Page 178 of The Lies We Play

Hal takes me deeper, and I stop thinking in sentences. I stop being the man with the Cup, the stats, the cameras, the last name everyone keeps shouting.

For one breath, I am only his.

And somehow, impossibly, still mine.

I’m loud.

I let myself be loud because he likes that too.

He told me once that hearing me moan was better than any crowd’s noise. I didn’t believe him then. Now, with his cheeks hollowing and his lashes lowered and his body angled over mine like this is the only task he intends to complete today, I think he might have been telling the truth.

He pulls off, lips wet, eyes darker than before.

“Tell me if you want me to stop.”

“Don’t,” I say, and it comes out too close to begging. “Don’t you dare.”

His mouth curves. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

Then he goes down again.

Deeper this time.

My hips move without permission. My hands shake in his hair. The ceiling blurs because the room is too bright and the pleasure is too much. I haven’t had to hold myself together for anyone since I opened my eyes. His finger trails lower, slick from his mouth, teasing the rim of me, and my whole body reacts.

I lose the breath I was pretending to manage.

Halston looks up from my cock with me still in his mouth.

That image is going to ruin me.

He keeps me pinned with one hand on my thigh as his finger circles, barely pressing. My body tenses around the promise of it. I want to tell him how good he is. How much I need this. How terrifying it is to be wanted by someone who notices everything and still chooses to stay.

All I can do is groan his name.

He understands.

He always understands.

When I get close, I warn him, because if I don’t, I am going to come in his mouth and he told me he wants something else.

“Halston, I’m⁠—”

He stops.

The loss is immediate and brutal.

I swear under my breath, and he gives me a look that says he heard every syllable and will be remembering them for later.

He reaches into the drawer beside the bed.

Of course, the drawer is organized. Lube. Condoms. Wipes. Everything placed with obscene practicality. For over a year and a half, Halston has stocked this drawer the way he organizes everything—efficiently, without comment, with a clear sense of what belongs where and what needs replacing. I have stopped asking how he knows. He just knows. Liv doesn’t understand how he can be so organized in that drawer and forget to stock the refrigerator.

That’s our guy, and we love him no matter what.

Halston comes back with the lube in one hand.

The sight of it makes my stomach dip.