Page 205 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

‘Do whatever you want.’

‘I want to be him for you.’

Lachlan takes him by the chin, a spark of anger threatening to catch. ‘You’re you. I only want you, exactly as you are.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be good at it.’

‘At what?’

‘Sex.’

The anger vanishes.

Lachlan’s thumb moves slowly across his jaw.

‘I want whatever you want,’ he says. ‘Make it feel good however you like, baby. Anything or nothing. I just want to be with you.’

‘Will you show me how you loved him?’

‘I can show you how I love you.’

‘But you don’t love me. You love him. The boy in the picture.’

Lachlan looks at him for a long, wounded moment.

Then he seizes Kade with a kiss.

Takes his mouth, briefly owns it, and everything Kade is answers by lighting up inside. Crystalline white, moonstone and pearl; a sudden shine of certainty that he is exactly where he should be, loved and held and safe.

‘I love,’ Lachlan says into the kiss, ‘you.’

‘You don’t. You can’t.’

‘You,’ Lachlan repeats, harder this time, and each kiss becomes longer, lingering like whiplash. ‘You impossible, stubborn, beautiful brat.’

Kade’s breath stutters, confused by his own need. ‘Please.’

‘Tell me what you want.’

‘I… I want…’ Everything. All of it. Every single thing he’s not had or done in the last seven years. Kissing. Touching. Sex. ‘You.’

‘I’m yours, darling. I’ve always been yours. Tell me what—’

‘Make me come,’ he blurts out, clinging to hide his face in Lachlan’s neck, embarrassed and thrilled. ‘Nobody ever made me come.’

Lachlan’s hand rests over Kade’s heart while his mouth opens over Kade’s, and this new kiss builds in deep, dragging strokes that empty his head of everything except pleasure. Kade rises into it, ravenous for the weight above him and the friction they’re making together, grinding and moaning. He swallows the honeycomb heaven of Lachlan’s mouth, the vetiver radiance of summer storms warming between them in winter.

‘With clothes on, like this?’

‘Yes.’

Lachlan noses below his ear, scenting him, reading him like a book, Kade can feel it. ‘You wanna be my good boy?’

A would-be-mortifying sound slips out of his open mouth, and Kade can’t even blush because all the blood in his body has rushed down between his legs. ‘Um.’

‘I think you do.’

‘Yes,’ he answers, desperately breathless. ‘Yeah, I do. Fuck. Is that bad?’