Chapter 39
LINCOLN
Iwoke up certain I’d been hit by a semi-truck, but as I blinked the bedroom into focus, I remembered the reality had been much, much worse.
I was in bed with Hunter wrapped around me like a goddamn octopus, my head aching like I’d slammed it into a wall five hundred times, when in reality all I’d done was ruin Hunter’s life, run to his house, and cry about it until I basically lost consciousness.
Call me the patron saint of…
I didn’t even know.
“Are you awake?” he murmured into the back of my hair.
“Unfortunately.”
“Can we talk?” he asked.
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and I swallowed bile. “Can I have coffee first?”
“Yes. Of course.” He made no move to get out of bed. “Here or the living room?”
“The bottom of the ocean,” I offered as a counterproposal.
“The living room,” Hunter said, giving me a squeeze before untangling his burning hot body from mine.
I immediately mourned the absence of him, but it was my quest for closeness that pulled me out of bed and forced me to the couch.
Hunter had put a pair of his pajamas on me at some point, and I appreciated that he’d dressed me in his clothes instead of my own.
There was no real reason for it other than I liked it.
I liked the way his pants were a little too big around my waist. That, even knotted, they hung a little too low.
Hiking them up so I didn’t trip, I made my way to the couch and sat down.
Hunter was there seconds later with a mug of coffee for each of us, his dark scruff looking soft and gorgeous.
Just like the rest of him. Even with his hair wild from sleep and purple bags bruising beneath his eyes, Hunter Covington was a catch of a man.
He deserved someone so much better than me, but he didn’t seem to care.
“Are you breaking up with me?” I asked, burning the words out of my mouth with a swallow of still too hot coffee.
“What?” His brows raised, and bless him, he looked genuinely shocked.
“Are you breaking up with me?” I asked again, the words hurting marginally less the second time. I wondered how often I’d need to utter them before the sting lessened to something manageable.
“Why would I break up with you?”
“Because of what happened last night.”
“How was any of that your fault?” he asked.
I didn’t appreciate the obtuse conversation, and I had half a mind to pour my scalding coffee all over his head.
“It was because of my job,” I reminded him. “Or did you not get the whole story from your brother or your business partner?”
“My brother told me my former business partner was trying to blackmail you,” he said, setting his coffee down on the table and grabbing my knees. “That’s not your fault.”
“It…what do you mean former?”
“Former,” he repeated. “I told them last night before I left I wouldn’t work with someone like that. He can leave or I will; it makes no difference to me.”
“How can you say that?” I leaned over and set my coffee next to his, frowning down at the way his fingers wrapped around my kneecaps like they’d been molded to fit there.
“How could I not?” he asked, moving his hands from my legs to my face, the same thoughtful grip against my cheeks, fingers sculpted to hold me in all the right ways, and I blinked hard, fighting back an embarrassing wave of tears. “I love you. I’m in love with you, Lincoln.”
I clenched my jaw, fighting the way my chin quivered at his confession, at his truth. It was far from the first time he’d told me he loved me, but maybe…it was the first time I believed it.
“I’m sorry,” I whimpered, hating the water in my words, the tremble as I fought through every syllable.
“I’m not.” He brought our faces together, mouths so fucking close. “I’m the opposite of sorry.”
“Did you lose your job over me?”
“If I lose my job, it’s because of Scott Shaw, not because of you.” Hunter exhaled against my lips. “But I hope the right decision is made, and if not, that’s better for me in the long run anyway. I don’t want to be tied to a firm that rewards that kind of behavior.”
I wanted to believe him.
He sounded so earnest and true, but it was hard. It was so fucking hard.
“I was so scared when I couldn’t find you last night,” he said next. “I went to your apartment first, then I went to Marshall’s, and then I realized what a fool I was. I knew exactly where you’d be.”
“I came home,” I murmured, blinking hard.
Hunter’s fingers swiped stray tears off my cheeks, and I went slack in his arms, letting him hold me up.
He pulled me in, curled his arms around my shoulders and held me like he had the night before in the shower.
The level of coddling should have been embarrassing, but I’d never felt more protected than I did when Hunter held me, and I needed that to be okay.
My relationship with Hunter had taught me so much about myself, and not just in the dominant and submissive way.
He’d given me a safe and non-judgmental space to explore parts of myself that I’d tried very hard to keep in the dark, and in shining a light on them he’d shined a light on me.
I was whole because of Hunter, but more than that, I was loved.
“I know you did.” He kissed the top of my head, and I relaxed against him.
Hunter didn’t complain, didn’t groan, didn’t even move.
He held me there on his couch for as long as he’d held me on the floor of his shower.
Maybe even longer. When I pulled away from him to drink some coffee, he watched me quietly like I was a deer about to bolt in front of a car in the middle of the night.
It felt a little like that, I realized, swallowing the room-temperature coffee before sliding off the couch and onto my knees.
“What are—” he protested, trying to hook his hand under my armpit and pull me back up. “What are you doing?”
“Daddy,” I whispered, placing my hands on my thighs palms up, something I’d seem Silas do more times than I could count. Fuck, it was powerful. Heat surged through me, up from my stomach and into my throat, making me sit straighter, chin tipped up even as my lashes fluttered.
“What do you need?” he asked, pushing my hair back from my face. “What do you want?”
“Just this,” I said softly. “Just you.”
“You have me,” Hunter promised, climbing to his feet and standing in front of me.
His dick was soft, but he pulled his pants down anyway and dragged his flaccid tip against my mouth.
I opened for him because it felt like the right thing to do, and he fed the entire soft length of his shaft onto my tongue.
He was in me fully, my nose buried in the trimmed hairs at the bottom of his happy trail, and I huffed a breath out of my nose that had Hunter shivering against me.
“You’re perfect,” he said softly, fingers sliding through my hair as his cock thickened against my tongue. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted. More important than any job or any other man could ever be.”
I knew he meant his brothers, and I blinked hard.
“My priority is always you,” he said next, another promise. “Whatever you need, it’s yours.”
Precum pulsed out of his cock, painting the very back of my tongue.
It was impossible to breathe without getting erect myself, his cock very nearly fully hard, pressing against the roof of my mouth and my throat.
I swallowed around him, smiling to myself at the way he groaned and thrust his hips against my face.
“Is that what you need?” he asked, tightening his grip in my thoroughly finger-combed hair. “You need this cock in your throat?”
I groaned and nodded, reaching between my legs when Hunter started to pump into my mouth in earnest. Precum smeared around my mouth, and I was desperate for the taste of him, the stretch of him.
I wanted Hunter deeper inside of me, and not in my mouth, but I trusted him to know what I needed and give it to me.
He always had, and I was certain there on the floor of his living room—of our living room—he always would.
I nodded around him, groaning low when the first burst of cum shot against my tongue.
He was so deep in my mouth I barely tasted him, but he spilled his load into my throat, entire body going tense until his orgasm settled into something soft around the edges.
Hunter tugged my hair until I looked up at him, and the admiration in his eyes was almost enough to send me over the edge myself.
“I don’t want you to come yet,” he said, pulling my mouth away from his cock with an obscenely wet pop. Strings of saliva connected his cock to my mouth, and the way his chest heaved with every breath was hotter than it had any right to be.
“I’m close,” I warned, rubbing my palms over the tops of my thighs.
“Well…” Hunter licked his lips and stroked his half-hard cock inches away from my face. “Don’t make that my problem.”
A shiver tore through me, and I managed a jerky nod.
“Yes, Sir.”
He licked his lips again and, on instinct, I licked mine, chasing the sweaty and musky taste of his dick down my throat.
“I like that. But I think you forget who I am sometimes, don’t you?”
Another hot rush of tears filled my eyes, and I offered him another nod, this one weaker.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Is that my fault?”
“No,” I rasped.
He disagreed, “I think it is.”
“Daddy—”
“I’ll make it right, though,” he interrupted me, tucking his dick back into his pants and taking a half-step away from me. “I’ll make sure you never forget who I am to you…who you are to me.”
I’d never felt so weak and so strong at the same time. I wanted to crumble and build myself up with the same breaths, the same actions.
“Go back to bed,” Hunter said slowly. “Get some lube and one of your toys.”