Chapter 8
I’ve been coming back for two weeks straight.
Not for exams, not anymore, though I still technically owe him a follow-up I keep not scheduling.
Every night after the clinic closes, I let myself in the back door he’s started leaving unlocked for me, and every night ends some version of the same way, tangled together in his office or on that exam table, learning each other a little more each time.
Tonight he’s watching me differently, some assessing look on his face the second I walk in, one I don’t fully understand yet.
“You’re still holding back,” he says, not a question.
“What?”
“Every time, you brace. You control your breathing, you control your noise, you control exactly how much you let yourself feel.” He crosses the office, backs me gently against the desk. “Tonight you don’t get to.”
Nerves knot in my chest at that, half worry, half relief, like he’s naming a thing I didn’t know I was doing.
He bends me over the desk, patient, and works me open with a slowness that borders on maddening, refusing to let me rush either of us toward the part I keep trying to get to. Every time I try to brace, try to control the sounds coming out of me, his hand presses flat against my lower back.
“There,” he murmurs, feeling the tension in me before I even register it myself. “Right there. You just did it again.”
“Did what?”
“Locked up. Went quiet on purpose.” His fingers keep moving, slow, deliberate, refusing to let me hurry him. “You do it every time it starts to feel like too much. Like if you stay quiet enough, you stay in control of it.”
I don’t have an answer for that because he’s right and I’ve never once put words to it myself.
“I don’t know how to stop doing that,” I admit, voice already shaking. “I’ve spent my whole life not letting anything look like it’s too much for me.”
“I know.” His voice gentles further, if that’s even possible. “Tonight, you don’t have to be in control of anything. That’s the whole point.”
“Stop managing it,” he murmurs against my ear. “Just feel it, Tyler. I’ve got you.”
“I’ve never had to just let go before,” I admit, voice already cracking. “I’ve never been able to stop being in control of it.”
“I know.” His voice stays gentle even as his fingers keep working me open, patient, relentless. “That’s why I’m here. Let me show you.”
“How do I even start?”
“You stop deciding in advance what you’re allowed to feel.
” He presses a kiss between my shoulder blades, unrushed.
“Every single time tonight, the second something starts to feel like too much, I want you to lean into it instead of pulling back. Even if it embarrasses you. Especially if it embarrasses you.”
“That sounds insane.”
“It usually does, right before it works.” A soft laugh, warm against my skin. “Trust me, Tyler. I’ve had a lot of practice reading exactly how much someone can actually take before they think they can’t take any more.”
When he finally pushes inside me, he keeps one hand wrapped around my cock, stroking slow, and every single time I feel myself tense up, trying to hold back the sounds building in my throat, he slows down deliberately, waits until I unclench again.
“Louder,” he says. “I want to hear you. All of it.”
“Garrett.” It comes out broken, more honest than anything I’ve said out loud in weeks. “I don’t, I can’t.”
“You can.” He picks up his pace, driving deeper, his hand working my cock faster now too, refusing to let either sensation lag behind the other. “Let go. I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere.”
Something in me finally does let go. I stop trying to keep the sounds quiet, stop trying to keep my hips still, stop performing composure I never actually had to begin with, and the orgasm that rips through me a moment later is louder and more overwhelming than anything I’ve felt in my entire life, shaking me apart under him with a cry I don’t try to muffle at all.
He follows almost immediately, groaning my name against my shoulder, burying himself deep, his own hips stuttering out of rhythm for the first time since I’ve known him.
We stay slumped together over the desk a long moment, both of us breathing hard, before he finally straightens, helping me up gently, steadying me when my legs don’t quite want to hold my weight.
“You did that,” I say, still catching my breath, half accusing, half amazed. “You did that to me on purpose.”
“I did.” No apology in it at all. “You needed someone to. You’ve been performing composure for so long you didn’t know how to stop, and I don’t think anyone in your life has ever told you it was safe not to.”
I don’t have anything to say back to that right away. He’s not wrong, and hearing him say it so plainly, that flat honesty he’s had since the very first exam, cracks something open in my chest that I don’t fully understand yet.
“Nobody’s ever heard me like that,” I finally say. “Not even close.”
“I know.” He tucks a strand of hair back from my face, watching me like I’m the only thing in the room worth paying attention to, in no rush to look away. “I wanted to be the one who did.”
He hands me a glass of water from the little fridge under his desk, watching me drink it with the same calm attention he’s given every single thing I’ve done in this building.
“That was different,” I say, once my voice works again.
“Good different?”
“I don’t have another word for it.” I set the glass down, still a little unsteady on my feet. “I’ve never let myself sound like that. With anyone. Ever.”
“That means something,” he says, brushing his thumb along my jaw, filing this away with everything else, no urgency in any of it. “That’s what I wanted for you tonight. Not the orgasm. That part.”
“I don’t want to stop,” I tell him, once I can talk again. I don’t just mean tonight.
He understands that anyway. “Then don’t.”
I laugh, because I just came apart louder in this office than I have in my entire life, and Garrett looks entirely unsurprised by that too, like he already knew exactly what was in me the whole time and was only ever waiting for me to find it myself.