But I couldn’t be what he needed. He really was just grateful.
“I’m not the same guy who had to sleep with the light on,” he said, kissing along my jaw. “I’m not the guy who was afraid to be touched or the guy who was sure that everyone knew what had happened to him. I’m not the guy who had to cut all his hair off so no one could ever hold him with it. I’m different now, and the main reason I’m okay is you, Leo. It’s been so long since I’ve been scared or sad or angry or anything but content. I love my life, but lately I’ve realized that there’s something missing.”
“And what is that?”
“Your heart,” he said, tracing a finger down the side of my shaft.
Oh God, it felt good, and my slumbering interest woke right up and was ready to play.
“And I know that I’m talking about one organ while I’m fondling another”—he smiled widely—“but the fact of the matter is that while I want to see love in those big chocolate-brown eyes, I also wanna see lust. I want you to want me.”
“I think you’re just feeling gratitude for—”
“It’s not gratitude. You’re not a fuckin’ saint, and we both know you can be a total ass sometimes.”
“I can?”
He laughed at me, and the sound of it, really, was pure unadulterated joy. “Yeah, you can, but that’s okay, ’cause so can I.”
Oh yes, he could. “Yeah, you can be a real dick.”
“Yes, I know,” he indulged me, “but that’s okay because it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you make me feel safe, and you don’t know what that feels like, how great that is to not have to be on guard, to just trust.”
“Charlie,” I sighed.
“Wait,” he said, stopping me. “I don’t only mean physically safe, even though knowing you would never let anyone or anything hurt me is amazing, but it’s more than that. You never hurt anyone on purpose, and so I know if you decide you’re gonna love me that I’d be so fuckin’ lucky, ’cause you’d never stop unless I screwed it up, and God, why would I?”
I stopped breathing.
“And yeah, I want you to love me. That’s my plan, and that starts with you seeing me and wanting me and not being able to keep your hands off me,” he said as he wrapped his fist around my hardening shaft. “And I want this inside me.”
I couldn’t still the thrust of my hips shoving forward, driving my cock into his hand, pushing in only to drag slowly out.
“Doesn’t that feel good?”
I turned fast, and he gasped because I’d surprised him as I took his sweet face in my hands. “Baby, I’m so scared that what you went through—”
“Was four years ago,” he told me, wiggling closer, sliding a leg up over my hip. “And can I just say that my whole life, a lot of guys have tried to call me ‘baby,’ and I’ve never liked it, but from you, hearing you say it to me… it’s so fuckin’ hot. I love it.”
I stared into his eyes. “I think we need to wait, Charlie. I think you’re a little mixed up about your feel—”
He leaned in, and the kiss he planted on me made my skin run with heat, curled my toes, and took my breath away. And when I felt the man shudder in my arms, it hit me like a freight train: he was having the same reaction to me.
“Charlie,” I panted as I broke the kiss, our lips still so close.
“I haven’t slept with anyone since that day,” he told me, his voice breaking. “I haven’t wanted to until you. I mean, four years ago my plan was to die, and it took me a year after that to get my head together enough to try and figure out what to do with my life, and the first man I met, once I chose living, was you. Isn’t that amazing? Don’t you think that’s fuckin’ amazing?”
His face, alight with hope, was what was amazing.
“Leo,” he sighed deeply. “Haven’t you been waiting for me too?”
I searched his face. “So we’re gonna do what, jump together?”
“Would you please just start with me? You already trust me, that’s the hard part, and it’s already done.”
“Yes, it is,” I agreed, smiling at him. “I just don’t want to scare you or hurt you or—”
“You can’t,” he told me, and I watched his eyes fill. “I trust you. Don’t you get it? I trust you, Leo Foster. You could tie me up, and I’m not gonna worry. I’ve been here, living in your world, for the past three years. I’ve seen you mad and happy and hurt and… I’ve seen it all, but never once, in all that time, have I seen what you look like when you’re in love. I wanna see that.”