Page 183 of The Lies We Play

That thought hits harder than the stretch.

We’re so close our noses bump. Our chests brush with every breath. The room is hot now, the air gone damp between us, noon light turning the sweat on his skin silver at the edges. I can hear the city below us, muffled and distant, but it has nothing to do with this bed. Nothing exists past his body over mine, his cock buried in me, his mouth parted like he’s in pain from not moving.

He looks at me.

Really looks.

I hate it for a second.

Then I need it.

There is too much in his eyes. Fear. Want. Care so fierce it almost reads as anger. Something bigger than the moment, bigger than sex, bigger than the two of us pretending we know how to survive loving one woman across an ocean and loving each other in a room no one gets to see.

“Creed,” he says, voice raw.

My name breaks in his mouth.

I lift my hand to his face because I don’t know what else to do. My palm lands against his cheek, and he turns into it as if the contact costs him.

“You’re fucking incredible,” he says.

I almost joke.

It is right there, familiar and easy. Something about his low standards or post-Cup sentimentality or the alarming lack of peer review on that claim.

I can’t.

His face won’t let me.

“Move,” I whisper.

Then he kisses me and pulls out a little.

The first thrust back in ruins whatever answer I had.

It’s slow enough that I feel every inch. The burn is still there, a deep pulse, but it shifts under the pleasure until I can’t separate discomfort from need. My body opens for him in stages, reluctant only because the sensation is enormous. Full. Hot. Too much and exactly right.

I moan before I can stop it.

Halston groans in answer, low and rough against my mouth, and the sound goes straight through me.

He moves again.

Still slow.

Still holding back.

That should frustrate me. It doesn’t. There is something almost unbearable about this version of him—the careful restraint, the control that has nothing to do with distance and everything to do with not hurting me. Halston, who can go lethal in a heartbeat if someone touches what he considers his, is above me, his entire body shaking because he refuses to take more than I give.

So I give him more.

I hook one leg higher around his hip.

His breath catches.

“There,” I say, and my voice sounds nothing like mine. “Like that.”

He closes his eyes for one second, as if he has to survive hearing me ask.