Chapter Sixteen
~ Hooper ~
The upstairs hallway had a flavor at night that you couldn’t replicate with paint or a cleaning crew or any amount of artificial nostalgia.
It was the kind of quiet you only get in old houses, where the drywall and the studs have spent so long together they start to answer for each other’s flaws—a different kind of insulation, intimate and unfixable.
I paused at the nursery door and listened, but the only thing alive in that moment was the hum of the monitor and the micro-ticking of the baseboard heater. The old carpet had a give to it, the memory of a thousand boots and maybe twice as many bare feet, none of them mine until recently.
Inside, the crib was lit by the most anemic nightlight I could find—a donut-shaped plastic thing that glowed the exact shade of a burnt-out amber warning on a Ford dashboard. It painted the crib bars in long, honey lines, but left the rest of the room in blue shadow.
Emilio slept like an angel, or at least like someone who had no idea how close he’d come to being shuffled off to a different set of hands.
He was on his back, both fists balled up and floating beside his ears, the pose equal parts surrender and threat.
The blanket was a single layer, tucked with enough precision to meet inspection, but he’d already managed to pull it down past his knees.
I watched his chest rise and fall for a solid minute, long enough for my own lungs to start matching pace.
I leaned in, made sure he was actually asleep and not running some scam—babies, like small mammals, could always sense when you were about to leave the room. He stayed out cold, mouth open just enough to show the faintest glisten of drool on his bottom lip.
The baby monitor blinked from the top of the dresser, steady as a sniper’s heartbeat. I had it set low, barely audible, so the only sound it made was a faint digital tick, not even a real sound but the echo of a sound, the way you feel phantom vibrations in your phone long after the call ends.
I left the door open a crack, just enough to let the air cycle, then pulled it to with two fingers. The latch had a mechanical click that used to wake him every time, but now it was just part of the fabric of his world, like the pressure gradient you don’t notice until you move from indoors to out.
I stood in the hall, the cool of the wood on my feet and the weight of the day pressing out from under my collarbones.
I could still feel the courthouse—a smell of waxed linoleum and exhausted paperwork, the scratch of a pen in a clerk’s hand as she wrote out Liam’s name next to mine, neat and unhurried, as if she did it for three couples an hour and it was always this easy to make something real.
I could see Liam’s hand in mine, the way his fingers trembled and then steadied when it came time to sign, the way he looked at me across the cheap county counter like we were the only two people in the building who understood that this was not a loophole, not a fix, but a real thing with weight and permanence.
He’d said, “I want this,” and it wasn’t even a question or a dare, just a statement of the kind of fact you build a whole house on.
I’d carried that since the sidewalk outside the courthouse. The way it landed in the gut, the way it turned everything else into a waiting game.
I was done being patient.
The bedroom was at the end of the hall, the only room in the house that still smelled a little bit like the people who’d lived here before us—cheap aftershave, lemon Pledge, the ghost of something floral that clung to the drapes even after three wash cycles.
I moved toward it, each step measured, slow, a deliberate countdown. My hand on the knob was steady. I twisted, pushed, and let myself in.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, one towel slung low on his hips, the other working through the steam-wet tangle of his hair. His skin still glistened, droplets hanging in the hollow of his throat and in the deep lines where his collarbone cut under the pale, damp shine.
His eyes snapped to mine as I entered, but there was no wariness in the look—just a clear, measured taking-in, as if he’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop and was relieved to see the tread on it.
I didn’t bother with a greeting. I shut the door and then walked across the floor, the boards flexing under my weight, and stopped in front of him.
He didn’t flinch, didn’t shy away, didn’t offer a performance. He just waited, hands idle for once, the towel in his lap forgotten.
I took the towel from his hands and dropped it to the floor, then set my thumb and forefinger under his chin, tilting his face up. The jaw was soft, still damp, a trace of shaving cream hanging on the edge of his earlobe. I ran my thumb over it, slow, and watched his pupils bloom.
I kissed him—soft at first, letting the warmth of his mouth dissolve the last of the day’s anger.
He let me in without hesitation. The taste of him was still mint and the faint, mineral clean of the spring water; under that, something low and familiar, the scent I’d started to think of as belonging to this house and to no one else.
He made a small, helpless sound into my mouth, and the hands that had been empty a second before were now curled into the hem of my t-shirt, bunching the fabric hard enough to hurt.
He leaned into it, and I let him, then pushed him gently backward until he was on his back at the edge of the bed. His legs spread, towel barely holding on.
I gripped the side of his neck with one hand, thumb anchored against the pulse point, and ran the other down his shoulder, the muscle ropy and alive under the skin.
He wasn’t big, not the way I was, but there was a density to him, the kind you only get from running or climbing or bracing yourself every day against some internal wind.
I broke the kiss and looked at him. His chest was rising and falling fast, nipples already drawn tight, the left a little higher than the right. I ran my fingers over both, pinched, and watched him arch up into it.
He closed his eyes. “Hoop,” he said, and it was a warning, but also a request.
I said nothing. I kept my hand on his chest and let my mouth follow it, down his throat, biting at the angle where it met his shoulder, then lower, teeth just grazing the skin until I felt him twitch under me.
I worked my way down, sucking at the spot just above his left nipple until it went red, then raw, then purple.
He gripped the sheets with both hands now, the towel gone, cock standing up hard and flushed against his stomach, a bead of clear already leaking from the tip.
I licked down the center of his chest, then lower, tasting the salt and the last of the shower water, feeling his stomach tighten and jump as I traced the line of his abdominals with my tongue.
He made another noise, higher this time, and I took the base of his cock in my hand, ran my thumb up the length, and watched the bead of precum spread out.
He reached for me—one hand at the back of my head, the other finding my wrist—and tried to guide me down.
I let him, for a second. I took the head of his cock into my mouth, just the tip, tongue working slow circles, then backed off, dragging my teeth along the underside until he shuddered.
He wanted to let go. I could feel it in the way his hips rolled, the way his feet flexed against the sheets, but I wasn’t ready to give it to him. Not yet.
I let go and straightened up, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
He looked at me, eyes glassy and almost accusatory.
I said, “Lie back.”
He did, arms above his head, cock still hard and leaking, towel now somewhere under the bed. His thighs were tense, hair still dark with water, and the skin at the top of his legs was so pale it seemed to glow.
I stood in front of him, letting him watch as I stripped my clothes off, my cock smacking against my abdomen, smearing precum along my skin.
I knelt down and ran both hands up his thighs, spreading them, then dipped my head and bit the inside of his right leg, hard enough to leave a mark.
He gasped. “Fuck—”
I did it again, this time on the left, then moved up, nose in the crease where thigh met hip, breathing him in. The scent was stronger here, animal and real, and I let myself sink into it, let the rest of the world drop away.
I reached up, found his nipple with my fingers, and pinched again. At the same time, I ran my tongue over the head of his cock, pressing down just enough to make him buck.
He was breathing hard now, making a little “uh, uh” sound with every exhale, and I could tell he was on the edge.
I let go, and he made a sound of protest, almost a whine.
I knelt up and looked at him—really looked. His hair was wet and plastered to his forehead, eyes blown wide, lips swollen and parted. The flush ran from his cheeks down his neck and across his chest, every inch of him straining for more.
I leaned over and kissed him again, hard, pushing my tongue into his mouth, letting him taste himself on me. He kissed back like it was oxygen, hands fisting again in my arms, dragging me down onto him.
I held my weight up with one arm and used the other to palm the inside of his thigh, thumb brushing his balls, fingers tracing the seam of his ass. He spread his legs for me, shameless now, hips rolling up to meet my hand.
I said, “You ready?”
He nodded, but that wasn’t enough.
“Say it,” I said.
He looked at me, pupils so wide there was almost no blue left. “Please.”
I grinned. “Good.”
I reached for the nightstand, pulled the drawer, and took out the lube. The cap came off with a single twist, the smell synthetic and sharp and oddly nostalgic, like memories of every half-drunk college hookup rolled into one.
I slicked my fingers and went slow, working the first in with care, just to watch his face. He closed his eyes and bit his lip, but didn’t tense up. I pressed deeper, curling, and felt him relax around me.
“More,” he said, voice gone hoarse.