Chapter 25 Alex
Iwrapped my hand around him and everything in my chest recalibrated.
The weight of him. The heat. The way he filled my grip—thick and hard. My lip caught between my teeth before I could stop it.
"God, you're big," I said.
My thumb traced the vein along the underside and his hips jerked off the mattress. The responsiveness of him—instant, unguarded—sent a pulse of heat straight down my spine.
"Alex—"
I licked the head. Salt and clean skin and something underneath that was just Liam—raw, specific, impossible to replicate. My tongue circled once before I took him in. The weight of him on my tongue, the stretch of my lips around the width, the wet heat of my own mouth surrounding him.
I pulled off. Licked down the shaft. All the way to the base, following the vein, feeling the pulse of him against my tongue. Then lower—finding his balls, taking one into my mouth, sucking gently while my hand kept stroking the shaft.
"You taste so good," I said against his skin. And I meant it. The intimacy of this—his most vulnerable self on my tongue—was intoxicating in a way I hadn't anticipated. "I've been wanting to do this all week."
"All week?"
"Since the bridge." I licked back up. Took him deep again—deeper this time, testing my own limits, feeling him hit the back of my throat.
"Watched you undress in the locker room this week. I almost lost my fucking mind."
The curse word felt foreign in my mouth. A word my father would never say. A word I'd stolen from Liam's world because nothing polished could touch what I felt.
I kept going. My mouth and my hand finding a rhythm. His thigh tensed under my palm. His breathing changed. I read every signal and used it for devotion.
My fingers dug into his thigh. His hips were starting to move—small, involuntary thrusts he was trying to control. I took him deeper to show him he didn't have to.
"I could do this forever," I murmured.
Then I proved it. Took him deep enough that his hands flew to my hair and his body went rigid and a sound came out of him that made my cock throb against the mattress.
I pulled off. Kissed up his stomach—the ridges of muscle, the trail of dark hair. Then his chest. His neck. Each press of my lips leaving heat on skin that was already burning.
I climbed on top of him. Straddling his hips. My weight settling over him. And the moment our cocks pressed together the friction when I rocked my hips pulled a groan from both of us simultaneously. The synchronization unconscious.
The way everything was with us.
I kissed him. Deep and slow and filthy. My tongue in his mouth, and he could taste himself on me, which should have been strange but was instead another form of intimacy—our bodies already shared, already mixed, the boundaries dissolving.
My hips rolled against his. His hands found my ass, pulled me tighter, the slide of our cocks together.
Something shifted in me. Deeper than friction. Deeper than heat.
I rose up on my knees. Reached behind myself and took him in my hand. Angled him. Pressed the head against my hole.
Liam's breath stopped.
I pressed back. Just enough to feel him there—the blunt pressure, the heat of him against me, the tight resistance of my own body against something it hadn't done before. Not inside. Just the promise. The edge of a threshold I could feel myself wanting to cross.
"Alex—"
"I want to," I said. My voice was shaking. "I want you inside me."
Every part of me was screaming two things simultaneously. Yes—do this, take him in, stop being afraid. And underneath: what if it hurts, what if you can't, what if this is the one thing you can't control and you fall apart in a way you can't reconstruct.
His hands found my hips. Steadied me. Not pulling me down. Not pushing forward. Just holding—the warmth of his palms against my hip bones, firm and grounding.
"Hey," he said. "Hey. Look at me."
I looked at him. And I could feel it on my own face—the nervousness I was trying to bury under bravery, the fear I was trying to override with desire. Written in a language I couldn't edit. I'd spent my entire life being unreadable. Liam could read me in a second.
"Have you done this before?" he asked.
"No."
"Me neither."
Something cracked. I don't have a better word for it.
The wall I'd been pressing against—the one that said you have to be ready, you have to be competent, you have to know what you're doing at all times—developed its first real fissure.
Because Liam had just admitted he didn't know either.
We were in the same place. The same uncertainty. The same vulnerability.
And then the relief hit.
I'd been bracing for him to push forward.
That was what people did, in my experience.
When you offered something, they took it.
My father took my choices. Kingswell took my identity.
The scouts took my performance and measured it against a standard I hadn't set.
Everyone took. That was the transaction.
You offered, and they took, and you reconstructed yourself from whatever was left.
But Liam didn't take.
He stopped.
"I want to," I said again. Softer this time. Meaning it. "I really do."
"I know." He pulled me down against his chest. His weight warm and solid beneath me, my face finding the space in his neck where it fit. Where it had always fit, since the first night in his dorm room when he'd held my wrist and said not like this. "I want to too. So bad."
"But?"
"But not tonight. Not in a hotel room. Not when we have a race in—" He turned his head toward the nightstand. "—eleven hours."
I exhaled against his neck. The breath shaking on the way out.
"When?" I asked.
"When I can make it good for you. When we're not worried about getting up at four-thirty."
When I can make it good for you.
He was protecting me.
I propped myself up on my elbows. Looked down at him. Water from the shower still drying on his skin, his hair dark and damp against the white pillow, his face open in a way that Liam's face rarely was—without the sarcasm, without the anger.
"Come here," he whispered.
He kissed me. The kind of kiss that said I see you instead of I want you.
Though he wanted me. I could feel it—still hard against my hip, the evidence impossible to hide. But he was choosing something over want. Choosing patience. Choosing me over his own need.
I wasn't sure anyone had ever done that before.
My hips settled against his. Our cocks still pressed together—still hard, still slick—and the contact sent waves of warmth through my stomach. But the energy had shifted. Not less intense, just deeper.
"Touch me," I said. Against his lips. "Just like this. I want to feel you."
He reached between us. Took both of us in his hand—his cock and mine pressed together, his fingers barely reaching around both. The sensation drew a gasp from my chest that I didn't try to contain.
"Yeah," I breathed. "Just like that."
His forehead on mine. His breath on my lips. Eyes open. Both of us looking. Both of us staying.
"You feel so good," I said. The words inadequate. Everything I had was inadequate for this. "You feel—Liam—"
"I know. I've got you."
"I know you do."
The pleasure built.
A heat that started behind my sternum and spread outward—through my stomach, down my thighs, into my throat. His hand tightened us. His strokes getting faster. His breath coming in short, ragged gasps that matched my own.
"I'm close," I whispered.
"Me too."
His eyes held mine. Green and dark and open.
I let go.
The orgasm hit like a wave break—sudden, total, annihilating.
My body going rigid against his, a sound tearing from my chest that I'd never made before—half his name, half something wordless. I felt myself spill between us—onto his stomach, his chest—warm and real and mine.
The sight of me—the sound, the heat—pulled him over. I felt it beneath me. His body arching, his grip tightening on my hip, his cock pulsing against mine.
The sound of Liam Moore surrendering everything he'd been carrying. The anger. The armor. The performance of not caring.
All of it. Gone. Spilling between us. Mixing with mine. The mess warm on his chest and my stomach and neither of us moving to address it.
I collapsed forward. He caught me.
Both of us breathing hard. Both of us wrecked.
My face in his neck. His hand in my hair. His heartbeat against my ribs—or mine against his. I couldn't tell anymore. Didn't want to.
I drifted off in the warmth of him and after sometime I heard him.
"We have a race tomorrow."
"I know."
"We should sleep."
"Yeah."
I giggled. Quiet, vibrating against his throat.
We cleaned up with a hotel towel and got under the covers.
I pressed my back against his chest. His arm around my waist. His semi-hard dick against my ass where it should be.
"Liam?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For sitting with me on the bus."
"That's what you're thanking me for?"
"I know what we just did." I paused. Laced our fingers together—his calluses matching mine, the blisters in the same places. "But the bus was bigger."
He was quiet then kissed me.
Because the sex was private. A locked room, a shared bed, a secret between two bodies. It cost nothing to want someone in the dark. But the bus—him sitting next to me in front of thirty teammates. That was a choice that could unravel everything, everything we were supposed to protect.
And he'd done it anyway.
And I'd let him.
The city hummed through the window. Boston at night. A million lives—none of them knowing that two rowers were lying in a hotel bed, eleven hours from a race that could change everything.
"We're going to be okay," Liam said into the back of my neck.
"You sure?"
"We will."
I squeezed his hand. Felt my breathing slow. Felt my body get heavier against his chest.
I closed my eyes. Liam's chest against my back. His arm around my waist. His breathing slowing to match mine—or mine to match his. The synchronization unconscious and inevitable.
He held me, and I just slept.
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