Page 58 of Brothers of Redemption
Leo tightens his legs around my waist in a grip so crushing it’s almost painful.
It feels like approval, and I’m suddenly hit with the desire to tell him everything, all the scary, too-much, obsessive shit I’m usually too afraid of saying in case it drives him away.
I plant my hands on either side of his head and look down at him, drinking in the hungry brightness of his gaze. With those eyes, he promises me that he won’t leave, that he won’t run from this, no matter what I do, no matter how insane we make each other feel, constantly on the edge of a pain so brutally sharp itcould cut us up into bloodied pieces that no one would recognise afterward.
“You’re so beautiful and lovely andmine,” I rasp, overcome by how much I want him, how much I always,alwayswant him. “But, fucking hell, you’re strong too. Stronger than me. Stronger than anyone I’ve ever met.” I don’t slow my thrusts as I talk, instead ramping them up until I’m barely able to speak with the exertion of fucking him. “I never knew it was … possible to love someone like this, like … like I was fuckingborn to do it. … I … I look at you and … all I can think is … this …thisis why I’m here. To do … this. To … love you. To fuck … fuckingkeepyou.”
Leo doesn’t falter, doesn’t ask to stop or take a breath. He just holds on, staring up at me like I’m his whole world, the only thing he can see, the only thing that matters.
It won’t last; it can’t. Leo could never lose himself in me, it just isn’t in his nature. But he’s willing to give me this, this moment, to bask in the fantasy that I’m his everything the same way he’s mine.
When I come inside him, Leo takes it all, the heat and essence of me filling him up, marking the claim he allows me to have.
Once my heart has stopped racing quite so dangerously, I fight through my exhaustion and move down the bed to suck Leo’s leaking cock, swallowing him down my throat again and again until he comes with a shout that sounds like it was torn out of him by something with vicious fangs.
I leave the room to get a wet towel to clean us both up, and then we lie together in our bed, curled up and entwined like vines climbing up the side of a house.
Sometimes when we fuck and it’s as intense as that, which is often, I become a little melancholy after. I can’t help but think while I have him held tightly in my arms, what it would feel like if he wasn’t. How would it feel to lose him?
I wonder if I would survive it, and then I stop wondering because I know the answer: that I wouldn’t. At least, not this version of myself. I’d become someone else, darker and harder, less easy to love and be loved.
Leo has left fissures across my soul, little rips that wept red and gold. Without him, life would be less, I would be so much less. How could any person be whole again when their other half has been torn away?
“Hey,” Leo says, lightly smacking my chest. “Stop thinking like that.”
“Like what?” I ask, feigning ignorance.
Leo smacks me again, a little harder this time. “You aren’t going to lose me, Jack.”
My arms tighten around him instinctively at those thoughts being spoken aloud. Nightmares brought to life.
“Don’t know how I’d react if I did,” I lie.
“You won’t ever have to find out,” Leo promises, which is its own sort of lie. He can’t know that any more than I can, especially not with the lives we lead.
Still, I press a soft kiss to his hair and hope with every breath and beat of my heart that he’s right.