Page 10 of The Year of Us: June

Reese

“I love you,” Cory said to me again after he helped me onto the bed and spread my legs.

“I love you,” he said when he pushed a mid-sized plug into my swollen and fucked asshole.

“I love you,” he said a third time, kissing the place where the flared base of the plus pressed against my skin.

Gooseflesh prickled up and down the length of my body, and Cory laid himself out on top of me to steady me, both of us sweaty and trembling. He brushed my hair back from my face and kissed my forehead, and I’d never felt more treasured or necessary in my entire goddamn life.

“Would it be horrible of me to send you to work smelling like sex?” he asked, rolling off of me and picking loose the knot in the tie around my wrists. The silk fell away and then he kissed me there too.

Slowly, I regained my spatial awareness.

My thoughts widened from being solely about Cory until the other parts of my life and my day filtered back into recognition.

His fingers massaged swirls and stars over my wrist bones, and I’d let him tie me up a hundred times over if he always touched me that tenderly afterward.

“I could probably get away with it,” I answered, voice scratching. I cleared my throat. “But Morgan won’t let it slide.”

Cory helped me into a seated position, both of our feet flat on the floor. He’d barely gotten out of his slacks. He was still wearing his socks, and I was completely naked.

“Morgan’s coming by?” he asked.

I knocked him with my elbow. “Are you jealous?”

“You know I want to meet her.”

“And I want you to meet her,” I said. “That was actually something I was going to talk to you about when I brought lunch, but you distracted me with your watch and your shoes.”

He huffed an amused laugh. “Oh, is that what happened?”

“Clearly.” I pushed myself to stand and Cory was hot on my heels, walking me to the bathroom like I was an invalid and not a fully whole and able-bodied man. “I’m fine, Cory.”

“I know you are.” He smacked my hand when I tried to protest his help, and I was too weak to fight him more about it. “What is this, Reese?”

“It’s aftercare.”

I leaned against the bathroom counter and waited for him to turn the shower on for me, watched the way he waved his hand beneath the spray to check the temperature of the water before stepping out of the way to let me in.

“I wish your shower was bigger,” he said, pressing a kiss against the bruise he’d bit into my shoulder as I passed.

It was tender, already purpling, and I winced at the touch.

Every muscle in my body went tense, on the defensive, until my hole clamped down around the plug he’d shoved inside of me after keeping up his end of the deal he’d promised me earlier in the day.

I groaned, pulling the shower door closed behind me.

“I know I said I love you, but I think maybe I hate you.”

He sat down on the closed lid of the toilet and smiled up at me, smug and knowing. “Sure you do.”

“Are you going to sit here the whole time I clean up?” I asked, gingerly reaching for the soap.

“Yes,” he answered simply.

I washed myself as carefully as I could, trying to ignore the way every muscle in my body still trembled and ached from use.

Once I finished, I pushed open the door and stepped right into the towel Cory held out for me.

He wrapped me up and traded places, taking whatever was left of the hot water without any protest.

“So,” he said, tipping his head back to rinse the sweat from his hair. “You were saying about Morgan?”

“She has been on my ass about meeting you since she knows you’re in town,” I said. “She suggested I bring you to work for a little with me tonight so she could come by and do more than lurk at you from across the bar.”

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”

“What part?”

“Any of it.”

I sniffed, hanging up the towel after getting myself dry.

“No,” I said. “A few months ago, it might have, but you’re my boyfriend now and we love each other, and if you lived here, you would have met her a very long time ago.”

I didn’t need to see Cory’s face through the steamy door to know there was an unspoken question hanging in the air.

“What?”

He chuckled. “I’ll table it for another day.”

“That’s ominous.”

He turned off the water and opened the door, stepping onto the bathmat in all his wet and naked glory. Cory was so fucking gorgeous, and his cock was the best I’d ever had. I wanted to spend half my time on my knees with his dick in my mouth and I wasn’t even his submissive. I?—

Wait.

Was I?

Was I his ?

Was I even submissive ?

“If I asked you to kneel…” I trailed off, not able to finish the thought before he sank down to his knees in front of me.

I cursed under my breath and pulled a dry towel off the back of the door. Holding it open for him like he’d done for me, I clenched my jaw as Cory elegantly lifted back to his feet and walked into my waiting arms.

He kissed the slope of my neck, down the length of my collarbone and then licking the trail of kisses away with one long drag of his tongue.

“I’ll do anything you ask of me, Reese,” he whispered. “Always.”