Page 56 of Breakaway
"I do want to stop. I have wanted to stop for a year."
"Then why haven't you?"
"Because I'm scared." He doesn't take it back. "Because every time I think about what happens if someone finds out, I see the version where it costs you something. More than something. I can't be the reason you lose your entire career."
"What's in your head is keeping us from really being together."
"Come here," he says.
I cross the room. I stand between his knees. His hands come to my hips. His forehead presses against my stomach and I feel his breath through my shirt.
"I'm sorry," he says into the fabric. "I'm sorry about the hand."
"Sorry about the hand isn't the same as sorry about the last year."
His grip tightens on my hips. His head lifts. His eyes are steady and stripped of every layer I'm used to seeing. No patience. No steadiness. He is looking at me like I am the most important thing in his life and also the thing that just took him apart.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to say it's going to change."
"I don't know if it's going to change."
"Then I don't know what we're doing."
He pulls me down. His mouth is on mine and the kiss is not an answer. I kiss him back because my hands know him better than my sentences do right now, and his hand is on the back of my neck holding me there and I can taste the salt on his lip from the walk and neither of us has stopped being angry.
I pull his shirt over his head. He pulls mine. His chest is broad and the tattoo sleeve catches the low light. I press my mouth to his collarbone and he smells like soap, and under it the warm steady scent I know from a year and a half of sleeping beside him. His hand is in my hair. He pulls me up and both hands are on my face.
"I want you to fuck me," he says quietly.
"Is that supposed to fix this?"
"Nothing is going to fix this tonight. I still want you."
I get my shorts off. He gets his off. I reach for the lube on the nightstand. He opens his legs and I settle between them and press one finger inside him. He exhales and his jaw loosens and his eyes stay on mine. I add a second finger and curl and his back lifts off the mattress and the sound he makes is sharp.
"You let go of my hand," I say.
"I know."
"In front of a stranger. On the one trip a year where it's supposed to be safe."
"I know, Luca."
A third finger. I stretch him and he rocks onto my hand and his cock is hard against his stomach and I cannot tell where the anger stops and the want begins because they are sitting in the same place in my chest.
I slick myself and push in. Slow. His legs come up around my hips and his hands grip my shoulders and I watch his face as his body takes me in. His mouth opens. His brow pulls tight and then smooths. His eyes find mine and stay.
I move. Deep, slow strokes. Each one full. His hand finds mine on the pillow and he laces our fingers together. Our hands locked beside his head while I fuck him careful and unhurried and outside this bed there is a table where his hand left mine and a year of hiding. All of it is in the room with us.
"I love you," I say. Not loud. Not the way I said it last year with the relief still in my voice. This time it lands heavy and worn in and I do not know if he can hear the anger still running underneath it.
"I love you," he says. "I love you, Luca."
"Then stop letting go."
His eyes change. His hand tightens in mine. His body clenches around me and I wrap my free hand around his cock and stroke him in time with my hips. He is slick in my grip and his hips push up to meet my hand and his breathing is ragged against my mouth. I come first and bury myself deep and hold and let go with my forehead pressed against his, both of us breathing the same air. I feel him come in my hand, hot across his stomach, his back arched, his body clenching around me in waves.
