10. Gil
CHAPTER 10
GIL
S hoving Rowan’s pants down to his knees was a bad idea. Curling my fingers around his cock and stroking him until precum smeared across the palm of my hand was even worse. Knowing and caring weren’t the same thing, and knowing wasn’t enough to stop me from doing the latter over and over and over again until I had to clamp my hand over his mouth so he didn’t wake up his kid.
Fuck.
His kid .
What was I doing fucking around with a single dad who had a sleeping pre-teen upstairs? One with Rowan was already one time too many for me, and here I was, back for more, knowing full well he carried the biggest and reddest flag any man ever could. I didn’t want kids, mine or someone else’s, and having a repeat with Rowan—even with no commitment between us—was way too close to kids for comfort. Rowan’s dick throbbing in my hand was enough to make me temporarily forget that, though, and soon my own cock was just as hard as his.
Dragging my hand away from his mouth and letting it rest on his throat, I let my lips hover over his, the promise of a kiss almost too much to bear. Rowan reached forward with his whole body, pressing his throat into my hand, his lips against mine. Suddenly, the bottle of lube I’d stashed in my pocket before coming over didn’t seem like such a silly idea. I hadn’t bothered with getting condoms when Jack had run me by the liquor store, but that was a conversation Rowan and I still needed to have at some point. Ideally with clothes on and no beer in our throats.
“I can’t date you,” I whispered, still touching Rowan in all the places that mattered the most. “I won’t.”
“Whatever.”
Rowan was too new, too inexperienced.
With all the regret I could muster, I pried myself away from his cock and took a deep breath.
“It’s not whatever,” I said, squinting down at him with narrowed eyes. “I’m being serious.”
“I’m not looking to date anyone,” he said, yanking up his pants. His expression bordered on angry, hands shaking as he tried to pull up on his zipper. “You don’t have to worry.”
“Don’t be like that, Row.” I cocked my head to the side and frowned at him.
“I’m not like anything,” he argued, still fighting his fly. “This is just…I’m how I am.”
I knew that about him already. I understood the way Rowan was and I liked it, but I definitely wasn’t going to tell him that.
“I’m trying to have an adult conversation with you about adult things.”
Something about those words seemed to sober him, and he gave up on his pants, leaning against the back of the couch and scrubbing both hands down his face with a groan. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Why don’t you go change into clothes that aren’t soaked in beer and we can finish this conversation once you’re dry?”
Rowan huffed a breath out his nose like a bull. “Are you telling me what to do?”
Heat surged between my legs. “Would you like that?”
He cursed under his breath and shook his head. “I’ll go change.”
Rowan walked off without another word and I found myself alone in Rowan’s house for the first time. The place had definitely seen better days, run down by time after Carl McAllister’s death, but even after a handful of days, Rowan was already managing to bring some life back into the property. His furniture was nice enough, not new but not old, worn and loved in all the right places. The living room definitely needed a coat of paint and the TV must have been almost a decade old, but it was all very Rowan , in a way I couldn’t articulate. It was going to take a lot of hard work and elbow grease to turn the place from a house back into a home, though, and Rowan was only one man.
One man with a fucking kid.
Rowan returned with bare feet and gray sweatpants, which felt inherently unfair. He was smaller than me in every way, but his cock was still hard, tenting against the soft material and begging to be seen. He’d covered his upper body with a plain white undershirt that looked to be right out of the package, but closer inspection revealed Rowan was simply the kind of man who washed his whites in hot water with bleach.
Of course he was.
The memory of his perfectly knotted bowtie was still too fresh in my mind for him to be anything but a man who had crisp white undershirts with hems that weren’t frayed. He couldn’t have been more my opposite.
Another red flag.
I’d learned that lesson already.
Rowan cleared his throat and I blinked quickly, tearing my stare away from the bulge between his legs to look him in the eye. I shouldn’t have come over. I knew that without being told, but I couldn’t stay away from him. I wanted him. Wanted him more than I’d wanted anyone or anything in a considerable amount of time.
“I’m changed,” he said, shrugging and sort of throwing his arms out to his sides.
“You are.”
“What did you want to talk about?”
Rowan, even with his dick hard, was guarded and more defensive than he’d ever been. It was the same fear I saw when he chased down Fisher in my driveway the first day we’d met. That concern and uncertainty manifesting into something combustible and dangerous if stoked.
“This was supposed to be a one-off,” I reminded him.
I hadn’t moved from behind his couch, and Rowan joined me there again, leaning against the back of the couch and folding his arms in front of his chest, which only confirmed my earlier assessment of his mood.
“And you’re back for more,” he taunted.
I licked my lips, pulling them in between my teeth and biting down to stop myself from offering to leave. He wasn’t wrong. I’d seen the way he stared so hard at Jack’s and my joined hands, felt the jealousy rolling off of him in waves. And even still, I’d stopped at the store and bought beer. I’d taken it home, I’d thought better of the whole thing, and still. Still , I’d pocketed a bottle of lube and walked my happy ass around the block and knocked on his door.
“Maybe poor judgement on my part,” I said, raising a brow. His glare tracked down the length of my scar before settling on my mouth. I released my lips, and his nostrils flared. “I can go.”
“No!” Rowan surged forward, hands raised to stop me. He fell over his feet and slammed into me, palms hot and sweaty even through my shirt. I took a step backward to steady us both and grabbed him by the wrists to move us both back upright.
“No,” he said again, softer.
“I can’t offer you any more than I can offer.”
“Gil, I…I don’t…” Rowan stammered his way into another nervous monologue, and instead of being turned off, my traitorous dick thickened even more. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. Even if I’d been with a man before, I haven’t…haven’t been with anyone since Lisa, and I don’t know how to not be married anymore.”
“I’m not the marrying type, Rowan.”
“I mean, the whole casual thing. This isn’t even casual, is it? It’s not even a thing at all.”
I puffed a long breath out, my cheeks deflating as I exhaled my trepidation right into the shitty carpet that was no doubt on Rowan’s list of things to address.
“It’s not a thing at all,” I confirmed.
“Not at all,” he said softly.
Rowan had turned from defensive to defeated, even though both of our bodies were far from either of those feelings. A dark wet spot had appeared on the front of Rowan’s sweats, and it took all my willpower to not fall to my knees to clean it up.
“More than once,” Rowan continued, pausing to swallow. “Just not more than it is.”
“Right,” I agreed, taking a step toward him and hooking my finger over the waistband of his pants. “Did you wear these on purpose?”
His cheeks burned red.
“Rowan, you fucking kill me,” I said, closing the rest of the space between us. He tilted his head back to look up at me and, damn, I loved the sight of him bent and angled to reach me. “I want to put my cock in your mouth so fucking much. Want to come in the back of your throat and make you choke on it.”
Against me, he shivered.
“So, I guess this means you always talk like that,” he rasped.
Reaching up, I traced the edge of my finger along his cheekbone, relishing the way his lashes fluttered at my touch.
“I do,” I told him.
“I’ve never sucked a cock before,” he said. “Sometimes I’ve used a toy, though.”
The two sides of Rowan Verne were going to give me whiplash. I had no idea how he could be so obtuse and bumbling in one breath and so accidentally forward in the next. Like, when he was horny enough, he lost the ability to censor himself. And fuck if that wasn’t the hottest thing ever. I loved being able to dismantle him like that, take him apart until he wasn’t anything more than a quivering need… for me .
“What do you mean you’ve used a toy?”
“You know, like…in my mouth instead of in my?—”
I covered his mouth again with my whole hand, fingers wrapping around toward his ear. “That’s enough.”
He was going to take me apart again before I even had a chance to get started. “How about I show you how I like it, and then you can try for yourself?”
“Show me how?”
The question died in his throat, because I went to my knees and took his sinful gray sweatpants with me. Rowan’s hard cock bobbed in front of my face, as pink as the rest of him and slick around the tip with all the precum he’d been leaking while we talked. His balls were hot and heavy in my hand, and the sound that fell out of his mouth when I tested their weight was enough to make my own dick leak against my thigh.
“It’s okay to tease sometimes,” I said, pulling his cock against his stomach so I could mouth that sensitive swatch of skin where his shaft and balls were joined. With my tongue and my lips, I sucked him there until he was soaking wet, then slowly dragged my mouth up his length. “As long as you know when playtime is over.”
He tasted like salt and soap, and when I sealed my lips around the tip of his cock, his entire body buckled in half. He folded over me with a strangled grunt, forcing himself all the way into my mouth whether I liked it or not. Thankfully, while still well-endowed, Rowan was shorter than me and skinnier than me in all of the ways possible.
Stretching my free hand up under his shirt, I pushed him back up so I could bob up and down his shaft, swirling my tongue and groaning quietly at the feel of him against the roof of my mouth. I took his hands and threaded his fingers into my hair, blinking up at him with a wall of unshed tears in my eyes. Humming around the base of his cock, I flattened my tongue against the underside of his shaft and sucked hard. It was all the sign he needed. Tightening his hold in my hair, Rowan’s hips snapped forward and he came hard and fast right into the back of my throat.