Chapter 18
eighteen
Linus
Three Months Later
Our cheap hotel room reeks of cigarette smoke and old coffee.
The air is still, holding its breath.
As if the walls themselves haven’t yet decided whether last night was a win or a funeral.
I sit naked at the edge of the bed, spine aching the way it always does when adrenaline from a show wears off and there’s nothin’ left but gravity. My phone buzzes again on the nightstand.
Probably Felicity. Or her lawyer.
I don’t reach for it. My world is on fire and the madness of last night is the least of my worries.
Across the room, Liam is sprawled out on the couch, one arm slung over his eyes like the light’s too much to bear.
He’s shirtless, one jean-clad leg is hooked over the back, long and lean and carelessly beautiful.
His lips are pursed with tension. He gets this way when he holds in too many things for too long.
I let myself look.
Really look.
God, he’s beautiful.
It still hits me sometimes. How this impossible man is mine, if only in the fragile way anything can belong to anyone. I’ve kissed every inch of his skin. I know every sound he makes when he comes. I know exactly how to touch him when he can’t find the words to speak his truth.
Somehow, it’s never quite enough. He’s slipping away and I don’t know what to do.
He stirs under my gaze, exhales. “I feel you starin.’”
“You’re my favorite thing to look at.”
His mouth curves, lazily. “You’re biased.”
“Extremely.”
He doesn’t lift his arm, doesn’t open his eyes, but I see the smile twitch again before it fades when he remembers the real world’s still out there.
Yesterday, we finally got rid of Felicity.
She self-imploded, dragging the entire band into the blast radius. Padraig finally snapped. Fireball might survive. If it does, it’ll be a different animal.
One I won’t be part of.
As much as I despised Felicity, it wasn’t only her we lost last night. It was the illusion Fireball could keep going in its current state. For me, I finally came to terms with the fact Liam and I aren’t going to make it.
Not this version of us.
I’m leaving soon. Heading home for Dublin. I don’t have a choice. My visa’s expiring. Graduation is a breath away. I’ll be on a plane back in less than two months’ time. No job. No apartment. No plan. Other than I want to continue managing bands. I’m good at it.
Liam hasn’t said it, but I know him well. He’s been emotionally pulling away in preparation for my departure. The space between us expanding like a fault line.
I know why. He doesn’t want to hurt me by making promises he can’t keep. He loves me. I love him. I believe this with every ounce of my being.
But, he wants more. So do I.
The worst part is, wanting what seems impossible doesn’t make either of us wrong. We’re not gay. We can’t make it work as a gay couple. We’re not straight either, so where does it leave us?
We need a third. A woman. Someone whom we can love and will love both of us. The truth of the matter sits between us like a missing limb.
I want a woman to hold Liam when I can’t.
To fuck me while he watches.
I want Liam and I to worship her together and fill her with our seed and make a family, however unconventional this might seem.
We both crave a kind of love that doesn’t fucking exist except in fantasy-land.
So, I’m not gonna beg him. It’s a sad end to a beautiful love.
Liam moves his arm and opens his eyes. Barely a squint. He studies me for a long moment, trailing his gaze to my thickening cock. Hesitates, deciding whether to speak.
“Are you gonna say it?” he finally asks
“Say what?”
“Goodbye? You’re leavin’, right?”
I exhale through my nose. “Doesn’t matter to you.”
“Fuck, Linus.” He’s furious. “You always go there. Like you’ve already written me off.”
“Not true,” I protest. “Did it occur to you I was thinkin’ I can’t ask you to follow me when I know you won’t?”
Silence. It hurts. More than I want to admit.
“Linus…” He grimaces. “You know I love you.”
I nod. “I do.”
“I don’t know how to be what you need.” He scrubs his face with his hand. “Not without fuckin’ it up.”
“I don’t want perfect. I want real.” I lean forward and rest my forearms on my thighs.
His eyes flicker. “We both know real means I can’t be only yours and you can’t be only mine. We’ve said it from the beginning.”
“Well…” I swallow. “How about we stop pretendin’ for a change.”
Liam studies me. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.” I say it without shame. “I want someone who can love both of us.”
He swallows. His fingers twitch where they rest on his stomach. “I want it too, but I don’t know how to find it.”
“Neither do I.” I sigh heavily. “Doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop lookin’.”
Liam sits up like the weight of it all is dragging behind his shoulders. He looks exhausted. Beautiful. He crosses to the bed and stands in front of me, bare, eyes burning.
“I don’t know how to keep you.”
I place my hands on his hips and draw him toward me. “Please stop pretendin’ we’re not already spinnin’ toward different skies.”
He kneels between my legs. His hands find my thighs. When he rests his forehead against my chest, I wrap my arms around him and hold on like I still believe we can survive this.
Love isn’t the problem. It’s abundant between us. It’s the fear we both carry.
It’s always been the knife at our backs.
So we default to sex. Like we always do.
Liam doesn’t wait for permission, his mouth demands my cock. The heat of his lips swallows my head and I swear everything goes white at the edges. He sucks in slow, greedy rolls. Tongue dragging along the underside of my shaft, tasting me in long, methodical strokes.
He takes me deep, past the rim of his teeth, and I feel the soft, rough scrape at the base of his throat as he works me the way I love. He hums, a guttural, animal sound vibrating along my cock and into my bones. My hand finds the nape of his neck and I clamp down to anchor myself to him.
Liam sucks me with precision. Throat opening, throat closing, taking me, then releasing me so my tip quivers with each squeeze. Each time his tongue flicks along the thick vein underneath my crown, I see stars burst behind my lids.
His hands aren’t idle, either. One clutches his own cock, stroking himself as he works me with his mouth.
The other maps the soft hollow where my thigh joins my pelvis, his thumb kneading the warm flesh behind my balls until my breath stutters.
Without breaking his rhythm, he descends to the place between my scrotum and my asshole.
He tongues my taint with long, deliberate licks, circling my puckered rim, then dipping inside. A sharp, involuntary exhale turns into a choked wheeze.
Liam loves it when he coaxes this sound from my soul.
He works me, sliding his fingers under my balls, pulling them up and nuzzling with his mouth.
He sucks one into his cheek, then the other, slurping them both into the hollow and rolling them gently against the roof of his mouth. The sensation is obscene. Exquisite.
Impossibly intimate.
My hips start to buck, betraying me. I wince, trying to carve time out of the pressure building in my gut, but Liam clamps a palm to my sternum and pins me down with his weight.
His eyes are fierce when he looks up at me, pupils blown. “Stay with me.”
A command I wish I could obey.
He drags his tongue in wide, velvet strokes, then flicks it sharp at my frenulum until I’m whimpering, fingers digging crescents into his scalp.
When he takes me again, he goes deeper than before, pushing until the back of my cock hits his throat and he gags.
One sharp, involuntary sound and I can’t help but clamp down on his head with guilt and a feral wanting all at once.
Liam swallows my cock down, throat bobbing. His determined motion sends me into a frenzy.
I’m on the edge, lurching toward the cliff, and he answers me—palm wrapping my shaft in a rhythm echoing the bobbing of his throat. His eyes are locked on mine with a wrecked, worshipful look intended to remind me how thoroughly I’m loved.
The sound of his hand on his own cock is wet and urgent. Skin slapping skin, fist jerking himself in time with the way he sucks me, faster now, throat taking and giving, his own breaths hitching. He glances down, watching his hand move then resumes watching me.
The sight of him fucking himself with my cock buried between his lips sends a current through me so hot I taste copper.
“Don’t stop,” I croak.
His mouth becomes a vise, a temple, a furnace. I feel the knot in my stomach fist and release; it’s sudden and total. My orgasm slams into me like a truck: bright white, spreading down my legs, through my hands, making my vision swim.
I howl his name, not a prayer but utter surrender, my cock seizing as ropes of come shoot against the back of his throat. He doesn’t flinch. He swallows every drop, leaving me raw. When, at last, he draws back, a strand of spit and come between us snaps like a fragile wire.
He pulls his mouth free with a pop, lips and chin shining with my spunk and he licks his lips clean, eyes half-closed and luminous. For a fraction of a second I watch his Adam’s apple flick, his breath hot and ragged against my sweat-slick skin.
My voice breaks, raw and needy. “Liam, please. Fuck, please—”
“Please what?” He looks up at me with wild, hungry eyes, stroking himself languidly. A tease to watch me unravel.
“Fuck me,” I beg. The words pour out, shameless, thick with hunger. “I need you to fill me up.”
I don’t care how I sound.
I don’t care how desperate it is.
My whole body’s thrumming, open, craving the delicious burn only he can provide.
I lie back on the bed and my thighs fall open without thought, heels digging into the sheets, cock spent and forgotten against my stomach. Nothing matters now except Liam’s thick cock buried inside me to the root.
“Liam. Please, I want it. I want you.”
He hooks my knees up, wide and trembling.
The blunt head of his cock finds me, unrelenting.
“Then take it,” he growls—and pushes in.