Chapter 36 Derek
Théo was on his iPad when I got back from my appointment.
Dr. Flores—Gabe—had bonded my chipped tooth and given me a temporary flipper for my missing tooth and it felt weird in my mouth.
Foreign. My tongue kept prodding at it, testing the edges, trying to convince my brain that it belonged there.
The socket was still sore but I could tell it was better than the day before.
The swelling had gone down slightly, though the bruising had bloomed into spectacular shades of deep purple and sickly green.
It certainly looked worse today than yesterday, judging by Théo’s expression when I walked through the door.
He dropped the iPad onto the couch cushion and rushed over, but Aspen beat him to it, scrambling off his dog bed to demand my attention with enthusiastic tail wags and happy whines.
I let my suitcase roll to a stop and bent down to give him some pets, scratching behind his ears while he tried to lick every inch of my face he could reach.
“Easy, Aspen. Daddy’s face is tender,” he scolded gently.
When I straightened up, Théo was right there, his eyes roaming over my injuries with barely concealed distress. I wrapped a reassuring arm around his waist and pulled him close. He was trembling slightly—so subtle I might have missed it if we weren’t pressed together.
“It looks worse in person,” he said quietly. He reached up like he wanted to touch my face but thought better of it, his fingers hovering an inch from my jaw.
I grabbed his hand and placed it on the uninjured side of my face. “This side’s fine. See?”
He gently stroked my stubbled cheek, his thumb tracing my cheekbone. I leaned into his touch, letting my eyes fall closed for a moment. I’d missed him. A week felt like a lifetime.
It wasn’t just the distance. I’d been on road trips before—longer ones, harder ones.
I’d been away from Mackenzie for weeks at a time and never felt this pull to get back.
I’d counted down the days, sure, but more out of routine than longing.
More because that’s what you did when you had someone waiting.
This was different.
This was texting him from the bus and smiling at my phone like an idiot. This was FaceTiming from hotel rooms just to see his face. This was lying awake in unfamiliar beds and wishing he was there to steal the blankets.
I’d spent ten years in a relationship and never once felt the weight of absence like this.
“I missed you,” I said, my voice rougher than I intended.
His hand stilled on my cheek. “You saw me yesterday. On the phone.”
“Not the same.”
“No. It’s not.” He was quiet for a moment, eyes roaming my battered face.
“Aspen,” Théo said solemnly, glancing down at the dog who was now sitting at our feet, watching us with his head tilted. “We have to be good boys this week. Daddy’s hurt.”
I smiled and it hurt less this time. Progress. I wanted to kiss him but that would probably be ill-advised—my lip was still split and swollen, and the last thing I needed was to reopen the wound.
Théo giggled and the sound was surprisingly boyish. Light. He was staring at my mouth with a mixture of fascination and relief. “You did grow a tooth.”
“It’s a temp.” I ran my tongue over it again. “Gabe will install a more permanent implant in a few weeks once everything heals.”
“Oh, Gabe will?”
I raised an eyebrow at his tone. “Are you jealous of another man having his fingers in my mouth?”
“Well, when you put it like that.” He pouted—actually pouted, his lower lip pushing out in a way that made me want to bite it. “Now I want to take a hockey stick to Gabe’s mouth.”
“When did you become such a vicious little creature?”
“I’ve always been vicious.” His pout transformed into something sharper, more dangerous. “The pretty face is just to distract you from my venomous fangs.”
He rubbed against me—a subtle shift of his hips that was definitely intentional—and my dick perked right up despite my injury. Apparently my body hadn’t gotten the memo that I was supposed to be recovering.
“I need a good distraction,” I admitted. “My face still hurts like hell.”
“Kissing is off the table, I don’t want to hurt your face.” He traced a finger down my chest. “Though it makes me feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. It’s my mom’s favorite movie.”
“Are we going to talk about your mom while you’re grinding on me?”
“Definitely not.” His eyes glinted with mischief. “Come on, let’s distract you for a bit.”
He took the arm that was wrapped around his waist and led me down the hallway to my own bedroom. Aspen started to follow but Théo pointed firmly back toward the living room.
“Stay. This is grown-up time.”
Aspen huffed but obeyed, turning around and trotting back to his bed.
Théo closed the bedroom door behind us.
He sat me down on the edge of the bed—carefully, like I might break—and then crawled onto my lap, straddling my hips. The weight of him settled against me, warm and grounding.
He was so pretty up close. Dark lashes framing his almond shaped eyes.
His delicate nose contrasted with that full, perpetually disapproving pout.
The way the afternoon light caught the blue black sheen of his hair.
I wished I could kiss him right now. The wanting was almost a physical ache of its own.
His fingers weaved into the hair at the nape of my neck and he tilted my head gently, inspecting the bruising with clinical attention.
“Do you want to ice your face first?”
“I thought you were going to distract me.” I wiggled my hips suggestively.
“The sunlight really makes the bruising pop.” He traced the edge of a bruise with his fingertip, feather light. His fingers felt cool against my overheated skin. “It really is impressive. Like a gruesome painting.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It wasn’t one.”
I tapped the other side of my face. “Focus on this side. This side is perfectly fine. Handsome even.”
He considered me for a moment, that sharp gaze softening into something warmer. Then he leaned in and kissed my right eyebrow. Then my cheek. Then the spot just under my jaw that made electricity shoot down my spine.
He worked his way down my neck, pressing soft, open mouthed kisses to my skin, nuzzling into the space where my neck met my shoulder. And all the while, he was rolling his hips in this slow, deliberate rhythm that was rapidly short circuiting my brain.
All the blood was rushing from my face down to my groin. The pain was still there, but it was fading into the background, eclipsed by the feeling of Théo’s body moving against mine.
I groaned and he pulled back immediately.
“Shit, did I hurt you?”
“No, snowdrop.” I gripped his hips to keep him from retreating further. “That thing you’re doing with your hips feels really good.”
“This?” He arched his lower back and ground down on my lap, slow and filthy.
“Oh fuck. Yes. That.”
My hands slid down to grip his upper thighs as he continued that torturous grind.
I liked the way my big hands looked against him—the contrast of my broad palms against the lean muscle of his quads, the way my fingers dug in just enough to leave faint impressions on his skin.
His thigh muscles were pulled taut with the effort of controlling his movements, flexing under my grip.
“You’re so good at this,” I breathed. “So good at taking care of me.”
“Someone has to be.” He rolled his hips again and I felt his hardness press against mine through the layers of fabric between us. “You’re clearly a disaster on your own.”
“No arguments here.”
He kissed the corner of my mouth and resumed that slow, devastating grind. He pressed his nose against my skin. Nuzzling into my neck. Pressing soft kisses to my throat. His unspoken version of I missed you.
I slid one hand up under his shirt—my shirt, actually, another stolen hoodie—and splayed my fingers across the warm skin of his lower back.
He shivered at the contact, then grabbed the hem of the hoodie and pulled it over his head, revealing the lean lines of his torso, the pale skin I’d mapped with my mouth.
The scars on his arms caught the afternoon light filtering through the blinds, thin white lines casting faint shadows across his forearms. He always kept them hidden—long sleeves even in the height of summer. But here, in my bedroom, with my hands on his body, he let me see them.
I traced one with my thumb.
He tensed. “Don’t.”
“I like that you share them with me.” I kept my touch gentle, reverent. “That you trust me enough to let me see.”
“I wish I didn’t have them.” His voice was small. Brittle. “I wish I was… unmarked. Normal.”
“They’re part of you.” I moved my hand up to cup his face, tilting it so he had to look at me.
“And every part of you is beautiful to me. These—” I traced another scar with my free hand, “—these show me what a survivor you are. How strong you are. You went through hell and you’re still here. Still fighting. Still blooming.”
“That’s the sappiest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“Doesn’t make it less true.”
His eyes were glassy but he blinked the moisture away before it could fall. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m serious.” I gently traced the inside of his wrist, right over a faded line. “My beautiful survivor. My snowdrop.”
He made a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and then he was kissing my jaw, my neck, anywhere he could reach without hurting me. I held him close and let him hide his face against my shoulder until the trembling stopped.
“I still think about it sometimes,” he said quietly, his breath warm against my neck. “When things get loud. When I can’t make the noise stop.” A pause. “About how easy it would be to relieve some of that pressure.”
My arms tightened around him.
“I’m not saying I want to,” he added quickly. “I just… I wanted you to know. That it’s not all in the past. That I’m still—” He swallowed. “That I’m still working on it.”
“Thank you for telling me.” I pressed my lips to his hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He exhaled—shaky, relieved—and his fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt.
When he pulled back, his expression had settled into something softer. More open. The sharp edges he usually wore like armor had been tucked away, at least for now.
“Enough talking,” he murmured. “I believe I promised you a distraction.”
He climbed off my lap just long enough to strip off boxers also borrowed from my closet, then helped me out of my clothes with a carefulness that made my throat tight. He kept glancing at my face, checking for signs of pain, adjusting his movements to avoid jostling me.
When we were both naked, he straddled me again, and the feeling of his bare skin against mine made us both groan.
“Okay?” he asked.
“More than okay.”
He reached between us and wrapped his hand around both of us, stroking slowly.
The contrast was obscene. His pale, elegant fingers—a skater’s hands, delicate but deceptively strong—wrapped around our stiff, leaking cocks.
His slighter frame bracketing my bulk. The lean lines of him against the broad planes of me.
He looked almost fragile like this but I knew better.
I’d felt the iron in his thighs, the coiled power in his core.
He was lithe where I was compact, graceful where I was solid, and somehow we fit together like we’d been designed for this.
“Fuck,” I breathed. “Théo—”
“Shh.” He kissed my shoulder, my collarbone, the hollow of my throat. “Let me take care of you.”
He set a rhythm that was slow and deliberate, designed to drive me out of my mind.
Every stroke sent heat rolling up my spine, pooling low in my belly.
The friction was perfect—his cock hot and hard against mine, his grip just tight enough to make my toes curl.
I watched his hand work us both, mesmerized by the slide of pale fingers over flushed, swollen flesh.
The way his thumb swept over the heads on every upstroke, smearing the wetness that was leaking from us both.
My hands roamed his body—his back, his ass, his thighs—touching every part of him I could reach.
“You feel so good,” I told him. “So perfect.” I gripped his hip, pulling him closer, feeling the jut of bone beneath my fingers. “Missed you so much. This week lasted forever. Couldn’t stop thinking about you. About this.”
His breath hitched. His hand moved faster. I needed more slip. I tilted his chin up with one finger, held his gaze, and spat directly onto our joined cocks where his fist was wrapped around us.
Théo made a sound like I’d punched the air out of him.
“Oh fuck—” His voice cracked, his hips jerking forward involuntarily. “Derek, that’s—”
I watched the spit slide down over his knuckles, slicking his grip. He started stroking again—faster now, wetter, the obscene sound of it filling the room.
“That’s it, baby. Just like that.” I was babbling now, the words spilling out without thought. “You’re so beautiful. Can’t believe you’re mine. Can’t believe I get to have you like this.”
“Derek—” His voice broke on my name. “I’m close—”
“Me too. Come with me. Come on, baby, let go—”
He kept stroking us, our breaths ragged, and then his hips jerked and he came with a cry, spilling hot over his fist and onto my stomach.
The sight of him—flushed and trembling, his head thrown back, his lips parted, pale throat exposed—pushed me over the edge.
I followed him with a groan, adding to the mess between us.
He collapsed against my chest, careful to avoid my injured face, his breath coming in ragged gasps. I wrapped my arms around him and held on.
We lay there for a long moment, sticky and sweaty and utterly content.
“Best distraction ever,” I murmured against his hair.
“I aim to please.” His voice was drowsy, muffled against my chest.
“You definitely hit the goal.”
He snorted. “Did you just make a hockey joke?”
“You love it.”
He was quiet for a moment, tracing lazy patterns on my chest with his fingertip. Then, so soft I almost missed it, “Yeah. I kind of do.”
I smiled into his hair.
My face still hurt. But right now, with Théo warm and pliant in my arms, I couldn’t bring myself to care.