Getting It Twisted (Unforgivable Needs #1)

18. Epilogue

Epilogue

Daniel

Two months later

Nathan lounges on the bed, freshly showered and dressed only in a pair of tight red boxers. He watches me with an intent expression on his face: brows furrowed, mouth slightly parted. Now and again, he looks away, only for his gaze to flit back to me just as quick.

After a good ten minutes of this, I drop my pen and lean back in the chair. “Go ahead—speak your mind.” So much for his promise to help with my reapplication to art school; I won’t get anything done with him looking at me like that.

“I just like watching you draw, okay?” A flush creeps up his throat, and he looks away. “It’s kinda . . . peaceful or whatever.”

I raise an eyebrow, trying to decipher what he’s really trying to tell me. He’s rarely this quiet, and when he is, it’s because he wants to tell me something but doesn’t know how.

It can’t be . . . that . . . can it?

Two months after that cold, bright morning on the porch, he still hasn’t told me those magic three words, even though I’ve told him more times than I can count. I’ve been patient with it; what he doesn’t say in words, he shows me in action. But still . . . Nathan can say the most heinous, fucked-up shit, but “I love you” is too much?

He does love me, though, I’m fairly sure. Almost as sure as I am about my love for him. That’s not to say he doesn’t drive me to the end point of my sanity sometimes, like when he steals George’s protein shakes even though he obviously hates them and does it only to piss him off, or like right now, when he refuses to say what’s on his mind.

I just wish he would tell me how he feels. Unprompted, like I do.

There’s a knock on the door, and George sticks his head in. “Oh, come on. You guys still haven’t packed up?”

“I thought you said ten.”

“It is ten!” His gaze shifts from me to Nathan’s half-naked form, and Nathan meets his eyes with a challenging half smirk.

Somehow, they’ve made it two months of living in the same place without killing each other. No broken noses either. Not to say there haven’t been some rough times, but in a few hours, none of it will matter.

Nathan and I are moving out. It took us a while to find a one-bedroom apartment with decent rent and a good location. Took Nathan a while to get a job too, but now he works part-time at the animal shelter up north. He comes home with a tired smile on his lips, smelling of wet fur and dog treats.

By referring to Jessie’s love of animals more than her love for Nathan, I convinced my mom to let me take her to the shelter once a week. Her and Nathan’s encouraging coos as they feed the smallest, weakest little beagle together warm my heart more than anything else.

“I’ll go get the trailer now,” George says. “When I come back, I want all this shit downstairs.” He waves a hand at the moving boxes and furniture.

When the door shuts, I stand up and stretch my arms over my head. “You heard him. We should be getting ready.”

Nathan gazes at me from under his bangs, lips tilted in a sultry way only he can manage. I know what that look means.

“It’s at least a fifteen-minute drive,” he says in an innocent tone.

I give him a look. The look. The are you serious right now? look I give him at least once a day. The quit it or I’ll spank you so hard you won’t be able to sit for a week look.

“Oh, come on.” He pouts. “Can I suck you off at least?”

“I don’t know. Can you?” More often than not when he’s in this mood, he’ll end up begging me to fuck him before I come.

“Let’s put it like this, what’s gonna get you off faster: my mouth or my ass?”

I smile and shake my head. “There’s not enough time.” Despite my words, I find myself with one knee on the mattress, sliding my fingers into his hair.

He gazes up at me with an expression he knows all too well I’m hopeless to resist. “Wanna bet?”

We’ll figure things out.

That’s what I promised him we’d do. And that’s what we’re still doing.

Even though he tells me it’s all good—that he likes everything I do to him, and that I’m not causing him harm—I sometimes struggle to believe it. He’s lied to me before. It’s so ingrained in him to neglect his own well-being that it’ll take time, and a lot of coaxing on my part—and on the part of his new therapist—to mend what’s been broken in him.

Some nights, he still wakes up in a cold sweat. I hold him tight while he tells me the fragments of his nightmare until his heartbeat slows back down and we can both drift back to sleep.

No, we’ve hardly got it all figured out. But that desperate pinch in my chest isn’t there anymore. Now that all secrets are out between us—now that I know what he’s dealing with—I know I can help him through it. When my confidence wanes, he pulls me back up. When his bad feelings and memories flood him, I’m there to pull him back to shore.

I cannot take away the past—neither his nor ours—but I can promise to be there for him. For us. And part of being there for him means satisfying his never-ending appetite for sex.

That’s why I end up with his lips wrapped around my cock. When I rock my hips forward, he takes me all the way down his throat with ease, looking up at me with flushed cheeks and half-lidded eyes.

“We could stay like this forever, huh?” I slide my fingers into the smooth locks of his hair. “You’ll never get enough of this.” Neither will I. Won’t ever get enough of how he shudders with relief as my cock slides into his mouth. He needs this from me, so badly. And I’m more than happy to give it to him.

He replaces his mouth with his hand and jerks me with slow, sloppy movements, licking his spit-slick lips. “Put it in. Just the tip. I know you wanna come in me.”

“Fine. Get on the bed. On your stomach.”

He grins and does as I tell him, tugging his boxers down and leaving them by his knees. I lube myself up in record time and push into the tight, willing heat of his body.

It never fails to amaze me how pliant he can be with my cock buried in his ass and my hand over his mouth. For all his confidence and stubbornness, in bed, he’s reduced to a begging, writhing mess.

He likes it when I fuck him hard and ruthless like this, sure, but what really gets to him is when we’re face-to-face. When I’m kissing him, rolling into him languidly with no hurry in the world, whispering how good he is. Yeah, that drives him properly insane. He acts like it’s a punishment—as if he can’t stand it—but when he comes, he throws his head back and gasps as if he’s been drowning, pleasure evident in the furrow of his brow and his sweet, parted mouth.

He can claim all he wants that he doesn’t like when I’m tender with him. I know the truth.

But today, I’m far from tender; I’m straight to the point, chasing my orgasm until I feel it cresting with every thrust of my hips. He gasps and writhes as I bury myself to the hilt. I’m almost there, right on the edge . . . when George’s voice calls on the other side of the door.

“Hey! I thought I told you two to get ready.”

I snap my hips once, twice, keeping my grunts as quiet as I can while I ride through my orgasm. I gather my breath enough to yell back, “Uh, yeah! We’re almost done.”

Nathan glares at me over his shoulder. “I was just about to come. He ruined it.”

“Told you we wouldn’t have enough time. Come on. We don’t wanna give George an aneurysm.”

Nathan wipes his sweaty bangs out of his face and mutters, “Don’t we?”

Apart from the smug smile he sends George as he exits our room, Nathan behaves surprisingly well. The move takes most of the afternoon regardless, and when we’re done, the sun is already setting.

A layer of snow covers the ground of the small apartment parking lot where we say our goodbyes.

“Tell me if you need anything,” April says and hugs Nathan for a long, long time. “Anything at all.”

“Okay,” Nathan whispers, smiling into the embrace.

My heart swells with a strange sort of pride at his newfound ability to accept help without any of his usual sarcastic remarks.

George clears his throat. “It’s not like you guys are moving more than ten minutes away.”

I take his outstretched hand and pull him into a hug. “Thank you.” Thank you for letting him stay. Thank you for accepting him.

George gives a little chuckle. “I never thought I’d say this, but he’s not that bad. You really mellow him out.”

“Don’t say that to his face. He’ll take it as a challenge.”

Nathan turns to us, viper quick. “Don’t say what to my face?”

“Nothing.”

April gives me a long, tight hug, and soon after that, Nathan and I are left alone to our new home.

The apartment has an open floor plan with a bathroom to the right and a small bedroom by the balcony door. It’s not much, but it’s ours. I can’t wait to fall asleep every night with him in my arms and wake up every morning to his sleep-tousled hair and the shy, happy smile that nowadays isn’t as rare as it used to be.

“Come here.”

Nathan hops off the kitchen counter he plopped himself onto. His arms sling around my shoulders, body pressed tight against mine.

“It’s kind of cold in here,” he says.

“I’ll keep you warm.”

He hums and clutches me closer. “We’ll keep warm together.”

It’s such a simple thing, but coming from Nathan, it means the world. A great possessive urge sweeps through me as my arms tighten around his waist. Mine. He’s mine. Only I get to have him.

He’s been roughed up and abused in every which way—more ways than I can probably imagine. Life has held him under, but I’ll lift him up. He’s mine to hold, mine to fuck, mine to protect. And I’m his.

“Fuck, I love you so much,” I mumble into the crook of his neck.

There’s a hitch of breath, and a muffled, “Me too,” against my shoulder.

I pull back. “What?”

“I said, me too.”

“Yeah, but tell me what you mean by that.”

He frowns, and his mouth opens and closes. “Just that I . . . love you too is all.”

My chest swells with warmth. Finally. Finally he said it. It’s not like I didn’t know, but to hear it confirmed feels even better than I thought it would. Still, I can’t help but tease him.

“That’s all? Way to downplay it.”

He scowls, cheeks flushing pink. “Shut up.”

I kiss him—first his pretty, plump mouth, then his jaw, then his throat. “Say it again.” I slide my hand down his back and into the hem of his jeans.

“I love you.” His fingers tangle into my hair, and he lets out a hopelessly breathy groan as my finger slips into his crack, prodding and pressing his tight, willing hole. “Oh fuck . I love you. I love you.”

He shudders into my embrace, and I lick away the salty tears that trickle down his cheek. I root myself in him, and he roots himself in me.

We’ll take care of each other. We’ll make a home together and make a home in each other. My best friend. My ride-or-die. My Nathan. His tears are mine to dry, his holes are mine to fill, and not a day goes by that I don’t bask in the impossibility of this new, hard-fought truth.

THE END