Chapter 8
I wake to gray light and an empty bed.
The sheets beside me are still warm, the pillow still holding the dent of his head. For a moment I lie there, half-dreaming, my body heavy with the memory of last night. The floor. The way he said my name when I pushed inside him.
Then I hear movement at the window.
Dominic stands with his back to me, barefoot, nothing but boxers.
Gray light catches the line of his spine.
He’s watching the maple tree, the one we climbed as kids, the one whose branches used to tap this window on windy nights.
His posture is still, but I can feel the tension in him from across the room.
I sit up. The bed creaks. He doesn’t turn.
“You’re awake,” he says.
“Hard not to be. You think loud.”
He laugh, a quiet exhale that fogs the glass. “Didn’t want to wake you.”
“You didn’t.”
He turns. Gray light softens his face, catches the stubble along his jaw, the tired smudges under his eyes. Wrecked and beautiful and so familiar it hurts. We’ve been here before, the two of us, this room, this hour. A hundred sleepovers, a hundred slow wake-ups. Never like this.
He crosses the room. Three steps, maybe four, close enough that I feel the heat off his chest. The air between us is still, charged with everything we haven’t said yet.
He takes my hand. Pulls me to my feet. I go willingly.
He pushes me back onto the bed.
The frame groans under my weight, too small for two grown men, too small for what I know is coming.
The springs protest as I land on the mattress, my head hitting the pillow, my legs dangling over the edge.
Dominic climbs over me, his knees bracketing my hips, and the bed rocks against the wall with a sound like a warning.
“I need you,” he says.
His voice is rough. Scraped raw from sleep and from the things we did last night and from the words we still haven’t found.
His hands bracket my head, his arms cording with tension.
He looks down at me, and his eyes are dark, not with hunger but with something deeper.
Something that has nothing to do with the physical and everything to do with the fifteen years we’ve spent circling each other.
“I need to feel you,” he says. “All of you.”
My throat closes. “I’m yours.”
The words come out steadier than I feel.
His expression shifts, something cracking open behind his eyes, and then he’s kissing me.
It’s not gentle. It’s not soft. It’s desperate and certain and tastes like the last hours of the night, like salt and sleep and the faint echo of everything we did on this floor.
He undresses me slowly. I watch him. The broad plane of his chest. The trail of hair below his navel.
His cock, hard and curving toward his stomach, already slick at the tip.
He’s beautiful. He’s always been beautiful.
I just never let myself see it. My boxers slide down my legs and fall to the floor.
His follow. The gray light from the window traces the lines of his body as he settles between my thighs.
He reaches for the lotion on the nightstand. The same bottle from last night, the same one I’ve had since I was a teenager. He slicks his fingers and kneels between my legs, and the first touch of his hand there makes me gasp.
He takes his time. One finger, then two.
Patient, reverent, the way he does everything.
The stretch is unfamiliar, intimate in a way that makes my breath catch and my hands fist in the sheets.
He watches my face the whole time, his expression open in a way I’ve never seen.
Unguarded. Tender. Like he’s memorizing every flicker of sensation.
“Okay?” he asks.
I nod. “Keep going.”
The sun rises through the window, catching the old band posters on the wall, the dust motes floating in the pale light.
The maple tree outside is a dark shape against the brightening sky.
This room has held a thousand versions of us: kids doing homework on the floor, teenagers staying up too late, adults pretending we didn’t know what was happening between us.
Now it holds this.
Dominic positions himself between my legs. His cock presses against me, and I feel my body resist for a moment before yielding. The first push steals my breath. A burn. A fullness. A stretching so deep and complete that my back arches off the mattress and a sound tears from my throat.
He stops, his forehead dropping to mine. “Breathe.”
I breathe. In. Out. The tension eases. He sinks deeper. Inch by inch, until our hips are flush together and I can feel all of him, the weight and heat and impossible intimacy of it.
Then he moves.
Slow at first. A rhythm as old as the maple tree outside the window. The bed creaks under us, a counterpoint to the sound of our breathing. My legs wrap around his waist, pulling him deeper. My hands find his back, his shoulders, the curve of his spine.
“I don’t want to leave,” he says. The words are pressed into my throat, hot and broken. “I don’t want to go back to separate cities and phone calls and pretending this isn’t what I want.”
“Then don’t.” My voice cracks on the last word. “Stay. With me.”
He moves harder. The bed rocks against the wall, rhythmic and insistent.
The headboard knocks once, twice, a sound that would be alarming if I cared about anything other than the man inside me.
The sheets twist under us. The pillow falls to the floor.
The room is bright now, full morning light, and I can see everything.
The flush on his chest. The strain in his arms. The way his mouth falls open when I clench around him.
The climax builds in waves. I feel it in the base of my spine, a coiling pressure that spreads outward with every thrust. My cock pulses between us, untouched. Dominic’s rhythm falters, becomes desperate, and his hand finds my jaw, tilting my face up.
“Look at me,” he says.
I open my eyes. I didn’t realize I’d closed them.
He’s right there, inches away, his pupils blown wide, his breath ragged.
The maple tree sways outside the window.
Dust motes drift through the sunlight. The world exists somewhere beyond this room.
I don’t care. All I care about is him. The weight of him.
The heat. The impossible fact of him inside me.
The orgasm crashes over me. I spill between us in hot, pulsing waves, my body clenching around him. The sensation sends him over. He buries his face in my neck and lets go with a broken groan, pulsing inside me, his whole body shuddering.
Wave after wave. We ride it out together, tangled and shaking, the bed frame rattling one final time before falling still. The sun climbs higher. The house is quiet.
I don’t move. I don’t want to. His weight presses me into the mattress, and the pressure is grounding, real, proof this wasn’t a dream. His breath slows against my throat. His hand finds mine on the sheets, fingers lacing together.
Neither of us speaks. The words are there. Too new. Too fragile. Saying them out loud would make them real, and they’re already real enough.
The maple tree taps against the window, soft and familiar. I used to lie here as a kid, counting the taps until I fell asleep. Now I lie here with my best friend inside me, our heartbeats slowing together, and the tapping sounds like a blessing.
He lifts his head. His eyes are wet at the corners. He looks at me like I’m the only thing in the world, and maybe I am. Maybe I always have been.
He squeezes my hand.
“I’m not letting go,” he says.
I squeeze back.
That’s enough.