And then it hits, and we don’t run from the expanding inferno that sears through us. Trapped between us, my dick erupts, and Mal…his release is a new fire inside me, his body holding mine like heknows. Like he hears the words I’ve never said.
I shatter into a thousand pieces with them burning my lips.
I shout with the force of it, my confession this wild fucking noise that rips my throat.
I love you.
We’re so entangled in each other it takes a minute to unpick. Mal’s curved around me like he’s shielding me from the storm that’s caught a second wind outside.
He’s shaking.
So am I.
He’s dizzy too, and he doesn’t try to hide it. He lies beside me and breathes, and I realise he’s laughing. At himself. At me. At this messy existence we call life. As my blood cools and my nerves simmer down, it doesn’t matter. The ache in my chest…it isn’t pain.
Mal pulls himself together enough to raise his head. His skin is flushed, his sated gaze bright with exertion. It looks good on him, and it’s hard to accept I’ve turned away from him every time that’s come before this.
He reaches over me and wipes the cum from my belly with Jack’s t-shirt. Cringes when he realises. “Don’t tell him.”
I’m not going to. It’s bad enough Jack found out about me and Mal the way he did. I’m not about to confess we’ve defiled his clothes too.
I feel like I could sleep again. That if I close my eyes, I’ll fall through the bed.
Mal rubs my stomach, rousing me.
I speak before he can. “I’ve never stayed in bed with someone after sex before.”
“Neither have I. Honestly, I haven’t fuckedina bed since…eh, I don’t fucking know when.”
“I’ve never worn anyone’s clothes either.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t fuck people more than once.” Neither does he. We know this about each other already. It was obvious the night we met. But I find myself needing to give him more. “Apart from one person, but he was too good for me and I broke his heart.”
Mal snorts. “I must be your fucking karma then.”
If he is, I’m not complaining, even as the casual hand he has on my stomach seems to touch me with more purpose, and his laser focus on me turns assessing.
“You need to eat,” he says, after a pause I can barely stand. “If you can’t, we need to find someone cleverer than me to help you.”
Denial reaches my lips. But I swallow it down. He’s not wrong, even if he has no idea how much it matters that he’s not afraid to say this shit to me.
I nod and use his offered hands to pull myself upright. “Shower with me first?”
We get clean beneath the cool water Mal needs to stay upright.
Then he sits with me while I eat every half hour for the rest of the night. Tiny portions of bland food that make me want to light myself on fire, but it is what it is.
We fuck again. On the couch. The lights are low, the TV playing an old game show that makes Mal laugh. He’s at my back, but for the long, slow space in time he’s inside me, his lips fused to mine, it doesn’t feel that way.
His dick, though…it still feels bigger than it did a week ago.
“Maybeyou’veshrunk,” Mal tells me when I come back from the bathroom with that on my mind and sink into his embrace again so naturally I don’t know it’s happening until I’m there and Armageddon couldn’t make me move. I think he’s serious until his expression sobers for real. “Can I ask you something?”
I shrug. “If you like.”
“Did you puke in the shower just now?”