Hard to Pretend (Hard to Love #2)

9. Seb

9

T ension crackled in the air as Chris drove us back to my place.

It was a palpable thing, a physical presence in the space between us. It pulsed between us with every breath. My heart pounded in my chest, and I wished that the drive would take less time. I wished that we could just magically travel from the beach to my apartment in the blink of an eye. It would be pretty cool, but unfortunately, it wasn’t possible. We had to suffer, and maybe I could tell myself that the anticipation was just going to make the experience better.

Chris finally pulled up to my building and found a parking spot. Time moved strangely. One moment we were parking, the next moment we were at my door. I fumbled with the key and wished that my apartment was as fancy as Jonas’s new digs with Silas. They had an electric keypad and never had to make an ass out of themselves by almost dropping the keys because they were so excited their hands were shaking.

I finally got the apartment open after what felt like an eternity. Like I said, time was moving strangely.

That tension had traveled with us from the car and into my living room. Only it had grown and had electricity crackling over its surface. This time, I didn’t have to try to convince myself that it was just anticipation. I knew that was exactly what it was. I wanted to pick up from where we were on the beach. I wanted to kiss him again, to feel his hands over me. I wanted the same magical experience that we had that first night.

Only this time, he wouldn’t be a stranger.

This time, we wouldn’t lose track of one another.

It would make everything different; it would make everything better.

Unless I was looking back on our first night with rose colored glasses, and it hadn’t been as good as I remembered. Time had a funny way of doing that.

I was painfully aware that my apartment wasn’t as neat as it had been the first time he came over. The lemon blanket was balled up on the couch from where I’d been watching a movie the night before. Mine and Eli’s empty glasses were still sitting on the table from hanging out earlier. When I took him into my bedroom, the clothes I’d rejected were still on my bed. I grinned as a memory floated into mind: crumbled clothing on Chris’s bed that he pushed off to clear space for us.

I looked over at him and the faint smile on his lips, and I felt myself relax a little.

“You know, it’s kind of nice to see that your place looks normal when you’re not expecting company,” he teased.

I walked over to my bed and started picking up the clothes, returning them to their hangers. “I really should’ve operated on the principle of wishful thinking.”

“Oh?” he questioned with a raised eyebrow. He took a few steps closer to me. “So you were wishfully thinking that this would happen?”

My face flushed, and I turned back to the closet to hang up my shirts. Okay, I turned away to hide the fact that I was turning bright red. I had always hated how easily I blushed. I waited until my skin cooled before turning back around to him. He was closer than he’d been when he asked the question, less than a foot away.

“I think the word you’re looking for is hoping,” I teased. I took a step toward him, cutting the distance in half. My eyes drifted down to his full lips and back up to his dark eyes. “Of course I was hoping for this. Who isn’t hoping for the cute guy to come home with him after a date?”

He smiled. His hand reached out and cupped my cheek, thumb brushing over my lips. My lips pursed, kissing his thumb lightly as it passed. “I was hoping for this too,” he admitted. “Might have been hoping for this since we kissed after your mom’s. Maybe longer.”

“You mean we could’ve been doing this sooner?” I joked.

“Might have crossed the line between fiction and reality,” he pointed out.

My forehead rested against his. “I think we’re a bit too late for that.”

A breath passed between us. His lips gently pressed against mine, and it was like dropping a match into gasoline. The tension between us exploded the moment our lips collided. What started as a gentle rain turned to a storm. His tongue slipped into my mouth, and my hands wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer. We moved as one toward my bed and fell back on it with a grunt. I felt him laugh against my lips and pulled away. “Really?”

He answered with another quick kiss. His fingers moved down the buttons of my shirt, unsnapping them with ease. “I’ve been thinking about doing that since you got into my car,” he confessed.

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.” He pushed my shirt over my shoulders and I helped him pull it off of me.

His shirt was easier to remove, simply pulling it over his head. I should have had the foresight to wear a tee-shirt on our date instead of a button down, but something about button downs just screamed date in my mind. Our shirts fell to the floor in a pile of contrasting fabric. His eyes moved down my body, and I shivered like I could feel them. “Better than I remember,” he purred. My cheeks flushed again. “And that is just as cute as I remembered.”

“Shut up,” I groaned. I really hoped he never mentioned the whole blushing thing in front of my friends. They would never let me live it down.

I would have said something about it, but he distracted me with another one of those thought stopping kisses.

Our hands began to explore one another’s bodies as we kissed. I traced the lines of his abs, pleased that they were just as defined as they’d been the first time I’d seen him without a shirt. Maybe a little more so. I didn’t understand how he could be so fucking hot. He was like someone out of a magazine, except that he was real.

His dark skin was warm under my fingertips, and every touch he trailed down my chest left fire in its wake. The way he touched me was better than anything I remembered or fantasized about. I gasped into the kiss as his thick fingers brushed over my nipples, moaned when he pinched them between his fingers. He swallowed down the moan and broke the kiss off. Before I could chase his lips, they were on my jawline, kissing along my five o’clock shadow. He kissed along my jaw up to my ear, nipping it lightly. “You’re so hot,” he whispered.

Chills raced down my spine and he followed them. He peppered kisses down my neck, over my collar bone, down my chest. He sucked and bit at my nipples and continued his voyage down my body. My legs spread to give him room as he kissed further down my body. I sucked in a deep breath as his lips moved over my stomach. My cock throbbed in my jeans as his hand cupped me before he unbuttoned my pants.

“You’re so hard,” he exhaled.

I wanted to tell him it was his fault, but I was distracted. I was so distracted by his touch, by the look in his eyes as he pulled me free, and by that first stroke of his hand along my shaft. My breath caught in my throat and all thoughts stopped. I watched as he bent over my cock, watched as his tongue darted out and licked the bead of precum from the head. The light contact and his hot breath was one of the hottest things I’d ever felt.

At least until he took me into the warm heat of his mouth. His tongue swirled around the head of my dick. He licked and sucked and moaned, sending vibrations down my shaft and straight into my balls. My pants weren’t even off yet, and he was already making me see stars. I didn’t understand how anyone could read my body the way he did.

And watching him just made it that much hotter.

He looked like he was in heaven as he sucked my dick, like there was nowhere else he’d rather be and nothing else he’d rather be doing. Several times, he caught my eye through his long, thick eyelashes and I struggled to breathe. “Holy fuck,” I moaned out, my hips thrusting upward deeper into his mouth.

His hands gripped my hips and pushed them down as he pulled off of me. “I’ve been thinking about a lot of things,” he whispered, his deep voice traveling the space between us. He tugged off my jeans and let them fall to the floor. “I’ve been fantasizing about a few things too,” he whispered again as he pulled down my underwear. I was fully naked on my bed with the hottest guy I’d ever seen between my legs. Still half dressed, which seemed like a crime.

When I sat up to try to fix that, he pushed me back on the bed and hooked his arms under my legs, dragging them up over his shoulder and looked at me again. He turned his head to kiss the muscle of my calf. “Yeah?” I exhaled.

“Yeah.” His voice was steadier than mine, but it was still so damn heady. He planted another kiss on my other calf and bent over to lick along the underside of my shaft. “It wasn’t just about sucking your dick though.”

“What else?” I asked.

I watched as he laid out on his stomach, my legs still over his shoulders. He smiled softly up at me, a sinful smile that held promises that made me shiver. “I really want to eat your ass,” he answered. His warm breath teased me as much as his words.

I couldn’t say anything. I could only nod .

He grinned and went to town.

He ate me out like a starving man. It started with kisses over my hole before he began to fuck his tongue in and out of me. I was moaning like a porn star as he sent electricity through me. My cock throbbed and leaked precum down the shaft. My legs shook, and my thighs threatened to strangle him with how hard they squeezed together. Instead of making him slow down, it seemed to encourage him.

When he started to stroke me in time with his tongue, I knew that I was going to lose it.

He wasn’t even naked and I was about to cum.

I tried to warn him, but I didn’t get a chance. His tongue penetrated me again and he twisted his wrist, and I cried out his name as I exploded. My hot release exploded over my chest. It was quickly followed by a rush of embarrassment, because that was not supposed to happen.

I had a whole thing worked out in my head about how this was going to go. It didn’t include cumming because he was eating my ass like it was his favorite dish at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

He didn’t seem to mind. He licked my chest clean and came up to kiss me, the denim of his jeans bordering on painful against my overly sensitive dick. I could taste myself on his tongue, and I wished this weren’t over.

When he pulled away, I was still panting. It was one of the hottest orgasms of my life .

“You didn’t get off,” I managed to say after I caught my breath.

“It’s fine,” he assured me.

I could feel how hard his dick was, and there was no way I was going to let him leave unsatisfied. I pushed his shoulder, and he rolled off of me. I didn’t think. I reached down to the button of his pants and released it, nudging them down. His hips lifted automatically. I didn’t make a slow trip down his body. I’d never been a patient person when there was something I wanted, and his thick dick was exactly what I wanted.

I was practically salivating at the sight of it.

My hand wrapped around the base of his shaft as I leaned over him and took him in my mouth. My lips met my hand, and I began to suck and jerk him in tandem. I wanted to take my time with him. I wanted to take him apart as thoroughly as he’d done me, but like I said, I wasn’t a patient person. Instead, I licked him like he was my favorite flavor of ice cream cone.

I lost myself in the sounds he was making and the salty taste of his precum on my tongue. I lost myself in the way his hands tangled into my hair, gently guiding me along his shaft. I was high on his dick, and then I felt it throb just as he cried out and shot down my throat with a loud cry.

I swallowed down every drop, and we were both smiling when I made my way back up to him.

He circled his arms around me, and I rested my head on his chest. “Was that okay? ”

“That was more than okay,” he answered, pressing a gentle kiss to my forehead. “Best first date ever.”

It really was.

It might not have felt like a first date. It might not have even technically counted as a first date, given the two fake dates we’d been on, but if it counted? It was the best first date of my life.

And if it didn’t, then it was just the best date. Full stop.