Page 125 of Beautiful When He Breaks

“Over your heart,” I say again, because that detail will not leave me alone.

His expression turns painfully tender. “Where else was I supposed to put you, Liefling?”

I move up his body and kiss him hard. Julian answers immediately, his hands coming to my waist, careful even now, even when his own breathing turns rough, and his mouth opens under mine. I kiss him like I’m trying to reach every version of us at once—the five-year-olds arguing over a ball, the teenagers holding each other through grief and rejection, the idiots who wasted years saying almost everything except the one thing that mattered, the men we are now, tangled in his bed with my hand still pressed over the proof that he loved me long before I deserved to know.

I break off the kiss and lean back again, dragging my palms over his chest, learning the give and tension of him under my hands. His nipples tighten when my thumbs pass over them, and his jaw ticks. I catch that. I definitely catch that.

I lean down and run my tongue over it, listening to him gasp as my cock twitches. “You like that?”

His mouth opens, then closes, and then, because apparently trauma gave me no filter and lust removed the rest, I lower my voice and add, “I want to know what else causes you to make that face.”

He lets out a rough sound that might be considered a laugh if it wasn’t so close to a groan. “Where the fuck did that mouth come from?”

“I don’t know,” I admit, my cheeks blazing. “Apparently you unlocked it.”

“Lucky me.”

“Very lucky you,” I mutter, and then immediately want to throw myself out the window.

I slide closer until my knees bracket one of his thighs, and when I kiss him again, I do it with my hand still spread over his chest, thumb brushing deliberately over his nipples. He makes another low sound, this one caught against my mouth, and I swear I feel it everywhere.

The rest happens by degrees because Julian makes sure of it. Shoes already gone. Socks abandoned. Hands pausing at waistbands. His fingers brushing the edge of my sweats, then stopping until I say yes. Mine at his, shaking too much at first to manage the tie, which makes me curse under my breath until Julian covers my hands with his and helps without laughing.

When he rolls us, I let him, letting my back hit the mattress while he settles over me carefully. The weight of him is controlled but present, a solid heat between my thighs, and the first real press of our bodies skin to skin steals my breath so completely that I have to close my eyes.

He takes his time with me after that, and I finally understand that gentleness can be ruthless. His mouth moves down my throat, across my collarbone, over my chest, and everywhere he kisses feels like he’s writing over the ugliness without ever pretending the old thing didn’t happen.

My body doesn’t belong to fear in those moments. It belongs to sensation. His lips. His hands. The scratch of his stubble. The warmth of his breath. The way he pauses when my breathing changes, then continues only when I pull him back with fingers in his hair and a curse half trapped behind my teeth.

But when he leans back and says, “I want you on top,” my entire body forgets how to function.

I stare at him, every thought falling straight through the floor. I swallow once, and it does nothing. “You mean…” I stop, somehow completely incapable of finishing a sentence.

“I mean I want you to fuck me, Eli,” he says, quickly understanding that my brain has briefly caught fire. “If that’s something you want.”

My face goes nuclear. “I mean, yes. Fuck. Yeah, I want that. I just…” I drag a hand over my face, then drop it because hiding feels stupid when he’s being this open. “I don’t know how to do that. I don’t want to hurt you.”

His face changes at that, something tender and aching moving through his eyes. “You won’t.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can know enough,” Julian says, and then he shifts carefully off me, sitting back against the pillows so he’s angled toward me instead of looming above me. “You’ll use your fingers first. We’ll use a lot of lube. You’ll go slowly. I’ll tell you what feels good and what doesn’t. If it hurts in a way I don’t like, I’ll tell you to stop or slow down. I’ve done this before, Eli. I know my body.”

I nod once, because he’s right and I’m making a big deal out of it. Julian squeezes my wrist. “And for the record, I want you so badly I’m trying very hard to be noble and educational, so if you could appreciate the effort, that would be great.”

A laugh breaks out of me before I can stop it. “You’re such a dick.”

“Not yet,” he says, deadpan, and then his eyes widen like even he can’t believe he said it.

I stare at him.

For one perfect second, we both just look at each other. Then I start laughing so hard I have to cover my face, and Julian collapses back against the pillows with one arm over his eyes, groaning. “I hate myself.”

“You should.”

“That was terrible.”

“That was fucking awful,” I agree, still laughing, and somehow the absurdity saves me. It cracks the pressure in the room open enough for air to get in. When I finally lower my hand, Julian is looking at me with that soft, lovestruck expression again, and I can’t believe I get to be nervous and scared and laughing with him in the same bed after the day we’ve had.