Chapter 21
MAC
Arek’s hand in mine. A man leading me to a bed. My bed.
Nothing complicated about the mechanics of it—one foot, then the other, twelve feet of hallway, a door that was already open. I’d walked through hundreds of doors in my life, thousands, doors that led to combat zones and hospital rooms and courtrooms and the house I’d left my family in.
None of them had felt like this.
This felt like walking toward something instead of away.
The bedroom was dark except for the light spilling in from the hall. My bed, made this morning with precision. Some part of me had known, and I’d made the bed with clean sheets, squared corners, and a smoothed quilt.
Arek turned to face me in the half-light.
His chest was bare, the lean lines of him gilded by the hallway light behind me, and his eyes were dark and steady, patient in a way I’d come to understand was restraint.
This man, who vibrated with words and warmth, was holding himself still, giving me room, letting me move at whatever speed I needed.
I didn’t want room. I wanted him close.
I pulled him in by the waist. Both hands, firm, closing the distance between us until his bare chest met mine and the contact—skin on skin, his warmth against my warmth, the hair on my chest catching against the dusting on his—sent a shock through me that I felt in my teeth.
This was a man’s body against mine. I knew that. I’d known it in the kitchen when my hand found his heartbeat and in the hallway when his fingers laced through mine. I’d known it when I kissed him and when he’d touched me.
But knowing and feeling were different countries, and I’d just crossed the border.
The angles of him, the flat chest, the narrow hips under my hands, the muscle and bone of him—all different from what I’d known, what my body remembered from years of marriage. Different and right. The rightness of it was the thing I couldn’t get over.
Like coming home.
“Hey,” Arek said softly. His hands were on my arms, light, not gripping. Letting me hold him without holding me back. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” My voice was rough. “More than okay.”
“We can slow down. We can stop anytime.”
“I don’t want to slow down.”
Something flared in his eyes—heat, want, the careful control slipping a fraction—and the sight of it, of Arek wanting me and trying to manage it, snapped something inside me.
I kissed him. Harder, hungrier, my mouth meeting his and my hands holding on to him tightly. He tasted like wine and himself, and I wanted more of it, all of it, every sound and taste and texture this man would give me.
His hands came up to my chest, my shoulders, the back of my neck.
I’d expected him to guide, to take the lead the way he took the lead in everything, the competent caretaker who always knew the next step.
But he wasn’t leading. He was responding.
Meeting me where I went, following my hands with his hands, letting me set the pace even though he was the one who knew the terrain.
It was the most generous thing anyone had ever done for me.
We moved toward the bed together, completely in sync.
The backs of my knees hit the mattress, and I sat.
Arek stood between my knees and looked down at me.
The position of him standing and me sitting, with his hands on my shoulders and my face level with his chest, felt new and charged, and I didn’t want to look away from him.
I put my mouth on his sternum. The skin was warm and smooth, and I could feel his heartbeat under my lips, fast and strong.
The intimacy of that kiss, of my mouth being right where his heart was, made me almost euphoric.
I kissed across his chest, learning the landscape.
A mole below his left collarbone. The ridge of his clavicle.
The hollow of his throat where his pulse jumped against my lips.
His breathing changed above me, going ragged, and his fingers tightened on my shoulders.
“Mac.” Half whisper, half wreck.
I looked up. His head was tipped back, his lips parted, his eyes closed. Arek was beautiful, and I was allowed to see it, and the combination of those two facts made my hands shake against his hips.
“Come here,” I said, and pulled him down.
He came. Knees on either side of mine, settling into my lap with controlled grace.
His weight on me, his thighs bracketing mine, his face level with mine now.
His breath on my mouth, his eyes open and dark and watching me with an expression I’d never seen anyone wear for me—tender and hungry at the same time, care and want existing in the same look.
I put my hands on his back. The long muscles along his spine, the knobs of his vertebrae, the warm expanse of skin that I mapped with my palms. He shivered.
The house was warm, and our bodies were generating enough heat to power a generator, yet Arek shivered under my hands like a man who hadn’t been touched in so long that the sensation itself was overwhelming.
That hit me somewhere deep. This man who gave and gave and gave—who touched his boys’ hair and squeezed shoulders and laid hands on patients all day long—was starving for it himself.
The recognition was so sharp it ached. I knew that starvation.
I’d lived in it for years, on this mountain, in this bed, my body going numb from the absence of another person’s hands.
And here we were, both of us, starving and finally at the table.
I pulled him closer and kissed him again, and his hands came to my face, framing my jaw, holding me like I was something he was afraid of breaking.
The kiss went deep and slow, his tongue against mine, and the newness of a man’s mouth, a man’s jaw rough against mine, of the taste and texture of Arek, lit up parts of my brain that had been dark for years.
His hips shifted on my lap, and his hard cock, the undeniable evidence that he wanted me as much as I ached for him, sent a bolt of sensation through me.
My own cock, which had been all but dormant for years, was equally hard.
That alone was a foreign sensation that would’ve rattled me if I hadn’t been too busy focusing on Arek.
“Off,” Arek murmured against my mouth, his fingers at my belt. “Can I?”
“Yeah.”
Doctor’s hands, precise and sure, worked my belt open with an efficiency that shouldn’t have been as affecting as it was.
He raised himself, I lifted my hips, and he pulled off my pants.
The vulnerability of being undressed by someone, of letting someone see all of me, of choosing to be seen, was harder than I’d anticipated.
Every layer removed was a wall coming down, and I’d built so many walls that the demolition itself was an event.
Arek slowed. His hands stilled on my hips and his eyes came to mine, reading me, that diagnostic attention turned personal. “Talk to me.”
“I’m good.” The tightness in my chest wasn’t panic. It was the opposite, the ache of something expanding, making room for a feeling too large for the space I’d allotted it. “But it’s a lot to process.”
“I know.” He pressed his forehead to mine. His fingers, still on my hips, traced small circles on the bone. “It’s a lot for me too.”
“You’ve done this before.”
“Not this. Never this.”
I pulled back to look at him. His eyes were bright and glistening in the half-light. The composure he wore like a coat was gone, and what was underneath was raw and open.
He bent and kissed my chest, above the left nipple, and his stubble burned a line down my skin.
Then his mouth traveled, slow and reverent, like he wanted to remember the exact flavor of me.
He kissed my jaw, my neck, finding the places that made me shiver, the places that hadn’t been touched in years and felt electric now.
I sat there and tried to take it all in, tried to commit every feeling to memory because I never wanted to forget even a second of this.
He knelt between my legs, then looked up at me. For a moment, I wished I were a painter, that I’d be able to capture the pure wonder on his face on canvas. He raised an eyebrow, and I nodded. I wasn’t even sure what he was asking, but it didn’t matter.
His hands tugged at the elastic of my boxer briefs, and I understood, raising my hips once again.
He slid my underwear down, and my cock sprang free, slapping against my belly.
Arek licked his lips, the subconscious gesture sending a thrill through me.
I’d never thought of my cock as something beautiful, but seeing the appreciation in his eyes made me reconsider that.
I cleared my throat, then pointed to him. “Your turn.”
He rose, and before he was even fully standing, my hands were on his waist, unbuttoning his pants and sending them to the floor.
His blue boxer briefs had a wet stain in the front, and as if it had a mind of its own, my hand touched it.
He shivered again. Emboldened, I cupped him, his cock so hard and hot against my hand.
How could it feel so natural when I’d never touched another man?
The light from the hallway caught him just right, making the thin blond hair dusting his pecs shimmer.
I wanted to taste every part of him, and so I did—mouth on his chest, his stomach, the line leading down to the waistband.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed this until that moment: to touch and be touched, to learn someone by the feel and smell of them.
His hands found my shoulders for balance, and his cock pressed into my palm, both of us exhaling at once like we’d been holding our breath too long.
I fumbled with the boxers, and the moment his cock sprang free, Arek made a noise—half laugh, half moan—that went straight to my own cock.
He was longer than me, not by much, and curved slightly left.
Circumcised, the head slick, flushed, wet at the tip.
A trail of precum glistened on his belly.
Beautiful.