Page 79 of Bitter When He Begs

I press my weight into him, enough to make him gasp, before I kiss him. He tastes like sweat, like cum, like me—like what we are now. His cock twitches against my stomach even though he just came, and it makes me groan into his mouth.

When I pull back, I study his face. He’s flushed, dazed, lips red and slightly parted. Beautiful in the way something fragile is when you finally admit it’s yours.

“You okay?” I ask, my voice a little softer now, but my thumb’s still brushing his bottom lip, tracing the shape of his mouth like I’m not done tasting it.

He nods. “Yeah,” he breathes, his voice raw. “More than.”

I stare down at him, searching for anything he’s not saying, but he’s not looking away. Not hiding. Just watching me like he can’t believe I’m still here.

I should say something cocky, or smirk and ruin the moment before it gets too honest. But I don’t want to. Not this time. I brush my nose against his, softly, just once. “I don’t want this to be a one-time thing. I want to give this a shot with you, Sage. If you want me.”

He presses his hand against my chest—right over my heart. “You mean it?” he whispers. “This isn’t just one of your… games?”

That hurts a little, but I get it.

“Sunshine, you’ve never been a game to me. Not even when I was pretending you were.”

He lets out a shaky exhale and I feel his fingers curl into my skin. “I want it,” he says. “I want you, Luca. But we have a shitload of things to iron out before we even start.”

I nod, barely breathing.

“Okay,” I whisper. “Then it’s you and me now, Sunshine.”

His laugh is broken. “That nickname’s never going away, is it?”

“Not a fucking chance.”

When he threads his fingers through my hair and kisses me again—tired, bruised, but still here—I know I’m already in too deep.

And I don’t want a way out. I found something I didn’t know I’d been missing.

Him.

Luca

Sageisstillbreathingheavily when I press my mouth to his shoulder, my chest flush to his back, the air between us hot and thick with everything we didn’t say.

The room smells like sex and peppermint. I’ve got one arm slung around his waist, the other drifting lower, fingers trailing slowly across the tattoo I didn’t even notice before, not until I had him stripped and boneless beneath me for the second time.

I run my thumb along one of the ivy leaves and feel him twitch against me, body tense, like he forgot it was there. “When the fuck did you get this?”

Sage breathes out a slow laugh, but it sounds tired. “Couple years ago.”

My fingers keep moving, slowly tracing the head of the snake, then curling up around the inked line running along his ribs. “What’s it mean?”

He shrugs. “Nothing big. Something I got just for me. I liked the way it looked and the idea of it. Growth and control. The wayvines take over shit when no one’s watching. The snake was just—” He pauses, and I feel him take a breath. “It was a reminder that I don’t have to shed everything just to survive. I can keep the parts that got me through it.”

I nuzzle the nape of his neck and breathe him in like that’s going to help me understand him better. Spoiler: it doesn’t.

I hum low in my throat, dragging my thumb across the leafwork again. “It’s hot as fuck.”

Sage laughs again, and I can literally feel him rolling his eyes. “That’s your takeaway?”

“Damn right, it is,” I mutter, kissing his shoulder, then nuzzling into his neck again. “Sexy little brat hiding snake tattoos under all that cotton candy attitude.”

He makes a small noise that’s somewhere between exasperation and amusement, but he doesn’t move away or stop me from touching him. If anything, he settles against me more.

We stay like that for a while, long enough that the sweat cools on our skin, and the weight of what just happened starts settling in.