“You didn’t want to put in the work to make us happen.”It was true. I had been so captivated by Duncan, so enamored, so infatuated, that I let his life drown mine for two years. I went along, and when I got tired of it, tired of it just being easy and comfortable and convenient but not love, I ended it. And that was why I had the man in my lobby looking at me like there were still places for us to go. I had let him believe that he was my whole world, let him be everything, and then one day just stopped loving him and walked away. It was something I did, something I had always done—poured on the charm, made myself into the ideal partner, lover, friend, indispensable and irreplaceable, and then, when I got bored or tired or tapped out, instead of fighting, I just quit. It was wildly unfair, and the only people I didn’t do it with were my family. Even my friends complained that I was always around and then just gone. Nathan Qells”

“―I love you. He breathed down the side of my neck.I nodded. ―I love you too. And the smile on his face when he leaned back, so wide, so arrogant, so relieved, so smug, was not to be missed. I had created a monster with four little words.”

“You’re mine,” I told him, kissing each of his eyes before I looked at him. “No one gets you anymore; no one touches you anymore. Right?”He nodded, and I felt his heated breath fan over my face. “Put me up against this wall.”“No.” I shook my head. “No one sees you but me. No one hears you but me. All of you, your skin, your smell, your cum, all of it is mine, and especially your voice when you scream my name.”

“I never told anyone about waking in the night to him standing over me with a knife. It was small, one of my switchblades, chosen for carving.His seeping dick twitched as he bent toward me, his slick left hand went down on my sternum, the other holding the knife like a scapel. "What're you gonna do?" I asked, reaching for him, my fingers closing around his hard, wet length."Carve my name on your skin so everyone knows you're mine.”

“I love you" I sighed, unable to keep the smile from my face,leaning back and looking at him through heavy-lidded eyes. "I really do"."I know", he grunted, very pleased with himself. “You can’t live without me. I’m like cheese.”

“I was so tired but I wouldn’t let my eyes close because I was afraid he wouldn’t be there when I woke up, that I just dreamed him.”

“We kissed each other until we were too tired to keep going. I could still feel him holding back. It was my penance for what I had done to him. All I could do was hope the walls would fall and that I could have all of him again, but I was always leaving and he was tired of watching me walk away. We both knew that I couldn’t stay and that he couldn’t come with me, but still, we couldn’t let go.”