Page 65 of What We Become

“Shut up, Milo.”

“Shutting up.”

He rocks. Slow, deliberate pressure, both of us caught between his pelvis and mine, and every pass sends a white-hot stripe up my spine. One of his hands pins my hip. The other brackets my head against the pillow.

“You feel that?” he asks, low, right in my ear.

“Feel is a down payment—I am going to invent a religion around your dick⁠—”

He drops his weight and grinds, and the religion gets founded immediately.

I make a sound that would embarrass a man with shame. Fortunately, I packed none.

“Denomination pending,” I manage. “The holy book is a work in progress⁠—”

Holden silences me the only reliable way—he kisses me, deep and filthy, tongue sliding against mine while he rolls his hips again, and the joke dissolves on my tongue into something close to a whine.

Every pass drags my cock against his, trapped and slick between our stomachs, the friction perfect and maddening. No preparation. No logistics. Just pressure and heat and Holden’s body moving over mine like he’s conducting an interrogation and my dick is confessing everything.

“Holden.” I break the kiss to breathe. “Copernicus called—he wants to know what it’s like revolving around⁠—”

He bites my neck. Hard. “Finish that sentence and I stop.”

“I recant. Science is dead. You’re the center.”

His laugh grazes my collarbone, and I feel it in my marrow, because rationing is Holden’s whole personality and I just got change back.

He shifts down, lines us up, and clamps one hand around both of us—as much of the two of us as his fist can manage—kneading us together from root to tip, pre-cum slicking the slide. The head of his cock bumps mine on every upward stroke, an obscene little handshake, and my brain short-circuits into static.

“Together,” I gasp, very enlightened. “We come together, like a sync, a duet, an extremely exclusive club⁠—”

“Milo.”

“Sorry. Locking it.” I lock it by biting his shoulder, which, honestly, is a loophole, and his whole body tightens like I tripped an alarm.

He speeds up. The hand, the hips, everything—ruthless rhythm, his mouth back on mine, swallowing every noise I make. My heels dig into the mattress. My orgasm climbs fast, stupid fast, and I warn him with a broken hum against his tongue because apparently vocabulary has left the building.

“Don’t care,” he mutters. “Go.”

“Fuck!”

My cum stripes our stomachs while he keeps moving, and I’m still mid-shudder when he groans low against my mouth and lets go—hot cum pulsing between us. His forehead drops to mine, the two of us a mess of sweat and heaving breath.

“That,” I finally manage, voice demolished, “was the single most efficient use of skin-to-skin contact since the invention of skin.”

His chest vibrates with what I’m choosing to categorize as laughter.

“Also, for the record,” I add, tracing the line of his spine with fingers that haven’t stopped trembling, “you switching off the kitten monitor because it’s ‘not for me’ while pinning me to a mattress within the hour is the exact brand of hypocrisy I find irresistible.”

“Milo.”

“I’m just saying. Daddy dom adjacent. The job is yours if you want it.”

His hand slides to the back of my neck, thumb dragging once through the sweat there, and the joking stalls because his eyes do the thing—the same thing from the car, the I can’t lose you too thing. The tell he’d flag in an interview room, on his own face.

“You’re in the circle, Milo,” he whispers. “Stop auditioning for the position.”

My brain loads twelve responses at once and rejects all of them.