Page 27 of Doors & Windows
Time was an indeterminable thing when they were like this. Liam was content to remain immersed in this magma-hot liquid euphoria forever. Jonah, as always,respected his wishes and kept his hands above Liam’s waist, but even those touches—calloused hands splayed under his shirt, over his ribs, fingertips digging into his skin—were enough to light him from the inside out.
It was Liam who changed his mind, driven by the desire to show Jonah just how badly he wanted him back. He pulled back from the kiss, Jonah’s teeth tugging at his bottom lip in a way that made his stomach flip, and asked, “Can I…?” He let his hand, trailing flat-palmed down the plane of Jonah’s chest, finish the sentence for him.
The way they were intertwined, there was no missing the way Jonah’s body tensed. He caught Liam’s wrist too quickly to be casual.
“Wait.” Then, as if catching his own reaction, Jonah schooled his expression into a shaky smile. It reminded Liam of the smile he used to see in the morning light shining through hotel curtains. The deflecting smile that tried hard to convince him that everything was okay when it wasn’t.
“It’s your birthday,” Jonah said. “Shouldn’t you be the center of attention tonight?”
Liam’s mouth moved faster than his brain. “It’s not just tonight, though.”
Jonah pulled back an inch and went very, very still.
Liam cursed under his breath, becauseshit, he had not meant to say that out loud, and he hadn’t meant to say itlike that, and this wasnota conversation to have while even partially intoxicated. But maybe the alcohol was to blame for the slip. Liam had been bottling this unease for weeks, and now, with his inhibitions lowered and emotions high, it was spilling out of him.
That day in the Long Island house had opened the floodgates on physical intimacy between them. Early mornings and late nights were stolen away in Jonah’s room or Liam’s, getting lost in the feeling of skin and breath andlove, love love.It was everything Liam never knew he could want so much with another person.
But that joy didn’t blind Liam to how one-sided things had been, physically.
Liam’s inexperience meant Jonah was often the one taking the lead. Liam was more than happy to acquiesce to the guidance of his steady hands, but the result was an accumulation of memories of Jonah on his knees, Jonah with one hand down the front of Liam’s shorts, Jonah gently catching Liam’s wrist before things could venture too far toward reciprocity. It was too carefully curated to be anything but intentional, but still Liam held his tongue. Despite Jonah’s claims to the contrary, Liam was never very good at finding the right words to talk about things, especially things that were this close to the heart,thisimportant to get right.
So he had pushed down every real or perceived redirection in the dark, every thought that strayed too close to Jonah’s past that Liam had no right to bring up, every itching thought in the back of his mind that told him there were some things that needed to be said out loud.
It wasn’t meant to come out like this.
He probably should have stopped there, put a pin in this conversation until they were both clear-headed enough to talk about it with the care it deserved. Butthe look on Jonah’s face told him he had opened a box that wouldn’t easily close. Shutting it down now would only look like he was icing Jonah out.
“Sorry. That didn’t come out right,” Liam said. “I just worry sometimes that things are a little unbalanced between us. In that department.”
Jonah’s expression shuttered.
Liam was doing this all wrong, digging deeper with every word.Stop talking. Stop talking. Stop talking.
“Not that you need a reason to say no to something. You really don’t. But I can’t help but notice you’ve shot down all my attempts, and that’s fine if you don’t… You know, if you don’t like to be touched like that. But I don’t want to assume anything. I figured this was the kind of thing we should at least talk about.”
A few moments passed in tense silence. Then, slowly, Jonah extracted himself from their tangle of limbs, leaving bitter cold in his absence. He pulled his knees to his chest, his back against the wall.
“I didn’t realize you were so unhappy with what we’ve been doing.” Jonah’s voice was flat and toneless, a protective shell forming around him that Liam hadn’t witnessed from him in so long that he almost didn’t recognize it.
Liam wanted to eat his words, wanted to stuff them back down his throat and undo this whole conversation.
“You know I’m not,” Liam said desperately, sitting up on his side of the bed, careful to keep their legs from touching. “Jonah, if that is genuinely just the way you like things—like, just giving instead of receiving—that’s okay. I’m serious, you’ll hear no complaints fromme. But I never want to…” The words ‘take advantage’hit a little too close to Jonah’s real history, so he swallowed him back. “I just think it would be good to know if that sort of thing is triggering for you.”
Jonah’s jaw tightened. He wouldn’t meet Liam’s eyes when he said, “I just know what I’m good at.”
Liam put a hand to his stomach, steadying himself against the sudden, dizzy surge of nausea.
A whole lot of context was packed into so few words: that Jonah quantified his sexual prowess asgoodornot good,when so much of his experiences until now had been dubious at best and assault at worst.
A supercut of their most intimate encounters flashed before Liam, all tinged in a new, hideous light. How many of those times had Jonah just been falling back into old patterns? Had he ever forced himself through a sexual act for Liam’s sake? He imagined Jonah closing his eyes, making his body numb to Liam’s touch as he had with so many men before, and he wanted to throw up.
This whole time, Jonah had been carrying his demons into bed more than he ever let show, and Liam had been too caught to take proper notice.
Nathan’s voice taunted him.We’re not so different after all, Cassidy.
“I hate that you’ve been thinking about it in those terms,” Liam whispered. “I hate that I’ve let you. I hate that youeverhad to—” He scrubbed a palm over his mouth. “It’s not about beinggood, Jonah. What you were forced to do before… it shouldn’t feel like that with me. I don’teverwant it to be that way with me.”
“I’m trying my best.”
