Chapter 10 #2
Neither of us steps away. The refrigerator hums through the doorway, and under it I can hear our breathing — his quicker than it should be, mine doing something complicated I'm trying to control and failing.
The garage is stuffy, the heat trapped under a roof that wasn't built for two men standing close enough to touch with ten years of want hanging in the air between them.
My palm finds his chest. Flat against the sternum, not hard enough to move him, hard enough to mean something — to make distance, set a boundary, do the thing my mouth can't, which is say stop or don't or wait.
The contact lands somewhere below the skin.
His chest is warm under my hand, his heartbeat hammering through the cotton, the rhythm of a man holding something back by sheer will and losing the fight.
He shoves back. One hand flat on my shoulder, enough to rock me half a step, not enough to make real distance — and the shove does the opposite of what a shove is for.
It closes the gap instead of widening it, because now my forearm is braced on the cabinet behind his shoulder and his fist is in my shirt, gripping the fabric at my chest, and we're holding each other at arm's length and chest to chest at once, which is a contradiction and also exactly where we've been headed since we were kids in that bed, pretending not to feel our fingers touch on the mattress in the dark.
The line breaks. Not with a sound. Not with a word. With a silence — the kind that happens when two people who've been furious at each other and desperate for each other in equal measure for most of their lives finally stop pretending the fury and the desperation are different things.
His mouth finds mine. Or mine finds his.
Neither of us will ever be able to say who moved first, and it doesn't matter, because once it starts there's no first — only the collision, hands dragging at clothes, his back hitting the bench with a thud that's obscenely loud in the quiet, my knee sliding between his thighs, both of us breathing hard through our noses because neither's going to make a sound that could wake Eileen down the hall.
His hand fists in my hair, gripping the back of my neck hard enough to hurt, and the hurt is good — anchoring, something to focus on besides the fact that this is happening, after ten years of wanting and walking and wanting anyway.
It's not gentle. Not slow. Two men who spent a decade building walls around the one thing they couldn't admit wanting, and the walls aren't coming down in an orderly demolition but a collapse, all at once, no regard for what gets buried.
I shove his t-shirt up and his skin is hot under my palm, smooth and taut over muscle, and he makes a sound — low, choked, barely there — and I swallow it with my mouth because sound travels in this house and the walls are too thin.
His hand finds my belt. Fumbles the buckle — once, twice, his fingers shaking with something that isn't fear — and then the leather gives and his hand is inside my jeans, palming me through cotton, and the contact is so direct my knees nearly go.
I brace on the bench, one hand on the scarred pine beside his hip, and he works me, rough and desperate, and I'm harder than I've been in years, and the who of it sits in my chest with everything else, and I don't look at it, because looking would mean stopping.
I get his jeans open. Push them down enough, my hand finding him, and he's hard and hot in my grip, and the sound he makes gets caught in his teeth and comes out as something between a groan and a whimper against my collarbone, and it travels straight down my spine and settles low in my gut like a lit fuse.
He pushes my hand away. Not rejecting — redirecting. His fingers wrap my wrist and guide it to the drawer at the end of the bench, and for half a second I don't understand, and then I do.
The drawer isn't locked. He pops it one-handed, blind, his eyes never leaving mine, and his fingers find a small bottle, clear, unlabeled, and press it into my palm.
No commentary. No negotiation. Just the bottle, my hand, and a decision made somewhere between his back hitting the bench and my knee finding its place between his thighs.
I pour too much. My hands aren't steady.
Nothing about me is. The liquid's cold on my fingers and warmer when I reach for him, and the sound he makes when my fingers press into him is the kind of sound that could end me in the wrong context, and this is absolutely the wrong context, and I don't care.
He turns. Plants both hands on the bench, hips pushed back, and I'm behind him, one hand on the small of his back holding him steady, the other working him open with a focus that belongs to another lifetime — one where this isn't my stepbrother and the garage isn't down the hall from Eileen and the ten years between us don't exist.
I push into him slow. One hand braced on the bench beside his, the other gripping his hip hard enough to mark, and he takes it — Christ, he takes it — back arching, head dropping between his shoulders, a hissed breath through his teeth I feel more than hear.
He's tight. Hot. His body clutching around me like it's been waiting, and the thought's dangerous and I push it away, because examining it means stopping, and stopping isn't an option.
Not with Cole Marek bent over a workbench in a garage that smells like motor oil and regret, taking me like it's something he's thought about, maybe for years, the same way I have — and neither of us is going to say it out loud, because saying it makes it real.