Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 71651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“It’s the little things,” I said. “I love your sketchbooks all over the house, the watercolors. You spit them out in fifteen minutes and they look like little masterpieces. I like seeing your dumb Beetle outside when I leave in the morning. Fuck, Ori, I even like having an excuse to pick up extra food, knowing you might want some, too.”
“You’ve been doing that on purpose?” he asked.
“Of course I have. I think of you automatically. Even when I’m not trying to.”
He melted against me, claiming my mouth in another slow kiss. “You are too good to me. I think that’s always been true.”
“No such thing,” I said. “Ori, you can move anywhere. You can end up on the other side of the planet, if that’s what you want, but you need to know I’ll always be here for you.”
I wanted to kick myself, truly, for being so blind.
What had held me back?
Why couldn’t I have let myself feel any of this—do any of this, when I was just a little bit younger? My life had been a series of rules I’d thought I had to follow.
Rules, rules, rules: rise above your past, and don’t crumble, even when your parents do. Excel in school. Excel in football. Excel socially, with anyone and everyone. Get a job, get a house.
Find a girlfriend, then a wife.
I’d been in survival mode for so long that I’d never stopped to let myself wonder if there was anything beneath those rules that I might want.
I had to lose Ori and find him again to know how deeply I needed him.
And when it came to Ori? Fuck the rules.
I would do anything for him.
“Promised you wouldn’t touch me,” he said now, even as he wrapped his arms up around my shoulders, nestling his head against the crook of my neck.
I hummed. “I’ll stop the moment you tell me to.”
I felt him breathe against me. “That’s not going to happen.”
If I thought I wanted Ori to fuck me earlier, it was magnified to a level I hadn’t even known was possible now.
The fear had evaporated.
I was his, in whatever way he wanted to have me.
I reached behind him to turn off the shower, pressing a gentle kiss on his lips before grabbing the towels outside. I handed him one and after we dried off, I pulled open a drawer in the vanity, bringing out condoms and a bottle of lube.
I looked Ori up and down, his skin glistening in the light.
“You going to make me beg?”
13
ORI
Turns out there’s only one thing that could make me love being back in Bestens.
And I really, really love it.
Finn had done a lot of things throughout our lives, but one thing he rarely did was surprise me.
Since I’d been back in town, he’d made it his fucking mission to surprise me, on levels deeper than I ever thought he’d go, every time we were together.
In the backyard, he’d broken me.
In the shower, he’d fucking broken me even more.
And I wasn’t a person that normally let myself break.
Even coming back into Bestens with my tail between my legs, feeling like a fraud and a failure and like I was back at square zero, I hadn’t let myself break. I came in steadfast, knowing my plan. Knowing I was going to leave this place as quick as I could after I’d gotten on my feet, and knowing that my sister and family and Finn had moved on with their lives long ago.
But it turned out that Finn hadn’t moved on.
What was buried underneath layers and layers inside him was something so raw and vulnerable that I felt like I was with a new version of him entirely.
All of the best parts of him, but more… real.
Like he had nothing left to lose.
After our shower I was fascinated and so lust-drunk for him that when I stepped into the bedroom to find him naked on his cream-white sheets, his towel tossed away, I knew I wasn’t going to hold back.
“Going to put my fingers inside you first,” I told him, skipping any small talk. I sat down between his legs on the mattress. “Want to see how much you can take.”
His cock jumped, and he swallowed, nodding down at me. He looked more like a Greek statue than ever, his skin bronze against the white of the sheets.
I liked the doe-eyed look on his face. Like seeing a god suddenly become mortal.
“Good. Should I, uh, get on my stomach?” he asked.
“Stay like this,” I said, running a palm across the front of his smooth chest. I let my hand roam lower, trailing down from his abs to the hair on his lower stomach, then to his balls, which made him hum. I moved my hand to the edge of his ass pressed against the bed. I could see him tense up, just a little, in anticipation, as if he expected me to shove inside him right away.