Chapter 17
Holden
When Bryce showed up after work, he was too tired to do anything besides collapse into Holden’s arms and go to sleep.
Holden didn’t mind. He took Bryce to bed, stripped off his clothes, and held him until his breathing turned steady and slow.
Holden fell asleep soon after and woke the next morning with their positions reversed with Bryce’s face buried in the back of his neck and Bryce’s fingers drawing lazy swirls across his chest.
“I like waking up with you,” Holden said, half the words lost on a yawn. He rolled onto his back and Bryce tucked in against his ribs, cheek pillowed on Holden’s chest.
“I like it too.”
Holden stroked his fingers through Bryce’s hair, pressing a kiss against the top of his head.
They lay together in a comfortable silence, the sound of cars outside the window and annoying birds chirping on the roof the only sounds besides their level and even breaths.
They’d talked about being boyfriends, which to Holden had always felt like such a trivial word for the kind of commitment he wanted to give someone.
Boyfriends felt like it was a high school thing, a label kids used when they didn’t know better or didn’t care.
The way he felt for Bryce, even so soon after meeting, was far more monumental than “boyfriend” allowed, but Holden wasn’t sure how to express that.
Even in the space they’d built together where words weren’t always necessary, Holden didn’t know how to express the level of adoration he felt for Bryce, the level of want.
Need.
“For as quiet as you are,” Bryce murmured, breath hot against Holden’s nipple. “You sure think loud.”
Holden made an amused sound and inhaled so deeply it raised Bryce’s body.
“What are you thinking about?” Bryce asked next, clearly ready to use his words until Holden grew weary of it and took them away.
Holden arched a brow, and Bryce shoved off of him, pushing into a seated position with the sheets pooled in his lap and his knee digging into Holden’s side.
“What are you thinking about?” Holden countered.
“I’m thinking about how long I can make it before the anticipation of you pumping me full of fake cum kills me.” Bryce grinned, cheeks pink in the late morning light. “But I’m also thinking about how if that never happens, it would be perfectly okay.”
Holden thought of the bag of supplies in his nightstand. “It’ll happen,” he promised.
Bryce’s lashes fluttered a little. “I’m really lucky to have found you, I think.”
Something constricted in Holden’s chest, and he danced his fingertips across Bryce’s hip, easing the sheet down until Bryce’s thigh was visible.
Holden had always been so eager to bed the other man he’d never paid attention to Bryce’s tattoos.
At least not beyond the stardust on his knuckles.
Bryce’s body was a dedication to his brother, a portfolio of Merrick’s tattoos scattered across his skin.
“Now tell me what you’re thinking about,” Bryce said.
“I’m thinking about how I’d secretly worried talking all night at work would make you tired of it by the time you came home to me.”
The air crackled, and Bryce worried his lower lip between his teeth. Holden had used a lot of honest words in that sentence, but maybe not in the ideal order. He was very close to showing his hand.
“Worried?” Of course Bryce picked up on that. “You were worried I’d come back here after work and have nothing to say to you?”
Holden opened his mouth to argue, but Bryce showed no signs of stopping.
“And come home to you?” He flung one leg over Holden’s body and straddled him, fingers steepled on Holden’s chest. He ground his hips down against him, both of them shivering from the friction. “I think you like me, Holden Walker.”
Holden grabbed his hips, stilled him.
“I do,” he rasped, searching Bryce’s face for any trepidation or distaste at his very understated two-word confession.
What he got instead was a bright smile and a soft laugh.
“I like you too. And don’t worry, I’ll always have something to say to you.”
“Unfortunate,” Holden teased, and Bryce’s smile somehow grew wider. Bryce opened his mouth, but something flashed across his face and he snapped his mouth closed, licking his lips like he wanted to seal them closed.
“What?” Holden prompted.
“Nothing.”
“Not like you to keep something back.”
Bryce huffed out a laugh and lifted one shoulder to his ear in a casual shrug. “Last night at the bar, you said you had plans for me, but the only thing we did was go to sleep.”
Holden was fairly certain that wasn’t what Bryce had been about to say, but he’d come up with a way to get the truth out of him later.
Or he could probably wait it out. Bryce still wasn’t a fan of the silence, and he rattled on more often than not, especially if he was horny.
Maybe it was some kind of Pavlovian response Holden had trained into him by accident that if he talked too much, Holden would fuck him back to silence.
“You were very tired,” Holden said. “And I have you until Monday so there is plenty of time.”
“Not if I die first.”
Bryce gave him puppy dog eyes, and Holden flattened his hands against the small of Bryce’s back and used him for leverage to sit up.
Bryce jostled in his lap, the weight shifting on Holden’s half-awake cock.
The way his dick twitched didn’t go unnoticed, and Bryce smirked like he’d just won a scavenger hunt.
“I’m horny,” Bryce whined.
“You can wait.”
“I don’t want to.”
Holden realized in that moment, he never wanted to tell Bryce no.
About anything. He wanted to give Bryce everything he wanted, whether that was a dick to suck or a quiet hour of respite from the endless stream of noise in his mind.
That was so much more serious than the word boyfriend allowed, but they’d only known each other a handful of weeks and how could he admit any of that out loud?
He found himself jealous of Bryce’s gift of talk, wishing it came easier for him because maybe then he could be honest with them both about what he really wanted.
“I don’t care,” Holden said softly, stroking his thumbs across Bryce’s cheeks.
Bryce’s breath stuttered out of him, the denial clearly just as arousing as when Holden gave in to him.
“I want to get dressed, and I want to take you to lunch. I want to spend the day with you outside of my apartment.”
There was an implication with the statement that he wanted Bryce for more than sex.
“Like a date?”
“Maybe.”
“That is something boyfriends do, I suppose.”
Holden scrunched his nose. There was that fucking word again.
“No?” Bryce asked, lip pushed out into a frown.
“Yes,” Holden agreed. “It’s something boyfriends do.”
“What else?”
“I just want to waste some time with you,” he admitted.
Bryce hummed, taking Holden’s face into his hands and bringing their noses together, their mouths.
He paused, and Holden knew it was because he’d already said no to sex.
This was Bryce asking for permission to take what he wanted, even if ran counter to what Holden had expressed.
But Holden had no issues with a kiss. A kiss was…
he would have kissed Bryce every second of the day.
But he would have fucked him too, and he’d put a stop to that because he wanted more.
A kiss would be okay, though, as long as he could stop himself.
He closed the very small space between them and pressed his mouth against Bryce’s.
His concession rewarded him with the slide of Bryce’s arms around his neck and a moan that went right to Holden’s cock.
He licked into Bryce’s mouth, grabbing the back of Bryce’s neck to keep him still so he could control the kiss.
Bryce seemed to have no issue letting Holden lead, even as his hips started to move.
The hot line of Bryce’s cock against his stomach was enough to make him stop, and he tore himself away with a gasp, pressing their foreheads together.
Holden could see his spit on Bryce’s lips. “You’re a siren,” he murmured.
“I don’t think I’ll ever apologize for making you want to fuck me.”
Holden squeezed the back of Bryce’s neck. “I want to do more than fuck you.”
Bryce’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, making a soft clicking sound as he pulled it free. He leaned back and studied Holden, and Holden held his breath, not sure what Bryce saw when he looked at him.
“Oh,” Bryce said quietly.
“Oh?”
“Oh,” he said again, this time with more emphasis. “I see it now.”
“See what?”
“Verity knew who you were at the bar last night before I’d told them your name,” Bryce explained. “Knew you were the man I…knew you were my boyfriend.”
Holden briefly entertained the idea of striking the word boyfriend from Bryce’s vocabulary, but he didn’t have anything better to replace it with.
Yet.
“How did they know that?” he asked.
“The way you look at me,” Bryce whispered.
Holden licked his lips, heart slamming violently against his sternum. “How do I look at you?”
Bryce laughed at him, crawling off Holden’s lap and dragging him out of bed. He stumbled after Bryce until they were both in the bathroom. Bryce flipped the lights on and stood with his back against the counter so Holden faced him and the mirror.
“Look at me,” Bryce said, and Holden did.
Because of course he did.
He studied the dark pools of Bryce’s eyes and the soft swell of his cheeks and the plush lines of his mouth. Holden traced his fingers over the hint of scruff growing out against Bryce’s jaw, the small diamond tattoo in front of his ear.
“Now look at you,” Bryce instructed and Holden flickered his stare to the mirror.
It was quick, his expression changing when he became his focus instead of Bryce, but it was there for a moment…the thing Bryce saw when Holden looked at him. What Verity saw. What everyone must have seen.
“Bryce, I—”
“I think I love you,” Bryce blurted before Holden could say anything else. “I’m not sure because I thought I loved Bella, but it didn’t feel anything like this. I don’t know if it’s just the sex hormones or—”
“It’s not,” Holden cut him off, fingers pressed against Bryce’s still moving lips. “It’s not just the hormones.”
“I love you?”
Holden laughed under his breath, tracing his finger across Bryce’s lower lip before moving his fingers to Bryce’s chin.
“Are you not sure?” he asked.
“No.” A violent flush colored Bryce’s cheeks and he tucked his chin toward his chest to escape Holden’s stare. “I’m not.”
Something constricted, tightening every muscle in his body like he was a rubber band ready to snap.
Holden tilted Bryce’s face back up and looked at him again.
He didn’t even have to try to morph his features into what Bryce had seen before.
It was impossible, he realized, to look at Bryce and not let his emotions through.
Holden leaned in slowly and ghosted a kiss across the corner of Bryce’s mouth.
Bryce chased after him, hungry and urgent, and the kiss quickly turned into something that was going to lead them, again, right back to bed.
Holden had to take Bryce’s face into his hands and pull their mouths apart, and even then Bryce chased after his mouth.
“Oh,” Bryce murmured, lashes fluttering.
“Oh,” Holden agreed, knowing he loved Bryce and knowing it was returned.