Chapter 21 #3
He shifted his angle one more time, pressing deeper, hitting that spot on every stroke now, and Fergal shattered beneath him.
His back arched, his mouth opened in a silent cry, and his cock pulsed between their bodies, untouched, spilling hot across their stomachs.
The clench of Fergal’s body around him was rhythmic, involuntary, pulling at Gregor with a force that no amount of discipline could withstand.
Two more strokes. That was all it took. The orgasm crashed through Gregor like a wave breaking against stone, so intense that his vision went white and his arms nearly gave out.
He buried himself deep and came with a groan that he muffled against Fergal’s shoulder, his hips stuttering through the aftershocks, his cock pulsing inside the tight heat of Fergal’s body.
For a long, suspended moment, neither of them moved.
They lay tangled together, breathing hard, hearts hammering against each other through sweat-slicked skin.
Gregor was still inside Fergal, and the intimacy of that—the physical connection unbroken, their bodies still joined—was almost more overwhelming than the sex itself.
Fergal’s hand tightened around his. Their fingers were still laced together on the pillow, and Fergal squeezed once before his grip relaxed.
“So,” Fergal said, his voice hoarse and thoroughly wrecked. “For the record, that was worth the wait.”
Gregor snorted, a sound so unlike him, he almost startled himself. “Should I ask how long you were waiting?”
“Probably not. Pretty sure I wasn’t legal yet when I first wanted you.”
Gregor considered that for a moment, worry filling him. “I didn’t want you like that back then, just so we’re clear.”
“I know.”
“I would never—”
“I know, Gregor. It was a teenage infatuation on my end that developed into…more.”
More. There was a euphemism Gregor did not want to unpack now. “Okay, good. I don’t want you to think I groomed you.”
Fergal did a slow blink. “Well, there’s a topic to bring up when you’re still buried inside me.”
Gregor winced. “Sorry?”
Another blink. “And now you’re apologizing. Is hell freezing over today and no one told me?”
“I’m gonna just shut up now.”
“Again, words I never imagined coming out of your mouth.”
Rather than replying again, Gregor kissed him—a soft, lingering kiss that said everything he should have. Fergal smiled as he kissed him back, his forgiveness as easy and immediate as always.
Gregor pressed a kiss to Fergal’s shoulder, tasting salt. Then he carefully withdrew, noticing the slight wince, quickly concealed.
“Stay,” Fergal murmured when Gregor moved to get up.
“I need to clean us up.”
“In a minute.”
Gregor settled beside him, pulling Fergal against his chest. They were sticky and sweaty and the bed was a wreck, and Gregor didn’t care about any of it. Fergal’s head found its place on his shoulder, and it all felt so right, so perfect.
“Gregor?”
“Mm.”
“I love you.”
The words landed in the quiet room like they’d been carried for a very long time and finally, finally set down—Fergal letting go of words he’d been holding for years, offering them without demand or expectation, simply because they were true and he was done not saying them.
Gregor’s chest constricted. The response was right there with those three words, sitting on his tongue the way they sat there every night, every morning, every time Fergal smiled at him or argued with him or fell asleep in his arms. Three words that would be so easy to say and so impossible to mean fully while the heaviest door in his mind remained locked.
He couldn’t say them. Not yet. Not while the truth about Peter sat between them like a blade Fergal couldn’t see.
Saying “I love you” while holding that secret would turn the most honest words in any language into a lie, and Fergal deserved better than that.
Fergal deserved everything, and everything included the truth, and the truth was the one thing Gregor couldn’t give him.
He pressed his lips to Fergal’s hair. Held him tighter. “You are everything to me, baby boy,” he murmured, and the words were true—inadequate, incomplete, but true.
Fergal was quiet for a moment. Then his arm tightened around Gregor’s waist. “I know you can’t say it yet. I don’t know why, but I know there’s something. And I’ll wait.” A pause. “I’ve become very good at waiting, as you may have noticed.”
The trust in those words, the willingness to accept what Gregor could give without demanding what he couldn’t, cracked something open in Gregor’s chest that he suspected would never fully heal.
Not because it was a wound but because it was a door, one that Fergal had been slowly, patiently, relentlessly opening from the outside while Gregor barricaded it from within.
Someday, he’d open it himself. Someday, he’d find the courage to tell Fergal everything—the truth about Peter, the truth about his own unworthiness, the truth that he loved this man with a ferocity that terrified him and sustained him in equal measure.
But tonight, he held Fergal in their home, in their bed, in the warmth of a place where no one had stared when they’d held hands, and he let “you are everything” be enough.