As Tate’s lips twisted into an ironic smile, Logan frowned. “What? Come on, don’t tell me, that’s it?”
Tate said nothing. He just grinned and lay down onto his back. Quick as a flash, Logan moved over him, placing a palm on either side of Tate’s head.
“That’s it? That’s what you’ve been waiting for?” Lowering his head, Logan pressed his mouth against the corner of Tate’s. “What? I haven’t told you how much I need you in my life? How much I want you here in it, everyday?” Logan raised his hand to touch the hair by Tate’s face. “How can you not already know?”
Tate raised an eyebrow at him, and Logan couldn’t help but run his finger over it as he mumbled, “So damn stubborn.”
“It’s your own fault. You never told me. What am I, a mind reader?”
“I don’t know, but I’m a fool,” Logan stated.
“Why?”
“This morning, you accused me of risking nothing, and you’re right.”
Tate went silent as though knowing if he spoke, Logan would never get out what he wanted to say.
“You’ve changed me, and you don’t even realize it. Just being with you, near you? It makes me want to be a better person. You make me want to take a risk.”
Tate touched one of his fingertips to his lower lip.
“What do you want to risk?”
Logan let go of all the emotions he’d held so carefully at arm’s length. Finally, with those feelings surrounding and engulfing him, he answered simply, “Everything.”
* * *
Tate couldn’t believe all that he was feeling as he stared at Logan hovering over him. In the last couple of weeks, Logan had ignited in him things that he’d never thought possible. He’d challenged him to try things Tate had never ever considered, and as he looked up into Logan’s face, he wondered if he was in love with him.
He knew that he was close. He could feel himself sliding, falling over that edge into madness—a madness that, for him, had already ended badly once before.
Am I really ready to risk it all again on someone who has never done this before? My family is going to—
“Hey, what are you thinking about?”
Tate pushed thoughts of family out of his head. Right now and right here was all that was important for the moment. They had plenty of time for the rest of the world—later.
“Nothing important.”
“That usually means the exact opposite.”
Tate lifted both of his hands and ran them through Logan’s hair. As he pulled his head down, Tate kissed his lips lightly.
“It can wait.”
Logan’s mouth curved against his own as he lowered his body down on top of his. “Can it?”
“Yeah. But you know what?”
“No. What?”
Moving his mouth to Logan’s ear, Tate kissed the lobe as he told him, “I can’t wait anymore.”
Logan lifted up over him. “What can’t you wait for?”
Tate lowered his head back to the pillow and bent his legs, pressing his hips up into Logan, as he sighed, “You.”
* * *
Logan closed his eyes at the pleasure he got from the slow drag of Tate’s hips against his own as Tate’s voice filtered in past all of his anxiety.
Right now, all Logan could focus on was the man underneath him.
“Will you take me?”
As Tate’s voice filled the silent room, every muscle in Logan’s body tensed at the enormity of the request. Opening his eyes, Tate’s serious expression focused on him, and Logan discovered that once again, with this man, he had no words.
“You don’t have to if—”
“Oh, I want to,” Logan assured him as he moved back to kneel between Tate’s bent legs.
Tate moved up on his forearms. “But?”
“But I want this to be”—he rubbed his chin—“right for you.”
Tate smiled at him then, and Logan was reminded of the very first time they had ever met. That moment when he’d turned around to stare across the bar at the most gorgeous man he’d ever seen, and Tate had been wearing that same exact smile.
“Logan?”
Logan shook himself out of his daydream, and then refocused. “Yeah?”
“What you just said?”
“Yeah?”
Tate reached down his body to palm his hardening length. “Just made it right.”
Logan looked at the hand Tate was slowly stroking over himself.
“Are you sure? I mean, if we do this, you can’t go back. You can’t change it. This makes it real.”
Logan watched as Tate lay back down, pushing his hips up to him in invitation, and when he raised his eyes, Tate’s expression answered before his words did.