Page 185 of The Lies We Play

Halston slows but doesn’t stop. “Don’t what?”

“Be sweet right now.”

His mouth brushes my cheek. “No.”

I turn my face toward him. “No?”

“No.”

The answer is quiet. Certain. Very Halston.

Then he thrusts into me again, and I lose whatever argument I was building.

My body is no longer mine in any meaningful way. It belongs to the rhythm. To the heat. To the intense fullness of him. To the way his hand grips mine, tighter now, as if he thinks I might slip out of this bed and back into the version of myself that knows how to win but not how to receive.

I won’t.

Not now.

Maybe not ever.

The thought scares me.

It also frees something in me.

I reach between us, but Halston catches my wrist gently and pins it beside my head.

“I’ve got you,” he says.

My pulse kicks. “Hal.”

“I’ve got you.”

Then his other hand wraps around my cock.

The pleasure crashes through me so hard that my vision whites at the edges. I curse into his mouth. He strokes me in rhythm with his hips, and the combined sensation is obscene, tender, too much. I try to breathe through it, try to hold on, but he knows my body too well now. He knows the angle, the pressure, the exact pace that makes me shake.

“Fuck,” I choke out. “I’m close.”

His forehead presses to mine. “Good.”

The word is simple.

It breaks me.

My orgasm comes fast and sudden, ripping through me before I can brace for it. My body clamps down around him, and I squeeze his hand so hard he hisses. Heat spills across my stomach. My back arches. The sound that leaves me is rough and helpless, and I don’t recognize myself in it.

Halston does.

He looks at me like he has been waiting for that version of me all day.

The sight of his face sends me through another surge of pleasure, and I say his name. Not loud. Not pretty. Just broken enough that he loses the fight.

His hips stutter.

“Creed,” he groans, and then he comes too, buried deep, his whole body locking above mine.

For a few seconds, there is nothing but breath.