Page 47 of Making It Live!

“Sit,” I said.

He sat on the cleared vanity.I stepped between his knees, and his legs wrapped around me instantly, pulling me in.The heat of him against me through the last thin layer of fabric tore a moan out of my throat that I couldn’t have stopped if my life depended on it.

I kissed him.Deeply.Both hands cradling his face, thumbs tracing his cheekbones.Jimmy’s hands found my waist, my ribs, the waistband at the small of my back—and he pressed his mouth to my bare shoulder, teeth sinking in just enough to sting.I made another sound I didn’t recognize, raw and pleading.

I had spent years in this room.Sitting in this chair.Looking in this mirror.Becoming Nelson Mackenzie for the camera—composed, controlled, untouchable.The mirror behind Jimmy now showed me a man with his shirt hanging open, his hair falling loose over his forehead, his head tipped back while another man’s mouth moved down his chest.

Jimmy lifted his head.His pupils were blown, his breathing ragged, his auburn hair a wreck.“The couch,” he said against my mouth.“Please.”

We stumbled toward it, shedding the last barriers between us.His hand caught in his own waistband, and he laughed—a breathless, startled sound—and I kissed the laugh right off his mouth.I toed off my shoes and stepped out of the rest of my clothes, then pulled him down onto the cushions.

Skin against skin.The full length of his body against mine.

I had to close my eyes and just breathe.Just exist inside it without analyzing it.Without filing it away in the place where I stored things that could hurt me.

Jimmy propped himself on one elbow and looked down at me.Traced my lower lip with his thumb.“Hi.”

Something between a laugh and a sob caught in my throat.“Hi.”

He kissed me softly.Once.Then his hand slid down my body—my neck, my collarbone, over my stomach, lower—slow, deliberate, watching my face with those green eyes, reading every response the way he read a live feed.Gathering information.Following the thread.Letting the story build.

His hand closed around my shaft, and I stopped breathing.He stroked me slowly, his mouth at my throat murmuring my name like it was the only word he knew.Every point of contact was a place I’d gone numb years ago and forgotten was capable of feeling anything at all.

My back arched off the leather, and every thought I’d ever had about maintaining control left my body in a single sharp exhale.

I’d been perfectly composed for thirteen years.In this room.Behind the anchor desk.In front of those cameras.I’d taught myself to hold still when everything inside me was screaming, to deliver a perfect line while my world was falling apart, to feel nothing, because feeling things was what got you left behind.

I felt everything.

His name came out of me wrecked, raw, and completely without permission.

“Jimmy—fuck, Jimmy—”

His forehead dropped against mine, and he whispered something I couldn’t quite hear over the sound of my own heartbeat.I didn’t need to hear it.I felt it in the way his breath hitched, in the way his fingers tightened around me, in the way his body trembled against mine.

I came undone in his hand, my release crashing over me in waves so intense I saw stars.My vision blurred, and I clung to him like he was the only solid thing in the world.Jimmy held me through it, his face pressed to my temple, his breath ragged against my skin.

When I could breathe again, I rolled him onto his back before I could lose my nerve.My hands were unsteady, but I didn’t try to hide it.I was done hiding.

I kissed his throat, the hollow at the base of it, the freckle on his left collarbone that I’d kissed a thousand times in another life.He arched into me, his breath hitching, and I learned his body again—the places that made him gasp, the places that made him go quiet, the way his hips moved when he was close to the edge.

My mouth trailed lower, down his chest, over his stomach, and I took my time the way I used to.Until his fingers tangled in my hair, until his breath came in sharp, uneven gasps, until he was saying please in a voice that had nothing left of the professional in it.

I remembered all of it.Thirteen years, and my hands and my mouth still knew the map.

Jimmy came undone with one hand knotted in my hair and the other gripping the arm of the sofa so hard his knuckles went white.

“Oh, God, Nelson!Jesus…”

I held him through it with a ferocity that frightened me, because I recognized it for what it was.

Not want.Not lust.Not even need.

Mine.He was mine.Jimmy had always been mine.And I’d spent thirteen years pretending the space he left behind was a room I’d chosen to keep empty.

* * *

The quiet settled over us like a held breath.