Page 46 of Margins

“It’s okay. I’ll be quiet so you can sleep in. Just lock up behind you whenever you go.”

Elijah hums, quietly pleased. “That sounds incredibly domestic.”

“Maybe I just meant to sound lazy,” Alex teases, catching him for a kiss. “But seriously, help yourself to whatever in the morning, do whatever you have to do all day, then come back to me tomorrow night.”

“A little dinner, a little emotional upheaval?”

“Yeah, something like that.” When they step through the door, he nods toward his dresser and pretends it’s the most casual thing in the world. That it’s not the only time he’s ever had anyone in his bedroom like this—or the only time he’s literally slept with anyone like this—other than his wife. “Need to borrow anything to wear to bed?”

His voice breaks a little on the question, but Elijah is right there to put him back together, seeing right through him and stepping close enough to touch his hands to Alex’s waist without holding too tightly. “Hey, I don’t have to stay here tonight. Or I can sleep on the couch if you want some kind of compromise.”

Maybe the couch makes sense, and Alex considers it for the split second it takes to reason his way right back out of the idea. His bed isn’t the problem, no matter how many nights he shared it with Cassidy—not when Elijah has already settled into so many of the blank spaces she left behind—and he swallows around the knowledge that it’s only what he wants to do in the bed that is leaving him stunned now.

“No, I want this. I’ve just never—”

Elijah kisses him then, so slowly and so deeply Alex thinks he could drown in it. “There hasn’t been anyone else? Even before?”

“Nobody,” Alex admits. “And it feels really stupid to say that out loud.”

“It’s not even a little bit stupid, actually. It’s beautiful, and I’m honored to be the one here with you right now, but I promise it’s okay if you want me to go,” Elijah insists. “I promise I’ll come back tomorrow.”

And Alex closes his eyes and lets Elijah wrap his arms around him, strong and sure in the middle of a bedroom in which Alex has maybe never been either one. He lets himself nuzzle into Elijah’s neck and breathe in all the warmth there before he gives himself permission to taste it too, his lips just barely grazing Elijah’s skin. Elijah doesn’t move, his embrace neither tightening nor threatening to disappear, though it’s impossible to miss the quick hiss when Alex lands just below his ear.

“Don’t want you to go,” Alex says. “Just need you to be patient with me.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer—doesn’t know if there’s one for Elijah to give—too lost in the sensation of his mouth against Elijah’s stubble to care about much of anything. Alex drags himself back and forth until he trips back down Elijah’s neck, his hands a little clumsy when they curve around the back of Elijah’s arms, like he hasn’t figured out whether to push or pull.

Eventually, Elijah decides for him when he just barely backs away. “Look at me, sweetheart.”

“Sweetheart?”

Elijah leans in to nip at Alex’s lip. “No?”

“No,” Alex says. “I mean, yes, sweetheart is good. And I’m looking at you, I’m just—I’m trying.”

“I know that. And I know we’ve talked about so much of this before, but I really need you to believe that everything that happened these past two weeks—the tension between us—none of that was because you weren’t running around screaming to the entire state about me or blowing up social media with a bunch of heart eyes or—I don’t know—putting it into a column that you and I are a couple, just like I said that night at dinner,” Elijah tells him. “It wasn’t because we haven’t done more than make out on each other’s couches or at each other’s front doors. It wasn’t even because you wouldn’t go out to dinner with me or because you were hesitant to talk to Cassidy and Elena. It was just that—you didn’t seem sure about you. Not even about you and me together, really. You just didn’t seem sure about you.”

“I wasn’t,” Alex admits. “How could I be sure when I didn’t know who the hell I was all that time? Even now I—how can I be sure I won’t make the same mistake all over again?”

Elijah doesn’t look away as he lifts his hand to cradle the side of Alex’s face, Alex leaning into it instinctually, his mouth falling open when the pad of Elijah’s thumb drags across Alex’s lower lip.

“Does this feel the same?”

“No,” he whispers.

Then Elijah slides his hand further back, his fingers scraping through Alex’s hair until he can hold him there, his other hand light at Alex’s hip. He tugs on Alex just enough to tip his head up toward him and then he’s there when Alex surrenders to him without question, Elijah’s tongue so goddamn tender even as it makes demand after demand.

And then he’s gone, his lips at Alex’s cheek. “Did that feel the same?”

“No,” Alex repeats, though it sounds an awful lot like a whimper this time.

Elijah smiles—Alex can feel it more than he can see anything at all—and then the hand at Alex’s hip moves to his lower back, holding him there as Elijah steps that much closer, slotting their legs together and teasing Alex with the immediate friction.

“How about this?”

Alex chases another kiss instead of answering and is eager for another one after that. “Please.”

But while Elijah keeps them pressed together, he does nothing more, allowing Alex to grind against him however much he’d like. It’s probably not all that physically different from the night Elijah had pinned him on the couch, but there’s none of the frustration now, and Elijah’s patient enough to let Alex absorb the sensation of rubbing up against another man’s cock, over and over and over. They’re both so hard and Alex aches with a desire he’s only just getting to know, and when he starts to moan, Elijah helps him get lost in kiss after kiss before he carefully slips away from it to blink down at Alex again.

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