A brush across my shoulders as he sweeps my hair back. A brush up the back of my neck as I lean against the counter, letting my head fall back to gaze up at him.
“Sunglasses,” I say, making it a request even though I’m really just acknowledging where this is going between us. Where I want it to go. My voice is husky with restrained grief.
Still cradling the back of my head, Sully reaches up and removes my sunglasses. I blink against the brightness of the bathroom, feeling oddly exposed for a moment.
That feeling fades almost instantly, withering under the brush of Sully’s gaze across my face. His gray eyes gaze steadily into my own. His grief still simmers just under his skin, along with a weary acceptance. But …
He looks at me as if I’m precious to him.
Salvatore, my Sully, always looks at me that way. And not only when he’s smiling and playful. Even when the world frustrates him, or when he needs help with some class or understanding a confusing interaction. I’ve seen him in pain — both emotional and physical. I’ve seen him on and off meds that made him manic or depressed, before I — we — convinced him that he should be the one deciding how he wanted to live, rather than any medication making that decision for him. That we would happily navigate the world with him, as he wanted, as he saw it.
I’ve seen him angry. I’ve hauled him away from beating the shit out of multiple people. Including Bolan once. Even through being berated as I washed the blood off his knuckles, he looked at me as if I was … precious.
And I had simply accepted his friendship. Accepted that look as the love between friends. Because he was also Armin’s. He was Armin’s more than he was mine.
But … Armin is dead.
“He left both of us,” I whisper.
“Yes.” Sully sighs.
Holding his gray-eyed gaze, I deliberately arch into him, brushing my chest up against his taut body. Then I tease my lips against his in invitation, in welcome, in reverence.
He shudders, likely in response to the touch of my essence.
He groans into my mouth when I lick playfully at his bottom lip.
Desire crashes through me abruptly, painfully.
I’m suddenly not grieving or playful or poised at all.
I simply need.
Energy tangles between us. There has always been friendship and laughter and shared experiences between us, but it’s all tighter now … woven together by our shared grief.
And I need.
“Sully …” I cry, aware that I’m not remotely articulating myself as I fist my hands almost helplessly in his shirt.
But Sully understands me. He’s always understood me.
His mouth crashes over mine.
Maybe he’s always wanted this between us, and I’ve been the fool who didn’t understand. Or maybe losing Armin has fundamentally shifted something in who we are.
I’m suddenly, almost viciously alive in his arms. Not able to touch enough of him at once, wanting more even as he gives all of it to me. Our tongues dance. Our energy, our essence, entwines. Desire pulses between my legs. I’m warm and wet.
I can’t reach enough of Sully’s skin. The buttons fly off his shirt, one actually hitting me just below my right eye.
Yanked out of the moment by that pinpoint of pain, I hesitate for a breath, worried I’ve lost too much of myself, unleashed too much.
But Sully doesn’t pause. He palms my ass, bending his knees to press his hard cock right between my legs before lifting me up on the counter. Kissing me fiercely as he works his hands up under my thin sweater, not bothering to remove my duster.
I allow myself to relax into the energy weaving around us, shoving his jacket and ruined shirt off his shoulders so I can reach more of his skin. He groans as I tweak his nipples. Then he’s arching over me, kissing down my neck with a hand holding me steady on my lower back. He gives up trying to get my sweater up and simply nips at my breast and nipple through all the fabric between us.
Another fierce wave of desire and need shoots through me, then I’m pushing him back from the counter and scrambling to get his belt undone. He’s panting, alternating kissing me, tangling my tongue in his, with sucking lightly on my neck. While massaging my ass hard enough to bruise me.
Utterly irrationally, I want those marks on me. I want to claim Sully, make him mine even if he isn’t actually mine. Even if he was supposed to belong to Armin. We’re both untethered. And though Armin wasn’t my soul bonded, I know he was Sully’s.
