got situated again. Damien practically folded himself in half at the first slide of his cock through my fist.

Placing my other hand against his chest, I pushed him back down. When I went to pull my hand away, Damien caught it and brought it to his mouth. Lips grazed against the inside of my wrist. My palm. My fingertips. The affection in his gaze was enough to drown in. I don’t know what he saw in my eyes, maybe all my love for him pouring out of me, because he looked at me and smiled, a fond but kind of sad smile.

“I know,” was all he said. And it was enough.

Because he did know. He knew me, and he knew how I felt. And I knew how he felt too. As adrift as I’d been, he’d been too. Every shitty emotion I’d suffered, he’d suffered too. Every shred of hope in my heart looked back at me whenever my eyes met his.

I slicked up a couple of fingers and teased his entrance with slow, circular motions. Damien’s mouth hung open and he panted and whimpered and tried to get me to ease them inside of him.

Greedy crossed my mind, but that wasn’t right. He’d been so patient. Touch-starved was more like it, and I knew how that felt too. Getting to touch him again, to hold him, kiss him, fuck him, suck him, it was all so fucking good.

“Don’t make me wait,” Damien begged with a broken voice. “Don’t make me wait.”

“What if I want you to?” I teased as I reached for the condom I’d retrieved when I’d grabbed the lube. “What if I want to fuck you with my fingers until you’re nice and open and loose for me?”

“After. You can finger me after.”

“Now you’re just being greedy.”

“Don’t care,” he said, his eyes hooded as he watched me roll the condom on.

One day soon, I planned to ditch these things so I could mark him as mine, inside and out, but for now, I didn’t mind using them. They kept us safe, and they kept the mess contained.

Another day, I might have taken my time with him. Might have fingered him nice and open. Might have rolled him onto his stomach and eaten his ass until he cried, but today I was too desperate for him. Too needy. Too unhinged to wait.

I slicked up the condom, because I’m not a monster, and I positioned the head of my cock at his entrance. I looked at him, silently asking, and he nodded.