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He nods. “My brain was so inflamed it was running out of room and trying to hammer its way out. I think I asked my mum to kill me.”

“And she did not, I see.”

“No, but when I woke up a week later without my hearing, I wished she had for a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“A few months. Honestly, it didn’t take me long to figure being deaf isn’t that bad. That pain, though…” Poet blinks and fixes me with his blue eyes. “Still scares me to this day. I can’t even smell a hospital without hyperventilating, so if you’re looking for advice on how to banish your demons, I’m probably not your man.”

I think he might be. If such a thing were possible. But he’s not talking about that. He’s talking about trauma and survival, and the need to touch him overwhelms just about everything. “Come here.”

Poet slides me a wry glance, but sidles closer all the same. He lets me pull him into a hug and coax him to rest his head on my chest. His hair smells of the shampoo we shared in the shower, but beneath it his wood and apple scent lingers and I breathe him in, kneading the back of his neck, aware if I speak while we lie together like this, he won’t see me.

He’ll feel it.

Maybe. In any case, I do not have much to say beyond what I can show him better by holding him this close, and quiet falls over us. I wonder if I should leave. If I should go home so we both sleep alone. But it’s another errant thought that doesn’t stick and my eyes grow heavy. I am almost asleep again when Poet speaks.

“Folk had cancer treatment in America. I’ve always wondered if it was because of me. So I wouldn’t have to visit him in a hospital here.”

My arms tighten around him and I wait for him to look up. “Have you ever asked him?”

“No. And he’d never tell me. That’s not who he is.”

It isn’t. I have always known that about Folk Whitlock. And as we fall silent again and the conversation settles around us like the night itself, I know it about Poet too. We are forging a connection that has nothing to do with our naked skin or the bed we share tonight.

And yet…

We are naked and in bed. We are wrapped up in each other like lovers and I belatedly recall he hasn’t come tonight. That everything we’ve shared was for me.

His tongue inside me.

His skilled fingers.

I don’t think I have ever come that hard and it makes me wonder what might happen next. Thoughts that have heat pooling in my groin and my priorities turning away from my imagination to focus on him.

Poet.

He is already looking at me and somehow the barest sliver of moonlight has found his face. Enough to illuminate those sea-blue eyes.

We do not speak.

We are so close.

And not close enough. The pull is immeasurable, and though the weight of the conversations we’ve had tonight doesn’t dissipate, something warmer begins to rise.

Poet’s gaze drops to my mouth.

Returns to my eyes.

I sit up and roll him onto his back, looming over him. “I would like to have you in my mouth now. Is that okay?”

Faint surprise lights Poet’s gaze. “You want to blow me?”

“Very much. Yes.”

A slow smile curves his lips. “I’m never going to say no to that.”

He enjoys mouth play both ways. Noted. But like when our positions were reversed, Poet takes my hand again and squeezes with more force than affection. “In case I don’t feel that you need me.”