Page 73 of Loverboy

I DIDN’T GET more than three hours of sleep lying next to Milo in his bed. His breathing was too loud, his body too warm. The tossing and turning annoyed me like nothing else, but it was easy enough to swallow when every time I ran my fingers through his hair, his lips twitched into a sleepy smile, and his head nuzzled into my touch.

I trailed my knuckles over his hip for the hundredth time, dragging his shirt higher on the path back up to his ribs. He squirmed, half-conscious and pliant. I spent a long time staring at the streaks of blood that had dried on his skin like a macabre painting, and I felt a strange satisfaction not knowing where mine ended and his began.

This was how it was meant to be.

When he was asleep, there was no fight. No sharp tongue, no walls to scale—only raw vulnerability. It was the soft, exposed version of him that trusted me not to do anything cruel with it. The notion that other people had been given this freely and still chose to hurt him made something dark and ugly coil in my chest. They hadn’t deserved it.

Last night I’d crossed a line. The label of brothers had been my shelter, sturdy enough to hide behind, a place I could stay forever, never risking losing him. There was no way to go back to it now. Being brothers had been safe, but what I wanted from him was anything but. It was selfish, and I would, with absolute certainty, make him worse.

I wanted to be the object of his obsession. I wanted him to get jealous when I talked to other people, and I wanted him to crave me the same unhealthy, desperate way he did his lovers. Every red flag, every toxic behaviour, I would covet them the way no one else could.

As long as he didn’t leave me behind again.

I shifted and leaned down until my face was buried in the crook of his neck. The compulsion overtook me, and I placed an open-mouthed kiss over the fluttering of his pulse. There was an audible hitch in his breath, and I liked the softness of it a little too much, because I dragged my lips higher, kissing all the way up to his earlobe.

“Jas…” Milo sighed.

I watched the way his heavy lids opened a fraction, my heart rate picking up as he looked at me in a daze before closing them again.

I could get away with more if I wanted to.

Instead, I pulled away, resting the side of my head on my bandaged fist, elbow propped up on the pillow beneath me. Even though I’d cleaned it up at the end of the night, the deep cut still ached with every movement.

What I really needed to do was get up. I peeled the blanket off, determined to do the things I was good at. I could run Milo a bath, make a pot of coffee, and cook breakfast. Those were all safe ways to express how much I cared about him, and they were easy enough to frame in a nonchalant light. But as I moved to get out of bed, a pair of scrawny arms encircled my waist and squeezed. I covered Milo’s bandaged hand with my own over my stomach, going completely still.

I had to be careful because I didn’t know where his head was after last night.

“Where are you going?” he asked groggily.

I shot for normalcy while I ruptured from the inside. “Coffee.”

“Don’t leave.” He buried his face into my back with a groan and tightened his grip.

“The kitchen doesn’t even count as leaving.” I rolled my eyes.

“It does. I can’t see you out there,” he argued childishly.

“You’re right,” I said sarcastically. “It’ll be like when the dad goes out to grab milk and never comes back. I’ll disappear forever.”

A throbbing pain caught me by surprise, and my back arched in reflex. I peeled Milo’s arms away and turned to face him, grabbing his jaw. “Did you just bite me?”

“No?” He pursed his lips, fighting off a roguish smile while he batted his lashes innocently. I wanted to kiss that bratty little face so badly that it pained me, but the waters were so muddy, I didn’t know where it was safe to swim.

“I guess you’re making your own coffee then,” I threatened playfully.

Milo didn’t respond, his eyes dropping to my lips. Butterflies swarmed the cage of my stomach, the vivid memory of claiming him filling my mouth with the phantom taste of his. Now that I’d had him, my previously well-contained yearning was nothing more than a sinking ship.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he murmured, sounding a little sad.

“Like what?” I scoffed.

“It makes me want to kiss you.”

My mind short-circuited, caught off guard by the easy admission. When I asked if he was hungry, he’d say no just to be defiant, even while his stomach growled. Any time I wanted him to admit he needed something, I had to gaslight and manipulate him into doing it on his own, using calculated teasing and condescending remarks. It was a skill I’d perfected over the years.

“So then kiss me.” I pulled him closer by his chin.

He looked up at me, so goddamn vulnerable. “You won’t hate it?”