Chapter 8 #2
Our teeth clicked and our mouths ate at each other.
I needed this. Needed him. I thought about him yesterday with my family, how easily he’d colluded with them and made them laugh, and all the feelings stuck deep behind my ribs only grew.
I wanted to protect him, keep him in my pocket where I could always defend him. No one would ever hurt him again.
I nipped his lower lip, breaking skin, and he hissed.
“Fuck.” He groaned as I licked the blood that seeped from the cut and trailed down his chin. “You fucking maniac.” He laughed and kissed me again. “That was so hot.”
I gnashed my teeth at him, and he laughed harder, shoving me backward until it was me who hit the wall.
Then, he was in front of me, falling to his knees with his fingers at my fly.
I stared down at him, taking in the bruises that turned his skin pink, purple, green, and a few streaks of sickly yellow, and at the dark hair that hung around his shoulders as he yanked my pants and underwear to my knees.
Was he attractive? Yes, he was, especially when he curled his fingers around my dick and peeked up at me from under long, dark lashes.
He grinned, then leaned forward and took the head into his mouth.
His tongue flicked at my slit, and I groaned, letting my head fall back and clonk against the wall.
Desire sizzled through me as he sucked, using both the pressure of his warm mouth and his tongue to drive me into a state of arousal.
I’d never had a blowjob before. My ex had hated the idea of sucking me off.
Ezra’s mouth made memories I’d never forget as he played my dick like a musical instrument and he was a maestro.
He kissed down the length, tracing the lines of my veins with his lips, before he took me in again, right down his throat. He gagged. I jerked, hand snapping to grab his hair and tug as white-hot pleasure shot through me.
I shuddered and rocked my hips, and he held my thighs, nails digging in and causing the bite of pain to add to all the sensations hitting me.
He made a garbled sound around my length, and my grip in his hair tightened as I fucked myself down his throat. The constricting heat was enough to send me crashing over the edge, and I came.
He swallowed every last bit. When he fell backward onto his ass, he stared up at me with wide eyes and cheeks so flushed he looked ready to combust. “Jesus H. Christ, man. That was the hottest blowjob I’ve ever given.
” He reached up to touch his head with a grin.
“You can pull my hair any time you want.”
I snorted out a laugh as someone outside the curtain cleared their throat.
A woman’s voice echoed through the small room. “Sirs? There’s only one person allowed in at a time. Can you please exit the dressing room after you are decent? You will need to purchase everything you have in there with you.”
The attendant finally realized I was in here. Or was she merely enjoying the sounds and waited until we were done? The thought made me chuckle.
Ezra rolled his eyes, and I gave him a thumbs-up, then pointed at the curtain, and he got the idea fast.
“Yeah, we’ll be out in a second. We’ll buy everything.”
“Thank you.” The sound of hurried footsteps moving away made us both chuckle.
“Worth it,” Ezra murmured, and I couldn’t help but agree.
After we’d purchased the clothes from a very flushed cashier who couldn’t stop stuttering, we left the store with at least ten paper bags in our hands.
The mall was bustling more than when we’d first arrived, and I winced, not impressed by the crowd that had begun to form.
People congregated in the wide corridors, talking and laughing, and I held in the urge to glare at them and tell them to move.
I pulled Ezra over to a metal bench and laid the bags down. I tugged out my phone and typed out a message to him, letting the automated voice speak for me. “I want to get you a phone. We can stay in contact while I’m at work and you can call me if you need to.”
He hesitated, eyebrows furrowed. “Isn’t that expensive?”
I shrugged and flashed him a smile, which caused him to sigh and nod.
Backspacing the first message, I typed another.
"I’ll need you to do all the talking. It’ll take too long for me to type everything out.
Get the type of phone you want no matter the cost, and we’ll add all my details to the contract.
Tell the attendant I’m mute and need to add the details myself. ”
He pursed his lips as he read, then hummed. “All right.”
I nudged his arm and he finally grinned back.
“Is this because I gave you a mind-blowing bj and you want to sext with me?”
I rolled my eyes when he cackled.
After I picked up the bags again, we went into the phone store.
It took an hour to get the phone—“I always wanted a Samsung. I’ve seen people walk around with them and overheard the conversations,” Ezra had said to me in excitement—and when we were done, we were back in the main hall of the mall walking with an added phone to the bags.
We perused the stores in silence, and my gaze slid down to Ezra’s arm that kept bumping against mine.
I slid my hand into his, interlocking our fingers, and he shot me a wide-eyed look.
His brown hair fluttered when we went under a blast of heat.
A smile rounded at the corners of his supple mouth and he leaned into me.
I kissed him, and he moaned against my lips, eyes fluttering shut for a short moment. When I pulled away, his grin was wider.
“Fucking charmer, aren’t you?” he muttered, and I winked.
He went back to window shopping, and I caught the moment his gaze filled with intrigue when we came across a gift shop.
Inside the glass windows was a mannequin with an ugly Christmas sweater, and while that wasn’t something I’d expected him to be interested in, I noticed the way his throat bobbed and how he gripped my hand tighter.
I nudged him, and he shot a quick glance at me. When I pointed at the window, he shook his head fast.
“No, it’s fine.” He laughed, but the fakeness seeped out of it. “I hate Christmas.”
As if on cue, a deep Santa laugh filled the mall, rising above the racket of the busy area.
We were close enough to Santa’s Village to see the top of the castle behind his throne, which was set up in the center of the mall courtyard, so I wasn’t surprised we could hear him.
It was a place for kids to beg for toys from Santa and get their photos taken.
I didn’t believe what Ezra had said. I tugged him in the direction of the store and he groaned.
“I swear, I hate Christmas. It’s all about money and commercialism and fake families and—”
I dragged him through the door of the store to the rack of ugly sweaters behind the mannequin.
He stared at the gaudy mess in wonder, eyes widening slightly as I tugged out a random sweater—green-with-white reindeer patterned over it—and placed it against his chest with raised eyebrows.
“It’s ugly,” he drawled out, eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled.
“Fuck.” He laughed. “When I was a kid, I had this stupid little dream that every year on Christmas, me and my family would wear ugly Christmas sweaters and tease each other about them. I’d have a closet full and every day during the week of Christmas, I’d choose more and more embarrassing ones to make my family laugh.
” His face fell and a darkness swirled in his eyes.
His gaze slid from the sweater I held against his chest to my face.
“Then, my fucking uncle happened. He’s a piece of shit, and my mom was too scared to do anything. ”
I watched him carefully as he took the sweater from me and turned the front toward himself. He touched the fabric, thumb caressing it like he’d fallen into the fantasy of what could’ve been with his family.
I smiled and grabbed another sweater off the rack, this one red with a printed Santa hat. Beneath the image were the words “Slay, Bitches.” Grinning, I nudged the hanger against his arm, and he looked up at it. The moment his eyes met the words, he laughed loudly.
“Oh my fucking God. This is awesome.” He swept his fingertips over the fabric and his laughter grew. “That would be the perfect sweater for you.”
I nodded enthusiastically, and he froze.
“You’re going to buy it?” he asked, and I winked in answer, throwing it over my arm.
I took the green one and did the same, then braced myself for the pain so I could use my voice. “Buy more. For our family.” The familiar pounding in my throat hurt, but I ignored the pain. There was no way I could type with my hands full.
“Really?” His voice wavered, and when I gave him a look, he grinned widely. “All right. Remember, you asked for this.”
I enjoyed every second of his shopping. By the time he was done, he had at least twenty different sweaters, some more adult-rated than others, but all ugly. It was perfect, and I could already imagine Lucy’s face when she saw them. Dalton would find them hilarious.
With another two bags added to our haul, we were back in the mall, and Ezra had the biggest smile I’d ever seen on his face. He had an extra skip in his step.
I ran out to the car to drop off the bags before I found him again in front of a stationery shop, ogling the notepads with intrigue.
His face lit up when he saw me and my heart took off in a hammering beat.
His hand slipped back into mine and he leaned up to kiss me on the cheek.
Warmth spread through my stomach and up into my chest, and I contemplated the new and very nice sensation.
I’d been feeling this a lot around Ezra.
We visited the chocolate store that I’d seen him eyeing on the way in, and I made him buy a whole lot of that, too. He’d given up on the protesting, much to my relief.