“I’m starting to think you don’t actually have guys. It’s just you in a trench coat with a hat and fake mustache.”
He burst into another fit of laughter, rolling me back onto the bed until he was hovering over me. I let my hands wander, taking in the shape of him, the size of him, his bulk and his soft spots. Where he was smooth and where he was rough.
He really was the most gorgeous man I had ever known. And it was hard to believe I almost let this go.
“I think I need food,” I said when my stomach rumbled again.
“I will call room service. We eat, have sex if you want, then sleep.”
That sounded like the dream. “Burger,” I said. “Fries. A fucking gallon of water with lots of ice, and maybe something chocolate.”
I could feel his smile when he kissed me. “Anything for you.”
Freezing, I held him tight. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
His hand cupped my jaw, thumb stroking my skin, and we both just breathed for a moment. Then he leaned in and whispered right against my lips. “Yes, Micah. My pretty little goalie. I do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
VANYA
There wasnothing better than a stomach full of warm comfort food and a lover stretched out beneath me, asshole wet and soft and pliant under my tongue as dessert. What made it even better was the noise Micah made as I licked him, making him restless in my hands.
He writhed, gasped, fingers clawing at the mattress, body shifting like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to move closer or get further away from me. Pulling my arm back, I smacked his ass—the fifth spank I’d given him since getting him naked and on the bed.
He groaned loudly, his back bowing as his head lifted off the mattress. It was a wonder how much he loved it—how much he craved that little bit of pain with his pleasure.
I understood it in a way that I didn’t with most lovers. I’d been asked to do this before. I’d been asked to do more—bonds and paddles and gagsweren’t strange to me. But every lover before Micah seemed like they were putting on a performance.
Like because I was big and Russian and had a low voice and dark eyes, I wanted to hurt them. Like my rough hands couldn’t be tender, so they had to lean into who they thought I was.
With Micah, it was a need. It was a craving he had never been able to sate before. It was desperation for proof that he could take it—that I believed in him. That he was, above all, so fucking good and deserved to have everything he wanted.
“So perfect,” I murmured, admiring the way his skin lit up pink. It wouldn’t last. He was used to taking hits, and I would have to go a lot harder if he wanted bruises, but that wasn’t what this was about.
It was about the contrast.
About keeping him grounded.
About proving everyone in his past absolutely fucking wrong.
The connection between us was intense and powerful, and I knew that made a difference. I knew that was part of all of this. Without it—without the fact that he was in love with me, and I was in love with him—we wouldn’t have had any of this.
Being able to give Micah a little rough with his tender cravings didn’t mean he was fixed, because he wasn’t broken. In the times he couldn’t get hard or didn’t want sex because it was the last thing on his mind, it didn’t mean that things were suddenly wrong.
And I needed him to know I understood. Iwanted him to be unafraid to be himself—without compromise and without apology.
He’d been fist-fighting himself this entire time he was with me—his fear of loving getting in his way of being able to actually fall. But my patience was being rewarded now.
“Vanya,” he gasped. I could see his hips humping into the mattress, and I grabbed him, yanking him up onto his knees.
“Not yet.”
“Please, fuck. I need to come. I’m going to fucking die.”
“No. You will not. Maybe have some blue balls—a little ache. Maybe get more desperate,” I rumbled against his ear as I slotted my hips behind his round ass. I fucked my dick forward, grazing his balls, and he dropped his head on a heavy moan. “But you are so good for me just like this.”
He shuddered hard, and his hips rocked backward against me. He was ready to be taken—ready for my cock. Reaching for the lube, I slicked up, then pressed the head against his waiting hole.
