Page 83 of Under Locke & Key
I barely recognize his voice, it’s so low and dark. He sounds almost as desperate as me.
“So close. Please.”
He nips at my earlobe and sets a punishing pace that I can do nothing but acquiesce to. Bryce whispers praise against the shell of my ear in a voice that’s like dripping spiced honey. Sweet and biting. “Can’t wait to worship you. Every day you’ll let me. Want you to be mine.”
“Yes, yours,” I say, catching my breath for a moment before I claim him right back. “And you’re mine.”
“For as long as you’ll have me.” We make the promises we’ve been too scared to say out loud while joined in the most intimate sense and I feel it coming.
“Bryce . . .” I warn and he knows.
“Come for me, love. I want to feel you.” He thrusts hard and deep and I wonder for a second if I’ll have bruises tomorrow, from his hands or the frame beneath the padding of the chaise, before pleasure swallows me whole.
It’s blinding in its intensity and if he wasn’t basically holding me upright I would have melted to the floor from the force of it. I’m dimly aware of my moans and Bryce’s rough grunts as he chases me over that same edge. A few moments after my bliss, as I’m settling into a body thathasto be boneless—there’s no other way—Bryce stiffens and grips me tight as his own pleasure finds him.
“You’ll be the death of me.” Bryce’s heart races against my back, his chest heaving with breath.
“Ah, but what a sweet way to go.” I chuckle tiredly and he echoes it.
“Are you okay?” Bryce asks, withdrawing and leaving me strangely bereft as he searches for something on the ground near my feet.
“I’m more than okay. I don’t even feel like I have a body anymore.” More silly laughter and I wonder if I’m a little punch drunk in my post-orgasm haze.
Bryce frees my wrists, lifting each to his mouth to give it a little kiss. “That was phenomenal. Thank you for trusting me.”
I smile, no words available while my brain is mush. “Want to go home?”
“For tonight?” He asks and I can hear the question behind the words. Bryce wants to know my choice. Dressing, Bryce busies himself as if the act is enough to make the question seem nonchalant.
“For as long as you’d like to stay. I have a strongly-worded email to send to my asshole ex-boss to tell him that I’m far too happy with my current boss to ever consider going back. And then my current boss and I need to discuss what the future of my employment looks like now that our big project is up and running.”
He ceases clothing himself, pants on but undone and his shirt the same. “Oh yeah? What else is on the agenda?” That boyish smile that I love is back and I can’t stop my answering grin.
“Well, we’ll need to get dinner at some point. And move his stuff over into my place. We still need to finish the season of Grey’s Anatomy that we’re on. Sleep has to fit in there somewhere as well.” I lift a finger for each new item, listing them off.
“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out but you seem to be forgetting one vital step there.”
“Hmm, I don’t know. I think I was pretty thorough.”
Bryce stalks toward me, the heat back in his gaze and although I’m bone weary I feel the flicker of want within me respond. Dropping to his knees again, he kisses the softness of my stomach before looking down at my thighs, and the evidence of both of us trailing down the inside. “We’ll need to get cleaned up and I’d love an encore of the thing we just did together.”
My hands thread through his hair, clutching. “I think that can be arranged.”
He stares up at me with such wonder. Love and longing are plain to see and I can’t believe I almost gave this up. Because of fear and self doubt. I have an incredible man, literally at my feet, and I won’t take that for granted.
I give him a hand up and we dress in silence, locking the theater up behind us and Bryce drives us the few blocks to the apartment. My key slides home in that robin’s egg blue door I fell in love with on day one and as he follows me up the stairs, the thump of each of our footsteps sounds like a heartbeat.
We walk the well-worn wood from the doorway to the bathroom and worship each other in the shower until we’re both spent. Naked and drying off on the bed, my head on Bryce’s chest and his arm slung along my waist, I feel at peace.
Six months sounds like nothing in the scheme of things but every day has shown me who I am, who I want to be, and who I’d like beside me for the rest of figuring life out.
All the photographs of strangers, all the promotions I chased, fade away. There’s nothing to prove. No question of whether or not I’m worthy or wanted. In Bryce’s embrace I feel safe and adored. We have friends that love and support us and a fledgling dream that’s about to be very real. And I’m so happy that I don’t have to force the smile that teases the corners of my lips.
Whatever may come, we’re in it together.
