Thankfully, those words were enough to finally prompt a reaction out of Damon. “I’m never leaving you again,” he said, looming over Micah, drilling into him with his blue, blue eyes. “Make no mistake about that. I just thought…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “Never mind what I thought.”

Micah blinked. But he thought… Damon had made it sound like…

I thought you were through with me.

Utterly vulnerable, Micah held up the sign.

Damon’s jaw tightened at the sight of the words, but then, a beat later, the man was on him. Hands grasping either side of Micah’s face, the man kissed him.

Kissed was too bland a word.

Damon utterly ravished his mouth with his tongue and teeth and lips, until Micah was reduced to a breathless, brainless, puddly mess – unable to think or comprehend anything beyond the smell of Damon in his nose, the taste of the man on his tongue, the feel of him all around him.

He moaned in protest when the man eventually pulled away. “Can’t you tell how much I utterly adore you? Can’t you feel it?”

Micah did feel it, but he couldn’t leave anything open to interpretation – he needed to be sure – so he picked up the whiteboard with shaky hands.

I need it to be real this time. No money deposited into my account. No pretending for your family. REAL.

“Oh, Micah, to me it’s always been real.”

Tears sprang into Micah’s eyes, and he worked quickly to blink them away. The confession was easy to make after Damon’s own admission.

Me too.

There may have been some more hasty, impassioned kisses after that. At least until Micah accidentally jostled his own shoulder and Damon made them stop. Damon was too big to fit into the hospital bed with him, so they had to settle for holding hands, Damon using his free hand to alternatively rub soothing patterns into Micah’s thigh and squeeze his knee.

There was nothing sexual about it, but it was undeniably intimate as Micah listened with half an ear to Damon reluctantly describe his family’s various reactions to finding out Micah was a cop – at Micah’s insistence.

According to Damon, Sophie had merely accepted the news at face value, and Caprice was being surprisingly tight-lipped about her opinion on the matter – having hardly said a word about Micah since the Jason incident.

Unsurprisingly, Joelle had been loud in her disapproval, but apparently, she liked Micah enough that she’d offered to assist him in a career change. (Ostensibly, she was on the lookout for new “performers” to work at Lust. Damon’s answer to that suggestion had been an unequivocal “no”.)