Page 188 of The Menagerie
He can’t look anywhere but Mal’s face as he slides back in, watching that perfect mouth part in pleasure. Fully seated, he dips down, catching Mal’s bottom lip between his own, tugging gently with his teeth.
He keeps the pace slow, drawing whimpers from Mal’s lips as he kisses him deep. And fuck, it’s all so perfect, so warm and filling and fulfilling that he can’t help the words that escape him.
“Fuck, I love you,” Rowan whispers against his lips, hips moving on their own as his body fills with emotion.
He hadn’t meant to say it, but weeks—hell,months—of keeping it to himself has felt like a lifetime.
Mal gasps, a sweet little hiccup of a sound that Rowan’s going to remember for the rest of his life. He pulls Rowan down for a kiss that’s mind-blowingly tender, and feels more than hears Mal whisper, “I love you too.”
Rowan shudders into the kiss, eyes squeezed tightly closed as his chest constricts and his breath leaves his lungs in awhoosh. He wants to breathe in the residual oxygen from Mal’s exhalations so he can say that a part of him has been inside every single one of his cells.
It doesn’t take much after that. A handful of hard, deep thrusts has Rowan’s belly coiling tight and Mal clenching around him, and with mutual gasps they come together, shuddering in each other’s arms. It’s easily the best orgasm Rowan’s ever had in his life, and if the keening moan that Mal lets out as he comes across his chest is any indication, the same can be said for him.
They lie together, silent and sated, softly stroking whatever part of the other’s skin they can reach. Planting kisses here and there, on shoulders and foreheads and lips and hands because they can now. Rowan can feel the warmth seeping out of every one of his pores.
“I’m so glad I met you,” Rowan sighs.
Mal hums, curling into Rowan and snuggling into his chest. The casual display of intimacy is almost more than Rowan’s heart can bear.
“Me too, Red.” He’s quiet for a moment, breath coming down into soft little puffs out his nose. “You ever think we’d end up here, back at the gangbang?”
Rowan laughs softly. “I wanted it. From the start. But I didn’t want to get my hopes up, you know?”
“Yeah,” Mal agrees with a nod of his head against Rowan’s chest. “I know exactly what you mean.”
It feels like they’ve done this whole thing backward, to be honest. Started with impersonal sex and ended with love, or something a hell of a lot like it. Rowan’s never been in love before, but he can’t imagine it feels like anything but filling his entire being with Mal.
They don’t talk about what they are. Rowan, at least, doesn’t feel the need to label anything when what they have is still so new, so tender and raw.
But Rowan knows in his fuckingsoulthat what they have is real. Solid and sure and so damnrightthat no matter what happens, they’re going to make it work. They’ve been through so much together the past few months that it feels like they can take on anything that comes their way. And they’ll do it with the other at their side.
In his wildest dreams, Rowan never would have thought that a routine call to save someone’s life would end up savinghislife. Never thought that it would lead himhere, in Mal’s bed and Mal’s arms. But he wouldn’t change a thing.
Epilogue
IT’S BEENsix months since their first kiss. Six months since their mutualI love yous, and six months since they became…them.
And they’ve been the best six months of Rowan’s life.
He’s all but moved into Mal’s apartment by now—his being the nicer of their places—and it all feels so domestic that it sets Rowan’s chest on fire. He stays over on weekends and some weeknights when he feels like making the slightly longer commute to work the next morning. Clothes and toothbrushes and face wash and extra meds left over there just in case, and Rowan can feel Mal on the brink of asking him to move in fully.
As much as he doesn’t want to rush things between them, he can’t imagine finding anyone that gets him better than Mal does. Can’t imagine finding anyone that makes his heart skip a beat on the daily when he looks at him with that fond gaze or kisses him with those soft lips. So he’ll wait, but he has a feeling he won’t have to wait too much longer before the question is posed.
By now Mal has been introduced to the chaos that is the Campbell family, and he fit in right away, especially with Rowan’s younger siblings. They viewed him as acool, mysterious bad boywho’s way too cool and mysterious to be dating their loser brother, but nonetheless they accept him and their relationship in a heartbeat. He’s clashed a bit with Jay here and there, but their petty squabbles usually dissolve into good-natured jabs that die down after a beer or two. Even Aubrey likes him, for all her advice against catching feelings for a fuck buddy.
For once everything in Rowan’s life seems perfect. He’s happy, and this time there is no but. No caveats to his feelings. No other shoe waiting to drop that threatens to ruin his contentment.
It’s all perfect.
They still go to the Menagerie. Their sex life has improved exponentially since they’ve gotten together, but every once in a while, they get an itch to go back. Even worked out a new membership option with Clover to allow them to come as guests for a small fee rather than paying the exorbitant monthly membership rates.
So once a month or so, they find themselves back in the Gold Room. Back to where it all started, more or less. It feels good to slip out of the comfort of their bed and back into the gritty, sensual underworld and let loose for a couple of hours.
Sometimes, they even make a game of it. Pretend that it’s the first time. The first scene. Like they don’t know each other inside and out and backward and forward by now. Like they’re two near-strangers meeting once a week to give and take control.
But underneath, they know that their bond is unbreakable. They know that love courses through every bratty remark, every hard, answering spank. And it makes it that much better, that muchhotter, to pretend otherwise.
Mal and Rowan both know that if Mal safewords—meringuefor pause andapplefor stop (green apple, Mal insists, not the red ones, because green apples are disgusting)—that Rowan will stop immediately and cradle Mal in his arms and kiss away any tears that may have spilled and tell him that he loves him to the moon and back.
