Chapter 26 Benji #4
“Your arms,” I say, tracing another vein. “I’ve never — I’ve never been with someone built like you. I can’t get my hands around your bicep. Do you know how insane that is? My brain is short-circuiting.”
“Yeah?” His mouth is on my shoulder. He bites gently and my hips shift in his lap.
“And these veins? What the fuck are those? There’s a vein on your right forearm that I’ve been staring at since Tallahassee.
It runs from your elbow to your wrist and every time you gripped the wheel rim it stood up and I had to look away so I wouldn’t lose my goddamn mind.
I thought about tracing it with my tongue.
I’m confessing this to you right now. I’ve been fantasizing about your veins. ”
His laugh shakes through both our bodies.
The vibration travels from his chest through my back and into my ribs.
His hand drifts down from my chest. Fingertips trailing along my stomach, light and exploratory.
The muscles jump under his touch, and when he reaches the waistband of my pants he pauses. His thumb hooks the elastic and rests.
I’m hard.
I’ve been hard since he pulled me into his lap and the thin fabric of my pants is hiding nothing. From where his hand is resting, his knuckles are an inch from my dick and we both know it.
He doesn’t rush. His left arm stays locked across my upper chest, holding me against him, and his right hand slides from my waistband to the outside of my thigh.
He drags his palm up the fabric, the heel of his hand pressing into the muscle, and the pressure sends a current straight to my dick.
I squirm in his lap and his arm tightens across my chest.
“Stay still,” he whispers against my ear. “Don’t move.”
“I can’t stay still. Staying still is physically impossible when your hand is doing what it’s doing. Stillness is not in my skill set right now. Stillness has left the building. Elvis and stillness are both gone.”
His hand moves from my outer thigh to my inner thigh.
The fabric is thinner there. His palm presses flat and slides upward and the heat of his hand through the cotton is obscene.
He stops just short of where I need him to be and holds, his thumb tracing a small arc on the inside of my leg, and I make a sound that contains the word please although I’m not sure the full word survived.
“Watch the mirror,” he says.
I open my eyes. His face is behind my shoulder, his eyes focused on the glass, watching the way my body moves in response to his hand.
His hand moves the last inch and his palm covers me through the fabric.
The pressure of his grip, firm and certain, makes my hips push up off his lap and a moan breaks out of me that is unfiltered and entirely without shame.
His hand closes around my dick through the thin cotton and the heat of his palm and the size of his hand all register at once.
“Jesus,” he breathes against my neck. I don’t know if it’s a reaction or a prayer but it sends heat through me either way.
He strokes once through the fabric. His hand dragging the length of me, and the friction of cotton against skin under the pressure of his grip is maddening. I grip his forearm with one hand and the armrest of the chair with the other and my knuckles go white on both.
“Mickey. Please. I need —”
He strokes again. The same pace. As if he has all fucking night, which we don’t. We have five minutes. The pace of it when I am coming apart in his lap is the sweetest torture I’ve experienced in my life.
“Slide them down for me,” he says. “Just enough.”
I lift my hips and push the waistband of my pants down just past my hips. Not off. Just enough that his hand can find me without the pants. The cool air hits flushed skin and then his hand is on me.
My head drops back against his shoulder and the sound I make is his name. Just his name. Broken in half by the breath leaving my lungs.
His hand is big. That’s the first coherent thought my brain produces. And the calluses — the rough patches earned from the daily work of rebuilding himself — drag against the most sensitive skin on my body.
“Tell me what feels good.” His mouth presses against my shoulder. “Talk to me. Tell me everything.”
“Your hand. God, your hand. The roughness of it. I can feel every ridge of your palm and it’s — Mickey, I can’t — it’s so good it’s making me stupid. I’m losing words. You’re erasing my vocabulary one stroke at a time.”
He finds a rhythm designed to take me apart piece by piece. His grip adjusts in response to the sounds I make, tighter when I gasp, slower when I moan. His other arm stays locked across my chest, holding me against him so I can’t arch away from the intensity.
Suddenly, he turns loose of me and holds out his open palm below my mouth.
“Spit,” he says, and I do.
“Fuck, that’s hot,” I moan when he uses my spit as lubricant.
I keep watching in the mirror. His arm flexing with every stroke, the bicep and forearm tensing and releasing in a rhythm that makes the veins stand out even more. My stomach contracting with every movement of his fist. His face behind my shoulder, drinking in every second of me coming undone.
“I was afraid I couldn’t give you this,” he murmurs into my ear. “The sounds you’re making. The way your body moves when I touch you. I thought the bullet took this from us, but it didn’t.”
“What you’re doing to me right now is the most — oh God — Mickey, don’t stop.”
I’m making sounds that are definitely reaching the hallway and I don’t care. There is only his hand, his breath, his body behind mine.
The climax builds in a long, rising wave. It’s been building since the door locked, since the first kiss by the sink, since I sat down and felt his bare chest against my back. Every moment stacked on top of the last until the wave is too tall to hold back.
“Mickey, you’re making me feel so good.”
“Are you close?” he asks. “I know you are. I can feel it.” He tightens his grip on my dick and strokes faster. “Come for me. Give me this.”
Give me this.
I come apart in his lap. The release hits me in a wave that curls my spine and locks every muscle from my shoulders to my toes.
He holds me through it, his mouth pressed against the curve of my shoulder, his breathing ragged against my skin.
He doesn’t stop until the last shudder runs through me and my body goes slack against his chest and I’m boneless in his arms.
Neither of us moves. Eventually, I lift my head from his shoulder. The doubt of what he is capable of is gone from his face. What’s there instead is pride.
“That,” I say, still catching my breath, “is what your hands can do to me. I need you to remember this.”
“I’ll never forget.” His mouth curves against my shoulder. “Come here,” he says, and he turns my chin until my mouth meets his.
This kiss is different from every other one tonight. The desperate edge is gone. The tenderness of it after the intensity makes my chest ache.
When we pull apart, his forehead stays against my temple.
His kiss is the softest thing that has happened in this bathroom, his mouth moving against mine like we have all the time in the world.
We don’t. Visiting hours always have an expiration date.
But right now, sitting on his lap with his breath warm on my face, I let myself pretend.
His hands loosen on my back. I climb off his lap to clean up, my legs shaky. The tile is cold under my bare feet and the fluorescent light is doing its absolute worst. None of it matters.
I try to make myself presentable again at the sink. I fix my jeans and splash water on my face while Mickey watches me from his chair. I glance at us in the mirror. Both shirtless. Both a mess.
“We need to put our shirts back on,” I say, grabbing mine from the counter. I hop down and pick his up from the floor, then toss it to him.
I pull mine over my head and spend forty-five seconds wrestling my hair into something that doesn’t scream ‘I let a man wreck me against a bathroom sink’. Then I unlock the door and check the room.
“All clear,” I say, like we’re in a heist movie.
“You watch too many movies,” he says, but he’s smiling.
He wheels out of the bathroom and I follow. The pizza box is still sitting on the tray table where I left it, but nothing is the same. We both know it. Neither of us has to say it.
“I’m starving,” I say. “How about you? Apparently, doing the dirty in a bathroom works up an appetite.”
“Apparently,” he says, and the grin on his face is so wide and so new that I want to photograph it.
I can’t resist leaning down to grab his face and kissing him again. Just because I can. “I can definitely get used to this,” I tell him. “Be forewarned. I’m not going to be able to keep my hands off you. Or my mouth.”
“Looking forward to it,” he says.
I open the pizza box and load up a paper plate with pizza for him.
“How did you know my favorite pizza toppings?” he asks.
I roll my eyes at him. “Seriously? You think I don’t know all kinds of things about you by now? Especially what you like to eat?”
“That’s another reason I’m the lucky one,” he says.
We don’t talk much while we eat. The pizza is good and his knee is touching the side of my thigh. Every few bites he looks at me with a grin that guts me, and I grin back.
After dinner he reaches for my hand. Both of his around one of mine. His thumb on my knuckles. He lifts it and presses his lips against my fingers.
“What time do you have to leave tomorrow?” he asks.
“Early. I’ve got a vendor call tomorrow evening and an early morning venue walk through the day after. I need to allow plenty of time since Miami traffic doesn’t negotiate. I don’t want to talk about tomorrow yet.”
“Then we won’t,” he says.
“I want to talk about tonight. About what just happened in that bathroom. Because I need you to know that wasn’t impulsive. I’ve been thinking about kissing you forever. My hands were shaking. Did you notice?”
“I noticed.”
“Were yours?”