Chapter 16 Galen
Galen
I’m shaking.
But somehow I find the wherewithal to hook my arms under Sab’s strong shoulders and haul him up the bed.
His mouth is wrecked. That beautiful jaw has got to be aching, and I have the fecking cure.
I am the cure.
Tonight, anyway.
I claim that mouth. Then I tip him onto his back, trusting that he’ll tap out if he needs to, and crowd over him. “What’s on your mind when you think about fucking men?”
Sab swallows. “Fucking them?”
“Or them fucking you. Blowing you. It all counts—it’s all sex.”
I’m hooked on his answer, whatever it may be. But my hands wander as I wait for him to gather it, roaming his torso, knowing by now what makes him jump and shiver. Then lower, to his cock, and lower still, tracking his reaction.
Sab has the most beautiful eyes. Soulful and dark, they’re as hypnotising so hooded and heavy as they are wide open. I miss them as they flutter closed, and yet…
He likes it.
This. My touch right there.
I can read him. I don’t need him to say it with words. But the answer he’s holding back, the one that flexes his hips and has him widening his legs, making room for me, chasing my touch—I want it as much as I want him.
My free hand finds its way to his chest, splaying over his racing heart. “Saying something out loud doesn’t mean you have to do it.”
Sab forces his eyes open, something far deeper than shyness lurking in his gaze. “I don’t know how to say it. It’s too fucking weird.”
“Bet it’s not.”
He starts to look away.
I catch his jaw in a firm grip he can easily break if he wants to. “There’s nothing weird about taking the scenic route to figuring out what you really want.”
Sab’s lips twitch, a reluctant half-smile breaking through. “It wasn’t scenic. I saw my brother getting banged through a window.”
“And?”
“And what? You don’t think it’s fucked up that seeing my brother getting fucked cemented this shit in my head?”
“Not really.”
Sab huffs a humourless laugh.
I squeeze his jaw tighter, just enough to make him look at me again, hawk-eyeing the real discomfort marring his features, knowing he could shut down in a heartbeat if I don’t handle this the way he deserves.
“I mean it. There’s nothing fucked up about seeing something that flicks a switch for what’s already there.
Your brother or two strangers in the park pavilion, it doesn’t matter. It woke you up, that’s all.”
Sab doesn’t say anything.
I let my thumb graze his cheekbone, letting him feel how steady I am on this.
He sighs. “Got an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“Feck, no. I just fell down the rabbit hole a few years before you.”
“How many years?”
I think it over, searching for the point in my life where Sab’s distressed consternation might’ve been mine. “Eight, give or take. I’d been with loads of girls before I realised I was enjoying shower time at work way too much.”
“Then what?”
“Then I got myself a Grindr account and made a right mess of it for a while. I went too far the other way, you know? Shut off anything that wasn’t dude central. It took a minute to find the balance in the middle.”
Sab takes it all in, every word I’ve never got round to sharing with anyone else. Then he sighs again. “Tam’s like that…the middle part, I mean. And what he did to get there. I should’ve had this conversation with him a long time ago.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“Lots of reasons.” Sab tips his head to free himself from my grasp. “And because I don’t want to tell him I got a semi over his husband.”
Laughter bubbles in my chest. I force it down, but give him the truth. “You got a semi over wanting the experience, not your brother-in-law. But even if it was Nurse Bhodi, I’ve met him, remember? All this would be a heck of a lot stranger if that smiley cutester hadn’t turned your head.”
“He turn yours?”
“Not that I can remember, but I’d definitely watch him bang his husband if your brother looks anything like you.”
Sab cuts his gaze back to me.
I hold my hands up, letting him know I’m only halfway serious. Thank feck, he laughs, and that sound, it does something to me.
Fuels me.
I take a breath, then I’m on him, kissing him hard. Wet and rough. Tasting myself on his tongue for as long as I give him to slow this down. To stop me moving lower, down his chest and abs, worshipping pinewood and vanilla skin already burning from what he did to me.
Anticipation hums in my veins.
I nuzzle the line of his stomach, lost in his hot and uneven breaths. In the way his leg curves on instinct, curling round my pain-free shoulders. Lost in the hot pulse of his cock waiting for me.
In heaven, I close my mouth around him.
And I’m not careful. Don’t ease him into it.
I go hard on him, swallowing him deep, knowing if I look at him, he’ll have his head tipped back, eyes screwed shut as he acclimates to a rhythm he’s never felt before.
A cadence that matches my own ragged breathing as I realise I’m breaking myself open to take him apart, and I’m too riled-up to know why.
A snatched inhale has me groaning around his cock as if I’m the one being undone.
Emotion caught in my throat expands into sound and I’m powerless against it as Sab shudders beneath me, a tremor in his body that feels almost like panic.
Christ. I know I shouldn’t hide from it.
That I feel the same seismic shift in my own flesh and bone.
The same disarming realisation that this isn’t just want between us.
But fool that I am, I push it aside, shoving it into a corner of my mind that only gets my attention when my life goes to shit. Later, my stupid brain tells me, as if I have a clue what to do with the answering lance in my heart.
I ease Sab out of my throat, letting my tongue go to town on the slick flesh in my wake, tracing patterns that make him shiver and jerk, tilting him a little, aiming lower, hitting my mark with enough precision that Sab’s whole body jumps.
“Fuck…qu’est-ce que tu me fais?”
“Is that French for no?”
“Non. No. I mean. Fuck. Do that again…please?”
The please ruins me, another fraction of awareness creeping into the undefined ache in my chest.
I reach for the lube, letting him see what I’m doing as I tongue him again. Then I pull back a little, meeting his gaze dead-on, reminding myself how it felt the first time someone had me caught in a moment this vulnerable. “Tell me to stop and we stop.”
He’s so hard still. Keeping our gazes locked, I bend my head and lick the length of him.
Sab murmurs more French, but none of it sounds like I don’t want this.
I go slow all the same, claiming his mouth for a hot, messy kiss, before I slide down his body again.
His cock reels me in.
I work him up while I pop the cap on the lube bottle and slip my hand between his thighs, derailing the simmering tension in the leg he’s returned to its natural place, curved around my shoulder.
The taste of him is hot on my tongue. I don’t want to release him from my mouth.
But my conscience makes me, though I do it slow enough to distract him from what my hand is doing.
A distraction that only lasts so long as I press with more purpose and ease two fingers inside him, holding still for the moment he takes to fill his lungs.
For the moment I need, before I do God’s work and twist my wrist, skating my fingers over the spot that has him arching from the bed, his hands flying to my hair.
I take the gravelled moan as consent and do it again, unlocking him until every sound he makes is hoarse and unfiltered, and being this far down the bed…I fecking miss him.
Need his mouth on mine.
I recalibrate, so we’re face-to-face, his leg falling to my hip, his cock against my stomach as I slide my fingers inside him again, claiming his lips as he reacts to my touch, stealing his low moan for myself.
“You’re so hot like this.”
Sab drops his head to my shoulder, hiding his face. I fuck him a little harder and he pushes back, meeting me in the middle, nerves fading as pleasure builds.
“You are,” I whisper. “Whoever hurt you was fucking wrong.”
I don’t know where that comes from. Why I think I know something he’s never told me. But as his startled eyes lift to mine, I know it’s true.
And Christ, he’s tight.
I ease a third finger into him, slow…relentless, and I feel before he does that it burns. Feel his jaw clench a second before it happens.
“Take it.” I nuzzle his velvet jaw, as if he’s mine to hold this close. “Breathe. I’m gonna make it good, I swear.”
He wants to hide again. From me or from himself, I’m not sure. But the thing about Sab is that he has no idea how brave he is. He takes that breath, shaky at first, then stronger, as we find a new rhythm and he grinds his dick against my belly until I’m spinning with sensation as much as he is.
I crook my fingers.
Sab lets loose a tortured moan and I watch him break. Watch his back arch, his whole body jerking, his face split apart in shock as I fuck him through it, no mercy as he comes with a guttural sound that fecking destroys me.
His release stripes my stomach, hot pulses of wet warmth, his cock throbbing against me long after I’ve milked him dry.
I ease my fingers out of him. Wipe them on the towel I tossed on the bed earlier and pull Sab in for a hug.
He trembles in my arms, heart hammering beneath the palm I splay over it, skin sheened with sweat and the cum we’ve smeared between us.
We should clean up.
Get a drink maybe, before I see if he wants to go again.
Or do something else. But as Sab melts against me, none of it seems important.
I hold him close, as awed by his surrender as he seems to be.
A wonder that merges with the ache in my chest to become a holy thing I can’t even begin to make sense of.
It’s a while before I realise he’s not with me anymore. That he’s drifted off. That he’s sleeping in my arms, his cheek pillowed on my collarbone, his leg still hooked over my hip.