Chapter 49
Connor
I’ve never been this happy. Never, not even when I thought I was happy before. Comparatively, that happiness was fleeting. A transparent wisp that touched down on me, settled, and drifted off. It was mine, but not mine. Mine for a moment, but not part of me. Not part of my soul.
The way I feel when I’m with Lennon is nothing like that. I feel it in my bones. I feel it in my marrow. It roots me to the planet and cracks my chest open wider than anything or anyone has in the past, and let’s just say, my chest has been cracked open pretty wide in the past.
I feel the connection between us as though it’s a real, visceral thing. A metal cable. An invisible rope that binds us. A rope that’s tied tightly.
I miss him so much when he’s at work that my heart aches.
It physically aches. I listen to voice notes he’s sent me when he’s out and walk around the apartment smelling things he’s touched in a pathetic attempt to catch his scent.
The other day, he messaged to let me know he’d be home an hour later than usual, and I started crying when I read the message.
I didn’t mean to, but I did. Not bad crying, thank goodness.
Not sobbing, just some sniffling and two or three tears that got away from me, but still.
It was hard to say who was more horrified, me, Georgie, or Tank. Tank was so worried that he threatened to call my mom if I didn’t book an appointment to see Dr. Wegner for a checkup.
Lennon is home now, and all is right with the world.
We’re in the kitchen, and he’s trying to teach me to sauté garlic without charring it.
I’m standing behind him, chin on his shoulder as I watch what he’s doing.
My cock is resting in the valley between his cheeks.
It’s distracting and making it hard to follow simple instructions.
“So you see, Con,” he says, taking my hand in his, and guiding it to move several minced cloves of garlic around the pan, “you want to use a low to medium heat. You don’t want to scorch it.
” I snicker against his neck because we both know I’ve been responsible for quite a bit of scorching in the past. “You want to encourage the flavor, not force it, okay? You want to be gentle with it. Approach it tenderly. Move it around and coax the flavor out of it.”
“Ah,” I say. “I get it. Cautious approach. Encouragement, not force. It’s like those little moans I coax out of you, right?
You know, the quiet ones, the ones that take a long time to build.
The ones you try to tamp down by clenching your teeth.
” I move my hips from side to side, scraping the ridge of my boner across his ass.
“The ones I tease out of you with my middle finger on your gland.”
He clears his throat, and I notice a swatch of pink appears on his cheeks.
Despite his embarrassment, he smiles at me.
It’s the kind of smile that hits me between the eyes, in the back of my throat, and punches the wind out of me.
The kind of smile that makes the earth beneath me give way and sends me spinning through space.
“Something like that,” he replies gruffly.
He switches places with me and hands me the spatula, keeping a watchful eye on me as I perform this menial task with difficulty.
He places one hand on my hip and supports my cooking arm with the other.
He runs his palm up and down the soft skin of my underarm, and I love it.
I love touches like this. Unnecessary ones.
Touches that exist for no reason, no purpose, except that he wants to touch me.
“That’s right, baby,” he says, snaking the hand on my hip around my body and tightening it so I’m pressed against him. “You’re doing it.”
The joy in my marrow sizzles and swells. It grows to such impossible proportions that I can’t contain it. I can’t hold it in.
I can’t, and I don’t want to.
“Lennon.” There’s a faint trace of nerves in my breath because what I’m about to say matters.
It matters more than anything I’ve said to him or anyone in the past. I want to say it though.
I want to hear myself say the words because they’re true, and not saying them doesn’t do anything to erase their existence.
“I’m falling in love with you. I can feel it happening right now. ”
He drops my arm and spins me around to face him. His brow is creased, mouth parted. “What did you just say?”
I recognize the hope in his eyes because I feel it too. There are other things as well. A trickle of doubt mixed with a trickle of disbelief. An echo of pain that I want to chase away.
“I said I’m falling in love with you.” I raise my arm and card my fingers through his hair until my hand is curled around the back of his head.
I lean in and rest my forehead lightly against his.
He comes to me easily, with no resistance at all.
“But now that I’ve heard myself say it, I don’t think it’s true.
I’m not falling. I’ve fallen. It’s already happened. It’s done. I’m in love with you.”
His arms tighten around my waist and a rush of breath hits my face. “A-are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but I’m sure it’s happened.”
He drops his gaze and speaks quietly, his voice shaking.
“I do know when it happened for me, Con. I might not have realized what it was or what it meant, but I know when it happened.” He works his eyes up my face slowly, almost gingerly, as though he’s afraid of what I’m going to see, or what he’s going to show me.
“I fell for you the second I laid eyes on you.”
Dinner is a hazy, drawn-out affair that goes on for hours. I feel a little drunk despite the fact that I haven’t had a sip of liquor in well over a year. Tank and Georgie and Anna and Blake are here. They’ve eaten, and talked and talked, and laughed and laughed.
I’ve barely heard a word anyone’s said. All I can hear, all I can see, are Lennon’s lips moving to form the words I fell for you the second I laid eyes on you.
The second I laid eyes on you.
Laid eyes on you.
Every time I think of it, my entire body goes hot. I can’t believe it. How is this my life? How in the world did the perfect man walk into my life—mine of all people—by pure dumb luck and make my entire life make sense? How did I get so lucky?
“…a regular event. Not monthly or anything like that, but definitely quarterly.”
It takes me a while to piece it together, but best I can tell, Anna is proposing a regular team-building event for Lennon’s team.
Yes, that’s it. I can tell from the way Lennon and Blake groan in unison.
“Oh, don’t you start,” she scolds. “You both loved the last event, and you’re going to love the next one too.”
There’s a chorus of arguments and a sea of happy faces around my dining table. I catch Lennon’s eye and the world stops turning. His scowl is nowhere to be seen, replaced by a soft smile that mainly affects his eyes. It’s not so much a smile, really, as it is a message.
A message for me.
I love you says his eyes, and a second later, his hand finds mine under the table. Our fingers lace together, knitting themselves into something that’s familiar now. Something that’s right. Something that feels more like home than the roof over my head does.
His lips move, soundlessly mouthing the same words his eyes did.
“Thank fuck,” he groans as he closes the front door. “I thought they’d never leave.”
I get where he’s coming from. I love my friends, don’t get me wrong, I do.
Anna and Blake are really good company too.
They play off each other well, and the sexual tension between them is palpable.
It’s been driving Lennon crazy that neither of them has had the balls to make a move on the other yet, but I think it’s nice to be around people who care about each other.
Ordinarily, it would be a pleasure to spend time with them.
It’s just that at the moment, I can’t be around people who aren’t Lennon.
I kiss him hungrily, roughly, with lips and tongue that deliver a little bite. He kisses me back the same way. My dick, which has been hard on and off for most of the night, hardens fully and with such speed that I feel a little lightheaded.
“Want you naked,” I tell him as we crash to the bedroom, tearing shirts and belts off.
When we get to his bedroom, I kneel at his feet and pull off his shoes and socks for him. A wave of primal excitement rises to meet every item of clothing that falls to the floor. It sinks to my groin and makes me harder and hotter.
Lennon looks down at me with something that looks like acceptance, or maybe even reverence, and pushes his jeans and underwear down. He steps out of them woodenly, and like that, I have what I’ve wanted all night: my man stripped bare.
If I weren’t already kneeling, the sight of him naked would have buckled my knees for sure.
Lennon, without any clothes on, is almost too much to handle.
His skin is naturally tanned, naturally sun-kissed, and his musculature is a tease, a hint, more than an in-your-face assault of testosterone.
His brand of masculinity is hard, forceful, and cloaked in vulnerability.
Raw strength wrestles with something softer.
Something sensitive. Something I want to take from him and care for.
Something I want to nurse back to health before I give it back to him.
I sit back on my heels and sigh. “Holy shit, you’re attractive.”
His lips quirk, but his expression remains sincere. “You’re beautiful, Connor.”
He tilts his head to the side to get a better vantage of me, and a question pushes a single brow up. I know what he’s thinking.
“What are you in the mood for? Top, bottom, side?”
“I don’t know.” His breath stutters as he releases it. “I-I can’t decide. I want everything. All of it. I want to feel full, and I want to make you feel full. I want to be open and broken, and I want to fuck my dick into you.”