Page 173 of These Secret Years

“I’m ready,” he’d said. “Please.”

If we’d talked about it beforehand, I think I would have encouraged him to start off slowly. Maybe topping me like he did when we were first getting to know each other. It’d been about control then—him trying to control a situation and both our bodies, and it seemed to help him, but that was then.

What he’d wanted tonight was different. He maneuvered himself onto his stomach, facing away from me. As horny for him as I was, I made it inside him, both of us panting and groaning from how fucking perfect it felt to get this back and reclaim it for us. I was out of my mind with a toxic combination of lust and anxiety, but he’d urged me on with his hand patting my thigh.

It lasted all of a minute or two before he said exactly what I didn’t want to hear. “You can hold me down.”

I didn’t respond. I pretended like I hadn’t heard him.

“Put your hand on my head—or my neck,” he’d demanded breathlessly, but louder.

“No,” I grunted, easing my cock into his hole with a little less enthusiasm.

He asked one more time. Said please, and it was then that I could hear he was crying.

I stopped moving. He dove away from me, hurried off the bed, grabbed clothes, shouted at me, and left the room.

And here we are. I’m still breathing heavy.

He’s pacing the living room rug, nails digging through his hair as he huffs with frustration.

“Sullivan,” I begin, but he cuts me off fiercely.

“I can’t do this.”

“I know. That’s why we need to take it slow.”

“Slow? It’s been nearly a year. This is glacial. It’s bullshit. I can’t do it anymore.”

I respond more to his intensifying frustration rather than his words. I sit on the arm of the couch, perching there, hoping he’ll wear himself out. “Look. I get this has been hard for you, but I’m fine.”

“I can hear you, you know? Every time you jerk off in the shower, I hear it.”

Ouch. That makes me blush.

“What are you picturing when you come, Knight? Holding my fucking hand? Kissing my cheek?”

I drop my gaze to my own clasped hands. Stupidly, I decide to turn the tables. “You’re telling me you never jerk off in the shower?”

He stops pacing, and he’s standing right in front of me, his hands covering mine. “What I’m telling you is that I don’t think this is going to work. I don’t think I’m what you need anymore, and I don’t think you can be who I need either.”

His words don’t quite register. “This isn’t going to work,” I repeat slowly. “This, meaning us?”

He sighs. “Yeah.”

I’m silent for a second, taking that part in first, and then the other thing he said about us not being what the other person needs.

“Should I have come out?” I ask.

He scoffs in annoyance and shoves at my hands before taking a step back. “No.”

“Well, would you be trying to dump me right now if I had?”

“Who the fuck knows what would have happened if you had, and no, I never wanted any part of that—for either of us. That was a you thing. It was never about me. I’m perfectly fine with you keeping your private life private. Everyone has that right. I am talking about sex, and how we don’t have it, and it’s starting to look like we never will again, and that’s not gonna work for me.”

“We were literally just having sex.” Admittedly, I’m not feeling very sharp. His words cut, and even the supportive things he said still feel like lashes across my back. Like a punishment for whatever he thinks I’ve done wrong. “If I—If I’d done what you asked me to do, you would have frozen up.”

“You can’t know that.”