Chapter 31
MYLES
If I’d had any brain cells left that weren’t completely fixated on Charlie’s hand holding mine and the way he didn’t look away once from my face, I might have worried that some of the momentum and tension of the moment could have faded while we’d waited out the longest forty minutes known to man.
If I had though, I would have been an idiot.
By the time the speaker dismisses us, I’m so worked up that I almost knock my chair backward onto the ground when I push away from the table.
Charlie follows me more slowly, but only because I spot him pausing to grab a stack of papers to hold at an only slightly weird angle in front of him, trying to hide the fact that his lightweight khakis are doing nothing to hold down the unmistakable way his dick is tenting the front of them.
If it wouldn’t call more attention to what he’s already trying to hide, I wouldn’t be able to take my eyes off the spot.
I did that. That is because of me. For me. Mine.
And before we’ve even really touched.
Not that I’m any better off. My heavier duty jeans just hide the situation better.
The two of us are among the first out of the conference room. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Charlie was pissed, the way he strides out of there so fast, he practically pushes past a slower moving pair chatting on their way out the door.
I do know better though, and the way he’s beelining for the elevators only sets my heart racing and my adrenaline pumping.
All I regret is that we aren’t touching anymore. Just before we’d stood, I’d let go of Charlie’s hand. Now my hand feels lost without his.
The look on Charlie’s face when he turns toward me after pummeling the button to call the elevator almost does me in. Twin red patches blaze on his cheeks, and his wide eyes glitter under the brightness of the lobby lighting. Heaving breaths rise and fall through his chest.
I’ve never seen him look anything like this, and I’m instantly hooked. It’s the sexiest, most stunning thing I’ve ever seen, and it’s never been harder not to touch anyone or anything than it is not to touch him in this moment.
When the elevator dings and the doors roll open, I half push him into the small space. The instant he’s through the doors, his hands are at the hem of my flannel, grabbing hold of the material and dragging me after him.
I’ve never been so eager to follow anyone anywhere in my life.
“What’s happening right now, Myles? Tell me this is real.” His hands twist in my shirt, and the look on his face is wild. Desperate with hope and desire and a touch of fear, so that all I want in the world is to lean in and kiss him until he understands how completely real this is.
The doors are sliding closed. I know the moment they fully shut, all holding back will be over and there will be nothing to keep me from doing what every inch of me is screaming for.
Claim his lips and finally taste the person I should have known I’ve wanted nothing more than to lose myself in for over fourteen fucking years.
The next moment though— “Made it!” a woman’s voice laughs, slightly out of breath.
Charlie’s hands drop from my shirt, and I stagger back to a more normal distance from him as a hand pushes in through the closing doors and the metal panels reverse, opening wide to let in three women I vaguely recognize from the training.
“Third floor, please,” says one. So completely fucking normally. Like she and the other two didn’t just commit the most epic travesty of cock blocking ever.
Not cock blocking.
I push the button, turn to face Charlie.
Postponing.
“Completely real,” I whisper. The sound’s hidden by the three women laughing, but from the breathless smile that bursts across Charlie’s lips, I know he heard me.
CHARLIE
There’s no stopping my lunge for Myles the moment he shuts the hotel room door behind us.
Even with his whispered promise in the elevator, despite the way he’d held my hand so tightly in his, like he never wanted to let go, part of me is still waiting for this to turn out to be a mistake. A joke. Anything but real.
That should probably make me hold back, but instead, something just kind of snaps in my brain, like I have to make the most out of however much I can have before it’s gone.
I’ve wanted this for so damn long, it just feels too good to be true.
It’s the moment my body collides with his, shoving him back against the door, that I finally believe it. Myles lets out this sound when my hand grips the back of his neck, a split second before my lips crash into his. A hungry, greedy groan that’s almost pained, it’s so full of need.
I can’t even begin to imagine the sounds that would be pouring from me if my own throat weren’t so tight with tears and all the years of wanting I’ve held back.
Maybe a first kiss should be slow and tender, but I’m too high on Myles to stop my mouth from slamming into his, as desperate and needy as his groan that’s still tingling through me.
There’s still fear in the back of my mind.
Fear that he’ll realize what’s happening, that he’s kissing another man—me—and change his mind.
Be repulsed when all I want is more. It’s a fear that almost drowns me for one beat of my heart until Myles’s lips part on another rumbling groan, caressing, tugging, drinking me in every bit as eagerly as I’m drinking him in.
Like he needs this just as badly as I do.
Now it's not fear I’m drowning in but him.
Forest and pine and a faint hint of sweat, probably from those brutal forty minutes we just suffered through.
His large, gentle hands clutching at the small of my back as desperately as I’m clinging to him, gripping my shirt and holding me close.
The brush of his silky-coarse facial hair prickling my skin.
Densely muscled body against mine and the taste of him on my tongue as I tease over his lips, earning a soft moan.
The sound of his gasping breaths as they fall into sync with my own. Heat and need and passion.
My heart feels like it’s overflowing, so full of him and his touch and the aching perfection of this moment I’d never thought I’d actually have.
Tears prickle the corners of my eyes, threatening to fall as the onslaught of his mouth and the way it’s him chasing my lips as greedily as I’m chasing his slowly takes me apart. Piece by glorious piece.
Fire blazes over my skin, burning, consuming. My body shudders, pressing forward against his, and then I feel it; the outline of his cock, every bit as hard as mine. The whimper that breaks from me is almost a sob, and then he’s echoing the sound back to me, equally needy and desperate.
“You’re hard for me.” I hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, but there’s no time to wonder if I shouldn’t have, because the next moment, Myles is nodding against my lips.
“So hard, Charlie,” and ohmigod, he’s rocking forward against me, gasping as our bodies connect. “I want you...so fucking badly.”
Ohmigod—
His hands clutch at my waist, dragging me against him as mine ravage his hair, tangling in his soft, beautiful curls as our mouths devour each other.
I’ve spent more than half my life imagining what the touch of Myles’s lips on mine might feel like, and now that it’s happening, I know none of it came even close to preparing me for reality.
Myles’s tongue sweeps over mine, and it’s a revelation.
A burst of pleasure and sensation I can’t help chasing as I lick into his mouth where he rewards me with a moan that makes my desperately hard dick throb with the need to drag more of those devastatingly hot sounds from him.
To drive him as wild as he’s driving me as his body arches into mine.
I don’t know where either of us wants or needs this to stop. Through the clouded haze of desire and elation, I know we should talk. I have no idea what sparked this, what it means to him. If it could possibly ever mean anything to him that even approaches what it means to me.
But it has to, and my heart leaps and pounds, fit to burst from my chest, because I trust him. He’d never let this happen between us if it didn’t mean something to him.
I know I should pull away so we can take even just a minute to regroup.
To make sure we really are on the same page, but his hands are tugging at the back of my shirt now, yanking it out from where it’s tucked into my khakis, and then his palms skate up the bare skin of my back, and all reason is gone from my head.
“Ohhhmigod, Myles,” I’m panting against his mouth, barely able to get the words out as he nips at my lower lip, but neither can I keep them in.
My fingers close in his hair, not to tug at it but to hold him to me. To keep him fused to my lips, gasping in the same air as me.
“I know, Charlie.”
That short, breathless response is all I need. The awe in it. The raw hunger. The way he groans my name like a prayer, hips bucking forward, grinding against me as frantically as I’m rocking against him in a movement I hadn’t even realized I’d started.
When Myles’s mouth drops to the side of my neck, my head falls back and my knees threaten to buckle. His hands, low on my back, grip tighter as heat builds in me every place his lips touch, spreading, licking over my skin like fire.
My leg slips in between his, bringing us closer together than ever. A gust of exhaled breath shivers over my skin, and his entire body shudders with the increase of pressure against his cock as I press—
A sharp knock, just on the other side of the door I’m still pinning Myles to, makes us both jump.
As I pull back from him, he lets out this soft, pleading sound that I feel in my heart every bit as much as in my achingly hard dick.
There’s enough distance between us now for me to take in the state he’s in, and when I do, I have to bite my lip to keep from moaning aloud at the sight of him, so completely wrecked, with glassy eyes, pupils blown so wide that the velvety-brown is almost completely swallowed up.
My hands in his curls have left them wild—the sexiest sex hair I’ve ever seen.
The knock comes again, reminding me that we’re inches away from whoever’s on the other side of the door, and I raise a shaking hand to touch a warning finger to Myles’s kiss-swollen lips.
He nods jerkily, brushing those lips over my finger in soft, slow kisses that steal my ability to breathe for a moment.
My teeth dig harder into the inside of my lip as I fight to remind myself to stay silent. To pretend like we’re not here so that whoever’s knocking will just give up and go away.
“Myles? Charlie? It’s Janice—”
There’s no pause to the knocking now, and at the same instant as the awareness of the distress in Janice’s voice cuts through the delicious haze of elation and lust clouding my head, some of the glassiness fades from Myles’s eyes.
His eyebrows drop and his shoulders sag as his forehead comes to rest against mine in a moment of silent resignation.
Taking a miserable, regretful step back from him, I hurriedly tuck my shirt back into the waist of my khakis, trying to adjust my still incriminatingly hard cock in a probably useless attempt to hide exactly what’s just been happening.
I can only imagine how I must look, if Myles’s appearance is anything to go by.
Even with Janice just on the other side of the door, still knocking, I can’t hold back the quiet groan that escapes from me with my hard exhale as I watch Myles reach down to adjust himself too, and my hands itch with the desire to reach out and brush them, just once, over the still totally visible bulge in his jeans.
Instead, I reach up and give his curls a quick comb through with my fingers, trying to fix the glorious mess I’ve made of them.
The knocking grows louder. “Please, are you in there?”
Myles clears his throat. It’s an awkward, uncomfortable sound, and my stomach and my heart sink in unison when I see that his hand is behind his head, that old nervous habit surfacing as he rubs at the back of his neck.
Next moment though, his other hand is on my cheek, thumb sweeping just once over my skin, across the corner of my lips in a touch so sweet and tender, it sends me soaring.
His tongue darts out for the briefest moment, over his lower lip, like he’s tasting the memory of our kisses, and suddenly, instead of worry, it’s the threat of tears I’m only just fighting back.
I almost trip over my own feet as I stumble away from the door, enough for Myles to pull it open.
“Oh thank god,” Janice bursts out the second the door starts to swing back, and instantly, I feel like a total and complete jerk for having made her wait, even if she is interrupting the most miraculously perfect moment of my life. She looks distraught. Wide-eyed and totally frantic.
“I have to go," she starts babbling, even before the door is open all the way. “Can you take me back? I have to get back. I have to go—”
On instinct, I step forward, laying a hand on her shoulder, and she sags, head drooping and face falling like she’s about to cry.
“What’s wrong?”
“My mom had a fall. Our neighbor just called. She found her a few minutes ago, but she doesn’t know how long she was on the floor. The paramedics are on their way, but I don’t know—”
“We’ll take you back.” Myles is moving already, heading for his backpack to start packing. “Are your things packed, Janice? Do you need us to help you?”
She shakes her head, looking lost. Her suitcase isn’t with her, so it’s got to still be in her room.
“Can you take care of my stuff?” I ask Myles. “I’m going to go help her.”
Myles’s eyes find mine for the briefest second as he nods, and my pulse leaps at the message he’s sending me, as plainly as if he’d said it out loud.
This isn’t over.