Chapter 35 Wes
Iput my hands on his face. My thumbs along his jaw. I hold him there because sometimes he looks at me and then slides away, the eyes going to my mouth or my shoulder or somewhere that is not all the way in, and I am not letting him slide tonight. He meets me. All the way.
He kisses me, his mouth opening against mine.
His hands move from my chest to my neck, and a low sound escapes my throat, one I can’t control, can’t hold back.
His hands are in my hair, his body close, and a familiar warmth spreads through me, yet it’s different now.
The man beneath those hands has changed.
I’ve been kissed by Luca Berger in this apartment countless times, and each time he’s given me something. This is the first time he’s taking.
He walks me backward. Down the hallway to the bedroom.
He pushes me down on the bed and I sit and look up at him.
His eyes are dark and his mouth is wet from mine and I am waiting for him to tell me what he wants.
I have spent two and a half years setting the pace because the pace was what he needed. I am not setting anything tonight.
He pulls my shirt over my head. His mouth comes to the inside of my wrist and he traces the ink with his tongue, slow, and the taste of his breath on my skin makes my hand reach for his hip. He catches it. Presses it flat against the bed.
"Let me," he says.
My breath catches. "Yeah. Okay."
He pulls his shirt off. He stands between my legs and lets me look.
His chest, his stomach, the line of his hips.
He is letting me look at him the way he lets me look at him only when we are alone and the door is closed and the world outside this room has no jurisdiction.
Except that is not what is happening. The door to the hallway is open.
The balcony is open. The air is coming through.
He is standing in front of me with the door open and his body bare and he is here.
I watch him and I do not look away.
He drops to his knees between my thighs. He hooks his fingers into the waistband of my shorts and pulls them down and my cock is hard against my stomach and his hand wraps around me and strokes once, slow, and my jaw drops and I hear my own breathing change.
"Luca." His name breaks in my mouth the way it always has but for a different reason. Not careful. Not holding.
"I've got you."
He lowers his mouth. His tongue on the head of my cock, licking the precome away, and the taste of me is on his lips when he takes me between them.
My hand goes to the back of his head. My fingers curl into his hair and hold.
He takes me deeper, his tongue flat along the underside, and the sound I make is low and wrecked and I can feel it in my own chest, the vibration of it, the way the sound strips something away that has been in place for years.
"Fuck." My hips lift. "Fuck, Luca, your mouth."
He works me slow. His hand around the base, his mouth on the rest, the rhythm deliberate, and I realize he is not rushing because he does not want to rush.
The man who used to let me set the clock is holding the clock now and he is running it at his own speed.
I feel every second of it. I feel every inch of his mouth on me and my thighs shake against his shoulders and when he pulls off and licks a stripe from root to tip I groan with my head tipped back and my chest heaving and no part of me is managing any of this.
"Come up here," I say. "Come up here before I lose it."
"Not yet." He grins up at me and his eyes are glazed and bright and entirely his and I have never seen him look like this.
I have seen Luca on his knees in this apartment before and every time I could feel the performance underneath, the version of himself that was proving something, giving me something, being good at something.
This is a man who is on his knees because he wants to be there. He takes me deep again, all the way, his nose pressed against my skin, and my back arches off the bed and the sound I make is guttural, raw, and I have given up. I have given up managing anything.
He pulls off. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He stands and pushes his own shorts down and I look at his cock, hard and straining, and I let him see what looking at him does to me.
"Lie back," he says.
I lie back on the bed. The sheets are the gray ones I put on the bed because he was coming, the soft ones, and I had not thought about what it would feel like to lie on them and watch him reach past me for the lube and slick his fingers while I am looking up at him.
I had not thought about how his face would look from underneath with the fan turning above him and the light from the hallway on one side of his jaw. I watch him.
"Spread your legs for me," he says.
I do. My thighs fall open and he settles between them and presses one finger inside me and I breathe out long and ragged and my hand grips the sheet. His finger is slow and careful and then it is not careful. It curls and I gasp and my hips rock down.
"More," I say.
A second finger. He scissors them apart and I moan and my cock twitches against my stomach.
He leans down and his tongue is flat across the head of my cock while his fingers work me open and the sound I make is loud enough for the neighbors to hear through the walls and I do not care.
I have spent fifteen years making sounds that were contained and appropriate and calibrated for the room and the sound coming out of me now is none of those things and I want him to hear it.
I want him to hear exactly what he is doing.
"Luca, please." My voice is wrecked and I do not try to fix it. "I need you inside me. Now."
"Yeah?"
"Now. Fuck me. Please."
He pulls his fingers out. He slicks his cock and lines up and presses inside me and I take him in one long, tight slide.
His eyes stay open. My eyes stay open. His body fills me, hot and slick, and I grip him and he holds still all the way inside me with his hands braced on the bed and my legs wrapped around his hips and my heels pressing into his lower back.
"Okay?" he says.
"Don't you dare stop."
He starts to move. Slow. He pulls almost all the way out and pushes back in and I feel every inch of him and the drag of him inside me makes my nails bite into his shoulders. His body meets mine on every thrust and my cock is trapped between us, hard and leaking against both our stomachs.
"There," I say. "Right there. Harder."
He gives me harder. He shifts the angle and my back arches and my mouth opens and the sound that comes out of me is nothing like the locker room, nothing like the bench, nothing like the hotel rooms or the buses or the fifteen years of being the man who keeps his register even and his voice below the line where someone might wonder what's underneath.
This is the sound underneath all of that.
He presses his forehead against mine. "Look at me."
I look at him. His face is close and his eyes are dark and I am looking at him and he is inside me and there is nothing between us. His body in mine and his breath on my face and the rhythm we are building together.
He wraps his hand around my cock and strokes in time with his hips. I gasp, my head thrown back against the pillow, and he leans down and bites the tendon of my neck and I groan and my body tightens around him.
"I'm close," I say. "Luca, I'm close."
"Yeah. Me too."
"Come inside me." I put my hand on his face and pull him back to look at me. "I want to feel you."
He holds my gaze and moves deeper and my body goes taut underneath him and I come hard, his hand on my cock, the wave breaking through me, and my body clamps down around him and he follows me with a groan he buries in my neck, his hips stuttering, spilling inside me, my name on his mouth.
Both of us breathing. His chest against mine.
The slick mess between our stomachs and the sweat on his skin and the shake in his arms as he holds himself above me.
He is still inside me. My hand is on the back of his neck, my fingers in his hair, and his breathing is the only sound in the room besides the ocean.
He pulls out carefully. I make a soft sound at the loss.
He goes to the bathroom and comes back with a warm cloth and cleans my stomach, my thighs.
I watch him do it. He does not ask me if I'm okay.
He does not ask me what I need. He knows what I need and he is doing it and the knowing is quiet and precise and it is the same way I have known him for three years, except that he is the one doing it to me, and I have not been on this side of the knowing before.
He drops the cloth on the floor and lies down beside me and I pull him against my chest and my arm settles around him heavy and warm.
"I love you," I say into his hair.
"I love you."
He is quiet for a minute. His heartbeat under my hand. The fan. The water.
"Nine-point-seven," he says. His voice is loose and half-gone.
I look over at him. "You are not rating this."
"I'm rating the ambiance. The ocean sounds are an asset. The sheets are a surprise bonus. Point-three deduction for the stove light you left on in the kitchen."
"The stove light is a safety feature."
"The stove light is a six."
I put my hand over his mouth. He grins against my palm and then he kisses it, soft, and the grin fades into something quieter and he puts his head back on my chest and closes his eyes.
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