Chapter 36 Riggs
RIGGS
Lunch with Marshall went better than I had expected it to.
He and Smith talked out whatever they needed to talk out while I paced a hole in the floor of the bathroom, and everything was mostly easy after that.
Marshall was protective of his brothers, and that wasn’t something I could fault him for.
Toren and Ev had been the same about each other, and while I didn’t have siblings myself, I understood the bond.
We were on our way back to the apartment a few hours later when Smith’s phone went crazy with a series of text messages from his friend Lincoln, someone I was also yet to meet.
“Will you read them to me?” Smith asked, angling the phone mount toward the passenger side of the car.
“You’re alive!” I read him the first one. “Right? Marshall texted Silas and said he could come home. I don’t think he’d let him come home if your body was there.”
Smith chuckled, shaking his head.
“Are there more?”
“He told Silas you’d done well for yourself.” I paused, looking up at the stoplight. “Are you sure you want me to read all of these?”
“Do you mind?” he asked.
“I want to meet him,” I read the last one out just as another one came in. “When can I meet him?”
Smith banged his head against the steering wheel, glancing up in time to see the light turn green.
“What do you want me to tell him?” I asked.
“I guess it depends on when you want to meet him.” Smith groaned, flexing his fingers around the steering wheel until his knuckles were white. “This feels like a lot of work. Are you sure you’re sure about me?”
I let the phone screen turn dark, swallowing hard at the nervous simplicity of the question.
“Do you doubt me?”
“No,” he rasped.
“Then I want to meet him whenever you want me to meet him.”
The screen on Smith’s phone lit up again and we both looked at it and read the single word Lincoln had sent.
“Sure,” I answered out loud, and by text. “Today is good. Come to the shop if you want.”
“You’re not open today,” Smith protested.
“I know.” I put his phone back into the mount. “But it’s neutral.”
“He’ll ask for a tattoo.”
“I’ll give him one.”
Another incoming message that Smith didn’t even bother to read.
“He’ll be there in an hour,” I said.
“I bet he will.”
We got back to the shop, and Smith trailed me up to the apartment like a teenager who knew he was about to get grounded. I didn’t understand the hesitation, and I didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable about anything that had happened already in the day or anything that was about to happen.
“How do you think it went with Marshall?” I asked once we were in the quiet safety of my apartment.
Smith scratched his temple. “It went better than I thought, to be honest.”
“That’s good. And how do you think it will go with Lincoln?”
“Lincoln likes everybody.”
Smith smiled and walked into my open arms. He pressed his forehead against the front of my chest, his arms limp at his sides. “I’m not worried about him.”
“You?”
“It’s a lot.”
“We can tell Lincoln to do it another day,” I offered, but Smith shook his head. “Might as well rip off the bandage or something.”
“If that’s what you want.” I dragged my hands over the top of his head, smoothing his hair back and letting my fingers trail down the curve of his neck and over the top of his spine. Smith shivered in my arms, heat radiating off of him.
“I want,” he muttered, and I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t only talking about wanting me to meet Lincoln.
“Okay.”
I placed my hands on the tops of his shoulders and gave him a gentle push down to his knees.
Smith went more than willingly, wrapping his arms around the backs of my thighs and resting his cheek against my leg.
I kept one hand in his hair and fought my pants undone with the other.
I was soft, but I stroked my cock a couple of times anyway, easing it toward Smith’s already parted lips.
He took me into his mouth without being told, swallowing my entire length down to the root. He held me there, heavy against his tongue, knowing full well the odds of me getting hard were slim. That wasn’t his goal with the act, and it wasn’t my intention.
Smith was as overwhelmed by the events of the past two days as I was, and this was relaxing to him. This was peaceful, and I loved that I could give him this quiet safety on his knees, in my arms, or wherever our bodies found each other.
“God, your mouth.” I tightened my fingers in his hair and fucked my cock against his tongue. Smith moaned around me, blinking up with wide—and thankful—eyes. “Do you want to touch yourself?”
He nodded eagerly.
“Do it.”
He reached down with both hands and tore his pants undone in record time.
Smith grabbed his balls with one hand, his cock with another, and the resulting moan he let out at first touch was enough to send a flare of interest down the length of my still mostly soft shaft.
I was grateful Smith didn’t take it as an invitation to try harder.
He was content to suckle on me and touch himself, and I loved that about him.
I’d told him his pleasure was what mattered here, and he’d taken that at face value and never doubted me.
It was because of the trust he had in me, and that I had in him, that we were able to make this work.
Sometimes, it worked even in ways Ev and I never had, and that brought up all different kinds of grief that had no place in the moment when Smith swirled his tongue around my slit.
“Adventurous,” I murmured, tightening my hold in his hair and pulling him so his lips pressed against my skin. Smith liked it rough, and I was happy to give it to him the way he needed. “Are you close?”
His hands moved quickly, just out of sight, but I could tell by the hitch of his breath before he answered that he was very close to coming. We’d had a big morning, big twenty-four hours, and he obviously needed to let off some steam.
I curled my hand around the back of his head to hold him against me, and I pinched his nostrils closed with the other.
Smith’s eyes went wide and he sputtered, mouth opening wider to try and catch and breath.
I thrust deeper into him, the crown of my cock sliding heavy and hot against the back of his tongue.
His hands moved faster as his eyes began to water and his cheeks turned the most beautiful shade of pink I think I’d ever seen in my life.
“Just like that, baby. Come for me just like that.”
And did he ever.
Smith came with a garbled cry and the graze of teeth against the base of my shaft.
His entire body jerked, and I kept his nose closed off through the whole of it, only letting go once his muscles stopped jerking.
When I released him, he sucked in a desperate breath so large it made him choke, and I went down to the floor with him, taking him into my arms and kissing the top of his head.
He grabbed my shirt in his hands, cum webbed between his fingers, but I didn’t mind the mess.
It was easy to haul Smith into my lap, into my arms, and hold him while he settled, while he fought back tears he felt himself too brave to shed.
I found comfort for myself in the weight of him, the way his chest heaved with every breath, the way he pressed his hand against my ribs to feel my heart beat in what was certainly time with his own.
“Better?” I asked once he’d calmed.
“Yes.” He blinked heavily, shoulders sagging on the exhale.
“As much as I want to let you enjoy this moment, your friend is going to be here any minute.”
The reminder of Lincoln’s arrival was enough to spur him into action, and like an awkward baby deer, Smith was out of my lap, long limbs not quite cooperating in the way he wanted.
I helped him up to his feet and walked him into the bathroom where I leaned him against the counter while I turned the shower on for him.
“Are you good on your own?” I asked, brushing his hair back from his forehead.
He nodded, still half-drunk with lust, and I helped him into the shower and closed the door behind him.
I left the bathroom myself, stripping out of my shirt and tossing it into the hamper.
It was messy with his cum and sweat and tears, and that was not the first impression I wanted to make with Smith’s best friend.
I pulled on a black band shirt I’d stolen from Damon at some point, then sat down on Smith’s side of the bed, nearest the bedside lamp that had once belonged to Ev. I traced my fingertips over the base of it, sighing and letting my chin drop against my chest.
There was no betrayal in falling in love, I reminded myself.
It’s what he would have wanted for me, and he would have wanted it for me long before it had been something I entertained for myself.
Ev would have been upset I walked away from Toren, but I hoped he understood how hard it was after he’d gone.
We’d all suffered such a monumental loss, and there was no comparing what it meant for me to lose a husband, for Toren to lose his brother, for their parents to lose a son.
“You would have loved him,” I whispered, seconds before the water shut off in the bathroom.
The thing about Smith was, he would lose himself in pleasure, but he was always right there on the brink of attention, ready to do whatever needed to be done.
In that moment, I made it my mission to take him apart so thoroughly he would have no choice but to wallow in his own pleasure.
I wanted to give him a weekend—at least—where there were no responsibilities or expectation beyond feeling good.
He deserved that.
And so did I.
The sound of his damp footfalls grew louder as he came from the bathroom into the bedroom, and he came around to face me, towel low slung around his hips. The knot he’d done barely held the terrycloth up and it was no work at all to flick it loose and watch the towel fall to the floor.
Smith was still half-hard, his dick flushed and swollen.
I took him into my hand and traced the edge of my thumb through his wet slit, pressing down a little harder than was nice.
He grunted, bracing himself against my shoulders, back bowing as he breathed through the pain of my fingernail digging into that most sensitive part of him.
It, of course, had the opposite effect. Smith’s cock didn’t deflate; it only grew thicker and harder in my hand, which had me laughing at him under my breath.
“Do you really want to introduce me to your best friend like this?” I teased, letting go of his cock. It sprang against his stomach, hard and wanting.
“Not particularly.”
I hummed. “Will a second orgasm make this go away?”
“I doubt it.”
I laughed at his honesty, at the smile on his lips as he said the words.
“I want to take you on a trip soon. Away from here, no phones, no—”
“Yes,” he interrupted me, nodding eagerly. “I want that.”
“In the meantime, though?”
I stroked Smith’s cock and his entire body swayed forward.
“Maybe one more,” he murmured. “If you can be quick.”
I pulled him onto my lap, spitting into my palm and making a tight fist around his dick. “Oh, I can be quick baby. Don’t worry about that. I’m more concerned with if you can keep up.”
“I can…” Smith trailed off when I stroked him from root to tip. He dropped his head against my shoulder, cursing under his breath.
“You can?”
“I can keep—”
He was interrupted by the jingling of bells downstairs, of someone trying to open the door. Three seconds later, his phone vibrated from the pile of clothes on the floor and neither of us needed to look at it to know it was Lincoln.
I pushed him off my lap and brushed a chaste kiss across the leaking tip of his dick.
“I guess we’ll have to table this one for later,” I said, sliding over and standing. He collapsed onto the bed, burying his face into the sheets and letting out a frustrated scream. “Get dressed, Smith. We’ll pick this up later, I promise.”