Page 25 of Trust my Heart

“I got loud at you. Shouted, in our own kitchen. I slammed a door hard enough to rattle the cupboards, and I’ve been hearing it ever since.” I kept my eyes on him. “Most of what I said I still believe, and I can’t pretend I don’t. But I called you jealous, and that was a cheap thing to say, and I knew it was cheap while I was saying it. And the voice I used on you, I’ve never used that voice on anybody I love. You didn’t have that coming, and I’m sorry for it.”

Ryan didn’t move for a second. Then he came around the counter partway and stopped, a stool between us, like he didn’t trust the distance yet.

“I lied to you,” he said. “I stood in front of you and lied about what I was about to do, and then I let you find out where I’d really gone from him, on the floor, in front of everyone you work with.” His voice stayed quiet. “I’m not sorry I went. I’d go again. But you should have heard it from me, and instead I handed you a lie because it was easier. I’m sorry, Luke.”

Neither of us had touched the worst of it. He hadn’t said another word about being afraid of Adam, and I hadn’t asked him to. And I said nothing about my evening, the coffee and the curb and the mouth that wasn’t his, and I wasn’t going to. He was apologizing to me for the lie, and I was standing in my own kitchen holding one that wasn’t two hours old yet, and I let him apologize anyway. I knew exactly what I was taking, and I took it.

“Okay,” I said.

He looked at me a moment. “That’s the most words you’ve said to me in days, and half of them were about a door.” It came out dry, worn thin, but it was his, the first thing all week that had sounded like him and not like a man being careful in a room. “I missed you. It’s stupid. You were across the desk the whole time.”

“Okay,” I said again, because my throat wouldn’t do better than that.

That was all of it. Nothing was solved. The two of us just stood there in the lamplight, and I looked at him, the pushed-up sleeves, the missing him, and he was right there in reach, and I was done standing on my side of the kitchen.

I crossed to him. He straightened up off the stool, and I put my hand on the back of his neck, and he came the rest of the way on his own.

His hands came up under my jacket and closed on my shirt like he’d been waiting to do exactly that, and I kissed him.

Soft, at first. Careful. All that silence had made us careful, his mouth barely moving against mine, his breath coming slow and unsteady through it, and for a moment that was everything, the two of us standing in the lamplight, in no hurry at all.

Then his grip turned in my shirt and pulled, and careful was done. The kiss went deep and hungry, faster than either of us decided it, his mouth opening under mine, my hand leaving his neck for his hair, and the stool scraped and went over behind him and neither of us looked at it. I had him against the counter, his hands dragging up my back under the jacket, his teeth at my lip, my mouth on his jaw and his throat and back on his mouth, deeper, past every place we would have stopped to breathe, both of us trying to close all that distance at once.

The last clear thought I had was that I had him back, and then I let the rest of it go.

Chapter 9: The Same Side

Luke

The bedroom door shut behind us, and for the first time all week, both of us were on the same side of it.

In the kitchen the kiss had been all teeth, everything we hadn’t said coming out at once. It didn’t ease off when the door closed. It got worse. Ryan had my shirt in both fists, and I had a hand in his hair, and we came into the dark room without either of us reaching for the light. The lamp on the dresser was enough. It put his face in half-light, and that was all I wanted to look at.

I turned him and put him against the wall.

He went, and then he pushed back into me, and the sound he made was not surprise. His palms came up flat against the plaster on either side of his head. I got in close behind him, my chest against his back, and put my mouth on the side of his neck, and for a second we did nothing but breathe.

“I hated this week,” he said. His voice had gone rough already.

“So did I.”

“I kept lying there wanting to come round that wall, and I wouldn’t do it.”

“I know. I was on the other side of it doing the same thing.”

I worked his jacket off his shoulders and let it drop. His shirt I pulled loose from his waistband and opened from the bottom up, and got my hands flat on his stomach, his chest, feeling him breathe, feeling his heart still going hard. Then I put my hips against him and moved, slow, letting him feel through both our clothes how hard I already was. He swore under his breath and pushed back into it.

I don’t say much. He knows that about me. It’s half of what he complains about. So, when I put my mouth against his ear and started talking, he went still to listen.

“I missed you,” I said. “All week. I missed you like you were on the other side of the country. Lying on the other side of that wall every night.” My hand went down his stomach and opened his belt. “I’m not doing that again. That was hell.”

“Luke.” His head dropped back onto my shoulder.

“I mean it.”

“Yeah.” His breath had gone unsteady.

I got his belt open, and the button, and I pushed his pants down off his hips and everything under them, and took his cock in my hand. He was hard, and already wet at the tip, and when my fist closed around him the sound that came out of him went straight down my spine. I stroked him slow, my body holding him against the wall, my mouth working the back of his neck and the top of his shoulder. He cursed and pushed into my hand and then back against me, caught between the two, and after a second, he stopped trying to choose. His hand came off the wall and reached back and gripped my hip, holding on, keeping me where I was. His breath had gone loud in the quiet room. I kept the pace slow on purpose, my thumb dragging over the wet head of him on the upstroke, and every time I did it his hips jerked and a desperate whine came out of him.