10. Reese
Something about the ride back to Cory’s apartment from The Black Door felt different from the ride there, different from all the other times we’d been together. Something had changed inside me on this trip—I knew that—and if his nervous, evasive answers on the roof were any indication, he had changed as well.
“I’m sorry you were hurt before,” I said after we’d returned to the safety of Cory’s apartment. “But thank you for being honest with me.”
“Thank you for being honest with me ,” he said, tossing his keys and wallet into a small bowl on a table in his entryway.
I licked my lips nervously, hooking a finger through one of his belt loops and pulling him close. “Earlier at the club, you said everyone’s been looking at me like I was the most surprising thing they’ve ever seen…”
I trailed off, kissing Cory’s neck when he offered it to me.
He hummed, encouraging me to finish the thought.
I left a wet kiss against the underside of his jaw. “You look at me that way too. Sometimes, when you don’t think I’m looking.”
He swallowed hard and exhaled a shaky laugh into my hair.
“Reese,” he whispered, skating his hands up the length of my back. “My good boy. My very best…what am I going to do with you?”
There were lots of answers to that question, but I knew better than most that when your entire understanding of yourself was called into doubt, the only thing that could bring you back to center was the thing you trusted most. There had been a time when Cory watched me struggle with my own brain, and to quiet those demons, he’d offered me his submission. Even temporarily. Standing there in his arms in the entrance of his New York City condo, I could offer him the same thing in return.
I wanted to offer him the same thing in return.
Reaching back, I grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands back down to my waist so I could extricate myself from his embrace.
“Whatever you want,” I said, sinking to my knees and gazing up at him with all the trust that he’d spent five months cultivating in my heart.
He blinked hard, tangling his fingers into my hair far more gently than he had when we were at The Black Door earlier in the night. His touch was—for the first time—tentative, almost unsure. I pushed the top of my head against his palm, sighing when he finally took hold.
“At what cost?” he whispered.
If he’d asked me that three months earlier, the answer might have been very different, but now…
“No cost,” I promised him, reaching up and curling my fingers around his wrist. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”
“Reese.”
My name was a prayer as Cory sank to his knees in front of me, bringing us almost eye level. The concrete floor of his loft was less than ideal for pouring one’s heart out while being on their knees, but the kind of vulnerability he was about to offer was more rare than anything I’d seen from him over the course of the year. I pulled his hand away from my head and kissed his knuckles. Turned it over and kissed his palm.
“Is it selfish to say I don’t want you to go?” he asked, lashes fluttering as I scraped my teeth over the thin skin of his wrist, his pulse hammering against my lower lip. “That I want to keep you here. Just for myself.”
I exhaled and smiled, shaking my head. “It’s flattering.”
“I know you have a life back in LA.”
I kissed his wrist bone before letting our hands fall between our bodies, fingers half-threaded together.
“I never expected you,” I admitted, tucking my chin against my chest to hopefully hide the flush that had colored my cheeks with the confession.
“That’s an understatement.” Cory gave me a sad smile. “And what now?”
“You’re asking me?” I made a self-deprecating noise in the back of my throat. “I thought you were the one in charge.”
Cory chuckled, rocking back and sinking down deeper onto his heels.
I took the change as an opportunity to drop onto my ass, sitting cross-legged in front of him. My palms were sweaty and I already missed the feel of his fingers in mine.
“I don’t feel like I ever have my feet under me when you’re around.”
“Could have fooled me.”
Cory smiled sweetly across the entryway, and I’d never wanted to kiss him more.
“You make me want things I never thought I could have.”
“Like what?”
He arched a brow.
“Like what?” I asked again, knowing that both of us needed to hear the words come out of his mouth.
“I want you,” he said gently. “I want you exclusively.”
“I’ve only been with you since January.”
“But I want it said.” He tapped his hand against his sternum, fingers splayed. “I want it known.”
“I know.”
“I want everyone to know.” Cory knee-walked toward me until he was half in my lap, taking my cheeks into his hands and scanning my face with a renewed sense of urgency. “I want my friends to know. I want your friends to know. I want more than one weekend a month with you. I want you to lo?—”
The words died on the back of his tongue.
I kissed him so he didn’t need to say them because, in some ways, he didn’t need to say it. What he wanted was already his. I dragged my tongue across the seam of his lips until he opened and let me in, then I tasted the backs of his teeth and the roof of his mouth. Cory moaned into my mouth, fingers digging into my cheeks as he took over and deepened the kiss until my back was against the wall and he was straddling me. Somehow, I was hard again and so was he, and the weight of him on top of me didn’t do anything to quiet the urgency growing between my legs.
He kissed me into a frenzy and then kissed me calm, slowly untangling himself from my lap before collapsing on the floor beside me. He propped himself up against the wall with his shoulder pressed against mine and stretched his legs out, knocking his shoe against the side of my sneaker.
I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and opened my social media, setting the device down on my thigh. Cory looked at my profile, then up at me. I smiled at him, my mouth swollen and tender, slick with the taste of him.
“So,” I started, clearing my throat. “Does this mean it’s time for me to update my relationship status?”