Chapter Seventeen
Things He Needs to Know About Himself
Gabe
Ididn’t mean to frighten him, but the expression on his face right now has me thinking I did just that.
His body has gone taut, and every kiss now feels lifeless.
With my palms cupping his face, I graze my fingers along his skin, hoping to bring him back from his stupor—instead, I find tears beginning to well up in his eyes.
“I’m sorry if I went too far, but you need to—”
His breath quivers when he interrupts me to say, “Gabe, if you finish that sentence, I may break.” His dampened lashes flutter as he tries to hold back his emotions.
I’ve never truly hated anyone in all of my existence, but right now, I can confirm with no hesitation that I hate whoever did this to him with every fiber of my being.
I hold him firmly, looking into his eyes when I speak. “From this moment on, if you ever break, just know I’ll be there to catch you.”
A flash of lightning illuminates the room as our lips collide, and we both let out a muffled moan when he pulls me in until I’m so close it’s as if we’ve become one.
The taste of citrusy hops floods my senses with every swirl of his tongue.
My hips involuntarily grind into him as he wraps his legs around me, leaving room for his hands to grab my ass when he thrusts against me.
“Gabe…” He tries to pull away to speak, but my hands refuse to sever the connection, holding his neck so tightly I fear I may be hurting him. “Gabe…” He chooses words over air the second our mouths part. “I need you inside me more than I’ve ever needed anything before in my life.”
The yearning in his heavy-lidded eyes constricts my chest. I swallow the lump in my throat that quickly formed from the realization—I simply cannot resist him.
“Anything for you.” I give him one last fleeting kiss before fulfilling Ender’s needs—the goal I have set forth for the foreseeable future.
I sit back on my heels and put a pillow under his ass, then grab the lube and a condom and quickly slick my fingers up.
With barely any pressure, I circle his hole while I tease his perked nipples with my teeth, pulling the sweetest moan-laced gasp from him.
When the first finger breaks through and glides into him easily, Ender whimpers, and I take him into my mouth, teasing his head while I stretch him.
Even with his hands caressing my scalp, encouraging me on, I can feel the tension in his body—he’s holding back.
He’s repressing his passion, muting every moan and whimper, and I can’t have that.
I pop off his dick and lock my eyes with his.
“Ender, if you don’t get out of your head and enjoy what I’m about to do to you, I will find whoever hurt you and make them regret the day they were born.
” His darkened eyes communicate more than they ever have before—I think he knows I’d do it for him.
My voice is gravelly and filled with desire when I say, “Now let me hear you.” The moment I push on his prostate with the two fingers I’ve worked into him and massage, he finally lets out an intoxicating cry of pleasure.
Then another, and another. My dick jumps as each one reverberates through my body.
My mouth, as if driven by a mind of its own, leaves marks all over his inner thighs and chest while I continue to play with that sweet spot, even as he squirms against me with the intensity of it.
After a long, drawn-out moan from me licking his taint and up through the crease in his groin, ending at his hip bone where I clamp down with my teeth, I’ve had enough—I need to be inside him now, just as much as he wants me to be.
I pull my fingers out of him and start to roll the condom onto my sensitive cock, after swiping my thumb over it to capture the precum forming at the tip.
While one hand readies me to enter him, I use my already-slicked thumb to collect the small trickle of precum from Ender’s slit, mixing them together with my fingers right before shoving them into his open mouth.
The unintelligible words that he tries to say around my fingers while I twirl them with his tongue have me chuckling.
Tugging him by his mouth just enough to get his attention onto me, I press the very tip of my cock into his hole.
“When I fuck you,” I tell him, “I want to hear every moan, every whimper, every word you can use to describe the pleasure I’m giving you.
” I push in a little more edging until the head is through, causing both of us to gasp and Ender to arch his back.
With one last twirl around his tongue, I pull my fingers from his mouth—Ender sucking them on the way out—and place my hands on his hips before giving one final instruction.
“And make sure the neighbors hear you.” Then slam forward into him, relishing in his breathy cry that trails off in a guttural groan.
He wraps his arms around the back of his knees and hikes them up further, granting me better access as I begin thrusting relentlessly, bottoming out each time.
My hands find their temporary home on his thighs, and I lean into them, getting close enough to make direct eye contact.
I want a close-up view of the exact moment his every reservation vanishes.
And then with a sigh. He gives in to the pleasure, his inhibitions finally falling away.
Finally giving me everything. I fuck into him again and again, symphony of his rapture echoing through the room and escaping down the hallway.
If anyone else were in the house, they’d hear the vulgar groaning and the slapping of my skin against his, and finding the musky scent of sweat and sex in the air.
“Harder…fuck. Your cock inside me fe…unnggghhh…perfect…don’t stop.”
I’m not letting this end as quickly as he thinks. I slow my pace to long deliberate thrusts, and just watching my cock disappear and reappear from his hole is mesmerizing—I could watch it all day and never get tired.
“It’s absolutely beautiful how well you’re swallowing my cock.
” Ender lets out a sinful moan in response, his tongue darting out to lick his pouty lips as a flush of pink spreads across his pale cheeks.
Fuck he’s perfect. Heat prickles up my spine as a shiver runs all the way to my fingertips.
I’m so enamored by him that I didn’t realize I’d stopped moving.
“What happened? Why’d you…”
“You’re stunning, Bean.” I can’t help interrupting him, my heart pounding with the overwhelming desire to make him mine.
He chuckles nervously, with a one-sided grin just before he hides in the crook of his arm, and it only confirms my words.
Even in his shyness, I’m drawn into his orbit like air to my lungs.
If I ever thought I could deny it before, I’m helpless against it now.
Ender’s presence in my life has become a downright necessity.
Moving over him until our bodies are flush, I nuzzle into him until he reveals that same charming smile that threw me for a loop a month ago.
“Don’t hide from me,” I mumble against his lips. “How do you not know how beautiful you are?”
I lean into his warm palm after his fingers finish combing through my hair.
“How do you see through my wall so easily?” The look of wonder in his eyes tells me he has no clue just how deep my feelings for him really are.
“I’m not looking through your wall, Ender.” I hesitate, making sure I’m careful with my words so I don’t scare him off again. “I climbed over the wall and joined you. And I’ll be here until you’re ready to smash it to pieces with me.”
I’m woken up by Ender talking in his sleep again.
Tonight’s dreaming doesn’t seem to be as disturbing as the other times, but I can still hear the sadness in his mumbling.
He hasn’t mentioned any details of what he’s dreaming about, but I know it has to do with his parents—he’s said “Mom” and “Dad” multiple times.
Every time I feel him tense up and it sounds like his dreams are escalating, I tuck him into me a little closer and he settles down for a while.
Earlier tonight I thought I ruined the moment by telling him I planned on staying by his side until he was ready to let me fully in. The puzzled expression he had stuck on his face until I finally kissed him saddened me. Does he really think it’s impossible for someone to want to be with him?
By 5 a.m. I’m completely exhausted, but I’ve been awake so long I need to use the bathroom. I’m able to wiggle out from underneath him slowly enough for him to stay asleep.
When I return, he’s starfished on his stomach with his face half under a pillow and one of his bare ass cheeks outside the covers.
“Stop staring at me and come back to bed.”
I chuckle as I climb back into bed, throwing one leg and an arm over him.
“Did you sleep okay?” I can’t imagine he feels rested, even though he hadn’t actually woken up from his dreams all night.
“Yeah, as good as it gets.”
“Is it always that bad?”
He turns over under my limbs to face me. “What do you mean?”
Fuck, does he not know he talks in his sleep? “You were just talking in your sleep a lot tonight.”
I can see in his eyes that this is news to him.
“You said ‘tonight.’ Have I talked on other nights too?”
“Ender, you’ve talked in your sleep almost every time you’ve slept in my presence.” There are those confused brows again.
“Even on the video calls?” The concern in his tone is growing with every question.
I nod and cup the back of his neck. “Don’t get in your head about it. It’s not a big deal, I promise.”
When he closes his eyes, I pull him in closer and press my lips to his forehead.
“How much do you know?” he whispers into my chest,
“Nothing more than you dream about your parents a lot.”
The silence lasts way too long, but he hasn’t fallen back asleep yet. “Do you want to talk about it?”
More silence.
“You don’t have to, Bean.”
He interrupts my attempt to reassure him as our lips connect. “My parents were drug addicts.”
I’m not surprised by this information. It was one of my assumptions from the things he mumbled while dreaming.
“Well, they weren’t always addicts. It started when I was eight or nine.” His breath whooshes out into the crook of my neck before he continues. “They weren’t that bad, I guess, until a few months before my tenth birthday.”
The muscles in his back twitch just enough for me to notice. I massage them softly and offer some encouragement by nuzzling into his hair.
“That was the last birthday party I had. It was such a disaster.” He huffs—apparently, his disbelief hasn’t faded. “It was just my parents’ friends there, except…”
I don’t know who moves first when I roll on my back and he wraps himself around me, his arms tucked under mine with his hands gripping my shoulders.
“Except who, Ender?” I whisper.
“Matthew Rogers.”
Slowly, the dots begin to connect, and things start to make a little more sense.
“So, you went to elementary school with him?” I ask. This one, I can’t figure out on my own. “But he said you went to high school together. It seemed like he remembered you fondly.”
“Matt’s parents were so angry when they picked him up. By that time, everyone had stopped using the bathroom to shoot up or whatever their drug of choice was.”
It breaks my heart more when I feel his body trembling against mine.
“We stayed in my room the whole time. When the doorbell rang, we ran to get it before his parents came in, but it was too late—they let themselves in.”
He’s quiet for a minute while I tighten my hold on him.
“Matt’s father threatened my dad with calling CPS if he didn’t straighten his shit out.
They refused to let him be friends with me after the party.
” His fingers dig into my shoulders. “We’d known each other since kindergarten.
They were the only parents who even considered letting their kid come to my house at that point. ”
“I’m guessing you didn’t hangout again until high school?”
“Yeah, senior year. A year after I left my parents, he started talking to me more than the occasional ‘hey’ in the hallways. I figured his parents said it was okay now that my parents weren’t in the picture, but I’m sure Mrs. A had something to do with that.”
I think twice before asking the question, but I need to know. “When did you change your name?”
His eyes are glassy when he looks up at me. “After high school. As soon as I turned eighteen, I knew I wanted to, but Mrs. A convinced me to wait until I was out of school. She said it would’ve been more of a hassle to get it done before graduation.”
With a gentle kiss to his forehead, I ask, “What’s your real name?”
“Ender Phoenix.” He smirks, knowing that wasn’t what I meant.
I playfully bop him on the head with the hope of keeping the mood light. “What was your birth name, Ender Phoenix? Matt called you—”
He cuts me off with a whisper. “Kyle Roberts.”
I swipe my thumb over his pursed lips.
“I haven’t said that name in almost ten years. Feels weird.” His short chuckle feels like a weight just lifted from his shoulders, even if just a little.
“Ender suits you better. Much hotter than Kyle.”
With a roll of his eyes, he says, “Yeah, that was so what I was aiming for.”
“Call it a bonus—owwww.” He soothes over where he pinched me with an amused smile.
“So, how did you come up with your real name?”
“A song from a band I really like—at least the first name. Connor and Kaden took me to Durham to see them. They were my first concert.”
“Sounds like that was a special night.”
“One of the best.” He gifts me with that genuine smile he so rarely shows.
“I think it’s pretty safe to say Phoenix has to do with your tattoo.”
“Yeah,” he says with a pensive expression.
Instead of explaining any further, he huffs and climbs out of bed. “If you don’t get out of bed and get us coffee by the time I get back,” he says, “I’m going to suck your dick until you’re about to come, then leave you with blue balls.” He flashes me a devilish grin as he closes the bathroom door.
“You say that like it’s a punishment. Edge me, baby, please!”