Page 36 of Buried Past (First in Line #3)

Chapter twenty-four

Dorian

T he sheets smelled like Matthew's cedar soap. I counted his heartbeats against my palm.

I'd finally stopped registering threats. No mental inventories of the weapons within reach. It let me concentrate on the weight of Matthew's arm across my ribs, still a little tender but not enough to ask him to move.

The apartment's familiar sounds filtered through the thin walls—Mrs. Kaminski's morning routine upstairs, pipes groaning as water traveled through decades-old tubing, and the distant hum of traffic building toward rush hour.

I pressed my nose against Matthew's collarbone, breathing him in. The morning stretched ahead without pressing responsibilities.

The bandage along my hip crinkled as I shifted position, medical tape pulling against skin that was finally knitting itself back together. It was evidence of past violence, but also proof of healing. Matthew's careful stitching held me intact while my body remembered how to repair itself.

Matthew's hand twitched against my stomach, fingers spreading wider in sleep. Even unconscious, he reached for the reassurance of warm skin. I covered his hand with mine.

This is what normal feels like.

The previous day's interview replayed itself in pieces, my memory landing on disconnected moments like shuffling through photographs. The studio's aggressive air conditioning raised goosebumps along my forearms.

Ally Richmond. She wasn't the ambushing predator I expected, hungry for blood and ratings. She leaned forward when I spoke, listening instead of calculating her next attack angle. She asked questions that led to the truth instead of sensation.

The strangest part wasn't the questions, the lights, or even the surreal experience of voluntarily exposing myself after months of invisibility. It was my absence of shame. I'd expected to feel stripped and violated, like I was bleeding secrets onto the expensive carpet for public consumption.

Instead, I returned home relieved. Each answer lifted weight from my shoulders, including years of accumulated guilt.

"Thank you for listening like it matters," I'd told Ally afterward. We shook hands in the hallway while production assistants coiled cables around their arms.

She smiled. "It does matter, and you told your story like someone who understands the cost."

Now, with Matthew's steady breathing at my side, I realized I wasn't mentally rehearsing different answers or calculating what I should have said. The memories were quiet and oddly satisfying.

Matthew's body registered consciousness in stages—a deeper inhale that expanded his chest against my back, and a subtle weight shift as muscle tension returned to his limbs.

"Did you sleep at all?" His voice was thick and scratchy.

"Yeah. Eventually." I twisted enough to catch his eye, noting the crease lines pressed into his cheek from the pillowcase. "You snore like a freight train, you know."

He chuckled. "Freight train's an exaggeration. More like a... satisfied bear."

"Satisfied bear?" I laughed. "That's somehow worse."

"Bears are noble creatures. Environmentally important." He pushed toward me until we kissed, sending prickly sensations up my spine. "Essential to forest ecosystems."

"You're comparing your snoring to ecosystem management?"

"My snoring maintains the delicate balance of—" His words dissolved as his mouth found the sensitive spot behind my ear, teeth grazing my skin.

The conversation died a natural death as Matthew's hand slid across my ribs. His palm was warm against the bandage covering my hip, pressure just heavy enough to remind me that some wounds were still healing.

Matthew's hand splayed out, fingers dipping below the rumpled waistband of my boxers, just resting there, warm and large and familiar. He shifted behind me, spooning up close, hips flush against my ass, and exhaling against my neck.

His hard-on, unselfconscious and insistent, nudged the back of my thigh, a reminder that the morning sunlight and birdsong and all hadn't dulled his consistent hunger simmering under the surface.

If anything, the aftermath of survival stripped away pretense for both of us. We wanted. We took.

I slid my hand over his, guiding it lower until he was cupping my cock and balls. He hummed against my shoulder, the sound a mix of a growl and a moan. I grinned, rolling my hips back to meet his.

"You have to take it easy," he whispered. "You're—"

"Still alive." I pressed his hand harder, wanting both the pain and the pleasure of it. "The doc said I should stay active."

He laughed against my skin and then kicked the sheets off before he slid down the mattress, lips trailing along my spine. Lower still, his mouth mapped the hollows of my lower back, pausing when he reached the edge of the bandage.

There was nothing clinical about his touch, but he treated the area with the tentative gentleness of someone who'd become intimately acquainted with mortality. His hand bracketed my hipbone, not the wound, and his mouth planted a soft, sidelong kiss directly above the gauze.

"Gonna have to come up with a better story than kitchen accident for that," he murmured, lips grazing the fine line where healthy skin met injury.

"I'm open to suggestions. Maybe a shark attack. Or a fencing duel."

Matthew pressed his cheek against my hip as if he could listen to the healing happen. I craned my neck to watch.

He looked up, and our eyes met. "Stay there," he said. I stayed. I didn't fucking move.

Matthew slipped his arm under my waist and turned me until I was on my back. The motion pulled at the new skin, sharp and raw, but the distraction was immediate and worth it—his tongue was on the sharp ridge of my pelvic bone, hot and shameless.

He kissed the tape line gently and then, with a purposeful glance up, started working my shorts down past my thighs. He flicked his tongue out to chase the waistband.

My cock strained against the thin cotton, practically begging for his hand, and when his fingers finally curled around it, I nearly bit through my tongue.

"Fuck, Dorian," Matthew murmured. I was too busy trying not to arch off the mattress and pull my wound open to say anything clever back.

He circled my cock head with his thumb, slicking precum down the shaft. It was so gentle that I almost missed the edge of his teeth when he nipped the inside of my thigh. He followed the bite with a kiss.

"You sure you're okay?"

I wanted to call him out on his lack of awareness, but all I managed was, "Don't stop."

He didn't. Matthew dipped his head and took me into his mouth. My hands tangled in his hair as he groaned low in his throat. I lost track of the ceiling, the room, the pain, and everything but the wet heat of his mouth and the impossible, grateful pleasure of being alive right in that moment.

He was thorough. He alternated soft sucks with tight pressure, tongue tracing the underside, then the tip, and every time I gasped, he doubled down, like he was memorizing the parts of me that made me nearly black out.

I tried to keep quiet, but the pressure building was too much, and I let out a sound that might have made Mrs. Kaminski question her choice of residence.

Matthew grinned around my cock, the bastard, and bobbed his head faster, hand working the base in time with his mouth. Little black spots danced at the edges of my vision, and the next time he swallowed me down, I nearly lost it.

He slowed, backing off just enough to keep me teetering at the edge, then licked a broad, lazy stripe from root to tip. "Thought you said you wanted to take it slow."

"I lied," I managed. "Fuck."

He went back to it, more insistent, cheeks hollowing with every pull. My hips tried to buck, but his hands pinned me down, palms flat and unyielding against my thighs. I surrendered, letting him set the pace, the world narrowing to the grip of his fingers and the relentless heat of his tongue.

I was going to die. It wouldn't be in a hail of bullets but under the relentless, joyful assault of a man determined to worship every inch of me. I tried to warn him. "Matthew—fuck, wait—"

He shook his head, mouth still full, and bobbed harder, hand twisting at the base, the other splayed flat against my belly to keep me from bucking up and hurting myself.

The world narrowed into a single point, all nerves converging on the place where his lips met my skin. I made a sound, not even a word, just a helpless, animal noise, and he pressed in for the kill.

When the orgasm crashed over me, it was all blinding light and heat, the relief so violent it made me shudder from scalp to toes. My vision went white for a second.

Matthew didn't pull away—he took every last gasp and tremble, swallowing it all, and when I finally stopped shaking, he lingered for a beat, licking the last of me off with a little flick that made me jerk and yelp.

"Fucking hell," I croaked. "You trying to finish me off for good?"

He looked up, wiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb, and grinned.

"Got a little carried away. Sue me." He flopped down beside me, head pillowed on my stomach, arm draped across my hip like he was reclaiming territory.

I threaded my fingers through his hair and traced lazy circles on his scalp, half-lost in the afterglow.

I didn't have a plan, just a raw, compulsive need to see him come apart too. I slid my hand lower, mapping out the curve of his ass, and he made a sound, nearly a gasp. He was hard, had been since he woke, and I wanted him needy, desperate, and out of control like he'd done to me.

I nudged at his hip, rolling him over onto his back, and Matthew didn't fight it; he just sprawled out, lazy and loose, and not a tiny bit self-conscious. He looked up at me with an open, hopeful expression.

His cock was already leaking, the head dark and wet against his stomach. I watched his chest—every exhale shaky and every inhale making his ribs flare like wings.

He fixed his gaze on me, tracking every flick of my wrist, every graze of my knuckles against his skin. When I wrapped my hand around him, his entire body shuddered as he growled, "Fuck."

"Yeah?" I bent down and pressed my lips to the sweat-slicked center of his chest. "You want me to stop?"

He shook his head, and I knew he wouldn't last. I could tell by the way his belly sucked in with each ragged breath, and the heat building under my palm.

I played with the pace, slow then fast, squeezing just to the edge, then letting him collapse back, over and over until his knees drew up and his heels pushed hard into the mattress.

He came with a choked-off whimper, body arching up so sharply I had to brace his thigh to keep him from flipping us off the mattress. It hit him all at once—no dramatics, just the white-hot shot landing on his chest.

He sagged back, slack followed by a post-orgasmic tremor, and then he lay there, blinking at the ceiling. Seconds later, he was on me again, not for sex but for the simple pleasure of skin against skin. "You're not going anywhere today, right?"

I shook my head. I had no plans that didn't involve Matthew.

I traced a lazy spiral around his navel, feeling the subtle tremor in his belly every time I hit a ticklish spot. He tried to suppress it, but his body betrayed him, shivering and twitching under my fingers. "You're a masochist. You know that, right?"

He looked up at me, brown eyes wide and guileless. "Only for you."

"Do we stay?"

I wasn't asking about the apartment, Seattle, or the immediate future. I was asking whether this was real enough to risk believing in.

His answer came without hesitation, his voice steady with the same certainty he used when declaring someone stable enough for transport.

"We build."

Two words that reframed everything. He believed we had a foundation solid enough to support architecture. For Matthew, we were worth the investment of time, hope, and all the dangerous luxuries that came with choosing permanence over survival.

I pressed my face against his chest. Matthew was offering me the revolutionary concept of planning beyond next week.

"What do we build?"

"Everything. Whatever we want. Whatever feels right."

Love was a luxury I'd trained myself not to seek. In my former life, attachment meant leverage, and leverage meant vulnerability that could be weaponized by anyone clever enough to identify the pressure points. I'd watched good people destroyed by the simple crime of caring about someone.

Lying with Matthew, his breathing deep and unguarded, those concerns were like artifacts from someone else's life. He wasn't gathering intelligence or building files for future exploitation. He was simply present, offering himself without conditions.

"I love you, you know."

The confession escaped as I exhaled. Matthew's breathing changed, but he didn't move. His expression looked like he was absorbing something significant.

For a heartbeat, silence filled the space where I expected a response, and I braced for the inevitable complications that followed my admission.

When he spoke, Matthew's voice was warm and sure. "I've known. But I'll never get tired of hearing it."

Relief flooded through me. "How long have you known?"

"Since you chose to stay instead of trying to flee. You looked at me like I was worth the risk, and that's not something you can fake. I love you, too."

Matthew's thumb brushed the curve of my jaw, and I no longer flinched from being touched like something fragile.

Outside, the city moved on—car horns and birds battling over a scrap of bread on the fire escape. We listened for a while, not saying anything. It was just us, lying there in the aftermath of everything.

"I'll walk the dog in an hour," he said eventually.

"We don't have a dog."

"Not yet."

I smiled. We were talking about dogs now. Furniture. It was the future we were building—brick by brick, breath by breath.

For the first time ever, I looked forward to every minute of it.