Page 104 of Catcher's Lock

“What about me?” he asks. “Do Ihaveto love you?” Taking my face in his hands, he kisses me once, soft and sweet. “Because I do. I love you. I always have. In all the ways a person can be loved.”

My eyes burn and my heart swoops, and I bury my face in the crook of his neck as our arms wrap around each other, the night breathing an impossible future into being.

“I love you too,” I tell him. “In all the ways you want, for as long as you’ll let me.”

I am not alone.

“Hey. What are you doing?” The sleepy question rumbles out of the dark.

“Nothing.” Instinctively, I drop my phone to my chest, hiding the screen. He shifts—all that naked, masculine muscleagainst my side setting off the confusing mixture of guilt and dopamine I usually associate with getting high. “I’m blocking and deleting all my dealer contacts,” I confess, leaving out the part where I stared at the oh-so-subtly named ‘Jon Snow’ for ten minutes, wondering if he was still local and bringing up clean coke from SF.

“Okay,” Josha says, definitely more alert now. “Having trouble sleeping again?”

The amount of gratitude I feel at the lack of judgment in his tone makes my throat ache. “Yeah.”

“Do you want to load up the boards and drive to Jughandle?”

Idowant to hit the surf again, especially with him, but…

“No. My body is exhausted. It’s my brain that won’t shut up.”

“How can I help?”

“Lobotomize me?”

“I don’t think so.” Plucking the phone from my unresisting fingers, he rolls away to set it on his nightstand, then nudges my shoulder until I turn onto my side and he can snuggle in behind me. “You can talk to me, if you think it would help,” he says, rubbing his stubbled chin along my shoulder. I shake my head.

“There’s nothing good going on in there.”

His hand strokes down my arm and over my hip. “Need me to distract you, then?”

“Please.”

He reaches back to the nightstand and returns with the bottle of lube. When I try to face him, he stops me.

“No,” he says, slipping his arm under my chest to keep our bodies flush, then sliding his other hand down my thigh and coaxing my knee up. “Like this.”

I hug the pillow to my face, muffling a small, defenseless sound.

“Are you sore?” Dipping a finger inside me, he probes gently, testing the sensitive tissue.

“No,” I lie, because I don’t want him to stop. He huffs into my ear—an amused, affectionate sound that reminds me of the time he tried to teach me how to drive stick in his sister Hannah’s old Camry and I stalled out three times trying to back out of the parking spot. Like he finds me adorable instead of hopeless.

Like he’ll never give up on me.

He coats his cock, then guides it between my ass cheeks and rubs the silken head over my entrance. I’m still soft and open from being railed against the tree earlier, and my body welcomes him back like a missing piece.

This time, he takes me with one smooth glide, humming his approval in my ear when I arch and moan. It hurts a little, but in a satisfying way, like pressing on a good bruise. My dick twitches and starts to thicken against my thigh. When I go to grip it, he laces his fingers with mine and brings both our hands up to my thudding heart.

“Shhh,” he says. “I got you. Go to sleep.”

“With your dick in my ass?”

“Mm-hmm.”

I squirm, and he tightens his arms and stills me with a soft chuckle. “Not distracting enough?”

“Definitely distracting. Are you really not gonna let me come?”