Chapter 1

“You’re leaving.”

I’d just walked into the bedroom I shared with Seb, my lover of three years. He was packing a suitcase, his handsome face grim.

“We’ve been over this, Gus,” he replied tiredly while pulling the zipper closed with a finality that scared me. “I can’t believe we’re still talking about it.” The frustration in his voice—along with the guilt, I was sure—was achingly familiar, and it hurt.

I stepped closer to him and grabbed his arm. “What the fuck’s in New York that you can’t find here in Atlanta?”

Seb shook me off. “More money, a chance to become VP in less than a year. It’s the kind of opportunity I’ve always wanted. You know this.” I did, but I’d hoped to never see the day Seb would leave me behind because a job—money—was more important than what we’d built together. What I thought we’d had.

Taking the front of his shirt in my fists, I hauled him against my chest, secretly enjoying his shocked, wide eyes. “You want to leave us behind, do you?” I asked, sneering as I shoved a hand between us and squeezed his crotch. Predictably, he hardened. Like always. In my hands, he was a pussycat.

I smirked. “Your body doesn’t lie, even if you lie to yourself all the time.”

Seb blushed and pushed into my hand, unable to help himself. “We’ve al-always had chemistry,” he stammered, voice breathy, eyes falling closed as I yanked down the zipper of his pants and stroked his cock through the cotton briefs before pulling it out. “Anybody can have chemistry.”

“Not like this,” I hissed as I brought his head down to mine and took his mouth in a hard kiss. I kept up the rhythm on his dick, making it burn, and Seb bit my lip, fingers tight in my scalp as I pumped him to a loud, harsh finish, his shouts muffled by our tongues as his release spewed all over my shirt, and likely his.

I was hard as fuck, but this wasn’t about me. I wanted Seb to stay. To remember why he had to stay, even if I had to play dirty. How could he do this to us?

We’d been together for a long time. When we met, it had been lust at first sight. He was the dark to my light. While I was blond-haired and green-eyed, Seb had brown locks kept ruthlessly short, steel gray eyes and an eyebrow marked by a scar because of a childhood incident. He was a head taller than me at six-three, and kept in excellent shape by going to the gym four times a week. I’d been attracted to how driven, how focused he was, not to mention his high, firm bubble butt. Little did I know that his obsessive determination and ambition would become our downfall.

After pushing him away, I crossed my arms and ignored my dick, willing myself not to beg. The scent of him on my hands and clothes was driving me crazy, but I had to stand firm. “What am I supposed to do, sit here pining for you?”

“You can visit, if you want,” Seb replied as he stumbled back, still panting a little from coming so hard. He even managed to sound a bit sheepish, though I didn’t believe it for a minute.

I snorted. “So keeping our relationship together, even if long-distance, is going to be on me? Because you’ll be too busy with that powerful, ladder-climbing, ass-kissing new job of yours? Spare me.”

When Seb had made the announcement that he’d accepted a new job and was moving, we’d been at a fancy restaurant having dinner. It should have clued me in at that point because Seb was normally stingy about money spent on outings. Even our anniversary dinners had been at restaurants like Applebee’s, nothing on the level of the five-star eatery where we were that evening. He’d even suggested Waffle House, once, for a celebratory meal, and I’d pitched a fit. No offence to that particular eatery, but it had been our anniversary, goddamn it.

It seemed like I was always the one making the effort in the relationship to try new things, or even remember our special days. Seb was perpetually too busy, and only begrudgingly did some of the couple-y things because I called him out on his lack of boyfriend-like behavior. Just because I was a good lay didn’t mean he could take advantage of me. I polished his dick and sucked his ass on a regular basis. He could take me to a nice dinner or play. Hell, a picnic would be nice. Was that asking so much? Apparently so.

Seb hadn’t met my eyes when he’d told me about his plans, and it had felt like my heart dropped to the floor. I waited until we returned to our apartment—Seb had a five-year plan to save a certain amount of money for our “perfect” house—then had it out with him. Loudly.