Dan wants to tell him that he never could hurt Dan, but then Marcus moves again and looks at him just like that, and it's so much. The best kind of so much, and not for the first time does Dan suspect this is what could take him totally out of his own head, that thing he's always searched for; this time it won't hurt him. It's trust and it's pleasure and connection.

Intimacy, he thinks, as he licks into Marcus's mouth and tells himself to relax. He's never had intimacy before.

"More," he says, somehow soft and guttural at the same time. "Give me more."