Page 37 of Open Water
But that was the thing. The secret was out and Marcus had pressed send. Every phone on the Kingswell team had the photo. My father had probably seen it by now. The life I'd been protecting — the careful, calibrated, performance-of-Alex-Harrington life — was already in pieces on the floor.
And I was still here. Still breathing. Still wanting him.
So I stopped fighting it. could want him without any consequence because that consequence was already in progress.
He turned toward the shower and I watched him go. The lines of his back narrowing to his waist. The curve of his ass. Tight, built from ten thousand strokes on the erg.
He's so hot. And he's mine.
My dick was almost fully hard at this point.
Liam glanced over his shoulder. His eyes dropped and he could probably see the outline of my dick in through my boxers. The corner of his mouth twitched.
"Getting a little excited there, golden boy?"
"Shut up."
"I'm just saying. Rough night and everything."
"I said shut up."
He grinned. The real one. The one that made him look like the kid on the dock that first summer. Before the rivalry, before the secrets, before any of it.
He pulled the curtain and stepped in. I took off my clothes and followed.
The stall was barely big enough for one person. Two was an engineering problem. His shoulders took up most of the width. I pressed my back against the tile — cold, then warm where the water bounced off him and hit me — and he stepped closer and the space between us went to nothing.
"Your face," he said. His thumb traced the bruise on my jaw. Careful. "Does it hurt?"
"Yes."
He kissed it. Just his lips against the bruise. Soft enough that it didn't hurt and deliberate enough that my whole body registered the intention behind it.
"What about here?" His mouth moved to the corner of my lips.
"No."
"Liar."
He kissed me. Slow. The water running between our mouths. His hand slid up my side and his fingers wrapped around the back of my neck and pulled me in and the kiss deepened and I stopped thinking about the bruise.
His mouth left mine and moved down my jaw. My neck. Found the spot below my ear where my pulse was hammering and stayed there — lips and tongue and the edge of his teeth — and my head fell back against the tile.
"Liam —"
He kissed across my collarbone. Down the center of my chest. His mouth was warm and the water was warm and the tile behind me was cold and the contrast made every nerve ending fire at once. He dropped lower. Kissed my sternum. The ridge of my abs. His lips dragging slow across wet skin, his hands on my hips holding me against the wall.
I looked down at him. Water running down his back. The muscles in his shoulders shifting as he moved. His mouth trailing lower across my stomach, following the line of hair below my navel, and his green eyes looked up at me through the water.
Oh.
That was all. Just —oh.The sight of Liam on his knees in front of me, looking up through wet hair with those eyes, his mouth an inch from where I needed it. My cock was so hard it ached. I could feel my pulse in it.
He wrapped one hand around my dick. Held me. Studied it like he was memorizing the weight and shape. Then he leaned forward and ran his tongue across the tip. Slow, tasting it.
My knees almost gave out.
"Fuck —"
