Beneath him, Brix moaned too, and tilted his body, drawing Calum in deeper. “I haven’t done this in so long, I thought I’d forgotten, but I never knew . . . never knew it could feel like this.”
The sentiment was beautiful, like Brix, and Calum wished he could return it, but having Brix clamped around him had effectively cut off his power of speech. His only answer was to drive into Brix hard enough to make them both groan again, and find a rhythm that put an end to any further conversation.
At least, any conversation with words, because there was no way Calum could break the hold Brix had on his eyes, tear himself away from a gaze that had held him prisoner since he’d fallen drunkenly into it at Truro train station.
Brix stared back at him, his hands gripping Calum’s face, his legs a vice around Calum’s waist. His body arched with every thrust of Calum’s hips and his mouth hung open in a silent cry.
The height of Calum’s pleasure was dizzying, and he was wrapped up in so much love for the man beneath him he could barely think—barely breathe. The rush of imminent orgasm was all-consuming, and only the sudden tension in Brix’s body broke through.
For a brief moment, he feared something was wrong, but then Brix’s head fell back, his long neck curving in a perfect arch, and Calum knew that the spine-tingling coil in his own belly belonged to both of them, that Brix was on the edge of something incredible. Something beautiful.
Calum chased Brix’s gravelly cry, fucking him harder than he’d dared up until now. Brix’s moans became yells, and as his body tightened around Calum and spilled wet heat between them, Calum came too, pulsing where they were joined, fusing them, bonding them so absolutely that even if they never did this again, Calum would carry a piece of Brix with him forever.
He slowed his hips, and then withdrew, drawing another moan from Brix. Calum gazed down, ignoring the sticky mess and the sheen of sweat that coated both of them, and gripped Brix’s chin. He found his eyes, searching for any sign of distress or regret.
But he found none. Brix’s grin was sleepy, but a mile wide and true, and in the dim light of the room, just for Calum.
Calum stroked his cheek with the pad of his thumb. “All right?”
“Aye.” Brix nodded. “I—I can’t find my tongue.”
Calum chuckled. “I took it. It’s mine.”
“I’d give it to you if you wanted it.”
“That’s why what you’ve given me already is more than enough.”
“Can I tell you I love you?”
“If you like.”
“’Cause I do. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” And Calum did, certain of nothing else except how much he loved Brix in return. “I love you too, so I reckon we’re about set.”
Brix sat up on his elbows. “Set for what?”
Calum shrugged and used a stray pair of boxers to try to wipe them both clean. “For whatever you want to do.”
“Whatever we want. In this together, eh?”
“Course we are.”
“Good.” Brix shuffled up the bed and thrust his legs under the covers, holding the duvet up for Calum. “Do you know what I want to do, more than anything, right now?”
“Name it.”
“I wanna do what we just did all over again.”
Six months later . . .
Brix woke to the first glimmer of sunshine they’d seen all week, and rolled over, stretching. His hands found Calum beside him, and like a moth to a flame, he chased Calum’s warmth down, wrapping himself around him until it was hard to tell where Calum ended and he began.
For a while, he dozed, drifting in and out of the best kind of sleep, but when the early-spring sun became too bright to ignore, he relinquished his hold on Calum and propped himself up on the pillows, staring, awed, like he did every morning that he was lucky enough to wake first. He brushed Calum’s hair away from his forehead, ghosted a fingertip over his cheekbone, and lost himself in his long lashes and dark stubble. Calum mostly still walked through life with his head down and no idea how beautiful he was, but Brix knew it more and more every day that they were together.
And they were together every day—at home, at work. It was rare that they spent longer than a few hours apart, and though Brix had been a man who had craved alone time in the past, now, with Calum, he wouldn’t have it any other way. He’d carried his fractured soul for far too long. With Calum, he was whole.
On cue, Calum woke, his eyes hazed until he focussed on Brix and smiled a slow, gentle smile that seemed to wrap Brix in sunshine. “Mornin’.”