Chapter Nineteen
Savage
I can’t breathe. This isn’t a new feeling for me, but the circumstances definitely are. My chest is heaving while my body tries to find anything to latch onto so it can straighten itself out after the most dizzying orgasm I’ve ever had. I’m distracted, so it takes me a minute to notice that Micah is still looking at me like I’m a bomb, and he’s trying to figure out if he cut the right color wire.
I’m also trembling, but I don’t know whether to blame that on the orgasm, the fact that my mind is blown into a thousand disparate pieces, or the shower water that’s finally beginning to run cold.
“Come on,” Micah says, his voice more gentle than I’ve ever heard it, and his thumb tracing a soft trail over my cheek the way he’s taken to doing so often. “Let’s get cleaned up.”
“But you—” My voice is raspy with disuse, and I trail off, looking down at his crotch. He came into the shower in boxer briefs, I’m guessing to preserve what few barriers were left between us, although I clearly shot that all to hell. But they’re soaked through, and the dark fabric is clinging to every inch of him. I can see the outline of his cock as clearly as if he were naked, and my eyes trip over it for a second before getting trapped there.
It’s thick and long. Thicker and longer than mine, which is devoutly average, and looks even more huge and disproportionate on his slender body. I can see the way the fabric traces the flared head, and I can see how hard he is. How he’s straining upward, trapped between the wet material and his stomach, thick and practically pulsing with arousal.
Which is good? I’m glad that he’s not disgusted by whatever we just did, and only tolerating it to make me feel better because I’m such a hair-trigger disaster he’s worried that one false move will set me off on a trail of self-destruction. But I’m also trying not to think about what it is we actually just did, because it seems so monumental and perspective-shifting that accepting it into my brain all at once will make me snap.
I let myself glance at the edges of it. Darting, fleeting glimmers of this new reality dancing at the periphery of my awareness. Nothing more than that until my chest has stopped heaving and I’m not still thrumming with the afterglow of that orgasm.
Micah should come, right? He should get to come, too. He’s hard. He deserves it, after everything he does to take care of me, all the way up to coaxing said orgasm out of me with whispered filthy but loving words and electric touches. By letting me hump his hip like a desperate animal until I spilled myself all over my little brother.
No, not brother. Stepbrother. Former stepbrother. Fuck. I don’t even know how to think of him anymore.
Mine.
My Bambi.
The thought makes me tremble harder, flushing with adrenaline at the realization that I would do anything and everything to protect this man. Even from myself. I think he mistakes it for distress, though, because he wraps his arms around me and pulls me into a tight hug under the now freezing water.
I slip a clumsy hand between us and grab his shaft through his underwear, pulling a sound out of him that’s more breathy and… feminine than I’ve ever heard him make. I love seeing this soft, vulnerable side of him, which is different from all the vulnerable sides I’ve seen before, and my normally worthless dick is already trying to rally in response.
What is happening to me? And why don’t I hate it?
I move my hand down his length once, pulling another delicious noise out of him before he pushes back from me.
“It’s okay, Tadhg.” He’s a little breathless but composed. “I don’t need that right now. Let’s get out of this water and take a breath.”
My heart stutters, and my brain feels like it’s flattening and twisting, trying to figure out the hidden meaning behind his words. He doesn’t want it? Or he just needs a minute? The specter of rejection is looming so large over both of us, and I hate how my fragile, fucked-up mind is just waiting for it to swoop in and crush me.
I don’t say anything, but I think I manage a nod. My mouth is still hanging open as I breathe heavily, and droplets of water keep gathering on my bottom lip before dripping to the floor.
Micah hesitates, studying my face for a moment. It’s weird to see him look unsure. He was a nervous kid, and I was used to him being unsure about everything. But here, in this reality, he’s always in charge of the situation. His hesitance seems out of place, and I want to wipe it off his face.
But he doesn’t give me the chance, because he seems to come to some decision before leaning in and kissing me again. Just like before, his kiss is firm and demanding, making me open up to him immediately in a way that makes my stomach bottom out like an elevator in freefall.
Everything in me clenches in anticipation, but he doesn’t push it any farther.
The little voice demanding over and over again to know why I don’t hate this is getting quieter, drowned out by the white noise of pleasure and adrenaline that seem to take over whenever he touches me like this.
He breaks the kiss eventually with a contented little hum, and I already want to find a way to get him to make that noise again. Something about it makes me vibrate with satisfaction.
“Come on,” he repeats, more serious this time.
He takes my hand in his, which feels a little silly because my hand is bigger but he still manages to make me feel enveloped. Then he stands and turns off the water, pulling me to stand with him. Once I’m in the open air, I realize just how cold I’ve gotten, and my trembling turns to full on shivering.
Micah smiles at me fondly when he hears me hiss in a sharp breath between teeth that are on the verge of chattering. My body is a floodplain of adrenaline right now, which isn’t helping, but he’s shivering, too. Without a word, he pulls us both out and wraps me in not one but two towels before doing the same for himself.
Once there’s a towel around his waist, he shucks off his sodden underwear. I caught enough of a glimpse to see that his erection had deflated, which isn’t surprising, given the cold. But it does make me feel a pang of something. Guilt, maybe.
Or more like I missed a moment that I didn’t want to miss. Which is yet another thought that my brain—now frayed tissue-paper thin—can’t truly wrap itself around.
We both take a second to roughly towel off before heading down the hallway. I follow Micah into the bedroom, and he throws some of my clothes at me before getting dressed himself.
It’s all soft things. Sweats and cotton t-shirts. Once we’re clothed, Micah runs a towel over his hair one more time before throwing back the covers on the bed and pushing me unceremoniously toward it.
I don’t know if he’s expecting me to object, or freak out, or what. But so far I’m successfully keeping all the freaked-out parts of me walled up somewhere else, and the part of me that’s in control is mostly just dazed.
I climb into bed, and the sweet relief that courses through me makes me realize just how exhausted I really was. Not that I did much to earn that exhaustion. Torture is what my body is built for, it’s hardly a marathon. But all the weepy, self-indulgent equivocating afterwards seems to really have taken it out of me.
I cast that thought aside with another mental shrug and ignore my ever-growing later pile of problems.
Instead of climbing in with me, like I expected, Micah turns away. And it makes all that dulled panic and uncertainty rise right back up inside me. I jolt up, catching his wrist and holding him more tightly than I probably should, because he turns to look at me with wide eyes.
His mouth makes a small, shocked ‘o’ for a second, before his brain seems to piece it all together. Then everything about him softens all at once. His eyes crinkle at the side, and he leans over the bed to put his face only inches in front of mine.
“I’m coming back,” he says in a conspiratorial whisper, sort of like we did when we were kids. “I’m just getting you some water and something to eat.”
I don’t know what to say to that. The truth is, it makes the trembling from before start up again, but this time deep, deep inside my chest in a place no one can see. The place that has always been dry and dusty because I haven’t exactly lived a life where someone was cutting the crusts off my sandwiches or bringing me glasses of water.
Instead of speaking, I grunt my acquiescence, and it makes Micah give me another small smile. I uncurl my fingers from his wrist one by one, and before I know it, I’m alone in the room.
I hate it. It lets my mind drift toward all the walls inside me and the places they’re bulging, where fissures are beginning to form from holding back too much with too little for too long.
Numbness washes over me, because it’s easier than anything else, and I don’t know how much time passes until Micah comes back. When he looks at me this time, it’s with a little frown instead of that warm expression. I’m lying down, I realize. He sits on the mattress next to me and puts a plate down on the bedside table along with his obnoxiously oversized Hydroflask thing, then his fingers gently brush some hair away from my forehead.
“Can you sit up for me for a minute to eat something?” he asks, which is a lot easier than the other things he might have, like Are you okay? Or What did we just do?
With a groan, I pull myself up into a sitting position. Micah looks pleased and sits cross-legged on the mattress opposite me, reaching back and then depositing the plate between us.
It really is sandwiches. Not with the crusts cut off, because that would be ridiculous, but still. There’s a little pile of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the plate, all cut diagonally in half. Like something you would see at a kid’s birthday party.
Micah grabs one and starts eating it completely cavalierly, before nudging the plate toward me. I pick one up, but I’m slow to bring it to my mouth. It feels weird in my hand.
I suddenly worry that I didn’t get all the blood out from under my nails. When I look at my hand, it seems too big and too rough and scarred to be holding something like this. But the way Micah is watching me intensely as he chews his own sandwich tells me I won’t get away with not eating it.
When I take a bite, the sweet and salty flavors explode on my tongue in that way they do when you haven’t eaten in way too long, and your mouth forgot what food tastes like. Like when you’re so fucking thirsty that when you finally get to drink, water suddenly tastes like the most delicious elixir on the planet.
Micah nods slightly, still watching me, and his approval makes this all go down easier. Even if it shouldn’t. I shouldn’t need that from him, but it helps anyway.
In silence, we work our way through all the sandwiches and then pass the ridiculous flask of water between us until it’s empty and Micah finally seems satisfied.
Then he finally lets me lie down again. Just when I feel so tired my body might punch through into another dimension of existence. Like I’m floating in a land that’s parallel to this one, but where the air is viscous, and every movement is weighed down by extra gravity.
We lie on our sides, not touching, but looking at each other. Daylight filters in around the edges of Micah’s blackout curtains. It’s only a little, so we can still barely see each other, but you can tell from the color that the sun is already high in the sky outside and it’s probably getting hot. I need to close my eyes, but I can’t.
Instead, I watch the little dust motes floating in the air between us, caught in each tiny spear of sunlight that’s broken through. I watch the way Micah blinks slowly and watches me back, his mind obviously humming with a thousand things he hasn’t said yet but wants to.
Eventually, when neither of us has moved or closed our eyes, Micah reaches out to me. He cups my cheek for what feels like the thousandth time since I got here.
I hate it. I hate the way it makes me feel soft and fragile and like something that needs his protection. I hate it, but that doesn’t stop me from nuzzling into his palm like a needy animal, taking in a deep, shuddering breath as the warmth of his skin manages to calm something in me that I didn’t know was in distress.
“We can talk about all this later, yeah?” Micah whispers to me across the darkness.
“Yeah, Bambi. Of course.”
“Just get some sleep for me. Please.”
The please crumples something inside of me, just like it always does. I reach out and grab him by the waist, dragging his body across the foot and a half of mattress that’s in between us.
Instead of objecting or stiffening, Micah just sighs. His body is soft and supple under my hands, and he lets me arrange him next to me, pressed against me everywhere. He slots one of his legs between mine and then slides his arms around my shoulders until my face is pressed against his neck. I keep my arms around his waist, exactly where they belong, and for a second, I cling to him so tightly that I don’t know if he can breathe.
This is it. This is better. I don’t know what the fuck any of it means, but not letting go is the only thing that makes me feel like I’m not unspooling at some distant corner of the universe, so I’m going to roll with that for as long as he’ll let me and deal with the consequences later.
Micah
I don’t know what time it is when we wake up, except that it’s truly nighttime. Nothing but darkness sits on the other side of those curtains, and the room is so black I can only make out the vague outline of Tadhg’s face, still only inches away from mine.
Thank god I had the foresight to call out for my shift while I was making those sandwiches before. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to leave him until we’d at least had one conversation about what is happening between us.
The House Supervisor was pissed, and that’s putting it mildly. I’m clearly on thin ice. But I’m not very replaceable in a rural area like this, so I feel like I can keep pushing a little more before I’m at risk of losing my job.
And if I have to pick between losing my job or potentially losing my brother, I’m picking Tadhg, every time.
Brother .
I shouldn’t say that, even in the privacy of my own mind. We always threw the word around pretty casually, even after we’d been apart for so long. ‘Stepbrother’ seems clumsy, and we were so fucking close for the brief time that we were family, I never really thought it mattered what people thought about how we were related.
The only important thing to me back then was that we belonged to each other. We were the only family we could rely on. The only ones in each other’s corner.
Now, after all this time, I still feel like we belong to each other. But I guess my child’s brain couldn’t comprehend that it was maybe meant to be in a different way—a different kind of family—and it’s taken my adult brain a really long time to catch up.
He’s fucking beautiful. I’ve always known that.
Even with his cheap tattoos and his redneck haircut that’s one step away from being a mullet, he’s still stunning to look at. Light golden skin with just a few freckles. Those fucking eyes with matching shades of gold in them. The kind of strong jaw and straight nose I always associated with what Patrick called “real men”, but also with that gorgeous, pouty mouth.
If I’m being truly honest with myself. If I really dig deep into my inner bank of denial… Maybe I’ve projected a little of what I used to love about Tadhg onto the kinds of men that I fuck. There are maybe a few similarities there. If I really, really let myself think about it.
His entire body is like a wonderland of curves and muscle, so pretty and perfect he could have been made in a lab. But like a real person, not a Ken doll.
Well, a little like a Ken doll. But one with golden body hair in all the right places and little scars and imperfections and points of softness where the human body is supposed to be soft.
He’s my Ken doll. And while my rational self is screaming to figure out the ramifications of this huge, paradigm-altering shift in our relationship, the basic bitch part of myself just wants to take him out of the box and play with him.
No. Not until he wants to.
If he ever wants to.
I can’t push him. He doesn’t like to make decisions, I know, but in this case, he’s going to have to lead a little or I’ll feel like I’m dragging him into some toxic dynamic for my own twisted pleasure because I’ve just uncovered the world’s most deeply buried subconscious lifelong crush.
“You’re thinking very hard.”
His voice interrupts me, and when I peer further into the darkness, I realize his eyes are open and he’s watching me with that vulpine, calculating expression he sometimes gets.
“Mmm.” I reach out to touch his cheek, and he immediately presses into it, like he always does, which soothes some of my worry. “I was thinking about what happened.”
Tadhg stiffens. “Yeah?”
“I know this is a big question, but are you okay with it?”
I can just about make out the line of his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows, but then he nods, the movement taking my hand with it.
“It was good. Are you okay with it?”
I bite my lip. I don’t know whether I should be honest about how freaking okay with it I am. How seeing him rubbing one out against my hip unleashed something hungry in me, and I’m currently sporting raging fucking morning wood that’s reaching out toward his body like a heat-seeking missile.
“Yeah. The more I think about it, the more I think maybe I wanted it for longer than I realized.”
Tadhg’s eyebrows raise, but I can faintly hear his breath quickening in the quiet room.
“Really?”
I nod. “Have you ever done anything with a man before?” It’s the million-dollar question, and I don’t know how he’ll react, but I have to ask. I’m not asking him to label his sexuality, because I know what his dad is like and how this must be hard for him. But everything I know about him told me he liked girls. I want to know how much is shifting for him right now.
His face clouds, and he pulls fractionally away from my hand.
“Can we not talk about that right now? I don’t… I just. It’s not important. I liked it. It was good. I don’t want to think about anything…”
Outside of this room, where the consequences live .
That’s the unspoken end of his sentence.
“Sure.”
He huffs a little, wiggling in the sleep-warm sheets like he’s not comfortable. Then, just like he did last night, he reaches out and grabs me. Without a second’s hesitation, he drags me across the sheets and into his broad chest, pressing us together.
Only this time, it’s so abrupt that I don’t have the chance to hide my erection, so he gets a stiff fucking jab of hard dick right into his abdomen.
Tadhg makes this breathy little gasping sound that is so precious I want him to make it a million more times, and I file it away in my mind as a memory I will take to my grave.
He hesitates, then his big hands reach down to cup my ass and roll my hips toward him, rubbing my cock against his stomach. This time it’s my turn to gasp in surprise.
“You really liked it?” he asks me in a breathy whisper, continuing to squeeze my ass and keep my hips rocking fluidly against him.
“I think it’s pretty clear how much I liked it,” I whisper back, wrapping my arms around his shoulders so I can put my mouth next to his ear.
Tadhg keeps us rocking in silence for a few more minutes. I can feel him getting hard as well, his length bulging the front of his sweats and rubbing against me with every movement. Eventually, he rolls onto his back so I’m straddling him again, and I take advantage of the moment to bring our faces together and kiss him.
I don’t care about morning breath. I don’t care about anything. I feel like I could kiss him like this every day for the rest of eternity and never get sick of it.
He’s perfectly soft and pliant beneath me, responsive to my every touch, letting me fuck my tongue into his mouth and giving it back as good as he gets, all while letting out those breathy little moans and masculine grunts that are all going to be the death of me.
I can feel his body start to get tense with frustration as he seeks out more—more contact, more friction, more something.
But I swore I wouldn’t let this go too fast until I knew he was really okay.
No matter how much I’d love to roll him over right now and fuck him until he screams and cries and forgets he ever thought of me as a brother, or a weak little child, or anything other than the man turning him inside out with pleasure.
“Fuck,” he whispers when I break our lips apart for a second.
I don’t think he means anything. He’s already lust-glazed and staring at me with blown pupils, waiting for me to tell him what to do next. Like the most perfect little…
None of that.
Not yet.
I shuffle down his body until I’m sitting between his spread legs instead of straddling them. Tadhg watches me intently the whole time, trying to make my features out in the dark, so I reach over and turn on a very soft side light I have for just this purpose. It bathes him in a cool glow, and the faint shadows it casts over him only make the curves and dips of his body look even more tantalizing.
When I bring my hand to his crotch, I rub my palm from the base of his cock all the way up with gentle pressure, over the fabric, but it’s enough to make him gasp and writhe.
So needy .
Then I grab his hand and bring it down to where mine just was.
“Pull yourself out and show me how you like to be touched.”
Tadhg looks at me for a minute while the words sink in. His brow furrows, but then he seems to understand. Instead of pulling himself out, though, he pushes down his sweats and boxer-briefs in one movement, pulling up one leg at a time to get rid of them entirely and managing to do it more gracefully than he should be able to.
Then he arches his back and reaches behind him, taking hold of the collar of his t-shirt and tugging it over his head. It gets thrown to the floor in the same direction as the pants.
In barely a few seconds, he went from fully dressed to completely naked and spread out in front of me like a fucking snack. I know I’ve seen him naked plenty of times since he’s been injured, but normally with a clinical eye. Or when he’s having a meltdown.
This is the first time when there’s nothing else hovering over us, and I’m free to let my eyes rove over every inch of him, all the way down to his leaking erection.
As soon as I look at his cock, he fists it and starts to jerk himself. He doesn’t fuck around. The movement is hard and fast, and soon he’s panting, his hips jerking off the bed a little with each movement, his eyes flicking between meeting mine and looking at the tent in my own pants.
I stroke my length a few times over the fabric as well, to show him I’m in this with him. I just want to give him the chance to be in control.
“That’s it. Fuck, you look pretty. You’re like a perfect doll, made just for me. You know that, right?”
The words spill out of my mouth before I have the chance to think them through. I mean them, though.
Tadhg is breathing hard, still jerking himself roughly. His eyes are wide, and he’s writhing but there’s also an uncertainty to his expression that I don’t like. I put my hands on his thighs, tracing the muscles there in little patterns with my fingernails and trying to control the pulsing arousal that’s building in me at how fucking hot this is.
“That’s it, doll,” I whisper, because his hand is moving faster and I think he must be close to coming.
But then that uncertain expression becomes closer to panicked. His gaze leaves mine, and I hear him mutter, “ No, no, no, no ,” under his breath.
Before I can say anything, Tadhg shifts to lean up a little, and his movements get even faster. Too fast, and his grip is so hard it seems like it must hurt. I’m looking at it, which is when it hits me what’s happening.
His cock is soft in his hand, and he’s tugging at himself frantically, as if he’s trying to summon back the wilted erection with sheer willpower and friction. But his clenched fist looks too tight, and the expression on his face is so fucking far from the pleasured one I saw just a minute ago.
“Tadhg, stop,” I say, leaning forward to grab his wrist. “Stop, stop, stop, you’ll hurt yourself.”
I’m babbling, but he’s barely paying attention to me. He seems to have sunk into a half-panicked place in his mind. Gently, I pull at his wrist until he lets himself go, and then I climb into his lap and take his face in my hands until he’s looking at me.
He’s breathing heavily, looking at me with wide eyes. It’s a totally disproportionate amount of panic for something that’s happened to every guy at some point in their life, but I feel like I can see the bigger picture here.
When you have so much panic being penned in by such thin, shaky walls for so long, it only takes the smallest cracks to let it all gush out.
“Shhh. It’s okay.” I repeat myself for a minute while he catches his breath, and then I capture his mouth in a kiss to distract him even more.
He kisses me back with so much fervor it’s like he’s trying to climb inside of me. I only break the kiss once I can feel him settle beneath me. I can also feel a hint of his erection returning and putting pressure on the underside of my thigh, but we’re not paying attention to that right now.
“What happened?”
He shakes his head, not looking at me.
“Did you not want to do it?” I can’t stop myself from tracing his bottom lip with my thumb as I ask him. I need the truth, but I really hope the answer isn’t that I’ve already pushed him too far when that’s the last thing I wanted to do.
“No,” he says, his voice rough. “I wanted to. Really. It just happens sometimes.” His eyes dart to meet mine, and then he glances down again. “A lot. It happens a lot,” he says in a hushed tone.
“Oh.” I can’t think of anything else to say while I absorb that information. “Do you want to stop?”
He immediately shakes his head and then kisses me again with the same frenetic desperation as before.
I pull back, though, because we’re getting off-track. I can’t help but smile a little as I do. “Okay, okay, I get the picture. We’ll keep going, but promise you’ll tell me if you want to stop, okay? I won’t be mad.”
Tadhg nods, looking at me with the same mixture of hunger and apprehension in his eyes as before. “I just can’t always… I can’t?—”
“Shh,” I interrupt, wiggling a little on his lap for emphasis. “Look, I know you’re used to being the man or whatever heteronormative bullshit, but you don’t actually have to be a big swinging dick to have a good time in bed. There are lots of things people can do, regardless of what junk they have and how it works. And I think that you”—I slide back off his lap and push him until he’s lying down again, with me kneeling between his legs, still fully clothed while he’s naked and needy underneath me—“are secretly dying for the chance to be someone’s little pillow princess.”
Tadhg’s eyebrows raise, but he doesn’t say anything. He lets me keep talking, shivering and arching his back as I run my fingernails down his sides as I do.
“So why don’t we try that for a while. And let your poor dick have some rest.”
“What do you mean?” He asks like he doesn’t want to know the answer.
“Do you trust me?”
He nods, and it’s the most sure I’ve seen him look about anything in a while.
“Then lie back, relax, and let me take care of everything, doll. All you have to do is tell me if you hate it, and I’ll stop. Otherwise, feel free to react however you want. Personally, I hope you’re a screamer.”
Even in the low light, I can see the blush that crawls up his chest and neck, all the way to his hairline, and it does a lot toward bringing back my own hard-on that flagged while we were talking.
I smile at him briefly, because how could I not? He’s such a good boy, and he doesn’t even know it.
Well, I guess it’s time for him to find out.