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“You do not have to answer,” I said quickly. “I did not say it to be answered. I said it because it is true. The bond only told me what I was already beginning to know, and I would have loved you without it. I wished you to hear it once, aloud, in a room, while you were looking at me.”

He did not speak. He lowered his head and pressed his forehead to mine, and his whole body shook, and I felt a drop fall on my cheek and then another, and understood that they were his.

“I can’t say it yet,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I want to. I think it’s right there, but I’ve never said it, and I don’t know how, and I’m afraid that if I say it, it’ll be true.”

“It is true whether you say it or not.”

“That’s what scares me.”

“I know.” I brushed his hair back from his face. “There is no hurry. You may say it in a year, or in a hundred, or never, and I will go on hearing it every time you laugh.”

He made a small broken sound and kissed me until I forgot the room. When he began to move again it was different, deeper and slower, as though every stroke were a word he could not say aloud. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him in, and he reached between us and wrapped his fist around my cock and stroked me in time with his thrusts, slick and tight and relentless, until the pleasure gathered low in my spine and rose. I said his name into his mouth. When it came for me, the long slow flood of it, I spilled over his hand and my own stomach with a cry that I could not have held back for a kingdom, clenching around him, and I felt it not only in my body but in some place behind my ribs where a heart had once been, and it was so much that I wept.

He followed a moment later. He shoved deep and held there, groaning my name, his whole weight settling over me like a blanket as his cock pulsed inside me, and I held on to him until the last shudder left him.

For a long time, nothing existed but breath.

“Can I mark you?”

I did not say it. I want that recorded. It was Lex who said something, half muffled, in the crook of my neck, and I thought at first I had misheard.

“What?”

“I said…” He propped himself up on one elbow. His hair was a wreck. His neck was flushed. The garnet lay in the hollow of his throat, gleaming dully. “I said, don’t ask me.”

“I do not understand.”

“Tonight. Don’t ask me tonight. If you ask, I’ll say yes.” His voice shook. “I know I will. I’m naked, and I’m crying, and you said the L-word, and I’d say yes to anything. And I don’t want you to ask when I’d say yes to anything.”

I stared at him.

“I want to say yes when I’m sure, “ said Lex. “In daylight. With coffee. When I’ve had a shower and a bad night and a good night and can look at you and know it’s me talking. You said that. You said in daylight, with a clear head.”

“I did.”

“So don’t ask me tonight.”

“I was not going to.”

“I know.” He smiled, tear-streaked and helpless. “That’s why I’m telling you. Because you weren’t.”

I could not speak. I put my hand on the back of his head and drew it down, and held him against my heart.

“Thank you,” I said finally.

“For what?”

“For keeping the door open.”

“Yeah, well.” He nuzzled my collarbone. “You built it.”

I do not know how long we lay there. The lamp burned low. Below us, faint through the floors, the band played something slow.

“Maksim?”

“Yes?”

“I meant it. What I said about the necklace. I mean it’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever given me. It wasn’t the stone. It was the card. It’s not a leash, it’s a gift. “ He was quiet. “I’ve had a lot of people try to put me on a leash. Coaches. My dad. Every girl who ever said ‘I just want you to be happy’ and meant ‘I want you to be me.’ I never told anybody. But you gave me a thing that could’ve been a leash and you said, no, it’s mine, do what you want.”