Page 78 of The Art of Drowning

“Please,” he begged, his hands clutching my arms.

Fuck, he was so tight, but then he bore down and opened for me.

“Hurry,” he rasped, his head tilting back.

I leaned forward and licked a trail up his throat. I took him slowly. No matter how much he tried to rush me, I wanted to savor this. The last time we were together, I hadn’t known he’d waited. I hadn’t known what this must mean for him. Or what it meant for me.

I’d spent so much of my life in love with Damien. From that summer and every day onward, I’d loved him. I’d dreamed of him and ached for him. Nothing and no one made me feel the way he did.

“Please,” he begged again once I was all the way inside of him. He brought his legs up and wrapped them around me. He pulled me down to him, and when our mouths met again, it was sweet and soft and every ache that I’d felt when we were apart fell away, one by one.

I might have been the one on top, but Damien was definitely steering the ship. Anything he wanted, I’d give him. He wanted me to go faster, harder, wanted to kiss me senseless while I reached up and gripped the headboard with one hand to give myself some extra leverage.

I couldn’t get enough of him. I hoped he left marks when he scraped his nails down my back. I hoped he’d feel me for days after we were done.

“Callum, I…” He slanted his mouth over mine without finishing his sentence. He didn’t have to. I felt it in the way he moved. The way he clung to me, embraced me, the way it seemed like he wanted to climb under my skin. He loved me just as much as I loved him.

As much as I’d always loved him.

“I know,” I told him, breaking away from his mouth so I could breathe. I slowed my pace, changing from frantic thrusts to long strokes that dragged my cock in and out of him in a more torturous way. Damien whined and tried using his legs to urge me to go faster, deeper, harder. But I wouldn’t. I wanted this to last. I needed him to feel what he did to me. Needed him to know that I’d waited too. My heart had never belonged to anyone else besides him.

I hadn’t done enough to keep him before, and maybe that meant I didn’t deserve him now. But I wanted to.

I kissed him again, letting him explore this moment between us and the magnitude of it. And when he was nothing but a chaos of whimpers and whines, I reached between us and took him in hand.

Damien’s cock was warm and rigid, and it only took a handful of strokes to make him come. Fuck, I loved watching him let go. Loved that I was the only one who’d ever gotten to see him like this. I hated that we’d gone without this for so long. That we’d let Sam manipulate us. But no more.

Damien nudged my mouth back to his and in between kisses, he pleaded for me to come, for me to let go. Despite his protests, I pulled out and tore the condom off. The primitive part of my brain told me that I had to mark him. I wanted to see my cum on his skin. Wanted to rub it into him and make him smell like me.

“You’re mine,” I ground out through clenched teeth as my release barreled down on me. The sight of Damien beneath me, splayed out, still half hard and covered in his own release blew my mind. But it was the way he whispered that threw me over the edge.

“Yours,” he said.

I shattered on that word. Flew apart into a million pieces. My cum painted a stripe up his torso, then dripped on his cock. I wrapped our dicks together then, torturing his oversensitive cock with my furious strokes.

By the time I stopped coming, I’d never been emptier.

Damien gathered me in his arms and cradled me close. Burying my face in his neck, I tried to get my breathing under control. He smoothed his hands up and down my back, soothing me with his touch. He kissed my head, and I tried not to burst into tears.

“We wasted so much time.” The words warbled out of me, past my trembling lips.

Damien’s fingertips hooked me under the chin and he tilted my face up so I had to look at him.

“We’re here. We’re alive. We still have plenty of time.”

“Come with me,” I begged. “To see my parents. I can’t do this. Not alone.”

Damien’s expression softened then he smiled a little. “Where you go, I go.”

“Promise?” I had no right to ask, considering I’d been just as culpable in our breakup. But I feared if he left the room, he’d never come back. If I closed my eyes, he’d disappear. If I let go of him, I’d never get to hold him again. It wasn’t rational to love someone as much as I loved him.

“Promise,” he said, and that only made me hold tighter.

THIRTY-EIGHT

damien

NOW