Chapter 11 #2
"I know you didn't know. That's the point." I took a breath. Let it out. "You were so busy protecting yourself that you didn't notice you were destroying me."
He looked like I'd gutted him. Good. He should know. He should understand exactly what his fear had cost.
But I was tired of being angry. Tired of being hurt. Tired of wanting someone who was standing right in front of me and still somehow out of reach.
"I'm still leaving," I said.
His whole body went rigid.
"Unless you can promise me something."
He waited. I could see him bracing himself, preparing for whatever blow I was about to deliver.
"Promise you'll talk to me." I held his gaze. "When you're scared, when you're pulling away, tell me. Don't just disappear. I can't survive another week of wondering what I did wrong."
"I can try."
"Try isn't good enough." I shook my head. "I need you to actually do it."
The silence stretched between us. I watched him struggle with it: the weight of what I was asking, the vulnerability it required, everything he'd spent his life building walls against.
"Okay." The word came out rough. Certain. "I'll do it."
I searched his face, looking for a lie, an escape clause, a crack where the truth might show.
I didn't find one.
"Okay," I said softly.
He cupped my face in his hands. His warm, slightly calloused palms sent electricity cascading down my spine.
"Okay?" he asked.
"Okay."
He kissed me.
I'd imagined this moment a hundred
times—in the quiet hours when he was at work, during the dark nights when I couldn't sleep, in every stolen glance and accidental touch that had built up between us like pressure behind a dam.
None of my imaginings came close to reality.
His mouth was hungry and desperate, like he'd been starving for weeks, and I was finally something he could taste. I gasped against his lips, and he swallowed the sound, his tongue sliding against mine, his hands tangling in my hair.
I kissed him back with all I had: every lonely night on that couch, every morning I'd watched him leave without looking at me, every moment I'd spent wanting him and convincing myself it was foolish.
He backed me against the dresser, and a stack of folded clothes tumbled to the floor. I laughed against his mouth. Actually laughed, for the first time in a week. His response was a sound that was part groan, part sob.
"I'm sorry," he said against my jaw. "I'm so fucking sorry."
"Stop apologizing and keep kissing me."
He did.
We eventually made it to the bed.
He laid me down like I was something precious, something breakable, and for once, I didn't mind being handled with care.
I'd spent my life being arranged by others, posed and positioned where I was supposed to be.
But this was different. This was him learning and discovering me, touching me like I was a gift he couldn't believe he'd been given.
"Still okay?" he asked, hovering over me.
"Yes." My voice was steadier than I expected. "I just... I haven't done this much. With anyone."
"We can go slow."
"I don't want slow." I reached up, curled my fingers around the back of his neck, and pulled him down. "I want you. I've wanted you since that night on the terrace, and I'm tired of not having what I want."
Something broke open in his expression. He kissed me again, and this time, when his weight settled over me, I arched up to meet him, letting him feel how much I wanted this. How much I wanted him.
"Too many clothes," I gasped against his mouth.
He sat back and stripped off his shirt in one efficient motion. I'd seen his body before. Glimpses in the bathroom, the morning after the blackout. But never like this. Never with permission to look, to touch, to trace the scars that mapped his history.
My fingers found the puckered skin below his ribs and the thin white line across his shoulder.
"Someday," he said, covering my hands with his. "Not now."
"Not now," I agreed, pulling him back down.
He undressed me slowly, peeling away layers as if unwrapping something precious. Every inch of skin he revealed, he mapped with his mouth. My collarbone. My sternum. The sensitive spot below my ribs that made me gasp and arch off the bed.
When his tongue circled my nipple, my whole body jerked.
"Sensitive," he murmured against my skin.
"I didn't know." I swallowed hard. "I didn't know that about myself."
"We'll find all of them." He did it again, slower, and I fell apart beneath him. "Every spot. Every sound. I want to know everything."
By the time he worked my pants off, I was shaking. My cock was hard and leaking, and when he wrapped his hand around me and stroked, I nearly came.
"Vance." His name came out broken. "I'm not going to last."
"You don't have to last." Another slow, deliberate stroke. "We have all night."
"But I want..." I forced the words out through the pleasure haze. "I want to feel you. Inside me."
His hand stilled. His eyes met mine, dark with desire.
"Are you sure?"
"I've thought about it every night for two weeks." I held his gaze. "I'm sure."
He retrieved supplies from the nightstand. I watched him move, appreciating the flex of muscle, the controlled power in every motion. When he settled back between my thighs, I had to remind myself to breathe.
"We'll go slow," he said. "Tell me if anything doesn't feel right."
I nodded.
The first press of his finger against me made me tense. He waited, patient, until I deliberately relaxed. Then he was inside me, just barely, and the sensation was strange but welcome. Different. New.
"Okay?"
"Okay." I breathed out slowly. "More."
He added a second finger, stretching carefully. It burned slightly, an unfamiliar fullness that made me squirm. But beneath the burn was something else. A building pressure that felt almost like pleasure.
When he curved his fingers and found something inside me, the world went white.
"Oh." I nearly came off the bed. "What was that?"
"There?" He did it again, and I cried out. "Good?"
"God. Yes. Please, don't stop."
He worked that spot until I was writhing, until words stopped making sense and all I could do was feel. The pleasure built in waves, cresting higher each time, and I was so close, so impossibly close.
"Please." The word tore out of me. "Vance, I need you."
"I know." He withdrew his fingers, and I whined at the loss. "I've got you."
The sound of foil tearing. The slick of lube. Then the blunt pressure of him against my entrance, and for one terrifying moment, I thought this won't work, he's too big, it's going to hurt.
"Breathe," he said, and pushed in slowly.
The stretch was intense, right on the edge of too much, my body struggling to accommodate him. But he gave me time, inch by inch, pausing whenever I tensed, letting me adjust. Gradually, the burn transformed into something else: fullness, completion, the sense of finally being whole.
"Okay?" he asked when he was fully seated.
I couldn't speak. He was inside me, filling me completely, and the intimacy was overwhelming. This man I had wanted for so long, who I thought didn't want me back, was inside my body, looking at me like I was the most precious thing he'd ever seen.
"Tobias?" Concern crept into his voice. "Talk to me."
"I'm okay." The words came out thick with emotion. "I'm more than okay. You feel..." I struggled to find the words. "I didn't know it could feel like this."
"Like what?"
"Like finally being where I belong."
His expression softened. He leaned down and kissed me, slow and deep, and when he started to move, I moved with him.
The rhythm was slow at first, letting me adjust to the sensation, but my body wanted more. I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, and he groaned against my neck.
"You feel so good." His voice was wrecked. "You're so perfect."
"Harder." I dug my nails into his back. "I won't break."
He gave me what I asked for, driving deeper and faster, hitting that spot inside me with every thrust. The pleasure built until I couldn't tell where I ended and he began. We were just bodies moving together, breaths mingling, sweat-slick skin sliding against skin.
"I'm close," I gasped. "Vance, I'm going to..."
He wrapped his hand around my cock and stroked, and I shattered. The orgasm tore through me, whiting out everything except the feel of him inside me, his hand on me, his voice in my ear saying my name like it was sacred.
I felt him follow moments later, the stutter of his hips, the warmth flooding inside me, the broken sound he made as he came.
Afterward, we lay tangled together in silence.
My head rested on his chest while his fingers traced patterns on my back. I felt his heartbeat under my cheek, gradually slowing from its racing pace.
"I cried," I said eventually. "After. That's normal, right?"
I felt him tense. "Did I hurt you?"
"No." I pressed closer. "I think I was just overwhelmed. I didn't know it could be like that. I didn't know I was allowed to have something that felt that good."
His arms tightened around me. "You're allowed. You're allowed to have anything you want."
"Right now I just want this." I tilted my head up to look at him. "Is that enough?"
"It's everything." He kissed my forehead. "Stay."
"I was going to."
"I mean stay for real. Not just tonight."
"What changed?"
"I stopped being more afraid of wanting you than of losing you."
I pressed a kiss to his chest, right over his heart, and felt his breath catch.
"Okay," I said. "I'll stay."
We lay in silence for a while as his fingers traced slow patterns on my back.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"Anything."
"The last day. Before the wedding." I kept my eyes on his chest, watching it rise and fall. "When I found you in the corridor to say goodbye. Did you know?"
"Know what?"
"That I was looking for you. During the whole walkthrough, I couldn't stop—" I shook my head. "Never mind. It's stupid."
"It's not stupid." His hand stilled on my back. "Tell me."
The final walkthrough had been agony.
I couldn't stop searching for him.
Every security uniform made my pulse spike. At every corner, I hoped he'd be there.
I found myself drifting, falling behind the group, lingering near service corridors while Elizabeth's mother debated napkin folds.
"Tobias, do keep up," my mother called.
I smiled, nodded, and kept searching.
When the walkthrough ended, I made an excuse about the restroom and slipped away.
I found him near the staff entrance.
He was checking his radio, back to me. When he heard my footsteps, he turned.
"Mr. Langford. Can I help you?"
"I wanted to thank you," I said. "For the terrace. And the fountain."
"Just doing my job, sir."
"It didn't feel like just a job."
His expression didn't change.
"The fountain was a safety issue," he said. "The terrace was routine patrol."
I waited for something more. There was nothing.
The silence stretched. I should leave.
"Safe travels, Mr. Langford."
"Goodbye," I managed.
I walked away without looking back, my face burning.
In the car, I watched the Grandview disappear, knowing I couldn't marry Elizabeth. Not because of a security guard who probably wouldn't remember my name next week, but because my desperate need to be seen by a stranger revealed everything about the life I'd been living.
"I made a fool of myself," I said. "Didn't I?"
"No."
"You couldn't wait to get rid of me. 'Safe travels, Mr. Langford.'" I tried to laugh. "Very professional."
"I was being professional. You were a guest. An engaged guest." His hand resumed its slow movement on my back. "Whatever I noticed wasn't my business."
"What did you notice?"
"That you were unhappy. That you kept looking for something." A pause. "That you looked at me like I might be the answer."
"Did that bother you?"
"It confused me. I didn't think about you the way I think about you now. Not then. You were just... someone who seemed lost."
"And now?"
"Now I know what I was feeling. I just didn't have a name for it yet."
I tilted my head up. "When did you know?"
"The night you showed up at the wedding. When you said, 'please don't make me go back.'" His arms tightened. "Something clicked."
I kissed his chest, right over his heart.
"We're here now," I said.
"Yeah. We're here now."
He pulled me closer. I closed my eyes.
For the first time in weeks, I felt like I was exactly where I was meant to be.