Page 28 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

“It was miserable.” I open my eyes again and cast them sidelong, watching him.

He’s stopped drawing. He’s watching me back.

“I thought if I changed myself I’d become a different person.

The person I needed to be for Demi, the person my dad wanted me to be—and that’s a whole different story.

But I was just suppressing myself the whole time.

Honestly, I keep thinking about what you said the other day.

” I laugh a little. “Living my life the same way as I did when I was married—I don’t want to do that.

It’s not that I even want to live radically differently, I just want to go back to the person I was before all of that.

As soon as I figure out who that person is. ”

He leans forward, nodding. “Is that why you’re getting a divorce, then?” he wants to know. “Because you want to...go back?”

“Partially that. Partially the whole sexuality thing...” I swallow.

“And partially the fact that we were really supposed to start trying for kids this year. She turns thirty-five, so, you know, the clock’s ticking.

But I guess reality kind of hit because we’ve just had all these issues we’ve been burying, and she wants to start a family with someone who actually wants her, all of her.

I mean, she deserves that. I want that for her. ”

“Oh.” Noel’s voice is quiet and surprised. “That’s . . . sad.”

“It’s always sad when things end.”

I turn my face toward Noel again and meet his gaze.

He’s studying me, the pen and tablet forgotten in his hands, and I glimpse on the screen my half-sketched form.

I’m not quite sure what he’s thinking. If he’s absorbing all of that, the things I’ve said about Demi, or if his mind has gone elsewhere entirely.

Hard to tell what’s rapid firing behind his dark and sulky expression, curtained by the dark fall of hair .

“Did you want kids?” he asks suddenly. “With her?”

“With her? No,” I say honestly. It’s the first time I’ve ever admitted it out loud to anyone other than myself. “Not really. And I don’t think I’d be a very good dad at all.”

“I think you’d be a great dad, Luca.” And I can tell it’s one of his rare and genuine moments of sincerity, the way his wide amber eyes search mine.

It’s such a strange sentiment in the moment, I think.

Being told by your lover that you would’ve been a good father to your wife’s kids, if they’d ever manifested.

Nothing I want to think about in particular and nothing I agree with, but oddly sweet of him, nevertheless.

I give him a faint smile. “I will miss you, stunt girl,” I tell him softly.

Noel holds my gaze a moment longer before he rises to his feet and sets his things on the chair.

He approaches, sliding gracefully to the floor on his knees beside my head.

His face is close to mine now, close enough to nuzzle, to kiss, to take in my hands.

And I feel the same way I always do whenever he’s near: lightheaded almost, intoxicated by his proximity alone.

It’s a feeling that almost transcends carnal—it’s that penetrating warmth, the inexorable and quiet joy of simply liking someone.

“Will you really, Luca?” he asks me. And again, it is an honest question, his face open and earnest. Eyebrows drawn together, lips parted slightly. “Miss me?”

I move just enough to touch the end of my nose to his. “Yes.”

His long, dark lashes flicker against his cheeks as he casts his gaze downwards.

“You know, sometimes I—” He stops, and I shift my head back to get a better look at his face.

His words are halting and quiet when he speaks again.

“That thing you said earlier, about figuring out the person you are, or were, or whatever. I feel like that, too.”

I watch him for a long moment. He’s still looking at his lap, where his fingers are entangled with each other.

I don’t patronize him or condescend. I don’t tell him that it’s normal to feel lost when you’re young, or old, or any age at all, and to feel like you don’t know who or what you are or will become.

Because I don’t think that’s the place this comes from and I don’t think that’s what he’s saying to me.

I’m a stain, I’m a stain, I’m a— That, too, echoes through my head, the way so many of his words do.

I reach out and smooth Noel’s hair back from his beautiful face, following the curve of his head until my fingertips ghost the back of his neck.

He raises his chin to look at me again with those big, down-turned eyes of his, and they glitter in the afternoon sunlight that filters through the windows. “How come?” I ask.

“Because—” Here he stops again. Groping for the right words, it seems, the ones that will convey his meaning adequately.

“I don’t think I’m anybody,” he says at last, and his voice is so small when he offers it.

“I think I was just born nothing. It’s like, my existence is so fucking thin—” He demonstrates this with thumb and forefinger, with only the tiniest space between.

“One day I’m gonna just disappear. I’ll be less than dust and no one’s gonna give a shit.

World will keep on turning, right?” He drops his hand and shrugs his narrow shoulders and looks away from me again.

“Fuck, I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.

It just resonated, I guess. What you said. ”

And I do take his face in my hands now and I make him look at me. “You won’t, Noel,” I tell him. “You’re here and whole. That’s going to be true for a long time.”

He blinks rapidly at me. To keep tears at bay, perhaps, though he doesn’t seem like he’s about to cry.

His face is still; he is, in this moment, self-possessed.

That’s the pendulum he swings on. Between discipline and utter loss of control, traction and slip.

I never know which way he’s going to go but today he is all quiet composure, his sadness introspective and remote.

But he is hurting, and I hate to see it.

“And for the record, I’d absolutely give a shit if you just up and disappeared.” My thumbs stroke his cheeks. “I’d care a lot, actually.”

Noel touches one of my hands. His fingertips seem to glide over my knuckles, and his lips curl up ever-so-slightly at the corners. It’s not much of a smile, but it is a smile. “You’d miss me.”

“Make fun of me all you want, you little shit,” I say. “It’s the truth.”

Noel lifts his chin slightly and I know he wants me to kiss him, and I want to kiss him, too.

I lean closer and he meets me halfway, his lips soft and yielding beneath mine as my tongue slips between them.

I card my fingers through his dark hair and then down the side of his neck—I like the feeling of his pulse fluttering beneath my fingertips—and he makes a soft, sweet sound for me.

He breaks the kiss with one last swipe of the tongue against my lower lip. “You’re right,” he says, turning his head to gaze down the length of my body. “I never really get to look at you like this.” He places his hand on my chest, one finger stroking the hollow of my throat.

“Do you like what you see?” I ask him. My voice has gone low and husky.

His touch is featherlight as it roams along my chest, over the curve of my pecs and the serration of my ribs.

It is a memorization, almost, the way he seemingly traces these parts of me, but erotic as hell all the same, and I groan softly.

“The worst part about being blindfolded,” he tells me, “was not getting to see you. And I really love looking at you. All of you.”

I can relate to that. I love looking at all of him, too. And I really love all of him against me, too. “Should I apologize?”

“No.” He rubs his face against my shoulder. “Never.”

I pull him up onto the couch, on top of me, and his body pins my stiffening cock against my stomach as I push my forehead against his. “Sweet boy,” I whisper. “Come with me this weekend. Don’t make me go alone.”

He lowers his head to my throat. Kisses the tattoo there, rasps his tongue along it.

Lower, peppering kisses along my collarbone and then down my pecs, my nipples.

I feel him smile against my skin as my breath comes faster and along with it his name.

Lower and lower still until he’s reached that sweet spot between navel and groin, where every touch and caress is exquisite agony and makes my whole body seize and clench and want with an intensity so fierce it’s dizzying, and I have to shut my eyes because seeing him nuzzling the trail of hair down there is almost too much.

But not nearly as much as the sight and sensation of his cheek rubbing against my dick and his eyes rolling upward adoringly at my face.

I can’t help the sounds I make when he at last takes it in his hand, a slow and agonizing roll of the wrist, thumb skimming the tip that’s already wet, and I just want, no, need to be inside him so bad, right now, this instant.

“What was it you said earlier?” he asks me. “That I’m a pillow princess?”

“Never called you that.” My voice is rough. “Never said that at all. ”

He sort of runs his lips over the head and even that’s enough to make me shudder. He’s still just slowly working me, his tongue swiping pre-come from the slit as he watches me from beneath his lashes. “Relax,” he tells me. “I owe you, after all.”

“Owe me?”

“You know.” He gives me a languid smile. “For my birthday.”

I push myself upright. He raises his head with wide, dark eyes and I guess he thinks I’m about to do something to him as I take his chin in my hand, but I don’t.

Not what he wants me to do, anyway. “There is no owing ,” I tell him.

“I’m not a bank , Noel. Your birthday was good for both of us. I don’t get the problem.”