Page 218 of The Fall

His eyes lock on mine.

Everything else blurs, and there’s only this: his hand trembling against my cheek, the heat throbbing on my tongue, his breath hitching with every inch I take. I want to give him everything. I want to let him see how wrecked I am for him.

He bites down on a moan, and I feel it everywhere, burning through me like a fever.

I hollow my cheeks and drag back up, letting spit pool around the base before swirling my tongue. His mouth falls open, and he folds forward, one hand threading through my hair. “Wait,” he says, tugging.

I let him slip free with a last slow lick up the vein to the crown of his cock. My mouth feels empty. “I want you.”

He hauls me up and walks me backward until my calves hit his mattress. We fall together in a tangle, his sweats caught at his ankles, him warm over me. He shoves my T-shirt up and off, his mouth on mine, kissing me desperately.

“Please,” I whisper into the kiss. “I want?—”

He rolls, and I go with him. I slide down his body, mouth open, tasting a line down the center of his chest, biting at the sharp cut of his hip. I settle between his thighs again and he props himself on his elbows so he can see.

I work him with my mouth and tongue, licking the head and circling the slit, lips dragging down the underside where he’smost sensitive before I take him deep again. Quiet gasps slip free from him, and his thighs tremble beside my shoulders.

I pull back until only the head sits on my tongue, swirl, then slide down again, cheeks hollowing as I seal around him. Precome and spit run over my bottom lip.

His head falls back, throat open, tendons standing out, breath coming fast. “Torey,” he warns. “I’m close.”

I answer him by sucking harder, until he groans and hitches his hips, pushing up into my mouth and coming. He watches me while it hits, mouth parted, cursing. His stomach tightens, his thighs go iron-hard, and he floods my mouth with his heat. I swallow it all and keep stroking him with my tongue until his hand softens in my hair.

“Come here,” he whispers. I crawl up his body and sink into his arms. He kisses me, tasting himself on me, and his hand slides under the waistband of my shorts. “Let me take care of you.”

I nod. His hand wraps around me. I groan into his neck.

He’s slow at first; he knows me and what drives me crazy. Then he’s a little faster, a little tighter, his palm dragging over my cock head, thumb circling where it lights me up. Pre-come slicks his fingers and spreads, every glide smoother, every pull more. My hips thrust into his fist, and I pant into his jaw and bite down on a groan.

“That’s it,” he says. “Let go for me.”

The coil inside me snaps. My back arches off the mattress and I spill hot over his knuckles. He keeps working me until I shudder through the last of it, stroking me until I fall into him, boneless. I’m a puddle in his arms, and when I come back to myself, his eyes are on me.

“What’s gotten into you?”

Everything. Nothing. The phantom touch of his hand in mine while Calgary spreads below us on the plane. The trust in hisvoice when he shared that piece of his past. The way my body knows things my mind insists never happened.

“I needed you,” I breathe.

He pulls me closer and kisses my temple. “I’m here.”

I lose my phone somewhere between Detroit and Tampa, and I’m pissed. My photos with Blair, with the guys, with Hayes and Erin and Lily—they’re all gone. For days, I walk on nails, afraid of the headline: “Torey Kendrick’s photos reveal all.”

But it never happens. My phone is probably buried in some dump, wedged between baby diapers and kitchen trash. It seemingly being gone forever doesn’t make me feel any better about the loss.

I buy a new one, and Blair and I have dinner at Hayes’s, where I take all new photos to replace the ones I’ve lost.

“You boys look tan, eh?” Hayes says when we arrive. He’s wearing a wicked grin, and he’s looking at Blair like he’s about to decipher a secret. “Good vacay, eh?”

“The best,” Blair says simply.

I agree.

Hayes’s smile can’t get any larger.

Lily and I duke it out in a two-story Nerf war, carrying pot lids for shields and shooting at each other from the upstairs landing. Hayes does the dishes and Erin and Blair talk on the patio, and life is perfect, absolutely perfect.

The rhythm of our lives narrows to a single drumbeat: win, recover, win again. February bleeds into March with barely aseam between them, marked only by the urgency in Coach’s voice during practice and the extra hours Blair spends reviewing tape after everyone has gone home.