Page 71 of Someone Like You

He slowed down on a curse, almost stopping, and I felt his lips press against the top of my head. “Sweetheart,” he said, panting, his chest heaving beneath me. “I need to touch you. Let me out of these. I have to hold you.”

I lifted my head, dazed, lost in a cloud where nothing else existed but Brody and the euphoric state he’d driven me to. I felt around on the bed for the key, and when my fingers touched metal, my hands were shaking as I leaned forward to unlock the cuffs. Brody pressed his hips up to keep his cock inside me, and as I hovered over him, fumbling with the key and the lock, his lips latched onto my neck, sucking hard. I almost dropped the key as a zap of pleasure jolted down my spine, but I finally shoved it into the lock as Brody’s tongue made me forget who I was.

As soon as he heard the click, Brody yanked his hands free and wrapped his arms around me, one hand sliding up the nape of my neck and into my hair so he could drag my mouth to his. He held me there as he fucked into my mouth with his wicked tongue, his other arm wrapped around my waist. He sat up until we were chest to chest, and then started thrusting into me again, in earnest this time. He used the arm around my waist to move me with his thrusts, and when his lips trailed along my jaw, when he bit and licked and sucked down to my neck, my head rolled back and my eyes slid shut.

“You’re so damn perfect,” he whispered into my skin. “So beautiful. And all mine.” His fingers in my hair yanked gently, urging me to open my eyes. When I did, Brody was staring at me with a reverence that made my breath falter. “Say it. Say you’re mine, Isaac.”

“Yours,” I moaned as his cock slammed into me, harder now. “Fuck, I’m yours, Brody.”

His mouth was on mine again, and when he wrapped one hand around my cock and started stroking me, I shoved my fingers into his hair and held on as he sent me over the edge. I clenched around his length, felt him swell inside me, felt bursts of heat as Brody came with a groan into my mouth, and thenwent limp in his arms as the overload of sensations took every last bit of energy from my body.

Brody lay back against the pillows, one hand curled in my hair, the other stroking up and down my back as I nestled my face into the crook of his neck, my fingers lazily playing with his hair. “Thank you,” he murmured.

“For what?”

“Hm. For just being you. For letting me love you. For loving me back.”

I kissed his neck. “You know what Dr. Seuss said?”

“What?”

“‘You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.’ That’s how I feel. I don’t even want to close my eyes because I’m afraid to make this reality disappear. I never even let myself dream before you because I never felt good enough to be able to. I never even knew what love was, or what it could be, until you showed me. I love you, Brody. And I’m so thankful that you’re such a persistent motherfucker.”

When he laughed, the sound vibrated through me and tickled my ear, filling me up and evening out all my sharp edges. Contentment—true contentment—was the most invigorating and intoxicating feeling in the world. And I never would have known it without Brody.

Fuck, I loved this guy so much.

EPILOGUE

BRODY

TWO YEARS LATER

That little green-eyed devil was going to be the death of me. “Isaac!” I shouted, pacing back and forth in our bedroom.

Shortly after his graduation, we’d moved into an apartment together and had been living here ever since. Isaac had gotten a job with a publishing company in the next town over, and he absolutely loved it. Well, he hated it at first, but he’d been recently promoted and was finally getting to do some real editing and work that didn’t involve getting coffees for people or sorting through mail.

On top of that, he’d also finished his first book, sent out a million and one queries to every publisher he could, and gotten a lot of positive feedback as well as offers. His book was going to debut in a few weeks, and I was so fucking proud of him. He’d commissioned an amazing artist to illustrate every single page, which had cost a fortune, but was worth it. And he’d even printed off all his poems in a dyslexia-friendly font so I couldread them. But I still preferred it when he read them to me himself.

As far as our legal problems went, those had been fully wrapped up about a year and a half ago. Gavin was convicted of assault and battery on two counts, was sentenced to six months in jail, slapped with a requirement of two hundred community service hours to complete, and had to pay a fine of four thousand dollars. Because his attack was the reason my heart began to fail, he was ordered by the judge to partially pay for the fees that my insurance didn’t cover. They weren’t a lot, but according to Isaac, every penny mattered.

Our lawyer told us that the reason Gavin gave for attacking Isaac was because he blamed him for being kicked off the wrestling team and losing his scholarship. He admitted that it wasn’t Isaac’s fault, that he hadn’t been in his right mind because of all the steroids, and had even apologized. It was too little, too late, though. Apparently, it was his teammate, Beck, who’d told the coaches he saw Gavin juicing up in the locker room. The same guy who came to our aid that day. But Gavin had chosen to pick on someone smaller than himself, rather than his much larger teammate, like the coward he was.

In my opinion, he chose to take steroids, probably knowing how they would affect him, and now he was paying the price for that choice. I wasn’t angry anymore, but if I ever saw him out in public, I wasn’t about to say hi.

I was pretty much healed on the heart front, and not having to worry about an ongoing issue anymore was a huge relief. I was always going to get the surgery, but the way things had played out was not ideal. Still, I was okay, and that was what mattered.

Sam had informed us that Ethan had been sentenced to thirty years in prison, ten more years than the predicted twenty, and Isaac had been mostly quiet for the rest of that day. He still saw his therapist every two or three weeks, and he even talked tome about a lot of things as well. But sometimes, he would just sit and think, and that was okay too. I knew he’d talk to me when he was ready.

Now that school was finally over for me, I’d be working full time at the auto shop, and I was relieved about that. Part of me enjoyed school, but most of me was only passionate about the hands-on work I got to do. My uncle had made me the official manager of the shop, with a bump in pay and a few other benefits I hadn’t been getting before.

All in all, I fucking loved my life and the man I was sharing it with.

Now, we were heading to my uncle’s house to celebrate Isaac’s achievement and my own graduation from college a week ago. It was a little surreal, after being in school for so long. But I was glad to be finished, and I knew my mom would have been as proud of me as Isaac was. He’d framed my diploma and hung it in the bedroom, right above the cactus he’d gotten for me all those years ago.

Yeah, that prickly bush was still going strong, and I was going to be crushed when it finally decided to call it quits. How long did a cactus live, anyway?

“Isaac! What are you doing?” Damn it, what was he doing in there? He knew what time the barbecue was. He hated being late, couldn’t stand not arriving at anything at least fifteen minutes early, so what was taking him so long that he was willing to be late to this? I pressed my ear to the door when I heard frantic whispers.

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