Page 83 of Second Song

His laugh is a surprise. His eyes shining this much isn’t, nor is his voice thickening again. “Yeah, he’d have killed me instead of me killing?—”

I kiss him then, pulling him down so our mouths meet, and for a big man, he surrenders easily—so easily that I can’t keep this in. “You spent the last few years feeling guilty for living?”

He nods, eyelashes damply clumping, his gaze the softest silver.

“Liam, if you hadn’t survived, I’d still be stuck.” I don’t mean on a ledge.

His question is still low and careful. “Because?”

“Because I never felt safe. Then you made me feel that, and part of me knew.”

“Knew what, Row?” His arms come around me, so fucking protective, even though I’m more than ready to let out this last drop of paralysing poison.

I unbutton his shirt, pressing a palm over where his heart thuds, and wish I felt half as steady as this drumbeat. “I knew that everything I’d believed for years couldn’t have happened. You were the first man to make me doubt it. The first man who made me strong enough to face it.” His heart skips beats under my palm. Mine does the same against my ribs, but I still have to say this. “The first man for me, full stop.”

We kiss again then, and I think he gets it—that he hears what has slowly registered since our first meeting. The only sex that has ever been real for me has been with him. From the very first time in a Porthperrin hotel bed to our last, he’s the only person who ever inched my locked door open to let in all the light I needed, and I’m so relieved it was him and not a stranger.

One thing is for certain—he isn’t thinking about sad times right now. He’s with me. Really with me. Both of his hands cup my jaw like I’m something special and his mouth follows, kisses grazing lower to my T-shirt collar. He pulls it over my head and off to touch the same place on my chest as I did his, and he has to feel my heart thunder. His next breaths are harsher. “You didn’t ever…? Not since…?” He guesses correctly. “You didn’t trust anyone?”

“I couldn’t, not when I couldn’t trust myself either. I mean, I wasn’t even out, but I did everything in that story straight out the gate? Really? Then there you were, and everything changed. So I’m—” Glad isn’t the right word for his loss leading to my gain. Grateful would be better. I settle for saying, “I fell for someone I could trust,” and that sums him up, doesn’t it? He’s always been rock solid, there for me right when I needed saving.

And when I haven’t?

He’s kept watch while I’ve saved myself with glitter and a single set of drumsticks, with wooden planks and dried-pea shakers and with so much walking and talking. Liam doesn’t need my fear or obligation for any of that. Plus, he’d never ever want it, so expressing this is simple. “I fell for the right man for me, and I don’t see that ever changing.”

That might be too much too soon. Too heavy. It’s not like I have a metric for feeling like this.

He can’t think so.

Liam lifts me, making that look easy as well, and I’m learning to trust my judgement, so I go down without a fight, no need to worry when he drops me onto a bed and then covers me with his body.

Our bare chests press together. So do our foreheads after he removes my glasses, and I don’t care where they end up. All I care about is him saying, “Love you so much,” and I believe it. He also says, “You told me you’d done everything.”

I thought I had, but now that Liam’s between my spread legs, his mouth by my ear, there’s no way my insides have turned liquid like this for anyone else. I’m molten when he whispers, “I would have gone easier on you. Like this.”

Now I get to dissolve, melting when his hands roam in a slow reminder of how I once mapped him. He was my canvas the first time we did this, and now I understand why I couldn’t stop all that touching. I’d been starved before him. Now I’m greedy.

We get naked in a hurry, and I love all of our physical contrasts. I also love his low and sexy rumble when we’re chest-to-chest again. “Would have taken it all so much slower with you.” He rolls me over, his cock against the crack of my bare arse, nothing between us apart from this quiet truth. “I’m a lot.”

He isn’t kidding. He’s already made me see stars. Now I want to see more constellations, only he makes a different offer. “You could have done me first if you’d wanted.” He drops kiss after kiss on my shoulders, stubble rasping like his voice does. “Do you know if you’d even…”

Like that?

I don’t. Know, that is.

He doesn’t miss my indecision. “We can find out together. Now if you want.” He lifts up so I can roll onto my back. “Or later.” We’re face-to-face again. “Or never. Whatever you want, Row.”

It’s another no-hurry, no-worry promise. Another of his you’re-safe, I’ve-got-you whispers, and I have to kiss him. I don’t know how long we do that for. All I know is that his weight on me is amazing. Our cocks rub against each other, each slide increasingly fluid and heated, each driving thrust shoving me higher up the bed, closer to where he finds some slick, and then it’s all so good that I can’t keep my groans in. I breathe even faster when he shifts down the bed again to suck me.

I clutch his hair as he does that, but his fingers clench too, only into the meat of my arse, which he lifts, and I don’t care if he leaves bruises on a phoenix that once meant freedom to me. Now all I want is for him to keep tilting me up, to keep mouthing at my balls, to keep licking me open. Each flick of his tongue is as electric as the first time I felt it. Each long, slow, wet stroke pulling a low tone from me. That must be a signal he has no problem hearing—his tongue stabs, making way for a finger.

If I were standing, I’d go up on tiptoes at that thick invasion, at this sudden fullness that I know is only a prelude. And whatever low-pitched tone his mouth dragged from me before pitches sharply higher. He licks again, and all I feel is heaven. I’m spreading my wings and flying, and it’s all down to Liam.

He wrecks me with the kind of focus that means my cock drools. He must taste that when he sucks me again with two fingers deep inside me. His pleased rumble is intense. So is the attention he pays my prostate while his tongue finds a spot under the head of my dick that has me disintegrating.

Pleasure puts me back together and makes the room whirl. I’ve done that on the end of a rope with him already, so this spin doesn’t scare me. Neither does his strength when he shifts me again, this time rolling us over so I’m on top of all his broadness.

“I would have let you choose, Row.” He does now, leaning sideways to grab a square packet. Then he waits, those big hands light on my hips as I make my own decision. I glove him up, then let gravity do the rest to help him breach me. I shudder, almost falling.

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