The Anniversary

A Stepbrother’s Secret Bonus Scene

Set one year after the epilogue
Contains: Explicit MM content, body worship, praise kink, light restraint, edging, possessive dirty talk, mirror play, and intense emotional intimacy.
Reader discretion advised. 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

NOAH

The painting was wrong.

I’d been staring at the canvas for twenty minutes, brush poised, trying to figure out what was off about the latest commission—an abstract for a tech startup’s lobby that wanted “bold but approachable”—when I heard the front door open.

“Don’t come in here,” I called out. “I’m in a creative crisis and I might throw something.”

“You throw paint at me and I’m charging you for the dry cleaning.” Liam’s voice carried down the hall, warm with the amusement that came so easily to him now. A year ago, coaxing a smile from Liam Sterling had been like picking a lock with a toothpick. Now he laughed at my jokes. Terrible ones, even. The man was completely ruined.

I loved it.

He appeared in the doorway of my studio—our second bedroom, converted with better lighting than the first apartment—and leaned against the frame. He was still in his work clothes from the coffee shop, apron slung over one shoulder, hair slightly disheveled from his shift. He’d started classes again last month, business management this time, something he’d chosen for himself rather than having it chosen for him.

He looked good. He always looked good, but today there was something extra in the way he carried himself. A looseness. A confidence that had nothing to do with money or name and everything to do with finally being comfortable in his own skin.

“Happy anniversary,” he said.

I blinked. “That’s not until—” I checked the date on my phone. “Oh.”

“You forgot.”

“I didn’t forget. I temporarily misplaced the information due to creative—”

“You forgot.” But he was smiling—that slow, devastating smile that still made my stomach flip after all this time. “It’s fine. I have plans that will make up for your terrible boyfriend skills.”

“My boyfriend skills are excellent.”

“You forgot our anniversary.”

“Besides that.”

He crossed the studio in three strides, took the brush from my hand, set it on the tray, and cupped my face. His thumbs traced my cheekbones—a gesture so familiar it felt like breathing—and he kissed me. Soft. Slow. The kind of kiss that said I have time and you’re the only thing I want to do with it.

“Go shower,” he murmured against my lips. “You have paint in your hair.”

“I always have paint in my hair.”

“And I always love it. But tonight I have plans for you, and they require you clean.” His eyes darkened—just a shade, just enough to send heat pooling low in my belly. “Thoroughly clean.”

Oh.

Oh.

I showered in record time.

LIAM

I’d been planning this for two weeks.

While Noah showered, I transformed the bedroom. Candles along the windowsill—the good ones, not the dollar store ones we usually burned. Clean sheets, the soft gray ones he liked because they reminded him of my eyes (his words, not mine, and yes, I’d gone red when he’d said it). Music playing low from the speaker—something ambient and warm that Noah had put on a playlist called “Liam’s Frequency” that I pretended to find embarrassing and actually listened to every night.

I wanted tonight to be different.

Not that our sex life needed help. God, no—we’d spent the last year and a half exploring each other with an enthusiasm that occasionally alarmed our neighbors. But tonight wasn’t about heat. Or it wasn’t only about heat.

Tonight was about showing Noah what he meant to me. What he’d always meant to me, even when I was too broken to say it.

One year ago today, I’d stood in a crowded gallery and told the world I loved him.

Tonight, I was going to show him in private. Where it mattered most.

The bathroom door opened, and Noah stepped out in a cloud of steam, towel slung low around his hips. Water droplets tracked down his chest, catching the candlelight. The tattoos I’d memorized—botanical illustrations climbing his arm, the small compass on his ribs I’d traced with my tongue a thousand times—glistened against damp skin.

He stopped when he saw the bedroom. The candles. The music.

“Liam…”

“Come here.”

He came. He always came when I used that voice—not commanding, exactly, but certain. The voice of a man who’d learned the difference between control and confidence. I’d spent a year unlearning my father’s version of authority and building my own.

When he reached me, I pulled the towel free.

It hit the floor, and Noah stood naked in the candlelight—lean and golden, every line of him a brushstroke I wanted to trace with my mouth. His cock was already thickening, and the sight of it—of him, wanting me, always wanting me—sent a surge of possessive hunger through my chest that I’d long since stopped trying to control.

“Sit on the bed,” I said.

He sat, watching me with those dark eyes that saw everything. Saw through every wall I’d ever built and loved what was underneath.

I knelt in front of him.

His breath caught. “What are you—”

“I’m worshipping you.” I placed my hands on his knees and slowly pushed them apart. “I’m going to take my time. I’m going to touch every inch of you. And you’re going to let me, because it’s our anniversary and you forgot, which means I get to do whatever I want.”

“That’s… not how anniversaries work.”

“It is tonight.” I pressed a kiss to the inside of his knee. His thigh tensed under my lips. “Tonight, you don’t get to rush. You don’t get to deflect with humor. You just get to feel.”

“Liam.” His voice was already going rough. “I’m not good at just—”

“I know.” Another kiss, higher on his thigh. “That’s why we’re practicing.”

I worked my way up his inner thigh with my mouth, slow and deliberate, feeling his muscles quiver under each press of my lips. Noah’s hand found my hair—gripping, then releasing, then gripping again, like he couldn’t decide whether to pull me closer or push me away.

“You’re shaking,” I murmured against his skin.

“Because you’re being—” He hissed as I nipped the sensitive crease where thigh met hip. “—deliberately cruel.”

“Deliberately thorough.” I skipped over where he wanted me most and kissed his other thigh, starting the slow ascent again. “There’s a difference.”

“There really isn’t.”

I smiled against his skin and continued my exploration. His hip bones. The flat plane of his stomach, which contracted under my mouth. The ridge of each rib. The tattoo on his side—the compass that pointed north, that he’d gotten when he was eighteen because he’d felt lost and wanted something to remind him that direction existed. I traced the needle with my tongue, and Noah made a sound that was half gasp, half prayer.

“You’re so beautiful,” I said, and meant it the way I meant gravity—as something undeniable, fundamental, beyond choice. “Do you know that? Do you know what you look like right now?”

“Desperate, probably.”

“Perfect.” I kissed his sternum, felt his heartbeat hammering against my lips. “You look perfect.”

“Liam, please—”

“Not yet.” I pushed him gently onto his back and climbed over him, bracketing his body with mine. My clothes against his bare skin—another deliberate choice. The friction. The imbalance. The reminder that I was in control tonight, and he was safe to let go.

I kissed his neck. The hollow of his throat. The spot behind his ear that made his hips buck involuntarily.

“A year ago,” I said between kisses, “I stood in front of a room full of strangers and told them I loved you.”

“I remember.” His voice was wrecked. “Hard to forget the most dramatic thing anyone’s ever done.”

“But I never told you what I wanted to say. What I was thinking, standing there, looking at you.” I pulled back enough to meet his eyes. “I was thinking about this. About getting to come home to you. About learning the shape of your body in the dark. About spending the rest of my life trying to deserve you.”

His eyes went bright. “You deserve me.”

“I’m working on believing that.” I kissed him, slow and deep, tasting the toothpaste and the want and the thing underneath that was just Noah—paint thinner and stubbornness and the most generous heart I’d ever known. “But tonight, I want to show you. With my hands. With my mouth. With every part of me.”

“Then stop talking,” he breathed, “and show me.”

NOAH

Liam Sterling on his knees was a religious experience.

I’d seen it before—plenty of times, in plenty of configurations, in locations that ranged from our bed to the kitchen counter to one memorable occasion in the stockroom of his coffee shop after closing. But there was something different about tonight. Something reverent in the way his hands moved over me, unhurried, like he was memorizing braille.

He stripped off his shirt, and I reached for him, desperate to feel skin on skin. He caught my wrists and pinned them above my head. Not rough. Just firm. Certain.

“Keep them there,” he said.

“Liam—”

“Keep them there. I need you to receive tonight. Can you do that for me?”

I could. I didn’t want to—every instinct screamed to grab, to pull, to take—but I could. For him. Because the look in his eyes wasn’t dominance. It was devotion.

“Yes,” I whispered.

He rewarded me by trailing his mouth down my body—throat, collarbone, chest—pausing to take one nipple between his teeth with a precision that made my back arch off the mattress. His tongue circled, flicked, soothed, and I bit my lip hard enough to taste copper because the sounds I wanted to make were embarrassing.

“Don’t hold back.” He moved to the other side, and his hand came up to roll the first nipple between his fingers, wet from his mouth. “I want to hear you, Noah. Every sound.”

I stopped holding back.

The moan that poured out of me was obscene—raw and needy, the kind of sound that would have mortified me a year ago. Now I knew what it did to Liam. I could feel the evidence pressing against my thigh through his pants, hard and insistent.

“Good,” he murmured against my skin. “That’s so good.”

He kissed his way lower. My stomach. My hip bones. The crease of my thigh. Everywhere except where I was aching for him, my cock flushed and leaking against my belly, twitching every time his breath ghosted near.

“You’re killing me,” I managed. “You know that, right? This is murder.”

“This is foreplay.” He pressed a kiss to the base of my cock—just the base, just a whisper of contact—and I nearly came off the bed. “And I’m nowhere near finished.”

He wrapped his hand around me, and the first stroke was so slow, so deliberate, that I felt every centimeter of friction like a brand. His thumb swept over the head, spreading the wetness, and I heard myself whimper.

“Look at me,” he said.

I opened eyes I didn’t remember closing. Liam was kneeling between my thighs, shirtless, candlelight turning his skin to gold. His hair was falling across his forehead. His lips were swollen from kissing me. And his eyes—those ice-blue eyes that had once been walls—were completely open. Vulnerable. Burning with so much love it was almost too much to look at directly.

“I want you to watch,” he said. Then he lowered his mouth and took me in.

I watched.

I watched those perfect lips stretch around me, watched his cheeks hollow, watched his throat work as he swallowed me deeper. He’d learned my body with the same obsessive precision he applied to everything—every ridge, every vein, every spot that made me curse or gasp or lose the ability to form sentences.

He found every single one now.

“Liam—fuck—right there—”

He hummed around me, and the vibration sent shockwaves up my spine. His hand found the base, stroking in rhythm with his mouth, while his other hand gripped my hip—not to hold me down, but to anchor himself. Like he needed the connection as much as I did.

I was close. Embarrassingly close, considering he’d barely started. But it wasn’t just the physical—it was the way he looked at me. The care. The attention. The way he treated my pleasure like it was precious, like making me feel good was the most important thing he’d ever do.

“I’m going to come,” I warned, my voice shaking. “If you don’t stop—”

He pulled off with a slick pop, and I actually whined. Whined. Like a kicked puppy. The man was going to be insufferable about this later.

“Not yet.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand—somehow making even that look elegant—and reached for the nightstand drawer. “I told you. I’m taking my time.”

“Your time is going to kill me.”

“Then you’ll die happy.” He produced lube and positioned himself between my legs, pressing a kiss to my inner thigh. “Turn over.”

I rolled onto my stomach, and he pulled my hips up, arranging me how he wanted me. On my knees, arms still stretched overhead gripping the headboard, completely exposed. The vulnerability of the position sent a thrill through me that was part nerves, part trust, all desire.

His hands smoothed down my back—slow, reverent—then gripped my hips. I felt him lean down, his breath hot against the base of my spine.

“You have no idea what you look like from here,” he said, and his voice had dropped into that register—the one that was all gravel and want. “You’re a masterpiece, Noah. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re biased.”

“I’m accurate.” His mouth traced down my spine, vertebra by vertebra, while his slicked fingers found me. The first press was gentle—testing, circling—and I pushed back against him, impatient.

“Slow,” he reminded me. One finger sank inside, and the stretch was exquisite—familiar and new at the same time, the way it always was with him. “Let me take care of you.”

He opened me with devastating patience. One finger became two, crooking and scissoring, finding that spot that made stars bloom behind my eyes and pressing against it until I was trembling, sweat slicking my back, sounds falling from my mouth that I couldn’t identify as words.

“Liam—please—I need you—”

“One more.” A third finger, and I moaned into the pillow, gripping the headboard hard enough that my knuckles went white. He was relentless—steady, rhythmic strokes against my prostate that had me pushing back onto his hand, chasing the pleasure, forgetting pride or dignity or anything that wasn’t the overwhelming need to have him inside me.

“Ready?” he murmured against the small of my back.

“I’ve been ready since you walked through the door.”

I heard the rustle of him removing his pants. The tear of a condom wrapper. Then his hands were on my hips, steadying me, and I felt the blunt press of him against my entrance.

“Wait.” His voice was strained. “I want to see your face.”

He pulled me up, turning me so I was facing him. Then his eyes caught something across the room and I saw the idea hit him.

“The mirror,” he said.

We’d hung a floor-length mirror on the closet door last month. I used it for checking outfits. Liam used it for checking his hair. Neither of us had used it for this.

“Sit in my lap. Face the mirror.”

My breath stuttered. “You want me to—”

“I want you to see yourself the way I see you.” He settled against the headboard and pulled me onto his lap, my back to his chest. In the mirror across the room, I could see everything. Both of us. Candlelight on bare skin. His arms wrapped around me, his chin resting on my shoulder, his eyes meeting mine in the reflection.

“Beautiful,” he whispered against my ear. “Now watch.”

He lifted me by the hips and lowered me onto him, inch by inch, and in the mirror I watched my own face transform—eyes going wide, mouth falling open, body arching as I took him in. Watched his hands grip my waist, tendons standing out in his forearms. Watched us become one.

“Oh God—” I bottomed out, fully seated, feeling him everywhere. The angle was deep. Devastating. I could see everything—every flex of muscle, every point where our bodies connected, the way my cock curved hard against my belly, untouched and leaking.

“Move,” he breathed against my neck. “Show me what you need.”

I braced my hands on his thighs and started to ride him. Slowly at first—rising and falling in a rhythm that made both of us groan—then faster as the angle caught my prostate on every stroke. In the mirror, I watched myself come undone. Watched the flush creep from my chest to my throat to my cheeks. Watched Liam’s expression shift from tender to ravenous.

“That’s it.” His hand wrapped around my cock, stroking in time with my movements, and I cried out. “Look at yourself, Noah. Look at how incredible you are.”

“I can’t—it’s too much—”

“You can.” His other hand found my jaw, tilting my face back toward the mirror. “Don’t close your eyes. Watch what you do to me.”

I watched. I watched his hand work me, slick and relentless. Watched his hips thrust up to meet mine, driving deeper. Watched his face contort with a pleasure so intense it looked like pain.

“You’re everything,” he said against my ear, his voice cracking. “A year ago I had nothing—no money, no family, no future—and I had you, and you were enough. You were always enough. You’re the reason I’m brave.”

The words pushed me over the edge.

The orgasm hit like a detonation—my whole body locking, back arching against his chest, a cry tearing from my throat that I was distantly grateful our neighbors couldn’t hear. I came hard, pulsing over his fist and across my stomach, and in the mirror I watched my own face shatter into something raw and open and completely unguarded.

Liam followed me seconds later—I felt him swell inside me, his rhythm stuttering, his teeth sinking into my shoulder as he buried himself deep and came with a sound that was my name and a prayer and a promise all at once.

We collapsed together against the headboard, trembling, breathing each other’s air.

“Holy shit,” I said eloquently.

“Mm.” He pressed a kiss to the bite mark on my shoulder. “Happy anniversary.”

“If that’s what I get for forgetting, I’m going to forget every anniversary for the rest of our lives.”

“Please don’t.”

He eased out of me carefully—always carefully, always checking my face for any sign of discomfort—and cleaned us both up with a warm cloth he’d apparently pre-staged in the nightstand. The man was absurdly prepared. I loved him for it.

We lay in the candlelight afterward, tangled together in the gray sheets, the music still playing softly. My head on his chest. His fingers in my hair. The city outside doing its thing while we did ours.

“I have something else,” he said after a while.

“If it’s another orgasm, I physically cannot.”

“It’s not another orgasm.” He reached under his pillow—because of course he’d hidden it there, the dramatic bastard—and produced a small, flat package wrapped in brown paper.

I unwrapped it carefully.

Inside was a photograph. Us. At the gallery, one year ago tonight—the moment after I’d kissed him in front of everyone. Some stranger had captured it and posted it online, and the image had gone mildly viral in the local art community. In the photo, we were both laughing, foreheads pressed together, my hands fisted in his shirt. The people around us were blurred, irrelevant. We were the only thing in focus.

On the back, in Liam’s precise handwriting: The moment I stopped being afraid.

“Liam.” My voice cracked. Damn it.

“I had it printed and framed.” He cleared his throat. “I thought maybe… for your studio. If you want it.”

I set the photo carefully on the nightstand, climbed on top of him, and kissed him until neither of us could breathe.

“I want it,” I said against his mouth. “I want it and I want you and I want fifty more years of you forgetting to use coasters and singing badly in the shower and making me feel like the most important person in the world.”

“Fifty?”

“Minimum.” I traced the promise ring on my finger—the silver and gold band that I never took off, not even to paint. “You’re stuck with me, Sterling.”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

I settled back against his chest, and we lay there watching the candles gutter and the city lights shift through the window, and I thought about how strange life was. How the person you hated most could become the person you loved most. How breaking apart could be the thing that made you whole.

“Hey, Liam?”

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t actually forget our anniversary.”

A pause. “What?”

“Your present is in the studio. Behind the bad commission painting.” I grinned against his skin. “I just wanted to see what you’d do if you thought I forgot.”

“Noah Callahan, you absolute—”

I kissed him before he could finish the sentence. He kissed me back, laughing into my mouth, and the sound was the best thing I’d ever heard.

Better than music. Better than praise. Better than the sound of a sold sticker being placed on a painting.

The sound of Liam Sterling, laughing freely, loving loudly, finally and completely himself.

That was the real masterpiece.

THE END

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