"You're—"
"I know."
He squeezes. Slow. Confident in a way Max is never confident—he is teasing me, deliberate, his thumb finding the head of my cock through the fabric and pressing there. My hips push up against his hand without my permission. He smiles against my mouth.
"Bane."
"Yeah."
"I want—"
He kisses me again. Open. Hot. His hand still working me through my jeans, slow and merciless. The bond between usflares and I feel his want pour down it into my own body and it nearly takes me out.
I have to break the kiss to breathe.
His mouth goes to my jaw. His hand stays where it is. He is half-curled into me with his hand on my cock and his breath at my ear and the fire popping in the hearth and the bond singing under my ribs, and the word I just found for what I am has settled into my chest and is not going anywhere, and—
"I love you."
It comes out against his temple. Quiet. On an exhale. Before I've made a decision about whether to say it. Not whispered, exactly. Just spoken.
He goes still.
Everything in him. All at once.
His hand on my cock goes very still and very warm. He isn't breathing. I'm not breathing.
For a long second neither of us does anything.
Then, slow, he pulls back.
His hand slides off me. He sits up enough to look at my face. His mouth is wet. His eyes are wide. He is reading me the way he used to when he first moved in—careful, listening, deciding whether the floor will hold.
I don't say it again.
I don't say anything.
I reach up and I touch his cheek. Once. Light.
He turns his face into my palm.
His eyes are bright.
His mouth moves. It tries to make a word. It doesn't make a word.
Then he's moving. Off my lap in one too-fast push, his bare feet hitting the rug, the cushion under my hip still warm where he'd been a second ago.
"I—I forgot—"
"Maxie."
"—I told Wren I'd—she's been—I have to—"
"Maxie. Hey."
"—I have to text her, I forgot, I—"
He stops. He's at the doorway already. He's gotten himself almost out of the room. I haven't stood up. I haven't moved at all. I'm watching him from the couch with my hand still in the air where his face was.
