Page 269 of What We Burn

SIXTY-EIGHT

ELI

Micah’s hands are in my hair and on my shoulders and then he’s kissing me again—no hesitation, no question, just the collapse of all the years he spent waiting for me to catch up with his heart. I grab him by the hair and drag him even closer, mouths colliding with a hunger that is less want and more necessity. He moans into my mouth, biting my lower lip hard enough to make it throb, and fuck if that isn’t all the permission I need.

I wedge my hand between us, slip it down the front of his sweatpants. He’s already hard, straining against thin cotton, and the way he gasps when I wrap my palm around him makes my own pulse riot in my chest. For a moment, I hold him—feel the weight, the heat, the tiny tension in his body as he waits for whatever comes next.

“Tell me what you want, Micah.”

He shivers, his voice a rough scrape. “I want you to fuck me, Eli.”

“Say it again.”

“I want you to fuck me.”

He says it with his whole body. The way he arches up, the way his hands grab fistfuls of my arm, like he’s bracing against a current. The words land and echo, ripple through the room and flatten the last of my restraint. I push his sweatpants down. He’s not wearing anything underneath. His dick is thick and flushed and already weeping. For a moment I just look at him, prone and open and wanting, and some old swollen tangle in my chest breaks open all at once. I want to ruin him. I want to take care of him. With Micah it’s always both at the same time.

He reaches for me. His hands are far less steady now.

“Please,” he whispers, and the sound of it undoes a fundamental law of my personal physics. I slide his pants all the way off, then shed my own, and kneel between his thighs. I want this to be slow and rough but I don’t want to lose the sweetness of him. I want him to remember this the next time his brain tries to whisper he’s just the backup plan, the fallback, the utility boyfriend who floats around the edges of Sage and me and everyone else.

That’s not what he is. And it’s not what I am to him, either.

I drag my knuckles up his thigh, then brace myself over him and kiss the place under his jaw that always gets him trembling. Micah’s hands slide up my chest, his nails raking lightly over my skin, and then he wraps both arms around my back and pulls me flush against him, like if any air gets between us it’ll spook the whole moment back into nothing.

He smells like tea and sweat and that expensive cologne Milo buys him every year for his birthday, convinced it’s the only one worth wearing. There’s lube in the bedside drawer. Micah finds it first, but I take it from him and work the cap off with my teeth, squeezing some into my palm and then slicking my fingers before sliding one inside him. He tenses, then relaxes around it, breath shaking in my ear as I press my mouth to his cheek.

“You okay?” I ask, voice low.

“Yeah. Just—keep going.”

I work another finger in, slow and careful, crooking them until I hear the sound he always makes, the gasp that’s half embarrassment, half awe.

God, he’s gorgeous. Long neck arched, mouth open, eyes already glassy with it. I scissor my fingers gently and he shudders, gripping my shoulders like he’s about to fall off the edge of something and is trusting only me to catch him.

When I slide out, he whines. It goes straight to my own dick—I’m so hard it almost hurts. I lube myself, stroke enough to make it slick, and line up against him, rocking my hips so my dick barely catches, then slides away. Micah tries to buck up, but I pin his wrists to the bed, holding him there.

“Patience,” I rasp.

“Eli, please,” he says, and the way he says it is desperate. Like I’m starving him.

I push in, slow at first. I’ve been on the other side of this enough times to know that too much, too fast ruins the moment, so I inch forward until I get past the initial ring, then pause, letting him feel the stretch.

Micah’s hands turn into fists where I have him pinned. His thighs tremble. “God,” he hisses, “just do it, fuck me, I need it, I need you⁠—”

I push the rest of the way in, bottom out and hold. Micah arches under me, a wordless cry catching in his throat, and for a second we’re merged, fused, completely gone in the best possible way. The air is thick with all the things we never said, all the desperate wanting, all the years of pretending to be fine with scraps.

For the first time, I don’t want to be careful. I want to devour him.

I drag his wrists up over his head and pin them against the mattress. Then I start to move. Slow at first, rolling my hips, letting Micah adjust and settle around the strain of it. His eyes are fever-bright, locked on my mouth, his whole body loose except where our skin collides. I set the pace, sharper with every stroke, until we’re both shuddering, sweat running in rivers down my back.

Each time I bottom out, a sound escapes him. A whine. A curse. My name.

“You’re mine,” I growl. “You understand me? Mine.”

Micah arches harder, his head thrown back, every line of him begging for more.

“Yours,” he pants. “Always.”