Chapter 34
Ayden tugs his shirt over his head, and the moment his face is free, I lean in and claim his mouth.
He lets out a soft laugh as I loop my arm around his back, pulling him flush to me.
“So”—he attempts to lean back, but I don’t allow it— “insatiable.”
The second he dares open his mouth, I slide my tongue in. His smile curves against me, and I devour it. If he’s going to call me out for it, then I’ll show him just how greedy for him I really am.
We hadn’t lingered long in the shower, but the bath kept us. My burns still flare at heat, yet I wasn’t ready to let go of his body pressed naked against mine. The tub was cramped, but we didn’t care. For a while, he lay with his back against my chest, and later, he turned so he could kiss me.
It still wasn’t enough. It’ll never be, I just know it.
Dinner was made, and nearly forgotten because I couldn’t keep my hands off him, but we finally ate. We were ready to crash into bed when I remembered the medicine for my burns. In full nurse-mode, Ayden insisted on helping.
I only had one condition: no shirt—if I had to be bare, so did he.
“Keo.” He pulls back with a playful laugh, and points at the couch. “Sit.”
I roll my eyes, grinning. “Not my fault you’re so damn tempting.” I wink at him before dropping onto the cushions.
He grabs the ointment off the counter and trails after me. Just as he steps close, I set a hand on his hip. He’s in my favorite kind of pants—none. Just boxers. He cooked like that too, shirt grudgingly on, muttering something about boiling water and me getting distracted.
I’m obsessed, and have been, but now that I’ve been given freedom to have what should’ve been mine from the beginning, I’m feral.
“Sit in my lap.” I scoot back and lean forward.
He rolls his lips together and shakes his head. “I won’t have a good angle.”
I shift him to stand in front of my closed knees, then gesture for him to spread his legs. “You will.”
The look he gives me is hesitant, almost questioning. I tilt my head. “Talk to me. What is it?”
“Are you asking me to straddle you?”
I nod. “Is that a problem?”
He exhales slowly, shoulders rising before he lets them drop. “No, I don’t think so…”
As he steps closer, I lift a hand to pause him. “Don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with, sunshine.”
“It’s not about comfort,” he assures me softly. “I promise. If there’s anyone in this world I could be comfortable with, it’s you.”
That brings a cocky grin to my face. Damn right.
With a deep breath, he moves forward, placing one knee, then the other, to either side of my hips before lowering himself onto my thighs.
“Michael really fucked with my head,” he admits, voice low. “It’s going to take time to not allow the things he said and did affect me. He made me feel like a girl. And I’m not. Just because I was smaller than him didn’t make me any less of a man.”
“I agree.” My hands settle gently on his thighs—not to advance, but to anchor him. To reassure him I’ve got him.
He squeezes ointment onto his fingers and begins working it carefully over the burns at the backs of my shoulders.
His touch is steady, but his voice falters.
“I’d rather not get into the details, not right now.
I’ll just say he never let me have any control, and this feels like that.
Being on top in any capacity was strictly a hard stop for him. ”
An irritated tut falls from my lips. “Which makes him a complete fucking idiot.” Not that he already wasn’t one. “Probably had daddy issues. Mommy didn’t love him enough?”
He tries to hold back his laugh, but it simply comes in the form of a snort.
Ugh. Fuck me I’m a lost cause for this man.
The corner of my mouth lifts, bittersweetly. “Do you like being in my lap, sunshine?”
A slight red colors over his nose. “Maybe.”
The way my cock instantly reacts to that, has me shifting.
I’m glad he isn’t resting right on top of it, because honestly, I might throw out the ointment excuse and fuck him right here on this couch.
“I like you right here,” I murmur, leaning forward to catch his nipple between my teeth and bite down.
His gasp tangles with my name. “Keo!”
Chuckling, I pull him closer. Fuck it. I want him to feel exactly what he does to me. His ass grinds against what I can’t wait to bury inside him.
“Keep going, doc,” I say with a wicked grin. “I’m not doing anything but giving you a better angle.”
He shakes his head, and when I rest my forehead against his neck, he resumes, gently rubbing in the cream. The cool sting of medicine spreads across my skin, though his fingers feel like fire compared to the flames crackling in the fireplace behind him.
“Talk to me,” I whisper. “Tell me what hurts you, what makes you feel good… and what you want from us.”
His fingers still, causing my gaze to raise to meet his, and I catch the storm of questions flooding his forest-colored eyes.
I’ve never been this close, never been able to study them with such clarity.
They’re primarily green, but from the iris, brown bleeds outward like paint, seeping into emerald, like it’s trying to take over.
“I want… transparency.” He pauses, but only for a split second. “And to just be yours, and for you to be just mine.”
I can’t stop myself from asking, “Are you worried I’d belong to someone else?”
“Your last relationship was poly. I just… I need you to know I don’t want that. I refuse to share you.”
I have no doubt the grin on my face is stupid. Leaning in, I press a kiss to his shoulder. “I’m all yours, sunshine. I don’t plan on sharing you either. I’m a selfish, greedy man when it comes to you.”
I’m not even going to comment on the jealousy thing—because I would be. The urge to break someone’s limb just for touching him simmers at the back of my mind. It’s insane, I know, so I keep it to myself.
His soft sigh of relief warms me, and he keeps working across my shoulders with gentle precision.
“I think healthy arguments are necessary. We don’t have to be perfect, but…
don’t walk out on me. Don’t leave me angry.
And don’t be afraid to tell me when I’m wrong, or if I’m doing something you don’t like. I’m not fragile, just a little broken.”
My hand drifts up his side, the heat of his bare body searing into my palm. Ayden may feel broken, but he isn’t. Not to me. I understand him. And I just hope when it’s my turn to talk about my demons, he’ll understand me too.
“I don’t see you as anything but perfect.” My finger traces the scar down his spine, slipping beneath his boxers to where smaller ones scatter. “A little guarded, maybe. But I’d be the same…”
He shifts, pressing his cheek to the top of my head as his hand slides across to the other shoulder. “I should’ve let that guard down the moment you walked through the door back into my life. But it terrified me. I’d rather you be mad at me for keeping my distance than judge me.”
A frustrated groan rumbles out of me. “That would’ve been the last thing I’d ever do.”
“I know… Learned behavior, I suppose…”
I press my lips to his collar and trail them up the curve of his neck. “Running out on you the way I did—saying what I said—I know it didn’t help. I thought I was protecting you. Hoping maybe you’d hate me, move on to someone less… forbidden.”
“Joke’s on us both, all it did was—” he cuts himself off, his hands still. And when I lean back to catch his eyes, he shakes his head. “Never mind.”
“Tell me.” I cup his neck, his own hands hovering between us.
Another shake of his head. “You aren’t the only one who pays attention, Keo. I was going to make a bad joke.”
“Bad joke, huh?”
“Yeah, one that wasn’t funny.” He leans forward, brushing a kiss to my lips. “Let me wash my hands, you’re all set.”
As he shifts to stand, I help him up. As he turns, I scoot back against the couch, keeping my back straight so the ointment doesn’t smear onto the cushions.
Joke’s on us both, all it did was… The words loop in my head.
He’s gone only a few minutes, but long enough for me to sit here, stewing over what he meant. When he comes back and settles on my lap again, straddling me just as before, relief washes through me.
“Can I answer your third question from earlier?” he asks.
It’s obvious he wants to move on. As much as I want to pry, I let it go. Maybe that’s all it was. A bad joke.
I drag my fingers slowly up his back and nod. “Yes. What makes you feel good, sunshine?”
His lips curve into a smile as he leans closer. “Cooking for you. That oddly protective cat.” My chuckle earns me one from him. “You… Your praise of me… The way you enjoy hearing me.”
The memory of him moaning my name, spilling across my hand, has my dick tingling.
My groan is feral, and I wrap my arms around him, holding him tight. “Yeah?”
He nods while giving me a mischievous smile.
“I want you screaming for me. Don’t hold back.
There’s no one out here to hear you but me.
And even if there were, I wouldn’t give a single fuck.
” Leaning forward, I catch his bottom lip between my teeth, tugging, before rolling us hard to the side.
His back sinks into the couch cushions, his cock sliding against my groin as I settle on top of him.
“Now,” I growl. “Let’s talk a little filthier, hmm? ”
He wets his lips, his hips rising to meet mine. “Yes, please.”
I pin his wrists above his head, about to press him for his hard limits when something stops me—his tattoo.
“First,” I murmur, gaze dropping. “Answer me something.”
His head lifts, following my eyes. “Oh.” His cheeks are beginning to flush the deepest red I’ve ever seen.
God. That blush. My heart drops straight into my cock, and suddenly there’s no dividing line between passion and lust.
“Do you want to know about the tattoo?” he asks softly.
I nod, dragging my palm slowly down his forearm until it hovers over the ink. A bold rectangle filled with a lion’s face—amber eyes, that look exactly like mine, burn against the black-and-gray fur.
“Your name,” he whispers.
My heart kicks back into my chest, stumbling over itself, flipping and twisting in every direction.
“It means God is gracious; your mom shared it with me one night after you left for college. I think she could tell I was missing you. But…” His chin drops but he keeps his gaze locked on mine.
“It also means powerful; a name tied to kings. A crown didn’t fit you, not in the way I saw you, but a lion did.
” His voice falters, reverent. I can’t believe the goosebumps that rise across my entire body.
“My king… in a world as wild as the savannah. Every time I felt weak, I’d look at it.
And you were there, giving me the strength I needed when I was alone. ”
Grabbing the back of his neck, I drop my mouth to his. Heat crawls across my temples as tears build behind my eyelids. With his free hand, he threads his fingers up through my hair and holds me to him.
I suddenly laugh and drop my forehead to his chest. “Goddamn…”
His breath shudders as he asks, “What?”
“Do you know what your name means, Ayden?”
“Um… no?”
I kiss my way up between his pecs, one of his legs curling tighter around my thigh as I reach his ear. In a whisper, I tell him, “It means little flame.”
His chest rises sharply beneath me. The moment his hand clamps onto my arm—right over the ink there—I shake my head, grinning through the rush in my chest. “Unbelievable. My god…”
“Your tattoo…” His voice cracks, thick with disbelief. He brings his hand up my inked arm, dragging his fingers across the tribal design that I specifically had made. Every section meaningful, all of them integrated with fire. “Shut the fuck up.”
Everyone thought it was about my career.
They were wrong.
It was about him—the flame in my life that burned so hot, eight years later I could still feel the scorch of it.
I sit up, hovering over him, smiling down at the shock painted across his face. “I’ll regret it for the rest of my life never telling my mom how badly I liked you the day she introduced Grant to me. I should’ve been selfish. Because I knew then you were mine.”
He lets out a laugh that’s soaked in unshed tears. “We were supposed…” His breath hitches around the words. “Supposed to be talking filthy. Not fucking crying.”
I can’t help but laugh with him, the sound breaking through the heaviness of it all.
It doesn’t last long. I brush my knuckles along his temple, catching the tear that slipped free. “I don’t plan on letting you go anywhere, sunshine. We’ve got plenty of time for filth, for tears, for laughter…”
When his smile breaks wide and unguarded, pure joy lighting up his face, I hum softly. “Yeah. You’re stuck with me.”