Chspter 40
The cabana was cool and white and smelled like salt and sunscreen, the billowing curtains pulled shut against the brutal Sentosa sun, the sound of the turquoise water just a soft hush outside.
Brett was still shaking.
Lance had carried him out of the ocean like he weighed nothing — Brett wrapped around his waist, arms tight around his neck, his tiny pink bikini dripping, his long honey blonde ponytail plastered to his back — and laid him down on the daybed like he was something precious and breakable.
Brett was neither. He was on fire.
"Still straining?" Lance murmured, kneeling over him, his big hands braced on either side of Brett's head, his dark hair dripping onto Brett's chest, his blue eyes black with heat and with something softer underneath — worry, love, awe.
Brett nodded, unable to speak, his cheeks flaming, his chest heaving in the wet pink triangles, his hands fisted in the white sheets. The front of his bikini bottoms was still pulled tight, the hidden lining still holding, but the pressure behind it was a live wire, a sweet, terrible ache that had been building since Lance first ground against him in the water.
"It hurts," Brett whispered finally, his soft alto wrecked, his blue eyes wet and embarrassed. "It's pulling, baby. The tape, the tuck, everything. I told you not to turn me on."
Lance bent and pressed the softest kiss to the corner of Brett's mouth, then to his jaw, then to the frantic pulse in his throat.
"I know," Lance whispered against his skin, his voice rough with guilt and want. "I'm sorry. Let me fix it."
Brett's breath hitched. "How?"
Lance didn't answer with words. He answered with his hands.
Slowly, reverently, like he was unwrapping a gift, Lance's fingers found the tiny gold ties at Brett's hips, the ones holding the pink bikini together. He tugged, once, twice, and the strings came loose, the wet fabric falling away.
Brett gasped and his hands flew down automatically, covering himself, his eyes squeezing shut in pure, mortified panic — not because of what was underneath, but because of what Lance had done to him in the water, because of how hard his body was fighting the careful construction Nico had built for him that morning.
"Baby, no," Brett choked out, his voice breaking. "Don't look, it's a mess, the tape—"
"Brielle." Lance's voice was iron and velvet, and his big hands closed gently around Brett's wrists, pulling them away, pinning them softly to the daybed above Brett's head. "Look at me."
Brett forced his eyes open, tears spilling over, his chest shaking with sobs he couldn't hold back anymore — sobs of embarrassment, of arousal, of relief.
Lance was looking at him like he was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"Let me," Lance said simply, his thumbs stroking over Brett's pulse points, his gaze never leaving Brett's face. "Let me free you. You don't have to hold it anymore. Not for me. Not ever for me."
And then Lance moved down his body.
He pressed open-mouthed kisses to Brett's sternum, between his D cup breasts still cradled by the wet bikini top, down the flat plane of his stomach, over the faint red lines left by the compression, down to the place where Brett was most scared, most vulnerable, most him.
Brett whimpered and arched, his head thrown back, his ponytail coming loose, his hands clutching at Lance's hair, at the sheets, at anything.
"Lance—"
"I've got you," Lance murmured against his hip bone, his breath hot on Brett's sensitized skin, his hands so careful as they peeled away the last layers of tape and fear, as they freed Brett from the painful, perfect tuck he'd been holding all day. "Breathe for me, baby."
The relief was instant and overwhelming — a rush of blood, of feeling, of rightness — and Brett cried out, his whole body bowing off the daybed, his back arching, his throat exposed.
Lance didn't stop at freeing him.
He worshipped him.
With his mouth, with his hands, with a tenderness so complete it didn't feel like sex, it felt like absolution — like every teasing grind in the water, every "don't turn me on," every moment of fear on that beach was being answered and erased and rewritten into something holy.
Brett sobbed Lance's name, over and over, his hips lifting helplessly, his nails digging into Lance's shoulders, his blue eyes blind with tears and pleasure and love so big it hurt.
"You deserve this," Lance whispered fiercely between reverent kisses, his voice shaking. "You deserve to be touched like this. You deserve to feel good without hiding. You deserve everything, Brielle."
The words broke something open in Brett's chest — something that had been locked tight since Montana, since the first hormone shot, since the first time he'd tucked and prayed no one would notice.
He came apart in Lance's hands, in Lance's arms, with a broken, beautiful cry that sounded more like relief than anything else, his body shaking, his heart hammering, his soul finally, finally quiet.
After, Lance crawled back up his body and gathered him close, pulling the white sheet over both of them, tucking Brett's head under his chin, his big hand stroking slow, soothing circles on Brett's bare back as Brett trembled through the aftershocks.
Brett was limp and wrecked and utterly undone, his face pressed into Lance's chest, his arms wrapped tight around his waist, his breathing slowly evening out.
"You freed the tent," Brett mumbled sleepily, his voice hoarse and wrecked and happy, a watery laugh bubbling up.
Lance laughed too, low and warm, and pressed a kiss to the top of Brett's damp head.
"No," Lance corrected softly, holding him tighter. "I freed you."
And in the cool white cabana, with the ocean whispering outside and the pink bikini discarded on the floor, Brett finally believed him…