Chapter 18
Liam locked the door behind us.
Then Liam turned around, standing by the bed, and looked at me.
"C'mere," he said.
I went. The bed was a step away and I crossed it and his hands were already on me, one at my jaw and one sliding under the hoodie — his hoodie — flat against the small of my back, pulling me in.
He kissed me slow at first and then not slow at all, and I felt the whole long awful day start to burn off at the edges.
"I want to do the thing we haven't done," I said against his mouth. I'd planned to lead up to it. I didn't. It just came out. "Tonight. I want you to —"
"Yeah?" He pulled back an inch. His eyes were dark. "You sure? Today was a lot."
"I'm sure."
"Because if you're reaching for it to not feel the day —"
"Liam." I caught his wrist. Held it against my chest so he could feel how fast my heart was going. "I spent all morning in a room where I didn't get to choose a single thing. I want to choose this. I've wanted it since Boston." My voice dropped. "I want you inside me. Stop making me say it twice."
Something flared in his face. He kissed me hard enough to back me into the wall.
"Okay."
He got the hoodie off me in one pull and dropped it on the floor and then his mouth was on my throat, that spot under my jaw he'd mapped weeks ago, and my hips pushed into his before I told them to.
He walked me backward to the bed and I sat and he came down over me, and for a while it was just that.
Hands and mouths, the heat building, the narrow mattress creaking, his weight a good kind of heavy on top of me.
He stripped my joggers off and then his own and pressed back down skin to skin, both of us hard, the contact pulling a sound out of me I didn't plan. He rolled his hips once, slow, dragging against me, and I grabbed his shoulder.
"You feel so good," I moaned.
"I'm just getting started." He grinned, that grin, the one that undid me. Then he kissed down my chest, my stomach, the line below my navel, and wrapped his hand around me and took my dick in his mouth, and my head went back against the pillow.
He'd gotten good at this. His tongue and his fist working me in the same rhythm, his free hand splayed on my hip holding me down, and I lost a couple of minutes to it, to the wet heat and the pressure. By the time he pulled off I was breathing hard. My cock throbbed letting out a drizzle of precum.
He took me deep one more time, then pulled almost all the way off — just the head of my dick resting on his tongue — and brought two fingers to his mouth, wetting them slow, his eyes locked on mine.
Then his hand slid lower, between my legs, and his fingertips found me.
Just rubbing. Slow circles against the tight ring of muscle, no pressure, just there.
His mouth sank back down on me at the same time and my whole body came up off the bed.
"Fuck — Liam —"
He pulled off, grinning, but his fingers didn't stop. "Yeah. That's the idea."
"You're very sure of yourself," I managed, "for a guy who's never done this."
"Done plenty." That cocky tilt to his mouth, fingers still circling, slow and maddening.
"Maybe not this exact thing." A little more pressure, and I gasped.
"Not that different either. Same idea." He leaned up over me, mouth at my ear, his fingers never letting up.
"So here's how tonight goes. I'm the expert. You do what I say."
Something in me just gave.
I can't explain what those words did to me. I'd spent my whole life being the one who decided, never once let go of the wheel, because letting go of the wheel was how people got hurt.
Stop steering. Let him have all of it.
"Okay," I breathed. "Okay. Yeah."
I reached down and got my hand around him. His dick was hard, hot, slick at the tip. I stroked him slow, and the sound he made went straight down my spine.
"I want it." Past pride now. Past the careful Harrington control. "I want it so bad, Liam. Whatever you want. I'll do anything you want — just, please."
His forehead dropped to mine. His fingers stilled for a second, and I felt the tremor in them. Under all the cocky, he was as new to this as I was.
It made me love him in a way I still couldn't say out loud. Love. Liam was my boyfriend and he was about to fuck me and there was that word.
He reached past me into the drawer and came back with lube.
"Tell me if it hurts," he said, and the joking dropped out of his voice. "I mean it. We stop the second you say. "
The first touch made me flinch. Cold, and then his finger circling, slow, patient, and my whole body wanted to clamp down — every instinct I had insisting this was wrong, protect, keep out. My body didn't know how to let something in.
"Breathe," Liam said. His other hand spread flat on my stomach, warm, holding me to the bed. "You're somewhere else. Come back to me."
I breathed. He waited. He pushed in slow, just the tip of one finger, and held there until the resistance eased, and then a little more.
"Okay?"
"Okay. Weird. But okay."
"Weird's allowed." He worked it gentle, in and out, unhurried, and the strange gave way to something else.
A low, surprising warmth I hadn't expected, building each time he moved.
When he added a second finger I tensed again and he stopped, just stopped, mouth on my hip, breathing with me until I unwound.
"There you go," he murmured. "God, look at you."
He curled his fingers and found something that made my back come off the mattress.
"Fuck —"
"Yeah?" His voice went rough. "Found it."
"Do that again."
"So bossy for a guy who's not in charge right now.
" But he did it again, and again, until I was rocking down onto his hand without deciding to, my cock dripping against my stomach, every careful thought I'd ever had burned clean out of my head.
For once there was no audience. Just my body and his hands and the want.
"Liam. Now. Please."
"What do you want golden boy?" He asked.
"I want you in me. I want your dick."
He pulled his fingers free and I felt the absence of them like a complaint. He slicked himself, lined up, and braced over me on one forearm so his face was right above mine.
"Look at me," he said. "Whole time. Okay?"
"Okay."
He pushed in.
I'd been warned it would be a lot and it was. The stretch, the burn, my body's whole twenty-year reflex screaming back up, protect, keep out. I gritted my teeth and Liam went still instantly, buried halfway, his forehead dropping to mine, both of us shaking.
"Hey," he breathed. "I've got you. I'm not moving. Breathe with me."
I breathed with him. The blunt instrument.
The boy who'd put his fist through Marcus's face, whose body had only ever been for the boat and the fight, he was holding himself dead still inside me, every muscle in his arms locked with the effort of not moving, just so I could catch up.
I'd never been handled like that in my life.
Like I was something worth the patience.
"More," I said.
"You sure?"
"Yes," I whimpered.
He moaned and pushed the rest of the way, slow, until he was all the way in, his hips flush against me, his breath stuttering against my cheek.
"Don't move yet," I said.
"Wasn't going to." His voice was wrecked. "You feel — Christ, Alex."
We stayed like that. The resistance held a long moment, the wrongness, the rightness, the bracing, the door my body had kept shut my whole life refusing to believe it was allowed to open.
And then it did.
Something let go all at once. The clench releasing, the burn turning over into heat, my body deciding, finally, that it was safe.
Like the hull lifting out of the water when a boat swings — that exact thing, the drag I'd carried my whole life dropping away, the shell rising, no more fighting the water, just gliding over it.
I made a sound I'd never made before, low in his ear, and his whole body answered it.
"There it is," he whispered, the way he says it on the water when the boat finally goes. "There it is."
He drew back, slow, and pushed in again, and this time there was no fear under it at all. Just him, all the way, filling the last locked room I'd kept shut even from myself and me, holding him there, holding him in, us together.
I let him stay.