Page 52 of Naughty November
I swallowed and stood stock-still as he moved in close. He poured the water over my head and combed his fingers through my hair, and I didn’t look away from his face unless I had to blink away waterdrops.
In the low light from the lantern, he looked like a man from another world. He was all shadows and contrasts. And he was troubled by something.
I had to be as honest as he’d been, even if he ended up regretting everything.
Nerves tightened in my gut.
He emptied a second bottle over my shoulders, and he traced his hands over my skin.
“I’ve been low-key in love with you for a solid fifteen years,” I heard myself say.
Well, that was a fucking confession.
His gaze snapped to mine, and he stopped what he was doing.
I cleared my throat. “That’s not counting the childhood crush I developed overnight when my brother brought you home for the first time.”
He smiled faintly, and it wasn’t enough. He was struggling with vulnerability tonight too.
“It always seemed too farfetched, though,” I admitted. “I never let myself consider it because of…you know.”
We were such great friends. He was my brother and my lifeline. Losing that would be the end of me, and given how our…preferences…had lined up, it’d felt like too great of a risk, and I told him that. Word for word. Because I was fucking scared.
He nodded with a dip of his chin, and I grabbed the next bottle. It was my turn.
He closed his eyes as I poured it over his head, and I slipped my fingers through the short waves.
Waterdrops clung to his eyelashes, the tip of his nose, and in his scruff.
Too beautiful.
“I reckon I’m the one who’s gotta worry,” he said quietly. “You’ve only dated Littles and subs.”
“And that worked out well for me.”
He exhaled a low chuckle. “Touché. But those labels…? In the heat of the moment, I can call you mine and be done with it, but then you wake up the next day and feel like it’s not enough.”
Maybe it was, though. It sure as fuck felt like my chase was over.
He opened his eyes again when I used another bottle to wash his shoulders and chest. His skin was littered with tiny scratches and blotchy marks.
And I knew exactly what to say, for once. “You know when I never feel the need to hunt down my place in life? When I’m with you. Whether it’s you and me or we have the boys with us.”
He swallowed and nodded once. “Same.”
I closed the distance and kissed him, needing it. Another bottle fell to the floor, and he pressed his body to mine.That’s it. That was it right there. Him pressed up against me.
“I can’t go back to pretending,” he murmured. “I guess I’ve been in a similar spot as you—but I go through some rough patches here and there when all I want is to shake the fuck outta you for not seein’ what I see.”
I inched back enough to make eye contact, and he explained that, every now and then, when his feelings for me resurfaced with too much force, he turned to anger and physical outlets.
“Every time you went hiking off the grid…” I lifted my brows, just remembering being cranky as fuck because he hadn’t wanted my company.
He smirked a little and inclined his head. Then he went for the nextbottle of water. “But anyway. If you can just agree to spend the rest of your life with me, that’d be great.”
I grinned and shook my head. So we’d both harbored all these feelings for so long, and we’d been too scared to say anything because the partners we’d tended to go for were nothing like us.
“You have me,” I said. “But when you get sick of me?—”