“Come, Mattias.”
That was it. Saying his first name when he was on the edge was always the shove over. He reached for the hair on my head, gripped tight and shouted, “Varga, fuck!”
I’d swallowed since the very first blow job I gave him, and he said I grinned like a man who’d just seen God at a roadside diner.
“I think I saw God,” I said. He laughed so long and hard.
I landed on my side beside him, and he told me it was my turn. Rook worked me slow. He brought me to the edge three times, and I gasped louder each time.
He knew it wouldn’t hold much longer. “Mine, Luki?” he asked.
I nodded. Was that ever a valid question? It stopped being one a month into us.
My breath stopped, and I stared into his eyes. “I—“ No other words came out as the orgasm obliterated me. I buried my face in his chest as the last drops pumped out onto his belly.
“Mm,” he said, quietly pleased. “You okay?”
“Am I still alive?”
“I think so. You’re speaking.”
“Then I’m okay.”
He whispered something that I didn’t quite make out.
“What?”
“I said szeretlek,“ he said. “Just tried to say it. Pretty sure I murdered it.”
He had murdered it. He had a granite-block American mouth, and the soft Hungarianszslid out of him sideways. Thelekcame out with a hardk. I had stopped correcting him years ago on the night I figured out I never wanted him to say it correctly. I wanted him to say it his way.
“Murder it again,” I said into his collarbone.
“Szeretlek.”
“Do it worse.”
“Szeretlek.”
“Beautiful.”
It was his attempt to say “I love you” in my native Hungarian, and I treasured it.
He got up. I watched him walk to the bathroom. Five years and I couldn’t get enough of seeing Rook move naked. He came back with a damp washcloth and wiped me down, over my stomach, between us where we’d ended up sticky, and down the inside of my thigh. He was matter-of-fact about it.
He tossed the washcloth into the laundry hamper, came back to bed, and pulled me down with my ear over his chest and his hand spread flat on my back.
I lay there, closed my eyes, and started telling him about Rafe. I had a bigger thing I wanted to say, but tonight wasn’t the night to say it. The Rafe story was small, and I wanted to talk Rook to sleep. He had talked me to sleep a thousand nights.
I told him about the haircut. It was short at the sides and a flop on top, like a kid had asked his older brother to do it with kitchen scissors. I told him aboutyes sirthree times in twenty minutes, the third one after Markel had saidno moresir.
I said Markel had looked at the kid over the top of his reading glasses and saidMikkelsen, I am not your father,and Rafe had saidsorry sir.Cross laughed into his hand. I told him I was going to have to take Rafe out for a beer he wouldn’t drink and explain that Markel was not, in fact, his father, but that I was going to do it gently, because he was the kind of kid who would remember the conversation forever. Still, some of thatsirwas going to make him a captain in eight years.
Rook’s heartbeat slowed under my cheek.
I kept going.
I told him about Cross’s stick, and I told him about Eric the duck guy, and Eric’scarpe diemtattoo. I told him I had almost told Eric that the duck was for my boyfriend. I wanted to see what the face of a man at a Jewel-Osco meat counter on a Tuesday afternoon did when somebody said the word out loud.
