Where There's a Will (Lost Boys, #1)

by Jessie Walker

There’s only so much time a person’s allowed to grieve before it becomes an inconvenience, I’ve come to learn.

“The sun will always rise again.” I shrug. “You just need to make it through the night. Take it day by day—moment by moment if you need to—until you reach the other side. Nothing lasts forever.”

“Because in the end, the only thing we have to fear in the dark are the things we run from in the light of day.”

I need him to hold my hand—to touch me more than I think I’ve ever needed anything in my fucking life. And it’s ridiculous, it’s absurd, how fast and swift my overwhelming want for this miserable, gorgeous asshole bowls over me.

“Stop me,” I tell him gravelly, bitterly, desperately, “because I fucking can’t.”

His fingers grab onto the back of my head, yanking me back by the hair. Through his teeth, right against my parted, panting mouth, he snarls, “I hate you.” I smile a sad, breathy smile against his bared teeth. “Show me.”

“I hate you.” If this is hate, baby, I think, licking across his teeth, I don’t know if I’d survive your love.

“I showed you mine,” I whisper in a husky voice, watching the way his eyes widen and flash nervously up to mine. I force a rueful smile, baiting him. “You gonna show me yours or what?”

I give my head a little shake just as I reach out and fist his cock. Keeping him in my firm grasp, I climb back over him, seeking his mouth as I groan, “So fucking perfect.”

The world will keep spinning, and people will keep on sucking, and some days are going to be harder than others... But at the end of it, I’m still me. And they can take it or fucking leave it.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way, right?” he says simply. His mouth ticks up. “It made me laugh thinking about it. I couldn’t get the words out of my head after that. They just kept playing on this...endless, delirium-ridden loop. Like a song stuck in my head on repeat. I just kept thinking how it was a play on our names, and it just...it hit me.”

“Well, aren’t you just in a lovely mood this evening, dear cousin. May I ask who pissed on the man you ate for breakfast?”

Codependence. Cue the fucking jazz hands.

“What it did to me...I never knew a smile could make me feel so full. Like I was worth something. Like I mattered. And I remember wanting to see it as often as possible.”

I am drowning. Drowning in overwhelming want for this guy. This fucking guy who just told me I was once his everything, when I was sure I was only ever his nothing.

“You might not be able to trust what you feel,” I tell him, easing my hand back so I’m no longer touching him, “but your body doesn’t lie.” I lean forward just enough to press a chaste kiss to his lips. “It fucking sings for me.”

Miles and miles of warm sun-kissed skin lay before me, begging for my touch. My lips. I want to know if he tastes as good as I remember, salty and clean and all man, man, man.

Jesus, he’s big. Logically, I know we’re just about the same size, but there’s just something about having another guy’s dick in your face that really drives the point home: I’m really fucking doing this.

Because in this moment, all I see and feel and taste and hear is Will. And he is, and has always been, so much bigger than anything else in my life. It was never a question of whether or not he could consume me—it was always just a matter of me letting go enough to let him.

He looks up at me through his lashes with a smile that should be fucking illegal. “Gonna make you feel so good.”

His hair tickles my skin, and then it’s his breath tickling the head of my cock as he blows over it, and I’m pretty sure I die. I’m dead. The end.

My cock’s not the fucking Holy Grail, but Mother of God, if he’s not watching me like he’s finally found his single, sole purpose in life.

In a voice so low I have to strain to hear him, he says, “It’s always quieter when I’m with you.”

I’d be embarrassed by the sounds coming out of my mouth if I wasn’t so relieved to finally have a taste of what’s been forbidden for so long. If I wasn’t so fucking gone for this boy. This damaged, drive-me-fucking-insane boy who’s managed to find all those pieces of my heart he broke years ago, and fit them back together. Like it was nothing at all.

You’re taking me to Chickie’s and you’re buying. It’s the least you can do after waking me up at the butt crack of dawn just to tell me you kissed a boy.”