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  He picked up the wine and swirled it around in the glass. I could see him struggling to be as happy with my news as I was and it stabbed at somewhere soft and unguarded in the center of my chest. I put my hands on the table and leaned a little bit forward. “You’re not excited for me.” I held up a hand when he opened his mouth to reply. “That wasn’t a question, Lando, it was an observation. I can see that you’re not.”

  He swore under his breath and then leaned forward and copied my pose. “I’m happy for you, Dom. It’s me I’m not happy for.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him and fought to keep my irritation in check. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means this is the one time in my career I kind of resent that I’m so good at my job. I knew we would eventually get here, but I guess I thought we would have more time.”

  More time? It had been three months. Three months of hard work, uncertainty and endless amounts of doubt. For me, it felt like forever to reach this point.

  “More time for what, Lando? More time to decide if I was worth the effort or not?” It burned and the image of the pretty boy hanging on his wall and apparently on to his heart taunted me from a really dark place I didn’t even know I had.

  “It’s not about you, Dominic. It’s about what you do and if I’m enough a man to watch you walk out the door every day knowing you might not come back. It’s always been there, but now it’s right in my face, and I still don’t have an answer.”

  I leaned back and rubbed both of my hands over my short hair in agitation. “I could walk out the front door tomorrow and get nailed by a drunk driver while walking on the sidewalk. I could trip and fall down the stairs when it’s icy and break my neck. And yes, I could go to work one day and up on the wrong end of a bullet, but that happens to a lot of very innocent people that have nothing to do with being in law enforcement. Caring about someone else, being with them is a risk regardless of what they do to pay the bills. I get that you don’t want to be hurt again, but that isn’t a promise anyone can make and keep.” I pinned him with a hard stare. “I care about you a lot, Orlando. More than I was planning on caring while I struggled to get my life back, but I’m willing to take a risk on you. So you have to be willing to do the same if we have any shot at making this work.” I was beyond frustrated because I thought we had gotten past this point in our relationship but apparently not. We really were just stuck in the middle, not gaining any new ground or moving forward.

  He matched my stare for a minute before getting up and coming around the table so that he was standing by my side. He reached out a hand and gently brushed the backs of his fingers over my cheek.

  “I took a risk when I signed you on as a client because I was attracted to you the minute you walked in my door. I took a risk when we started working together because I knew you were going to push too hard and had to learn that your body has limitations and isn’t indestructible. I took a risk when I let things get personal because I haven’t cared about anyone the way I care about you in a long time and I thought that part of my life and my heart would never function right again.” His thumb caressed my bottom lip and he moved his hand so that he was cupping my clenched jaw in his palm. It was a tender gesture, but there was still a bitter hardness in his eyes that seemed to override it. “You have no idea how hard it has been for me to take those risks, Dom, to keep fear from winning.”

  I lifted a hand and curled it around his where it was resting on my face. I turned my head so that I could press a kiss to the center of his palm and then curled his fingers around it so that he was holding on to it. Maybe this was the moment we needed to have. Maybe this was the occasion that we needed to remember. Maybe this was the make it or break it point in us being together. The fork in the road was looming and no, it seemed there was no other choice but to pick which way to go … together or separately.

  “I told you, easy is for chumps, hard is for champions. You got me here; you fixed me. Do you really think I’m going to go out there and try and undo all the work you put in? Do you think I’m going to be careless and foolhardy knowing the effect that would have on you? If anything, being with you, seeing how much you worry about not just my safety but the safety and well-being of everyone, makes me more determined to get back to work and do my job better and more aware. I don’t want anyone to hurt either, Lando.”

  I stood up and the chair toppled over. Dinner was forgotten as we faced off indecision and longing at war in the air between us. Fear and love were two powerhouse combatants and it was questionable which one was going to win.

  Love took the first swing as we silently moved towards one another, lips colliding and hands grasping. Fear snuck in a sucker punch though, because even though he was there with me, his mouth on mine, his tongue tangling, twisting and turning with desperation in my mouth, I could feel he was also removed. He was back in that safe place where tender hearts and fragile feelings were locked up so tight nothing, not even love, could fight its way through.

  Love fired back though. It was there when he ripped open my shirt, sending buttons flying every which way across the small dining area. It was there when the kiss gentled, softened, and turned from something that was hungry and anxious into something that was satisfied and content. His long and tapered fingers landed over my heart and tapped out a beat, played a song that only he could hear and that changed its tune to something deeper and darker as he stepped closer to me.

  Our pelvises touched through our clothes. Hard on hard. Anticipation rolling across more anticipation. Our breath mingled and love and fear combined into something that was equally bitter and sweet. I put my hands on his hips and tugged him even closer, so there was no room to run. I rubbed the straining front of my pants against the bulge decorating his and got a sucked-in breath and shaky hands smoothing over my chest as a reward.

  We kissed again. This time smoother. This time softer. This time with love instead of fear on the tips of our tongues. His teeth sank into the bottom curve of my lip with a playful bite. It fired everything up to detonation levels inside of me. I pulled his shirt off with little finesse with the sole goal of getting my hands on those long, lean muscles that were everywhere I looked when he was naked. Every single freckle on his body knew the stroke of my tongue and the touch of my fingertips now. But it was still fun to connect them, to draw a line with my finger down, down and down ever further below his bellybutton and into the top of his pants. Those sexy little dots went all the way down to the base of his dick and a few rebellious ones even marked the taut skin of his shaft. Not gonna lie, those ones were my favorite and well on the way to making an appearance as I pulled open his pants to get them out of the way.

  Fear was back in the quake of his voice when he muttered my name as he bent his head to brush his lips against the side of my neck. That was a favorite spot of mine, one that he often used to distract me. Clever boy. But not right now. Right now I was determined, focused, geared up, and intent on beating all the fear down. This wasn’t a fight I was willing to lose.

  I moved forward so I could put my lips on his skin. I kissed his throat. I kissed his neck. I kissed his chest. I took a second to run my tongue over the flat of his nipple and was rewarded with it pebbling up and begging for more. I rolled my hand around his cock and took a moment to squeeze it. I always thrilled that his dick kicked into my hand ready and eager. There was never any hesitation there. I also loved that it was pale, smooth, long, and hard just like the man it was attached to.

  He made a low noise in his throat as his hip involuntarily thrust into my touch. His eyes were anything but distant now. They burned bright blue and they were so intently focused on mine that I felt like he was going to meld us together with the heat in them. I was beyond okay with that.

  “I like the way you touch me, Dom.” His voice was smooth as silk as it wrapped around me while he went to work on the opening of my pants.

  I lifted an eyebrow and felt my lips twist into a smirk. “Then you need to let me tou
ch all of you, Lando.” I wonder if he knew that I was talking about that carefully guarded heart of his.

  My own dick made its grand entrance and wasted no time in begging for his attention. Luckily he was happy to give it all the consideration it deserved and I lost my breath and maybe a good chunk of my mind while I watched us simultaneously work each other over. Darker skin against light. Hard hands against smooth surfaces. The stretch and pull of tender flesh as it yielded and asked for more and more. Both cocks harder than they had ever been as they throbbed in time to the stimulation. I could feel his heartbeat through the thick vein running underneath his erection and wondered if he could feel mine as his fingers danced and skipped with practiced skill over my rigid member.

  There was no room for love or fear now, only space for want and need.

  We shared another soul-melting kiss. One that had our stomachs touching and each of us scrambling to get out of our clothes. My tiny little kitchen was going to see a lot of firsts tonight, Mom’s lasagna and a tablecloth being the least exciting of them, apparently.

  I went willingly when Lando silently urged me to turn around even though it meant I had to let go of his dick and I could tell that he was close to coming in my hand. I braced my hands on the table a shoulder width apart and let my head fall forward. Love was exhausted from the fight and hung heavy around my neck.

  Lando’s hand traced up and down my spine a few times, leaving bumps of anticipation and excitement in its wake. He used his knee to spread my legs farther apart and I didn’t need to look over my shoulder when I heard a ripping sound to know that he had found a condom from either his wallet or mine and was suiting up. One of his hands connected with my ass cheek in a sharp pop that did have me scowling and turning to look at him over my shoulder. God he was beautiful and fear was nowhere in sight.

  “What was that for?” I didn’t mind a little slap and tickle every now and then, but we were about to fuck over the kitchen table and a long-cold dinner, that was enough of an extreme for one interlude as far as I was concerned.

  He pointed at his now latex-covered dick which he was pressing down with his thumb and then at my backside.

  “You want to move this party into the bedroom or you want to rough it?” He lifted both his eyebrows at me and waited for my response.

  Well shit. I was usually prepared for any situation, but sex over dinner was not one of them … hell, sex anywhere but in the confines of my very comfortable bedroom wasn’t really one of them. It wasn’t like I kept a bottle of lube stashed in every drawer around the house.

  “Uh, rough it.” There was no way I was going to shift the momentum we had going and let fear rear its ugly head back up.

  “You sure?” He was always the caretaker and that was love.

  “I’m sure. Now get inside of me.” Going rough and raw wasn’t my favorite, but anything that got this man inside of me I could handle. I turned back around and waited for the slow burn, the stretch, the automatic tightening of muscles against the invasion … it never came. Instead, there was the warm and damp lap of a tongue, there was the gentle probing of something much smaller and far more flexible. He would never hurt me, not when it could be avoided with a little love and care even if the pain was only temporary and well worth it for what came after.

  Suddenly one of his hands was on top of mine on the table, his strong chest was up against my back and his free hand was around my still aching cock moving up and down as he pressed into me.

  “Easy has its place, Dom. Not everything all the time needs to be hard.” It was a fair point, one that he made over and over as he started to slide in and out of me in an elegant rhythm that juxtaposed the rough and erratic way he was working my dick in his hand.

  It was a lot of sensation, a lot of different kinds of touching happening, but my favorite was probably where his lips rested against my ear so I could hear every pant, every gasp, every sigh that was ripped out of him as my body pulled at him and squeezed him. If what he was doing between my legs and behind me wasn’t enough to get me off, the sounds he was making in my ear would be. To me, that sounded a lot like love … not like fear at all.

  It didn’t take long for his whole body to tighten behind me or for mine to quake in response. When he came, he whispered my name. When I came, I shouted his so loudly that I was pretty sure the neighbors could hear it.

  We stayed like that for a long minute. Breathing hard and trying to figure out who won the fight … fear or love. As soon as he pulled out of me and there was distance both physical and emotional between us, it kind of felt like a toss-up.

  “Sorry, I ruined dinner.” He sounded sheepish and unsure.

  I snorted and surveyed the mess we had made of dinner and of each other. “You made up for it in spades but don’t tell my mom what we ended up using her tablecloth for. I’m gonna tell her I stained it and tossed it in the trash.”

  He laughed and our eyes met. Love was there, bright and clear, but that dirty bastard fear was still hanging on for dear life in the background. It looked like the battle had been won, but the war continued to rage on.

  Chapter 12

  Lando

  It was already a tough day before I even met with my first client. Today Dom was going in for his last physical test to get his badge back and even though he never asked, I could see it in his eyes when he left my apartment that morning that he wanted me there. It was a victory we had worked towards together, but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t bring myself to celebrate with him and it hurt me to hurt him. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even wish him good luck as I kissed him good-bye.

  Not only was I disappointing Dom, which sucked, but I was also feeling slightly heartbroken for another, unrelated reason. My client for the morning was a little girl who was going to be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life because her younger brother had found their father’s gun and accidentally discharged it right at her within close range. It was a heartbreaking case because she was so young, but also because every day she came to see me her mother came and brought the little brother.

  They were obviously a family in crisis. The little girl tried so hard every day to go through the exercises I gave her so she could keep her upper body strength and her core strength intact, but the mother, instead of being encouraging and helpful, instead of praising her daughter’s courage and strength, spent the session fighting back tears and casting hateful looks at the little boy, who couldn’t be any more than five or six. He never spoke, never uttered a word, but he also never left his sister’s side. It was obvious the mother blamed him for the accident and her daughter’s condition. I wanted to ask her why she didn’t put that anger and blame on the grown-ups in the house who were responsible for gun safety, but I didn’t want to cause any more of a rift, and taking care of the girl was my priority.

  But, like always, I couldn’t stand to see anyone in pain and hurting, so the following week during their session I asked the little boy to help me with some of the exercises. At first he balked because his mother told him to stay away from his sister, but when I cut her a look that indicated I was a hot second away from kicking her out of the room altogether, she changed her tune. I moved the little boy in front of the girl where she was sitting on the floor with her immobile legs in front of her and handed him a heavy length of rope.

  “You ever play tug of war?” He looked up at me with serious, sad eyes and nodded. “Okay, well, that’s what you’re gonna do with your sister. She’s gonna pull as hard as she can and I want to you pull back without moving, okay?” He nodded again. “Once she’s back as far as she can go you help pull her back until she’s sitting just like that.”

  It took a minute for the siblings to figure it out, she was obviously not pulling as hard as she could and the little boy was terrified of doing something wrong. The rope kept falling out of their hands and landing on the mat between them, but eventually that innate rivalry all siblings have kicked in and they started actually tugging
and pulling the way I wanted them to. It only took a couple times of the brother yanking the little girl back up into a sitting position for them both to be laughing and having fun with it.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and looked out of the corner of my eye at their mother. “He could be an instrumental part of her healing process. She’s going to need help for the rest of her life, including when you and your husband are no longer around. Trying to take him away from her isn’t going to help anything at all.”

  The mother put a hand to her throat. “I kicked my husband out. I told him over and over again I didn’t want those guns in the house.”

  That didn’t exactly absolve her entirely of the blame, but I couldn’t say I faulted her. “She forgives him. There isn’t any reason you shouldn’t be able to. It was an accident, a tragic, avoidable accident, but now you have to move on from that. She needs her family … all of them.”

  “It’s so hard to move on from something like this.” Her voice broke and she excused herself to get some water as I continued to watch the kids play.

  The little girl wouldn’t walk again and the little boy had played a hand in that, but to her, all she saw was her little brother. Maybe it was because she hadn’t been jaded by life yet, maybe it was that she was just a sweet kid without a resentful bone in her body, or maybe it was that she was smarter, more self-aware at twelve than I was at twenty-six and realized nothing was going to change. She could hate her brother, blame him and hold him responsible, but that wouldn’t help her walk. She could be bitter, angry, and curse everyone for landing her in that chair for the rest of her life, but again none of that would make her walk again. Her new normal wasn’t something I would wish on my worst enemy, but the clarity, the resilience that she was showing to get back to living life was something magically and particularly eye-opening.

  Bad things happened, it was how we navigated the fallout afterward that really defined what our new normal would be. You could do it gracefully, generously, thoughtfully like this precious little girl, or you could do it sloppily, haphazardly, and blindly like I had done.