Chapter 27 Derek
By the time we reached my bedroom, my head was spinning.
Théo called himself broken like it was a verdict.
A permanent condition. But sitting there, watching him bare the worst parts of himself with that defiant tilt to his chin, I didn’t see broken.
I saw someone who’d been shattered and had put himself back together—maybe not perfectly, maybe with cracks still showing—but standing. Still fighting.
That wasn’t broken. That was survival.
I didn’t want to save him. I wanted to be someone he could lean on. I’d seen what lived under the armor—fierce loyalty, a tenderness he tried to hide like it was a weakness.
After Mackenzie, I’d honestly thought that part of me was done. I’d closed the door, let the ice grow over, told myself it was safer that way. But Théo… Théo made me want to thaw. Like his namesake—a snowdrop pushing up through frozen ground, blooming in spite of everything.
Just inside the doorway, he spun and fisted my shirt, yanking me forward. His mouth found mine and I inhaled that clean, winter bright scent of him. It sent a shiver down my spine.
Would it be easier for him to heal without me complicating things? Probably. Would stepping back be the noble choice? Almost certainly.
But even though Théo liked to call me Saint Sully, I was only human. Selfish. Greedy for something I hadn’t let myself want in a long time.
So I let him tug my shirt over my head. My fingers went to his pants—fumbling, eager, no finesse. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just knew I wanted him. Wanted to learn him. Wanted to touch him until he forgot he’d ever thought he was something to be endured.
He was something to be savored. And I was going to spend all night proving it.
He shoved his pants down and kicked them aside, then tugged at mine with impatient hands. We fell onto the bed in a tangle of limbs, bare skin sliding against bare skin. He was warm against me, softer than I expected, and I ran my palms down his sides just to feel him shudder.
“Derek—” His voice was breathless, wrecked.
“I don’t—” I pulled back slightly, trying to catch my breath. “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“You’re doing fine.” He pulled me back down, arching up so our bodies pressed together. “Just touch me. However you want.”
However I wanted.
I kissed his jaw. The curve of his neck. The hollow of his throat where his pulse jumped against my lips. I licked a stripe across his collarbone and he made a sound that went straight to my cock. I wanted to catalogue every noise I could pull from him, memorize every spot that made him gasp.
I kissed down his chest, pausing to tease one nipple with teeth and tongue, then moved to the other. His back arched off the bed and his fingers tangled in my hair.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “Derek, fuck.”
I kept going. Down the flat plane of his stomach. Along the ridge of his hip. And then I found them—the scars. Thin silver lines, some faded, some newer, scattered across the inside of his thighs like a map of everything he’d survived.
He went still beneath me.
I didn’t hesitate. I pressed my lips to the first one, soft and deliberate. Then the next. And the next. I kissed each one like a promise, like a vow, like I could pour enough tenderness into the gesture to drown out whatever voice in his head told him they made him undesirable.
His hand found the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair, and he let out a shaky breath that sounded almost like relief.
I kept going. Mouthing at him through the fabric of his briefs, feeling his hips buck up involuntarily. His fingers tightened in my hair—not pushing, just holding on.
I looked up at him, meeting those dark eyes. “Tell me if I do something wrong.”
“I don’t think you’re capable of doing anything wrong, Saint Sully.”
I hooked my fingers in the waistband of his briefs and pulled them down slowly, revealing him inch by inch. His cock sprang free, flushed and hard, curving toward his stomach. He was leaking at the tip already and something primal in me wanted to lick it clean.
So I did.
Théo’s whole body jerked. “Fuck!”
He tasted like salt and skin and something underneath that was just him. I licked again, more deliberately this time, tracing the ridge of the head with my tongue. His thighs trembled on either side of my shoulders.
I had no idea what I was doing. I tried to remember what he’d done to me—the things that had made me lose my mind—and reverse engineer it. I wrapped my hand around the base and took the head into my mouth, sucking gently.
“Oh my God.” His voice was thin, reedy. “Derek, your mouth—”
I took him deeper, figuring out the mechanics as I went.
How to breathe. How to relax my jaw. How to use my tongue against the underside while I bobbed my head.
It was messy and uncoordinated but Théo didn’t seem to mind.
He was making these broken little sounds, his hips twitching with the effort of not thrusting up.
I pulled off to catch my breath, stroking him slowly. “Is this okay?”
“Okay?” He laughed, breathless. “You’re a fucking natural.”
“Mm.” I kissed the inside of his thigh, felt the muscle jump under my lips.
“Seriously. Ten years with one woman and this is what you’ve been hiding?” He let out a shaky exhale as I nipped at the sensitive skin. “Criminal. Absolutely criminal.”
Something warm bloomed in my chest at the praise. I pressed another kiss to his thigh, working my way back toward where he wanted me.
“I’ve got you,” I murmured against his skin. “Let me take care of you.”
“That’s it,” he said softly, fingers threading through my hair. “So good for me, daddy.”
The first time he’d said it, we weren’t even touching. It was weeks ago—he was sprawled on my couch, Aspen’s head in his lap, and I was handing him the list of care instructions before my road trip.
You’ll be good for me while daddy’s away, he’d murmured to Aspen. But his eyes had been on mine.
I’d laughed it off. Told myself the jolt that went through me was just surprise. Just the unexpectedness of hearing that word in his low, gravelly voice.
But now—now my whole body shuddered.
“Oh,” he said slowly, propping himself up on his elbows to look down at me. “Oh. You like that.”
“I don’t—” My face was burning. “That’s not—”
“You do.” Something between delight and wonder crossed his face. “I knew you liked being called daddy. Saint Sully has a kinky side.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.” He was grinning now, that sharp teasing edge back in his voice, but underneath it was something warmer. “Come on, daddy. Show me what a good job you can do.”
I took him back into my mouth before he could tease me any further.
Deeper this time, pushing past my comfort zone, wanting to give him everything.
My hand worked what I couldn’t fit, stroking in time with my mouth.
I could feel him getting closer—the way his thighs tensed, the way his breathing went ragged and uneven.
“Derek, I’m going to—” His fingers tugged at my hair in warning. “You should pull off, I’m—”
I didn’t pull off.
I wanted to know what he tasted like. Wanted to swallow him down the way he’d swallowed me. Wanted to feel him come apart on my tongue.
He came with a broken cry, spilling hot and bitter into my mouth. I swallowed as much as I could, some of it escaping down my chin, and worked him through it until he was twitching with oversensitivity and pushing weakly at my shoulder.
I pulled off and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, looking up at him.
He was wrecked. Flushed and panting, hair a mess against my pillow, eyes glazed and half-lidded. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Come here,” he said, his voice hoarse.
I crawled up his body and he pulled me down into a kiss, licking the taste of himself out of my mouth. His hand snaked between us and wrapped around my cock—I was so hard it almost hurt—and I groaned against his lips.
“My turn,” he murmured and wrapped his hand around me.
I choked on a breath. His grip was perfect—firm, confident, designed to unravel me.
“Look at you,” he breathed, stroking me slowly and deliberately. “So desperate already. Did sucking my cock get you this hard?”
“Théo—”
“Answer me.”
“Yes.” The word came out strangled. “God, yes.”
“Mm.” His thumb swiped over the head, smearing the precum leaking steadily now. “That’s so hot. You’re so hot, daddy.”
The word went straight to my spine. I buried my face in his neck, hips rocking into his fist, completely at his mercy.
“That’s it.” His other hand carded through my hair, a contrast of gentle and filthy. “Take what you need. I’ve got you.”
I was close already—embarrassingly close—wound too tight from touching him, tasting him, watching him come apart on my tongue. I tried to hold back, wanted to make it last, but he twisted his wrist and leaned in to whisper against my ear.
“Come for me, daddy.”
I was gone.
It only took a few more strokes before I came with a groan, spilling over his fingers and onto his stomach. He worked me through it, his touch gentling as I shuddered and gasped against his throat.
We lay there for a long moment, breathing hard, tangled together in the mess we’d made.
Théo started laughing. Not a huff or a chuckle—actual laughter, bright and unguarded in a way I hadn’t heard from him before.
I turned my head toward him and his smile was so radiant I felt my heartbeat stutter. “What’s so funny?”
“You.” He shook his head, still grinning. “The team’s resident saint. Nicest guy in the league. Probably helps old ladies cross the street and volunteers at soup kitchens on his days off.”
“I don’t see how that’s—”
“And you have a daddy kink.” He wiped tears from his eyes. “It’s perfect. It’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Glad I could entertain you,” I said dryly.
“It’s perfect actually.” He rolled onto his side, facing me, a mischievous glint in his eye. “Every brat needs a daddy.”