Chapter 15 Nothing Left to Hide #3
“Bullshit.” Another step closer. “You know exactly what I'm talking about. The way you watch me when you think I'm not paying attention. The way your hands linger when you're patching me up. The way you can barely fucking breathe when I'm too close.” His voice dropped. “How long, Declan?”
“This isn't—” I took a step back. Hit the counter. “This isn't a conversation we should be having.”
“Why not?” Troy kept advancing. “Because it makes you uncomfortable? Because it's easier to pretend you don't feel it?”
“There's nothing to feel.”
“You're lying.” He was right in front of me now. Close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his skin. “You've been lying to yourself since I got back. I see it every time you look at me. Every time you touch me. Every time you try so fucking hard not to want me.”
“Troy, stop.” My voice came out rough and desperate. “This is wrong. You're my—”
“Your what?” He cut me off. “Your stepson? The kid you raised? That's what you're going to hide behind?” His laugh was bitter. “I haven't been a kid in a long fucking time. And whatever this is between us stopped being about family the second you started looking at me like you wanted to devour me.”
“I don't—” The denial stuck in my throat. Wouldn't come out because it was a lie and we both knew it.
“Yes, you do.” Troy's hand came up. Pressed flat against my chest, right over my pounding heart. “Your heart is hammering. You can barely look at me. And right now, you're trying so hard not to grab me that your hands are shaking.”
He was right. My hands were curled into fists at my sides, shaking with the effort of not reaching for him, not pulling him closer, not giving in to what I'd been fighting for weeks.
“This can't happen,” I said. Voice barely there. “You know this can't happen.”
“Why not?” His hand slid higher. Fingers brushing the side of my neck, sending electricity through my nervous system. “Because of what other people would think? Because it's taboo? Because you're afraid of what it means?”
“Because I raised you.” The words came out desperate. “Because I was supposed to protect you. Not—not this.”
“You are protecting me.” Troy's voice softened slightly.
“You've been protecting me my whole fucking life. Even when I hated you for it. Even when I pushed you away. You stayed.” His thumb brushed along my jawline and I stopped breathing.
“But this? This isn't about protecting me. This is about you being too scared to admit what you want.”
“Troy, please—”
“Tell me you don't want me.” His eyes locked on mine. “Look me in the eye and tell me you don't think about touching me. About kissing me. About what it would feel like to give in to whatever the fuck has been building between us since I came home.”
I opened my mouth. The denial right there on my tongue. Ready to push him away. To do the right thing. To be the man I was supposed to be.
But the lie wouldn't come.
Because he was right. About all of it. I did want him. Had wanted him since he'd walked back into my life looking dangerous and broken and so fucking beautiful it hurt to look at him. I'd been fighting it for weeks. Burying it under guilt and duty and every reason this was wrong.
But standing here with him this close, with his hand on my skin and his eyes seeing straight through every defense I had, I couldn't lie anymore.
“This is wrong,” I said finally. Voice wrecked. “Everything about this is wrong.”
“I know.” Troy's other hand came up. Framed my face with both hands now, his touch gentle despite everything. “I don't care.”
“You should care. We both should.”
“Maybe.” His thumb traced across my lower lip and my breath caught.
“But I'm done pretending I don't want you.
Done pretending I haven't been thinking about this since I got back. Done lying to myself about what this is.” His eyes were dark and hungry.
“So tell me to stop, Declan. Tell me you don't want this and I'll walk away.
But if you can't say it, if you can't look me in the eye and deny what's between us, then stop fighting it.”
My hands came up without permission. Grabbed his hips. Pulled him closer until our bodies were flush, until I could feel every inch of him against me.
“Fuck,” I breathed. “Fuck, Troy, this is—”
“I know.” His forehead pressed against mine. “I know it's fucked up. I know it's wrong. But I don't care anymore. I'm done caring.”
Then Troy closed the distance.
The world stopped.
His mouth was hot and desperate against mine. Tasting like blood and grief and want we'd both been burying. His hands shook where they held my face. His breath came in broken gasps between kisses.
I kissed him back like I'd been holding the answer in my body for weeks and finally had permission to speak it.
This was wrong. Every part of this was wrong. He was my stepson. The boy I'd raised. The man I was supposed to protect, not want.
But I'd been lying to myself for so long that the truth felt like relief.
I wanted him. Had wanted him for longer than I could admit. Not as the boy he'd been. As the man he'd become. Dangerous and broken and beautiful in ways that made my chest ache.
Troy broke the kiss. Pulled back just enough to look at me. His eyes were dark and desperate and searching for permission.
“Tell me to stop,” he said. Voice wrecked. “Tell me this is fucked up and we can't do this and I'll walk away.”
I pulled him back in by the back of the neck and kissed him like I was apologizing for every time I'd stopped myself from doing it before.
Troy made a sound against my mouth and kissed me back with six weeks of accumulated wanting that I felt in my molars.
His mouth was hot and tasted like blood from the split lip and underneath that something I'd been wondering about since the first night he'd walked back through my door.
I walked him backward until his hips met the counter edge, not hard, just enough to anchor us both, and his hands moved from my hair to my face and cupped my jaw with a gentleness that was at war with everything else about him.
I pulled back a half inch. Just enough to look at him properly.
His eyes were dark and wet and he was breathing through his mouth and the bruising across his jaw made something in my chest do something complicated that had nothing to do with guilt.
My thumb found the cut above his eyebrow.
Traced the shape of the bruising there with the same attention I'd been disguising as first aid for the better part of an hour.
He went completely still under the touch, the way a wild thing goes still when it's deciding whether to trust the hand reaching for it.
I pressed my lips to his forehead. Held them there.
His exhale came out slow and shaking against my collarbone.
Both my hands moved to his ribs, careful of the worst of the bruising, just holding him, and I felt the moment his body stopped bracing for impact.
The wire tension he'd been carrying since the alley releasing by degrees, muscle by muscle, until he was leaning into me instead of squared off against me.
His hands slid from my jaw to my neck, fingers spreading wide across my shoulders, and he turned his face into mine.
Nose against my cheekbone. Mouth tracing the line of my jaw without quite kissing it, just breathing against the skin there, learning the topography of something he'd apparently been thinking about as long as I had.
I turned my head and found his mouth again.
Slower this time. Nothing frantic about it. His lips parted and I felt him exhale through his nose and my hands tightened fractionally against his ribs and he made that quiet sound again, the one that felt private, the one that didn't have an audience.
His fingers worked into my hair. Not pulling, just holding. The pads of his fingertips pressing against my scalp in a way that sent something warm all the way down my spine.
I kissed the corner of his mouth. His cheekbone. The unbruised side of his jaw, feeling the scratch of stubble against my lips. His head tipped back slightly, giving me the column of his throat, and I pressed my mouth to the pulse point there and felt it hammering against my lips.
His hands tightened in my hair.
I worked my way back up. Bit his jaw gently, nothing like the fighting earlier, just pressure, just presence. He turned his face into mine and his mouth caught my bottom lip and he sucked it slow and the sound I made against him wasn't something I could have stopped.
His forehead dropped to mine. Both of us breathing hard in the quiet kitchen. The only sounds the refrigerator's hum and the distant city and the ragged pull of air between two men standing in the wreckage of every wall they'd built.
My thumb traced his lower lip. Swollen from the fight and from me and warm under my touch. His eyes were closed, lashes wet, face open in a way I'd never seen it. Every year of careful armor stripped down to just him, just this, just the specific reality of his weight against my hands.
He turned his lips into my palm and pressed a kiss there that went through me like something breaking.
I pulled him back in. His mouth opened against mine and his whole body pressed closer and my arms wrapped around him properly, ribs and all, and he made a sound against my lips that tasted like relief.
Then his hands shifted. Moved from my hair to my shoulders, grip changing from pulling-close to something else entirely, and before I'd registered what was happening he'd turned us and walked me backward three steps and pressed me down onto the table's edge.
I sat. Not because he'd forced me. Because my legs made the decision before my brain caught up.