Page 73 of Running Feral

Fuck.

I want this more than anything, but I don’t want it to be a disaster we can never recover from.

He’s still kissing me, slowly but deeply enough to make my head swim a little. We don’t break apart until he starts tuggingmy t-shirt over my head. It gets thrown somewhere on the floor. Then his hands are all over my chest, palming my pecs and teasing my nipples, quickly being joined by his eager little mouth. We’re side to side, but he’s hooked his leg over my hip until he’s almost entirely wrapped around me, and it already feels like we’re a few thin layers of fabric away from this new kind of intimacy.

When he reaches down to shuck his sleep pants, I snap out of it. The arousal and apprehension are neck and neck for control of my emotions.

“Tobias, wait. I wanna talk about this first.”

He freezes, looking at me. Not upset, per se, but with something cracking in his expression. When he kisses me again, it’s more fevered. More desperate. He keeps talking, but only in breaks between having his lips on my lips and his tongue in my mouth, with his hands clutching every part of me as close as it can get.

“No,” he says. “Please, I need this.” He grinds his hips against me again, his heels digging into my ass now, like he’s trying to roll my weight on top of him, although now I can feel him trembling. “I need you. Fuck it out of me, please. I want it out. I want it all out.”

His voice gets more ragged and breathless in the worst possible way the longer he talks. His movements are sloppy and desperate, and everything starts to feel off.

Eventually, I pull his hands away from me as gently as I can and hold them between us. He’s shaking obviously now, his breath coming rapidly in the panicked way, not like he’s turned on, even though he keeps trying to grind against me and his cock is still hard.

“I want this too, baby, but we should slow down. You don’t look—”

“What?” He interrupts me, a sudden sharpness to his tone that I’m already intimately familiar with from the many, many other times I’ve underestimated him and pissed him off. “I don’t look okay? I don’t look normal? I’m not fucking okay. I’m not normal. I’m shit, and I feel like shit, and I’m asking you to help me feel better. So, unless you secretly like it when I feel like shit, or you’re now so fucking repulsed by me that you don’t want to touch me at all—”

“Hey,” I snap, because it’s my turn to cut him off. “Stop. Don’t put words in my mouth. None of that is true. But you’re shaking and you just woke up from a nightmare because you walked your ass back here from a three-day, all-expense-paid vacation to sexual assault land! I don’t think it’s particularly radical for me to suggest that this isn’t the best time for me to bend you over and get my rocks off.”

I regret everything I say the second I say it. The words feel like poison on my tongue. Not just what I’m saying, but the anger as I say it. Because it sounds angry to him and any other rational person, but only I know that I’m not really angry, I’m fucking terrified.

I’m terrified all the time. Like I’ll breathe wrong or touch him wrong or make yet another shitty choice, and he’ll be hurt because of it.

Bottling up all that fear was a terrible choice, because he looks well and truly hurt, and it’s all my fault. I can see the pain in his face for a few seconds as I reach for him, already trying to apologize, but he immediately tries to cover it with anger. He rolls over like he’s about to get out of bed, and my heart pounds with more guilt and fear.

“Wait, Tobias,” I say, forcing myself to sound calmer than I feel. “I’m so sorry. That was shitty, and I didn’t mean any of it to come out like that. Please don’t go.”

He freezes, half-off the bed already. Slowly, though, he lets his weight drop back down and turns to face me. He’s not touching me anymore. Instead, he’s sitting cross-legged on the mattress, pulling a pillow into his lap to hold. It’s better than running away, though.

“I’m scared,” I tell him, going for naked honesty. “I want you so much, and I want to feel that close to you. But I’m scared to hurt you or frighten you or make things worse between us. I know that’s selfish, but it’s true.”

“I thought after we talked last night, we were good. I thought things were normal between us. I want to go back to normal.”

I frown. “We are good. But we’re not normal. I don’t feel fucking normal either. You’re not the only one. And I don’t want you to force yourself to do something uncomfortable because you think I want it.”

Tobias avoids eye contact at all costs, tension obvious in every muscle of his body.

Finally, after a long silence, he mumbles his words to the comforter.

“What ifIwant it?”

I reach out, placing my fingers beneath his chin to tilt his face up so I can see him. “What?”

“I’m not always doing things just to appease you. What if I asked because I want it?” he asks, more sure of himself now. “Does that make me some kind of pervert? Like I’m sick for not wanting to spend all my time crying in a corner?”

He sounds angry, but I can’t tell if he’s angry with me, himself, or just the universe.

“Am I, Gunnar? Am I a freak?”

“Oh, honey,” I sigh, reaching out to pull him toward me. “You’re not a freak. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to feel after going through a bunch of fucked-up trauma. I justwant to give you what you need—what we both need, probably—without triggering you or fucking everything up.”

After a few more moments of silence, I realize what’s been staring me in the face this whole time.

“What if you fucked me?” I ask.

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