Say It Again, Sir — Bonus Chapter

An exclusive bonus chapter set one year after the events of Say It Again, Sir. Too hot for Amazon. You’re welcome.

🔞 This chapter contains graphic explicit content. 18+ only.

One Year

Set one year after the events of Say It Again, Sir. Adrian’s POV.

The studio smelled like coffee and cedar and the particular, irreplaceable warmth of a room that had been lived in — not just worked in, but lived in — for a year.

Adrian sat at the piano and played a chord progression he’d been refining all week. Something in D major. Something warm. Something that sounded, when he closed his eyes, like the inside of the life he’d built with the man who was currently running late.

His phone buzzed on the piano lid. Nico.

2 min. Mara had a crisis. (She broke up with the bartender again.)

Adrian typed back: The studio will survive without you for two more minutes. Mara will not survive without you for five. Take your time.

He set the phone down and played. The chord progression evolved into the melody he’d written for Nico — the piece from their first “I love you,” the one that had come out of him in twelve days after a decade of creative silence. He’d revised it since then. Added a second movement. The second movement was more complex — layered, contrapuntal, with a melody line that wove around the original theme the way Nico’s voice wove around everything Adrian played. It was, Adrian admitted privately, the best thing he’d ever written.

The buzzer. Adrian stopped playing, went to the door.

Nico stood on the steps in the March light with his jacket open and his hair in his eyes and a smile on his face that had not changed in a year — wide, crooked, devastatingly transparent. He was carrying two coffees.

“I’m sorry,” Nico said, handing Adrian the black Americano. “Mara was crying. The bartender apparently told her she was ‘emotionally dense.’ Which is objectively hilarious but I couldn’t say that while she was sobbing.”

“Emotionally dense is generous.”

“Don’t be mean about my best friend.”

“I’m never mean. I’m precise.”

Nico grinned and kissed him — quick, warm, tasting like his flat white — and walked past him into the studio.

One year. Adrian watched him cross the room — dropping his jacket on the stool, setting his coffee on the shelf, taking his position in the center of the studio with the unconscious, settled certainty of a man who knew where he stood. The posture was perfect. The breathing was automatic. The body that had walked into this room twelve months ago — tight, defensive, making itself small — now occupied space with the quiet authority of someone who had earned every inch.

Adrian sat at the piano. “I want to hear the song.”

Nico’s expression shifted. A soft flicker of vulnerability underneath the confidence. “It’s not finished.”

“Play me what you have.”

“It’s about you,” Nico said simply. “You should know that going in. It’s about you and this room and — what happened here.”

Adrian’s hands stilled on the keys. “Sing it for me.”

Nico took a breath. Set his feet. And sang.

The song was in a minor key — surprising, because Nico’s voice was naturally warm and bright, but the minor tonality gave it depth. The melody was simple and the lyric was direct and it was, Adrian realized in the first four bars, extraordinary. It was about being taught to use your voice by someone who’d forgotten how to use his own. About standing in a room and being heard for the first time. About the difference between being corrected and being cared for and the moment you realize they’re the same thing.

Adrian sat at the piano and listened and felt his chest crack open — not from pain or fear but from pride and love and the devastating joy of hearing the person you’d built give back something you hadn’t known you needed.

The last note faded. Silence.

“That,” Adrian said, his voice rough, “is the best thing I’ve ever heard in this room.”

Nico’s face broke open. The smile — wide, luminous — filled the studio. “Better than anything I’ve sung before?”

“Better than anything anyone has sung in this room. Including me.”

Nico crossed the room. Stopped in front of Adrian. Traced the line of his jaw with one finger.

“You know what today is,” Nico said.

“Tuesday.”

“It’s our anniversary. One year since the first lesson.”

“I know what today is.”

“Play me the piece,” Nico said. “The one you wrote. Play it while I—”

Nico straddled the piano bench. Facing Adrian. Knees on either side of his hips, their bodies close.

“While you what?” Adrian asked, his hands already on Nico’s hips.

“While I show you what I’ve learned.”

Adrian’s cock hardened instantly. Nico kissed him — slowly, deliberately — and his hands moved to Adrian’s chest, working buttons with focused patience. Slow down, let it build, don’t rush.

“Play,” Nico murmured against his mouth.

Adrian reached behind Nico’s body to the keys. Placed his hands on the ivory. He played from memory, fingers finding notes without looking, because his eyes were on Nico’s face and Nico’s hands were unbuckling his belt and the music and the touch were happening simultaneously.

Nico freed him. Wrapped his hand around Adrian’s cock — firm, confident, with a grip that had learned exactly what Adrian liked through a year of devoted research. Adrian’s fingers stumbled on the keys. A discordant note rang through the studio.

“Keep playing,” Nico said. The echo of a hundred instructions — keep singing, don’t stop — returned with precision.

Adrian kept playing. Nico stroked him, watching his face with that focused, unwavering attention. Adrian’s hips shifted. The melody wavered. Nico smiled.

“You’re rushing the bridge. Settle into it.”

Adrian laughed — rough, breathless, mixed with a groan. “You’re critiquing my playing while your hand is on my—”

“I learned from the best.” Nico rose up on his knees. He’d come prepared — Adrian could feel the slickness when Nico guided his hand behind, and the realization that Nico had prepped before the lesson, again, made Adrian’s vision narrow.

“You planned this.”

“I always plan this. You just don’t always notice.”

Nico sank down onto him. Slowly. Inch by inch. Taking Adrian inside with the controlled, deliberate pace of a man who understood that the build was the point — because Adrian had taught him that, and Nico had learned every lesson and was using them all at once.

Adrian’s hands fell from the keys. The music stopped. The studio filled instead with the sounds of Nico’s breathing — controlled, diaphragmatic — and the helpless sound Adrian made when Nico bottomed out and sat in his lap.

“I was supposed to keep playing,” Adrian managed.

“I like this sound better.”

Nico rode him on the piano bench. Their bench. In their studio. With the afternoon light through the curtain and a year of love and music between them. Adrian’s composure dissolved the way it always dissolved, because the dissolution was not loss but surrender, and the surrender was the bravest thing he’d ever learned.

“You’re everything,” Adrian said. “A year ago you walked in here and I didn’t know. I didn’t know this was—”

“I know.” Nico held his face. Moved faster. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Say it again.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Again.”

“I’m yours. I’ve been yours since the second lesson. I’ll be yours—” Nico’s voice broke on a gasp as Adrian’s hips drove up. “—until you stop saying again. Which is never.”

Adrian came with Nico’s face in his hands and the word again echoing like a chord that never resolved. Nico followed seconds later, crying out with a sound from the diaphragm — always the diaphragm, even now, especially now — and collapsed against Adrian’s chest.

They sat on the piano bench. Breathing. The studio holding them.

“Happy anniversary,” Nico murmured against his neck.

Adrian kissed his temple. “Happy anniversary. Same time next year?”

“Same time every year.”

“Good.”

One word. The word that had started everything.

Nico smiled against his skin. The studio held them both. Waiting for the next lesson.

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