“That is not what's about to happen.”
“Back to sleep, Maddox.”
His laugh is a chest sound, muffled. He rolls onto his back. The duvet slides. He is already half hard, the morning shape of him that I have known for six months and that I still look at with disbelief that this gets to be a thing I have.
I look up at him.
His eyes are still closed. His mouth is doing the thing it does. The small tight tuck at the corner that means he's pretending tosleep because he likes the part where I do this while he's faking it.
“Baby,” he says. Eyes closed.
“Shut up.”
His mouth twitches.
“Bossy.”
“Shut up, Maddox. I'm doing something.”
“Yes, you are.”
I put my mouth on him.
He doesn't open his eyes. Two minutes. Three. He lies on his back with one hand over his face and the other hand in my hair, loose, not directing, and he lets me take my time. That's a thing that has changed. January Maddox would have had my hair in a fist by now and his hips set. July Maddox lets my mouth do what my mouth wants to do and trusts me to get him there because I have, every morning for six months that I could get away with it—which has been a lot of mornings.
I take him deep. I take him slow. I flatten my tongue and I come off the head and I look up to see if he's looking.
He's looking.
His eyes have opened. His hand in my hair has gone from loose to less loose. His jaw has set. He's watching me with the look I have learned to read, half affection and half intent, a man who was planning to let me run this and is about to revise.
“Kid.”
“Mm.”
His thumb brushes my temple.
“Come up here.”
“I want...”
“Come up here, Theo.”
I come up.
He hauls me into his chest. He's warm. He kisses me once, hard, and then his hand slides down my back to the elastic of my boxers and inside.
“Better.”
“I was doing a thing.”
“You were. Now we're doing a thing.”
His hand is big. His hand is not rushed. We learned about each other in a panic in the winter, and we have been learning about each other without a panic since the spring, and his hand knows what I like now, which is long and close and him breathing into my ear while he does it. His mouth is on my neck. His hand is on me. His other hand is spread flat across my lower back holding me against him while he works me, and I come fast and loud in our apartment in Blackridge with his hand on me and his mouth at my ear, and he murmursgoodandI've got youandthat's it,and he comes a minute later with my hand on him and my face tucked under his jaw, and we lie there sticky and stupid in the honey-colored light.
The dog starts whining on the other side of the door at six thirty-four.
Right on schedule.
