Chapter 44
CHARLIE
I really hadn’t thought about what Myles might think of my yoga practice until I’d looked up to see him staring at me like he was about to eat me alive. What I’d told him was totally true.
I’d gotten home way later than I’d planned, and, since I have no intention whatsoever of doing anything tonight that doesn’t involve Myles and me all tangled up and as close as we can possibly get (whether it’s snuggling or something sexier) I’d been hurrying to squeeze in my practice before he got here.
The part I’d left out is that one of the reasons I’d still been finishing up when he arrived was the shower I’d taken before jumping into yoga time. That had been something I’d wanted to get out of the way first.
Showering before a workout may not be ideal, but I’d had a very specific agenda that definitely needed to be prioritized.
I totally can’t deny though that his reaction, now that I’ve seen it, is immensely gratifying. Until last Monday night, I can’t pretend like I hadn’t been just waiting for Myles to have a bi panic moment and put a stop to everything between us.
The way he’d moaned around my cock though? The combination of naked enthusiasm and desire that had so totally outweighed any hiccups from his inexperience to make it the best head, hands down, I’ve ever had? How hard he’d been after he’d refused to let me come anywhere other than down his throat?
Obviously it doesn’t mean that that bi panic couldn’t still happen.
It doesn’t even have to be about anything physical, but every eager slurp and suck of his mouth over my shaft that night, coupled with how possessively he’d held me and the soft, emotion-filled gaze of his eyes that never left me, had shown me, more than I think just about anything else could, that he really does want me.
But because he’s Myles and I’ve spent a decade and a half pining over him, and because I’m a total whore for anything he gives me, I still can’t get enough of his long, thirsty looks.
Myles is still staring when I hop up off my mat. Okay, so maybe I played up my winddown in child’s pose a teensy bit, popping my ass up a little higher and more obviously than I usually would, but knowing he was watching me the way he was? It had just been too good to resist.
Besides, if he thinks he can show up here, looking the way he does—so totally gorgeously sexy in a pair of jeans that show off just how very biteable his ass is and tease me with those thick, toned thighs of his, paired with an open flannel showing off that tight-stretched white tee he’s wearing underneath it, shouldn’t I get to give him just the tiniest taste of his own medicine?
Partly because it really is just too much fun making Myles drool as he watches me, and partly because knowing that’s exactly what he’s doing soothes that healing but still painful place in my heart that’s spent well over half my life convinced that the person I love most in the world could never want me the way I want him, I take my sweet time rolling up my yoga mat, careful to bend over in a way that gives him the best possible view.
His eyes are dark and glassy by the time I stand up, the bulge in his jeans irresistibly noticeable. And the best part? He doesn’t even try to hide the state he’s in as he trails after me when I head for my bedroom closet to put away my yoga mat.
“You do know what you do to me, right?” he groans, shaking his head with a bemused expression when I glance back at him over my shoulder before pressing up on my toes to tuck the mat away up on the top shelf.
Only when I’ve snapped the closet door shut do I turn to face him, popping my hip and tilting my head like I have to think about his (totally rhetorical) question.
“Exactly what you’ve been doing to me for my entire teenage and adult life?” I lift my eyebrows, letting my gaze noticeably track down his body, then back up again.
Between the gorgeous sexiness that is his constant state of existence, the greedy smolder in his eyes, and the plans I have for the two of us tonight (as long as he’s on board once he finds out) that up-down is all it takes to have my already very interested dick perking right up.
When my eyes fall pointedly to the quickly growing hard-on stretching the front of my yoga pants, Myles’s follow just like I’d hoped they would.
In an instant, he’s stalking toward me, slamming his hips against mine as he pins me to the wall beside the closet door. “Those pants,” he reaches between us, cupping my now fully hard cock and rubbing the heel of his hand over the head until I’m shamelessly arching into him. “Should be illegal.”
He captures my mouth, kissing me hard and deep until we’re both panting as he pulls away.
“And fucking hell, Charlie, that top—” His fingers tease under the hem of my shirt, skimming along my skin in a featherlight touch that has shivery heat licking over every inch of me.
A moment later though, he’s pulling back slightly, scrunching up his forehead so adorably, I can’t help chasing after him and tipping up onto my toes to drop a kiss on the line that’s tugging his eyebrows together.
“What is it?”
“I’m worried you’re going to think this is all about sex for me.” He cups my cheek as his other hand releases my dick in favor of tracing his fingers in swirling patterns along the side of my hip. “And it’s not. It’s so far from that, Charlie.”
I know this already, but there’s something in the intensity in his eyes and the thickness in his voice that sends a thrill every bit as heady as his touch shimmering through me.
Myles has so many facets to him, and I love every one of them.
At any given moment, however he is is my favorite Myles, but this?
This serious, raw vulnerability that I saw so rarely when we were kids but that he’s showing me more and more now that the barriers and misunderstandings and secrets between us are gone, may truly be my favorite.
When he’s like this, I can even let myself hope that he’s only just holding back deeper truths and deeper feelings than either of us have dared to let each other hear yet.
“I know that.” My voice is suspiciously choked, and I have to blink a little to keep my eyes from filling as I stroke my fingers through his curls. We’re both still breathing heavily as his forehead falls to mine, and against my hip, I can feel the hard press of his cock.
The fierce, unchecked desire I feel for him and from him does nothing to diminish the equally fierce and unchecked love that’s always burned in me for him, or the tender passion I can read so plainly in his eyes as they search my face.
If anything, my physical need for him feeds my love, just as my love feeds my attraction.
And now that I can give in to both, that feedback loop is dizzying.
“I spent all those years loving our friendship but wishing that we could be more,” I tell him.
Like always when our conversation veers near this topic, the guilt that flashes through his eyes is plain to see, and I tighten my grip on him, cupping the back of his head and pulling him a little closer, loving how he melts into me.
“But Myles, now when I look back on those years and the last couple months since I’ve been back in Riverside, I don’t feel like we ever really were just friends.
We didn’t kiss or touch, but what else about us has changed?
Nothing. There wasn’t a physical aspect to our relationship, but we’ve always been so much closer than two people who really were nothing more than friends.
“What is new now though is the physical and sexual side of us. Doesn’t it make sense that that’s kind of all we can think about right now?”
His answering smile is devastatingly wicked as it spreads across his wide, beautiful lips. “You’re saying sex with me is all you can think about?” He leans in, brushing his nose teasingly up the length of my neck, giving his hips a slow roll to drag his cock against my body.
“I did say kind of,” I qualify, but the effect is seriously diminished by the way the words come out all breathless and quavery as his lips close around the skin at the base of my throat.
“I can live with that.” I can hear the grin in his voice. “But Charlie? It’s not just sex I can’t get enough of with you. It’s touching you. Being touched by you.”
He pauses, and I can hear his slow, hard swallow.
“I know it was almost always you that hugged me or reached out and touched me when we were kids,” he goes on, lifting his face to meet my eyes again as his hand slips up from my waist and around my back, securing me tightly against him.
“But I lived for those moments. Every time you touched me, I wanted it to last forever. You made it seem so easy, how you’d just throw your arms around me and hug me goodbye, or when you’d touch my shoulder, but so much of the time, I was fucking terrified to do anything like that myself.
I wanted it so badly, and I couldn’t understand why, and so I’d almost always just wait until it was you that did it. ”
Even as I drink in his words, thrilling at the realization of what would have literally made my life had I only known when I was a teenager, my heart aches for him.
Did it hurt knowing how I felt for him and always feeling like I had to hold back and hide it?
More than anything (except for his absence) has ever hurt.
But suddenly, I realize that that hurt was nothing compared to the lonely confusion he lived in, just like the heartbreak I felt at what I thought was his rejection was nothing compared to the devastation he felt when he cut me out of his life.
“Don’t ever hold back from touching me,” I tilt my head, nuzzling my cheek into the palm of his hand as I slip my fingers down from his hair to trace up and down the back of his neck. “Don’t ever feel like it’s too much. You touching me is literally my favorite thing in the world.”