“No, please,” he begged. “Let me finish. I need to say this before I lose my nerve.”
“Okay,” I whispered. I leaned forward and pushed my nose against his temple. “I’m listening.”
He relaxed a fraction. “I don’t know if it’s just the feeling of…being with you, or the newness of it. I don’t know if one day, my desire for sex is going to dry up into nothing, and it’ll be years before I want it again. I don’t have any real experience. I barely know myself, and I went through something really bad when I was younger that left me afraid. You make me feel safe, but sometimes it won’t matter how good you are to me. Sometimes the past will catch up with me, and it’ll fuck me up all over again.”
I waited as he went silent. I could tell he wasn’t finished.
“And I don’t want to let you in only to be thrown away when you realize it won’t always be like this.”
I took a moment to think about his words. To process them. To make sure I understood everything he was telling me, because while I understood English better than I spoke it, he had a lot to say.
And those words were very important.
But it didn’t take an expert to understand what he was afraid of. Micah had been living behind so many masks for so long, it only made sense that letting one drop would terrify him. All I could do was take the time—the years, if I had to—to show him that nothing about him scared me.
That I didn’t need what we’d just done.
That while I loved it—while I fucking adored watching him fall apart beneath me—there was so much more to him than this. I had fallen for him long before I ever got to put my hands on him. Months before I had him in Alexio’s car, gasping and writhing at my touch.
I wantedallof him.
“Forgive me if I don’t say all my words as nice as you,” I told him. “Is so hard in English.”
He laughed softly. “I wish I spoke more than a few words in Russian.”
“Maybe you learn. Maybe we learn a language together, yes?”
He grinned and pressed his smile against my chest. “Okay.”
“For now,” I murmured, “I don’t think I can say any words to convince you not to be afraid. Fear has been best friend for so long.”
He sighed. “I…yeah. Fuck, that’s hard to admit, but yes.”
“So is okay for me to share space for a little while. As long as you let me try.” I eased him back and cupped his chin in my hand. I loved looking at his face. At the cut edge of his jaw, and the smattering of freckles across his cheeks, his wild hair and long eyelashes, and the way he’d wrinkle his nose when he was deep in thought. “If you try and be patient, I will prove.”
He swallowed heavily. “I can do that.”
“And as long as you need to take, I can wait for your I love you.”
He shook his head. “No—I…that’s…” He let out a puff of air. “That’s not what I mean. I’m saying all this because Idolove you, and it scares the shit out of me.”
I’d said those words already. I’d come to terms with them. I’d told him how I felt. But I hadn’t realized how profoundly it would affect me to hear them coming fromhislips.
“Micah,” I whispered.
He smiled and dislodged my hand, only to lean in and take a long, slow, possessive kiss. “Keep being patient with me too, and I will keep trying to get past everything that makes me so fucking insecure.”
I held him tighter. “Anything you want,” I told him. I meant it. And I would remind him of that as often as he needed to hear it.
It wasn’t often that the league shook things up the way it did today, but the one thing I wasn’t expecting when I got down to the practice arena was a massive press conference. Or a strange man with brown skin, black hair, and a surprisingly sunny smile addressing several sports reporters.
He caught my eye as I was walking in and gave me a nod like I was supposed to know who the fuck he was. But the second I stepped into the locker room, it all became clear.
“Ding dong, the fucking witch is dead!” Rene crowed as I dropped my bag near my stall.
I stared at him, confused. I knew the phrase, but I couldn’t remember what it was from.
“He’s gone! Noah’s fucking gone.”
