Chapter 9
I kiss him until asphyxiation is a real issue, and I’m not the only one of us who breaks off panting.
Dair gulps for air as I lose my coat, then he yanks my shirt free to get his hands underneath it, all while he resumes contact with his mouth. His lips brush my beard, the hinge of my jaw, and finally fuse to my throat, where he sucks heat to the surface.
I’m hot already, consumed with getting his clothes off, and I don’t know when I yanked off his own jacket or shoved his top up, but I want to map this bare skin—and he lets me. More than that, Dair lets out sounds I translate as more so that’s what I give him.
I do it by shoving his top layer of clothing even further up, then off completely, and he lets out a different noise, like he’s annoyed he has to break off that sucking contact to let me do it.
He’s happier when he’s stripped to the waist. Dair gets busy with his drawstring and I get busy with losing my own shirt, pausing when I notice that he’s stopped dead.
Dair stares at my bare chest like it’s the first time he’s seen it.
It isn’t. He’s seen me with my shirt off twice already.
Touched it too, like he does again now, only now, there’s no salve slicking his fingers.
His mouth does all the soothing I need, with no help from any aloe vera.
He kisses me all better, and it’s the closest I’ve felt to healed in this home since…
I close my eyes.
Have to.
They sting as if my old bedroom is smoke-filled, but I don’t need the firefighters on my new bedding to come to life to stage a rescue. Dair does it single-handedly by not stopping that kissing until there can’t be an inch of my pecs missing out on his caring treatment. Or my belly.
I guess where this is headed as soon as he sits on the edge of my bed, his mouth so close to the hard-on firming up in my jeans that I hold my breath. His lips almost land there, so close to where I strain against unforgiving denim that he must see it.
No one born or bred here would show the kind of softness Dair does now, all while sounding the opposite of gentle. For once, he’s rough—almost East End gruff. His gaze makes him a liar. It’s oh so tender.
“I never would have guessed what you were dealing with.”
Instead of pressing his mouth against my trapped cock, he stands, and I could groan at that missed chance. Might go ahead and get vocal about it. I would if not for him landing another kiss on my chest.
My heart stutters directly underneath where he made that contact, then stutters again at what sounds like praise from someone who has walked a similar path as me, for even longer.
“You’ll have to teach me how you do it.”
“How I do what?” I don’t mean to whisper. Apart from a cat prone to violence and a shit ton of spiky pot plants, there’s nothing and nobody here to eavesdrop on us.
Dair doesn’t reply right away. That’s just as well—I’m distracted by his head lowering to watch the path his knuckles take next.
They brush their way down my body, first bumping over a solid core built by delivering furniture to new addresses.
Those knuckles ruffle through a dark line of hair, but all I see are his eyes.
They look up to ask me the same silent question he’s voiced once already.
Can I?
Last time, Flynn interrupted, his phone call ricocheting around a bathroom in a much posher London borough. Nothing’s gonna interrupt us now.
Apart from me.
I’m the twat who repeats a question instead of getting my dick out for him to suck.
“How do I do what, mate?”
He’s still hoarser than usual, his gaze dropping.
“Be strong enough not to need help.” He glances up again, his knuckles so fucking warm pressed against my lower belly, and my cock likes that so much.
We both have to see a damp spot darkening the pale denim of my jeans.
What I don’t like half so much is him seeing me as some kind of warrior.
The real truth is different.
Here in the bedroom where I found shelter, I get honest.
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”
At least one of us has their shit together—Dair presses the heel of his palm against my hard-on like I did against his in his bathroom, and fuck me, that feels so good I can’t string two words together.
Not about how I couldn’t have packed all those totes away without Kev sniffing nonstop right beside me, nor about how that was the one and only day Kitty ever came to me for a cuddle.
“I ran away from dealing with it. Took the very first offer so I didn’t have to be here.”
But I have to admit that every single one of those bad times led to this moment of Dair sitting in front of me again on the edge of my bed, and on brand-new bedding designed to tempt me home.
I don’t even see any hose reels or hefty axes.
All I can see is him working on my belt buckle. On my fly. On pulling down the zipper and parting it to find what my underwear still covers.
He leans in to kiss that damp patch, the tip of his tongue adding extra wetness. He looks up once, asking can I again, his pupils huge and black and deep enough to drown in, and after nodding, I have to close my own eyes to stop myself from falling.
I open them the second he mouths the head of my dick through a layer of cotton, and I’ll tell him anything he wants to know about me just as long as he peels it down so nothing is left between us.
I’m so gruff. “Yeah.” Anything else I could tell him would only sound shattered.
Splintered. Broken beyond restoration. I don’t have the brainpower for additional communication.
Dair sucks my vocab from me, and not just through my boxers—he shoves them down, my cock right there, thick and wanting, and Dair shifts to free his own dick.
I glimpse it in the ring of his fist, the head as rosy as I remember from what I had thought would be my usual one-off.
This repeat is brand new. I can’t stop staring until it’s gone, out of sight, blocked from view by Dair taking hold of my shaft with his free hand to give me exactly what I need to quit thinking.
I thought I was on fire already.
His mouth is even hotter.
And so wet, like he’s been as hungry for this as me.
The rise and fall of his shoulder tells me that no more talking is needed.
We’re on the same page. Fuck it, our life paths have intersected too often to ignore.
From our roots to where we’ve ended up together, we’re more similar than different.
He even pays the head of my dick the same kind of attention I did his the day after I first met him.
That feels like a lifetime ago but déjà vu hits hard when he rubs the pad of his thumb over my slit, then licks it.
I did that our first time together.
Tasted him from my thumb first and then from his slit.
Now the tip of his tongue finds mine, sliding to the sensitive place where my shaft connects to my crown in shocking bursts of pleasure.
My toes curl in the socks I still wear, and I white-knuckle the urge to hold him by two handfuls of hair and slam inside his mouth hard and fast.
He takes me so much slower.
It’s torture.
And treasure.
My vision spangles with gold, then narrows to a fiery pinpoint, and I growl, “Don’t fucking stop.”
He doesn’t. Dair goes all in on getting me wet enough to take me deeper. Not all the way yet. That doesn’t stop him from trying, if slowly.
I process the ridges on the roof of his mouth on a delay, the edge of his teeth next, and then his throat’s resistance. It takes me even longer to register that each time he pulls back, he leans in again to take more of me, fraction by thick fraction.
He’s doing it—working hard to stop me from thinking in the very best way. Dair doesn’t give up, and I’m so fucking glad that he had people who didn’t give up on him, even if his foster folk couldn’t save him from a court battle.
I have to close my eyes again. Not to picture what he loves and will soon lose.
I close them to lock away these long minutes of bliss for later.
I store each wet noise from him and how we sound together, both of us getting off because there’s no doubting that he enjoys each rumble I can’t keep in.
He presses a palm flat against my chest like he’s doing some locking away of his own to carry each vibration all the way back to Scotland.
I’m not gonna stop him. I give him more noises to lock away in his wank bank, almost giving in to a coiling sensation that pulls my balls closer to my body.
I’ll come if he keeps going.
Shoot straight down his throat, and this will be over.
Dair stops before I get there.
He pulls off, his glance up at me wet and shiny. With good tears, I think. They must be for his one shoulder to rise and fall even faster, and I’ve never wanted to watch anyone get themselves off more or be their reason for it.
I drop to my knees beside my bed to see for myself.
The head of his dick shines, damp like his eyes, and fuck it, I kiss it. Lap at his slit. Suck him down until my lips meet his fist and he lets go of his shaft. I take him deeper, and if there’s a city outside this bedroom, it stops existing.
There’s just me and him, like on the night he kissed me better in his bathroom. Now the head of his dick bumps the roof of my mouth, and he likes that as much as I did—I taste precome. Then my throat fights what we both want.
He shifts back on the mattress like he thinks a little bit of gagging and a sudden flood of saliva means I’ve hit my limit. I’m nowhere near it, just got fucking started, so I grasp his hips and swallow.
Our eyes meet for a moment. He collapses backwards before propping himself up on his elbows to watch me take him deep, then even deeper.