31. Skylar
I never fucking stopped.
I hear the rest of it, but that’s what sticks.
What propels me to kiss him again, harder this time.
Deeper. No questions left—for now, at least. No air.
Just his lips and mine, and the healing heat that burns low in my belly as Mal’s long arm circles my waist and he hooks me to him, already backing me towards his bedroom.
To his bed.
He’s so physical. His blunt way with words has come to mean everything to me, but he speaks so much louder like this.
Every kiss.
Every grip of my hips.
Every rough, low sound he makes as he eases me onto his bed, his solid weight pins me down, and he claims me like something he’s fought for and won.
Mal kisses me as if he’s been holding back for years. He moves over me, all heat and weight and agile strength. And I let him, the dismantling need for control absent in ways I’ve never felt before.
You told him.
The thought slams into me, but it doesn’t settle, at least not with any feeling beyond acceptance, and it leaves my head as abruptly as it arrived.
“You sure you want to do this now?” Mal’s voice, rough and melodic, cuts through the weak noise, his lips brushing my jaw.
I breathe in and exhale slow. “Define this .”
Mal makes a feral sound, giving me no time to speak more. Then he’s on me, and he’s everywhere. My throat, my collarbone, my chest. That healing hand splayed over my abdomen as he settles between my legs.
I like him on his knees.
I love him poured onto this bed, his long arms wrapped around my waist as he takes me in his mouth with a slow, aching pressure that draws a snatched breath from my lungs and a low laugh from him.
“We’re alone , remember?”
I remember. But muting how good he makes me feel, it’s a hard habit to break. I bite back every moan until he bites me , and that pain…as my spine arches from the bed, driving my cock deeper down his throat, I love that too.
He has my lower body in a chokehold. It’s a fucking trip. But I miss him. And as wicked as his mouth feels fused around my dick, I don’t want to come yet.
I thread my fingers into his hair and tug him off me—slowly. Mal’s green eyes gleam with knowing anticipation, but I’m not done. I need more.
He’s still wearing a shirt. I grab him and pull where it’s tangled around his shoulders, ripping it over his head.
Then I haul him up the bed, kicking my clothes away, shoving at his until they’re out of my way.
Until we’re skin to skin and I’m staring at him as if I’ve never seen him naked before.
As if I’ve forgotten how he feels inside me when it’s been less than a week.
His long, tanned limbs. His lean chest and abs, dusted with dark body hair. The hot length of his dick. My body is tired, everything hurts. But I crave Mal like nothing else. Him , not distraction or a temporary fix to a permanent problem. I want him, and I fucking know he wants me.
He kisses me, a groan rumbling from his chest, deep and low. “I’ve got you,” he murmurs, and the sentiment hits like the truth it is. Because he does have me. Every cracked and broken part of me. He holds it all and I let him. I need him, and it doesn’t scare me anymore.
We’ve never fucked like this.
Face-to-face, nose to nose, foreheads pressed together as he eases into me, just lube, no condom.
“I’ve got you,” he whispers again.
He moves inside me, slow and steady, never breaking eye contact, and I lose myself in his face.
The clench of his jaw.
The way his long lashes flutter as his languid rhythm becomes a deeper grind.
I’m on the edge from the start, unbearable pleasure straining every nerve. Sounds rip from my throat I’ve never made with anyone, and I grip the back of Mal’s neck, panting into his bruising kiss, letting him break me wide open, his whole body a live wire, arousal trembling beneath his hot skin.
He thrusts harder, sinking his teeth into the spot on my neck he claimed for himself from the start, and I cinch my legs tighter around him, my fingers digging into any part of him I can reach.
Fuck.
Mal roots a fist to the bed, trying to tame the fire unfurling between us, but he doesn’t stand a chance.
It gets messy.
Loud.
Mal groans my name, forehead still pressed to mine, holding my gaze, keeping me present. Keeping me with him, as every laboured breath and moan draws me closer to the bliss we both deserve.
And then it hits, and we don’t run from the expanding inferno that sears through us. Trapped between us, my dick erupts, and Mal…his release is a new fire inside me, his body holding mine like he knows . Like he hears the words I’ve never said.
I shatter into a thousand pieces with them burning my lips.
I shout with the force of it, my confession this wild fucking noise that rips my throat.
I love you.
We’re so entangled in each other it takes a minute to unpick. Mal’s curved around me like he’s shielding me from the storm that’s caught a second wind outside.
He’s shaking.
So am I.
He’s dizzy too, and he doesn’t try to hide it. He lies beside me and breathes, and I realise he’s laughing. At himself. At me. At this messy existence we call life. As my blood cools and my nerves simmer down, it doesn’t matter. The ache in my chest…it isn’t pain.
Mal pulls himself together enough to raise his head. His skin is flushed, his sated gaze bright with exertion. It looks good on him, and it’s hard to accept I’ve turned away from him every time that’s come before this.
He reaches over me and wipes the cum from my belly with Jack’s t-shirt. Cringes when he realises. “Don’t tell him.”
I’m not going to. It’s bad enough Jack found out about me and Mal the way he did. I’m not about to confess we’ve defiled his clothes too.
I feel like I could sleep again. That if I close my eyes, I’ll fall through the bed.
Mal rubs my stomach, rousing me.
I speak before he can. “I’ve never stayed in bed with someone after sex before.”
“Neither have I. Honestly, I haven’t fucked in a bed since…eh, I don’t fucking know when.”
“I’ve never worn anyone’s clothes either.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t fuck people more than once.” Neither does he. We know this about each other already. It was obvious the night we met. But I find myself needing to give him more. “Apart from one person, but he was too good for me and I broke his heart.”
Mal snorts. “I must be your fucking karma then.”
If he is, I’m not complaining, even as the casual hand he has on my stomach seems to touch me with more purpose, and his laser focus on me turns assessing.
“You need to eat,” he says, after a pause I can barely stand. “If you can’t, we need to find someone cleverer than me to help you.”
Denial reaches my lips. But I swallow it down. He’s not wrong, even if he has no idea how much it matters that he’s not afraid to say this shit to me.
I nod and use his offered hands to pull myself upright. “Shower with me first?”
We get clean beneath the cool water Mal needs to stay upright.
Then he sits with me while I eat every half hour for the rest of the night. Tiny portions of bland food that make me want to light myself on fire, but it is what it is.
We fuck again. On the couch. The lights are low, the TV playing an old game show that makes Mal laugh. He’s at my back, but for the long, slow space in time he’s inside me, his lips fused to mine, it doesn’t feel that way.
His dick, though…it still feels bigger than it did a week ago.
“Maybe you’ve shrunk,” Mal tells me when I come back from the bathroom with that on my mind and sink into his embrace again so naturally I don’t know it’s happening until I’m there and Armageddon couldn’t make me move.
I think he’s serious until his expression sobers for real. “Can I ask you something?”
I shrug. “If you like.”
“Did you puke in the shower just now?”
“No, but I’d lie to you if I had.”
Dark humour lights Mal’s eyes. “Good to know. Can I tell you something?”
I nod, slowly, feeling the weight of the food in my belly, and everything that’s passed between us. His phone is on the coffee table. He brought it with him from the bedroom like he’s expecting a call on a device, until now, he’s seemed happy to drop in the sea.
That job.
Madrid.
I’ve seen the messages?—
“I’m not leaving.” Mal cuts through my spiralling thoughts. “Whatever happens with you and me, I need to be where Jack is for a while. I never realised how hard it’s been to live without him until I got him back.”
Relief soothes the wounds I’ve ripped open. “Does he know?”
“I think so. I told him I’d go to some military head shed with him. Get my noggin evaluated.” Mal raps a fist to his temple. “Unless he thinks I’m lying, but he should know me better than that.”
“Is this you warning me that you’re sticking around?”
“If you need warning.” Mal’s sprawled on the couch, long limbs everywhere. But his gaze is shrewd, and what’s coming should rattle me.
Should.
It doesn’t.
“This thing you have.” He skates a palm down my bare torso, ghosting it over my belly, before he drags it up again, chasing the goosebumps he’s left in his wake. “I’m not good at saying the right shit. But I want to learn. And I want you to know I’m here, for whatever you need.”
This thing . I wish it had a better name. I wish it didn’t exist. “I don’t want you to change.”
Mal’s hand slips from me. “Not even a little bit?”
I put it back. “ No .”
He smiles, but it’s brief, replaced by unfamiliar seriousness all too soon. “I’m not like Jack and Sol. I’m definitely going to fuck this up on a regular basis.”
“You can’t fuck it up worse than I have.”
“I wanted to shake you awake and force feed you.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t do it. You made me crumpets and didn’t say shit when I ate them like a fucking sparrow.”
Mal concedes that, but it’s hard to know what he’s thinking. What I’m thinking when this is the frankest—and longest—conversation I’ve ever had about this.
“I need to stop calling you Sky.”