Was Damon implying that his mother, in fact, wasn’t raped, and that the tryst she’d had with the man who fathered Sophie was consensual? Micah couldn’t tell.

Either way, taking in Damon’s curled shoulders and the clear self-loathing that rang through his voice, Micah hated Damon’s father – a dead man – more than he’d ever hated anything or anyone in his life. More than he hated the vicious criminals he worked to arrest on a daily basis, more even than the freak aneurysm that had taken his mother away.

Micah’s feelings didn’t matter at the moment, however, only Damon’s. So he needed to get his act together, and fucking say something.

So Micah took the man by the face and forced him to look into his eyes. “None of it was your fault,” he said, words firm and unyielding – they left absolutely no room for argument. Micah couldn’t imagine how confused and scared Damon must have been at only ten years old, seeing a bloodied man tied to a chair and being handed a frickin’ crow bar. “Whatever happened, you were only a kid – just doing what was expected of you.”

Damon swallowed, and Micah saw his Adam’s apple bob. “And what about now?” he asked. “I’m thirty-two, and I’m still doing what’s expected of me. Does that make me a monster?”

Micah took a deep breath in through his nose. “Maybe,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

Damon’s eyes, a hypnotizing blue, drilled into his own. “How do you feel?”

Micah couldn’t resist anymore – he just couldn’t. Not when Damon looked at him like that, like he was some precious, implausible thing.

Fuck the fact that heartbreak was imminent, and that Micah would probably never recover when things inevitably went south, that he would probably wander around as a husk of himself for months afterwards… Damon needed him, and that was all that mattered.

So, carefully cradling the man’s face in his hands, Micah leaned forward and kissed him.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

So, carefully cradling the man’s face in his hands, Micah leaned forward and kissed him.

It was just a mouth pressed to another mouth at first, soft and unassuming, but then Damon relaxed against him – he grew pliant – and Micah became braver, sucking and nipping at the man’s lips until he opened up. Then Micah found himself licking into the other man’s mouth and sucking on his tongue as his hands – which had been holding Damon’s face at the beginning of the kiss – grasped at his hair.