68. Eli
SIXTY-EIGHT
ELI
Micah’s hands are in my hair and on my shoulders and then he’s kissing me again—no hesitation, no question, just the collapse of all the years he spent waiting for me to catch up with his heart.
I grab him by the hair and drag him even closer, mouths colliding with a hunger that is less want and more necessity.
He moans into my mouth, biting my lower lip hard enough to make it throb, and fuck if that isn’t all the permission I need.
I wedge my hand between us, slip it down the front of his sweatpants.
He’s already hard, straining against thin cotton, and the way he gasps when I wrap my palm around him makes my own pulse riot in my chest. For a moment, I hold him—feel the weight, the heat, the tiny tension in his body as he waits for whatever comes next.
“Tell me what you want, Micah.”
He shivers, his voice a rough scrape. “I want you to fuck me, Eli.”
“Say it again.”
“I want you to fuck me.”
He says it with his whole body. The way he arches up, the way his hands grab fistfuls of my arm, like he’s bracing against a current.
The words land and echo, ripple through the room and flatten the last of my restraint.
I push his sweatpants down. He’s not wearing anything underneath.
His dick is thick and flushed and already weeping.
For a moment I just look at him, prone and open and wanting, and some old swollen tangle in my chest breaks open all at once.
I want to ruin him. I want to take care of him.
With Micah it’s always both at the same time.
He reaches for me. His hands are far less steady now.
“Please,” he whispers, and the sound of it undoes a fundamental law of my personal physics.
I slide his pants all the way off, then shed my own, and kneel between his thighs.
I want this to be slow and rough but I don’t want to lose the sweetness of him.
I want him to remember this the next time his brain tries to whisper he’s just the backup plan, the fallback, the utility boyfriend who floats around the edges of Sage and me and everyone else.
That’s not what he is. And it’s not what I am to him, either.
I drag my knuckles up his thigh, then brace myself over him and kiss the place under his jaw that always gets him trembling.
Micah’s hands slide up my chest, his nails raking lightly over my skin, and then he wraps both arms around my back and pulls me flush against him, like if any air gets between us it’ll spook the whole moment back into nothing.
He smells like tea and sweat and that expensive cologne Milo buys him every year for his birthday, convinced it’s the only one worth wearing.
There’s lube in the bedside drawer. Micah finds it first, but I take it from him and work the cap off with my teeth, squeezing some into my palm and then slicking my fingers before sliding one inside him.
He tenses, then relaxes around it, breath shaking in my ear as I press my mouth to his cheek.
“You okay?” I ask, voice low.
“Yeah. Just—keep going.”
I work another finger in, slow and careful, crooking them until I hear the sound he always makes, the gasp that’s half embarrassment, half awe.
God, he’s gorgeous. Long neck arched, mouth open, eyes already glassy with it. I scissor my fingers gently and he shudders, gripping my shoulders like he’s about to fall off the edge of something and is trusting only me to catch him.
When I slide out, he whines. It goes straight to my own dick—I’m so hard it almost hurts. I lube myself, stroke enough to make it slick, and line up against him, rocking my hips so my dick barely catches, then slides away. Micah tries to buck up, but I pin his wrists to the bed, holding him there.
“Patience,” I rasp.
“Eli, please,” he says, and the way he says it is desperate. Like I’m starving him.
I push in, slow at first. I’ve been on the other side of this enough times to know that too much, too fast ruins the moment, so I inch forward until I get past the initial ring, then pause, letting him feel the stretch.
Micah’s hands turn into fists where I have him pinned. His thighs tremble. “God,” he hisses, “just do it, fuck me, I need it, I need you—”
I push the rest of the way in, bottom out and hold.
Micah arches under me, a wordless cry catching in his throat, and for a second we’re merged, fused, completely gone in the best possible way.
The air is thick with all the things we never said, all the desperate wanting, all the years of pretending to be fine with scraps.
For the first time, I don’t want to be careful. I want to devour him.
I drag his wrists up over his head and pin them against the mattress.
Then I start to move. Slow at first, rolling my hips, letting Micah adjust and settle around the strain of it.
His eyes are fever-bright, locked on my mouth, his whole body loose except where our skin collides.
I set the pace, sharper with every stroke, until we’re both shuddering, sweat running in rivers down my back.
Each time I bottom out, a sound escapes him. A whine. A curse. My name.
“You’re mine,” I growl. “You understand me? Mine.”
Micah arches harder, his head thrown back, every line of him begging for more.
“Yours,” he pants. “Always.”
I can’t even process how hard that hits. I don’t want to talk—I want to ruin him, leave proof on his skin that he’s not the backup, not the fallback, that I’ve been bone-deep obsessed from the start and the only reason I pretended otherwise was because I’d die if he ever left.
So I fuck him like I’m trying to make up for all the time I spent pretending I didn’t want this.
The headboard pounds against the wall, the bed shaking under us, sweat and lube slicking the point where our bodies meet. Micah claws at my arms, at my back, the sounds in his throat high and helpless and exactly the way he sounded the first time I ever got him off.
I free a hand and wrap it around his throat and squeeze, thumb dragging up under his jaw. The flush crawling his neck is glorious, blooming in real time under my hand. His eyes go wide, then half-shut, the edge of submission so real it ripples right down my own spine.
“Fuck—” Micah chokes out, then he gasps, unable to say more. His cock is trapped between our bodies, leaking all over his stomach, and I press into him harder, the friction making him shiver.
“You want to come?” I snarl.
He nods. His pupils blown, face wild and ruined. “Please,” he manages. “Please—”
I never thought I’d get off on hearing him beg, but the way his voice cracks on it makes me want to give him everything. And God, I love him for still asking. Always asking.
“Good boy,” I growl, releasing his neck and wrapping my fist around his cock.
He bucks hard into my hand, his whole body coiling with the need to let go, and the sound he makes is pure fucking music—raw, shaken, like I ripped the last vestiges of his self-control from right under his skin.
He comes with a wrenching shudder, whole body locked around me, taking and taking like the hunger might finally be fed.
The release rips through him, heat splattering my chest, his back arched, and the sound that tears out of him is loud enough that the whole house will have an opinion about it.
I let go of his other hand, and he clutches my face, urgent, trembling, like he needs to memorize the shape of my jaw so he can find it in the dark later.
He yanks me down into a kiss as he’s still spurting, his hand fisting my hair, and I fuck into him as hard as I can, selfish and mean, wanting to pour everything I have into him.
His entire body is shuddering around me, his thighs locked tight to my hips, and when the orgasm hits me I almost black out, vision going white around the edges.
I’m so deep in him that I want to stay there forever, fused and stupid and wanting.
When I finish, I collapse forward, pinning him to the mattress with my own weight, both of us panting like we just sprinted for our lives.
Sweat drips down my face onto his, mixing with the tears streaming from his eyes.
I’ve never seen Micah cry from sex—I’ve never seen any man cry from sex—but this is some new fucking just-unlocked vulnerability and it undoes me in a way I’m not even remotely prepped for.
I kiss him, lips gentle now, trying to say all the things I can’t get my mouth to say out loud.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “You did perfect. You’re perfect.”
Micah’s breathing is still ragged, but the wobbly, shellshocked expression on his face shifts into a smile, ruined and brilliant. His arms wrap around my neck and he holds on for the simple fact of wanting me as close to him as possible.
“Fuck,” he says, voice hoarse, “I think you just exorcized most of my childhood trauma.”
I laugh. I’ve never loved a man more in my fucking life. I roll to the side, pulling him with me so we’re tangled together, his leg over my hip, our hands in a knot of limbs and sweat and aftershocks.
“Eli.” His voice is rough. Used. The sound of it tightens my chest in a way that’s dangerously close to the feeling I get when Sage curls into my lap and I feel her breathing slow. The same warmth. The same certainty.
Different frequency, same signal.
“Yeah.”
“If you ever go back to being gentle with me, I will actually kill you.”
“I make no promises,” I say, dropping my forehead to his. “But next time, maybe don’t wait three years to ask for what you need.”
Micah laughs, then he sobs, then he laughs some more. I stroke his hair, let him ride the edge until the rest of the shaking leaves him. The devastation is all through his body—muscles loose, eyes red-rimmed and shining.
“That was stupid good,” he says, still catching his breath. “Like, I think maybe the best sex I’ve ever had.”
“Yeah?” I kiss his jaw, the hollow beneath his ear, the tendons jumping in his throat.
“Yeah. Why did we ever pretend this wasn’t a thing?” His hand finds the back of my neck and rubs there, gentle.