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“Mmm,” he hummed drowsily. “Sorry I passed out on you. I didn’t mean….”

Fuck that. I took a trick out of his repertoire and silenced him with a kiss. I’d enjoyed my time with Maggie, and I wasn’t going to let him apologize for catching sleep he clearly needed.

Pete kissed me back and pressed himself into me. I let my legs widen so I could feel him better. He made a growly, throaty sound that made me shiver before he pulled away, wriggling around to make himself comfortable. “Maggie likes you.”

“How can you tell?” I said. “You were asleep the whole time.”

Pete poked me in the ribs. “You’d know if she didn’t. She used to call my ex ‘
un poco di buono
,’ and that’s just when she knew I was listening.”

The Italian rolled off Pete’s tongue effortlessly—like he spoke it all the time—but his usual accent was as American as mine. He laughed when I voiced my confusion.

“My dad was away so much when I was a kid that I only spoke Italian at home. Until I went to school, it was my first language. Of course, I’ve forgotten a lot of it now. I understand Maggie well enough, but I don’t speak the mother tongue anymore.”

“Mother tongue?”

“Native language,” he said without missing a beat, used to my stupid questions.

“What did Maggie say when she thought you weren’t listening?”

Pete rolled his eyes. “
Bagascia.
And she wonders where I get my dirty mouth.”

“Why? What does it mean?”

“Whore.”

“Oh.”

A peaceful quiet settled over us for a while. I wondered if Pete had gone back to sleep until he shifted slightly and slid his hand under my shirt to rest on my belly.

He exhaled slowly, sketching a light pattern over my skin. “You know there’s some stuff we need to work out.”

I felt suddenly chilled, despite the warmth of his touch. I’d been dreading the moment he’d say those words. To me, they meant the consuming limbo we’d created around ourselves was surely about to end. It was sink or swim. I couldn’t bear to lose him, but the thought of trying to mold the feelings I had for him into a relationship that gave him what he needed… what he deserved…. I couldn’t do it.

Pete took my terrified silence as agreement for him to continue. “I know you hate this as much as I do, so I’m just going to say it. Top or bottom?”

I closed my eyes, glad he couldn’t see my face in the darkness. I’d been expecting it, but his typically blunt question caught me off guard. I swallowed heavily. “Top.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

The silence seemed unending as I waited for him to tell me that wasn’t enough for him, that
I
wasn’t enough for him. Just when it felt like I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, I suddenly felt his fingers under my chin.

He tilted my face until I met his eyes. “Why do you think that’s a bad thing?”

“Aren’t you a top?”

Pete shook his head in a slow, deliberate motion. “No, I’m more of a ‘do what feels right at the time’ kind of guy. You know me; I don’t like to commit to anything. I think Wikipedia calls it
versatile
.”

“Wiki-what?”

He sighed patiently. “I do both, and I like both. I don’t want you to worry about shit like that. It’s not an issue for me.”

I looked away, but he forced me to look back. “Ash, I don’t ever want to make you uncomfortable. It defeats the whole point of whatever this is between us, and I don’t want to fuck it up because we were both too stubborn to talk about it.”

He let go of my face. I broke our stare and closed my eyes for a moment. The neutral environment of Maggie’s living room had made the conversation easier, but it was still difficult. I felt him lay his palm flat on my belly. I tried to focus on the way it made my skin tingle and my toes feel warm. He was throwing me a life raft and giving me a chance to make it work. I needed to tell him the truth if I had any hope of repaying his faith. I just didn’t know where to start.

Resolved, I opened my eyes. “I need to see you,” I said slowly. “I need to see your face.”

“Always like this?” Pete gestured between our bodies with his spare hand. I nodded and he quirked an eyebrow. “Watching your face while you fuck me doesn’t seem so bad.”

In spite of myself, I smiled. “Why’s that?”

He leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to my lips. “You know why.”

I didn’t, but it didn’t seem to matter as he settled against me again and wrapped his arms around me. Nothing seemed to matter then.

“I don’t want you to worry about this,” he said after a while. “Just because we’ve talked about it doesn’t mean we have to do it.”

“Do what?”

Pete chuckled. “You sure are evasive when you don’t want to talk about something. I meant
this
….” He wiggled the hand he still had under my shirt. “We’ll figure it out, if you want to. If you don’t… well, that’s okay too.”

“What do you want?”

He shrugged. “To try, I guess. I just don’t want to make things harder for you. If there’s something you don’t like, you have to tell me.”

For some reason, it struck me as funny that he really didn’t know he was the only thing holding my fragile sanity together, but I didn’t laugh. Instead, I stretched my neck, captured his lips with mine, and kissed him until I forgot my own name.

Perhaps knowing his mother was asleep in the next room gave us the necessary restraint to test the waters without moving too fast, but it was the last conscious decision I made. The next thing I knew, it was morning, and despite enjoying my time with Maggie, I was eager to get home.

A
FEW
days later, I felt like my life had flipped upside down. We literally couldn’t keep our hands off each other. One night we crossed paths in the hallway. An innocent brush of our hands, a grin, and suddenly we were falling onto his bed and kissing the hell out of each other. Kissing like that was new for me. I’d never kissed anyone as much as I’d kissed Pete. His mouth was incredible, and his lips, his tongue, I couldn’t get enough. It was like the best kind of addiction.

He slid his hands down my torso and tugged at the hem of my T-shirt. I eyed him for a moment before I sat up slightly and took his hands away. I pulled it over my head, slowly balled it up and threw it to one side, keeping my eyes down until his voice forced me to look up.

“Wow,” he said hoarsely. “You are smoking hot. You know that, right?”

I bit my lip as he used the very same words Ellie had used to describe him all those weeks ago, squirming under his intense stare. I wasn’t used to people looking so closely, and his gaze burned a hole in me.

Pete sat up, maybe sensing the blip in my confidence, and knelt in front of me, mirroring my position on the bed. He put his hands on my hips and pulled me gently toward him, pressing our heads together as he ghosted his hands up and down my ribcage. His touch was calm and soothing, and it gave me the moment I needed.

Then he reached down and stripped his own shirt, and all coherent thought abandoned me.

I’d seen Pete shirtless almost every day since I’d met him, but the moment our bare skin connected, something came alive in me and I lost my head. A shot of energy crackled through me as I pushed him down onto the bed and kissed him roughly. Suddenly, I was desperate to feel more of him.

I slid my hand over his taut stomach and reached for his dick. Pete caught my hand. I thought at first that he was deflecting me, but instead, he placed my hand on his waistband and silently urged me to pull his sweatpants down. I kept my eyes on his as I complied, but once he was bare and open to me, I let my gaze drift lower.

Hot damn.

I stared at his cock. He was
big
, just like I thought. There was some shit you just knew, and it was obvious by the way he carried himself that he was packing some serious heat. I took him in hand. He groaned, dropping his head to my shoulder as I felt the weight of him. Again, he stilled my hand. He let out a shaky breath and wrapped his arms around me. His grip on my body was tight, too tight, and the thud of my heart too loud.

Too much, too much….

I sucked in a ragged gasp of air. Pete felt me seize up in his arms and quickly released me. He lay back on the bed and pulled me on top of him. “Let’s slow this down.” he said. “Before I really embarrass myself.”

Residual nerves made me dizzy, but knowing I was doing that to him split my face in half. Pete smirked back, kicking his pants away from his legs. He reached for me, and before I could blink, my sweats had joined his on the floor. Cold air hit my skin. I shivered, dropping my gaze and placing my palms flat on the bed either side of his head. He took advantage of his position and ran his hands over every part of my body he could reach. He paused over the raised skin he found on my back. Even though I hid my face, I could see still see his curious eyes gleaming through the darkness of the room.

He closed warm fingers around my dick. He’d distracted me and I’d missed his hand snaking between us. My hips bucked before I could stop them. “
Shit
.”

Pete chuckled lowly. I felt his breath huff over my overheated skin as I mirrored his earlier action and dropped my head to his shoulder.

“Yeah, know the feeling, fucker.”

I choked back a laugh, but it was quickly replaced by a gasp as he squeezed my dick and pumped his hand up and down. A violent shudder ripped through me. It felt amazing. He moved with the skill of someone who truly knew how to pleasure a man, establishing a slow rhythm that with every flick of his wrist made my heart beat faster.

My breath came in shuddering gasps. In the back of my mind, I knew I had to put the brakes on before it was my turn to embarrass myself, but it was hard to think clearly. Pete pressed his other hand against the base of my spine and kept his lips busy on the part of my neck I’d left exposed. The combination blew my mind, and without warning, it was suddenly too late. I came over his hand with a sound I hardly recognized.

The abrupt onslaught of sensation knocked the breath from my lungs. My arms collapsed from under me and I fell unceremoniously onto his chest. “
Fuck!
”

Pete laughed softly and wiped his hand with a discarded piece of clothing. “Gotcha.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant literally or figuratively. I raised my head and tried to glare at him, but it didn’t work. He was far too pleased with himself for me to be mad at him. Besides, he was breathing as heavily as I was, and trapped between our bodies, he was still hard and waiting—waiting for me.

Pete eyed me as I held his gaze, like he was bracing himself for an inevitable shitstorm. I couldn’t blame him for that, but he didn’t need to worry. I was more comfortable naked and breathless with him than I’d ever been with anyone, and I wanted more than anything for him to feel as amazing as I did.

Slowly, I reached up and took his face in my hands. He looked surprised for a moment before he met me in the middle and our lips came together. The kiss was hot and searching, and despite the release he’d just given me, my body instinctively responded to him, like I needed more.

I pulled away from Pete’s kiss and moved down his body. I wasn’t ready to fuck him, but I needed to explore him, to find out what made
him
shiver. For an unmeasured amount of time, I paid homage to his body. He had the smoothest skin I’d ever touched, and his tight abdomen was something I couldn’t get enough of. I moved lower and lower, until I grazed his hip bone with my teeth and his dick dug into my chest. Pete froze as he felt it, but I didn’t. Suddenly, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

He caught my shoulders. “You don’t have to do that.”

His caution confused me. I looked up, holding his gaze and giving him the chance to pull away, but he didn’t. I took him in my mouth, and as he tightened his grip on my shoulders to the point of bruising, I didn’t feel any pain. In a faceless city he’d made my home, I only felt him.

A
WEEK
or so later, Ted finally lost patience with the scrappy, handwritten logbooks I gave him and sent me to the community college to learn how to use the computer properly.

It was a boring day. The room was gray, the people were gray, and the instructor was so monotonous I stopped listening after the first ten minutes and resorted to watching the clock. I let my mind wander. I planned out a few sketches in my head, but as usual, my thoughts drifted to Pete. We still hadn’t fucked, but we seemed to spend every spare moment we had fooling around. Being naked in his bed had become one of my favorite places to be, and he’d quickly shown me that other places were just as good. A shiver ran through me, and I let my mind drift back to the first time we’d showered together. It was a Monday morning and we were both in a rush, but it turned out to be the perfect way to start the day.

In my pocket, my cell phone vibrated and pulled me from my dirty daydreams. My heart skipped when I saw Pete’s name.

Gonna be late. P.

I put the phone away and grinned, but my smile quickly fell when I chanced a glance at the clock. It was only just midday and it would be hours before I saw him. Sighing, I pulled out my sketchpad. The clock was no longer my friend, and I’d lost any inclination I had to feign interest in my surroundings.

The hours passed slowly. There was a brief lunch break, but after that it was back to the classroom for another three hours of tedious boredom. It was dark outside by the time the instructor let the class go. I got up and filed out into the corridor. My stomach growled. There were some vending machines at the far end, so I put my coat and bag on the bench beside them and dug in my wallet for a dollar. The candy bar had just dropped when I heard the clang of a metal bucket behind me. I spun around and found myself face to face with a haggard old woman and a spreading puddle of bubbly water. The noise I’d heard was the bucket she’d knocked over.

The woman smiled apologetically and stooped, reaching for her mop. “I’m sorry, dear. My fingers aren’t as nimble as they used to be. I can never keep hold of this damn pole.”