Chapter 14
A sharp hint of salt slows my roll, otherwise I’d bob my head even faster. That salt doesn’t come from anything I added to the bathwater. For a second time in this room, I’m the reason Dair is close to coming.
I’m tempted to be as greedy as I felt over something else I once stripped bare but didn’t get to keep. That desk turned out to have more value than I could have guessed, and I let it slip through my fingers.
I hold on to Dair much more tightly.
I’m also careful. I know that’s a contradiction.
I can’t help being that way around him, and I got no hope of stopping myself from wanting to give back all the care he’s shown me.
I adjust my hold to do that, shoving up my shirt sleeves before hoisting him higher, and once his cock is out of the water, I take all of him.
The next time I speak, I’ll be hoarse for more than East End reasons. That gravel will be worth it if I get to rewind and replay Dair’s eyes closing and his mouth falling open the moment I bury my nose in wet and dark-red pubes and swallow around his dick.
He clings then, desperate.
I am as well, for more hours than we’ve got left. All I’ve got is now, so I swallow again and get another flood of salty sharpness to prove Dair’s racing to a finish I can’t let come this soon.
I pull off, and his eyes shoot open, then widen at me finding his hole. His breath catches, which could mean stop.
I don’t need to rasp a question aloud to find out. He’s already nodding. And already reaching for something slippery to help me continue.
Bottles topple from the side of the bath.
Some of them sink fast. Others float in milky water.
Neither of us scoops them up or sets them upright.
He holds the one he wanted. Opens it to pour bath oil on my fingers, and I swear on everything I ever loved that I thought I knew what pretty meant before I met him.
And strong. He’s next level at both tonight, all damp and flushed, his lips bitten redder now than pink, every muscle tense, and I don’t know whether he slips or if I shift position, but I’m—
Inside him.
He gives way, letting me in to the first knuckle. But he also lets out another of those low-pitched groans, and I need to be sure it’s for a good reason. “Yeah?”
He nods, chin dipping in the water. His nips are still tight despite the water’s warmth. They say yes too. So does his cock twitching to add more ripples to the surface, and I ease my finger in another fraction.
My shirt is soaked, bunching around my bicep where his fingers dig in. “You want more?”
He nods even harder.
“Then I’m gonna need more than bath oil to make it good.”
He slides out of my hold. Splashes upright. “In my room.” Water slops over the side of a bath that would sell for plenty at auction to collectors of Victoriana. I got no time to waste being pissed off that it will soon belong to strangers. I’m too busy finding a towel for him.
He takes it and uses it on me instead of to dry himself. Of course, he fucking does. Dair pats dry my wet face, and I’m so gone on him, it isn’t funny.
I can’t laugh about this care or complain about him dripping on bathroom tile when he efficiently strips me out of sodden clothing.
He’s deadly serious about hanging my shirt and trousers over a radiator in his bedroom followed by dumping the contents of my pockets on his bedside table, which he bends over on the hunt for lubrication.
I’m deadly fucking serious too about what the hallway light spills into the room to show me.
A swirl of auburn glints somewhere that light doesn’t usually get a chance to shine, and I drop to my knees behind him so fast and so hard every building in this borough should crumble.
Dair crumples instead as soon as I get my mouth near him. He’s weak at the knees for a second time, buckling as I kneel behind him on faded carpet beside his narrow mattress. Don’t ask me why I’m more at home here than I ever was a few streets away.
It feels familiar, that’s all. Right. Like tonight isn’t the one and only time we’ve both been fully naked. I’m bare right down to my soul because he looks back at me and proves I don’t have a monopoly on gruffness.
“Vincent.”
That’s all he says. My name. It’s more than enough incentive to part his cheeks, the tip of my tongue picking up from where I left off with a slippery finger, and if there’s any bath oil left where I kiss him, I don’t taste it.
All I get is Dair, and each slow circle I paint with my tongue makes him shiver.
I take time we don’t have by licking him forever. And by prodding with the tip of my tongue, which is when he buckles again, weak at the knees for me. He also reaches back to clasp an arse cheek, making more space. Dair wants me closer. I hear it.
“More. I need—”
I got him. I’m not saying I know exactly what he needs, but him wanting me so much that he’s wordless does fuel me.
I rim him and I don’t stop. Dair pushing back tells me to keep going, and that’s what I was built for—workhorse, remember—so I lick and kiss him, poke and prod and suck until he shouts, and both of our breathing turns ragged.
His moans pitch a whole lot lower, and my cock drips.
I have to give it a squeeze at the base, then squeeze myself even tighter, not wanting to get off before he does.
It won’t take much. He’s so responsive, pushing back against my face one more time, grinding before falling forward on the mattress.
His legs spread even wider, and I could do this forever, so I do, and perhaps that works some magic to stop every clock in this city.
Dawn doesn’t feel right around the corner.
Kev won’t be pulling up outside any time soon in a van he wants to paint with the word cousin, even if I’ll never read it.
The future fades when I get a finger inside Dair. Then two, and that’s gotta burn. He quits his squirming. Goes still, and I get why. I might not have Blake’s massive cannon, but I am in proportion from head to toe and from dick to each thick knuckle.
It takes an age before I can slide that second finger inside him with ease, but that extra time gifts me the kind of sounds that say I’ve found a decent angle, one that works for Dair, and the next time he looks over his shoulder at me, the light from the hallway shows me those deep, dark pupils.
There’s nothing hidden in them. He wants me.
This. Us together, and there’s nothing heather-soft about his order.
“Fuck me.”
There are rubbers in his bedside drawer. I take one. Take the lube too while he scrambles up on his knees.
I know he’s ready.
I do.
I still have to pause, the wide head of my dick a millimetre from heaven until Dair takes over. He pushes back, and I’m inside him.
Just.
The head of my dick spreads him, and I score myself another of those deep groans that tells me not to pull back.
To stay right where I am and let him take what he needs from me.
I’m never gonna get over how hard he works to draw me in, and I’ve never felt heat like it.
It doesn’t only wrap my dick. It soars through my chest, searing it from the inside.
My breathing is as shaky as his with each inch he takes, and Dair’s next groan is different, going on for what feels like forever.
I’m flush against him. Held tight and wanted, exactly as I am.
Then we’re fucking hard and hot and heavy, and I hope to everything holy that I don’t grip his hips too tightly.
I can’t help this bone-deep need to stay buried inside him. Dair finds his voice, saying, “Yes,” to this pounding, and he doesn’t stop there. He goes ahead and tells me everything else he’s feeling.
It’s everything I know about him already.
“Good,” he grinds out, and he has been so, so good for me since I first met him.
“Deep,” Dair groans, and I did have to dig fucking deep to get honest but look what it got me.
He shouts, “Don’t stop,” and I wouldn’t, if I could think of how to swing by a Hebridean island regularly enough to find out if this magic could last for longer.
I can’t do anything about the distance between here and the Isle of Harris. Can’t pretend I don’t know how much going home means to him either, his one constant wish since I met him. I have to settle for making this as good as I can.
Sheets rumple, crushed in his grasp, his knuckles bone white, and I’d hold him as tightly, if—
His tight hold suddenly releases, and what he sobs out might wake his neighbours. I hear my own name, then he’s gone, and my dick is suddenly so much cooler.
Not for long, thank fuck.
Dair turns. He pulls at me, and I don’t fight him. I go exactly where he wants me while I still can, which is sitting with my back against the headboard, and with him pouring more slick onto my dick.
He’s on my lap then. On my cock. Sinking with both arms locked around my neck, and we’re kissing.
His tongue finds mine, which should be filthy, but isn’t.
His cursing is when he bottoms out, but I get it—I’m thick at the root.
He wants that stretch. Works for it. Kisses me again and whimpers, which could sound like weakness.
It’s a sign of strength in my opinion; another way he rewrites my internal vocab to rephrase everything I thought I knew.
He rides me, and it’s my turn to white-knuckle the sheets. They twist between my fingers at his slow rise and even slower descent. It’s so good. Even better when he speeds up, and then there’s no more kissing.
I thrust up each time he slides down, and it’s messy. Uncoordinated. Desperate until he stills me. He does that by pushing back my hair to kiss me where I once broke, which is a first for me.
Dair looks at me like this is a first for him too, and just like that, there’s nothing uncoordinated about us.
We’re in sync, like we’ve been so often since meeting.
Aligned.
He rides me again, gaze locked with mine, and I didn’t know sex could feel so connected that he can come without needing a helping hand on his dick. He shoots to prove it, pulsing around me, and I’m right there with him, shaken apart by more than my own climax.
Once we’re flat on our backs, barely fitting side-by-side on his narrow mattress, his gaze is liquid gold. Dair melts me too with a question I’d usually say no to.
“Stay with me?”
I do, and once the light is out, me spooning close behind him is another first.
And a last.
I don’t want to think about what is coming a few hours from now.
Dair makes me face our ending.
“It’s almost morning.” Every clock had paused until now. Those fuckers tick extra fast as soon as he whispers, “What if I can’t do it?”
I pull him closer, his back to my chest right where it belongs. “What if you can’t do what, mate?”
“Take care of everything Alice left to me.”
Those pets of hers are lucky. I can’t think of anyone better than Dair to take care of them. It’s what he does. “You’ll smash it.”
He rolls over to face me. Streetlights find gaps around his curtains to show me his worry. “But what if I don’t, and I still can’t find a way to pay that bill?”
I never thought I’d have a reason to thank Flynn.
If I ever see him again, I’m gonna have to.
Him fucking me over is the reason I can say this and mean it.
“Then you reach out.” The one time I did that is why I have so many more people in my corner.
“Like when you came to find me, yeah? You did it once. You can do it again.”
The streetlights show me his lingering doubt. They also show me my wallet and phone on the bedside table. I reach over him to grab one of those items.
The sticker I retrieve is a decade old, the printing on it as clear as the day I earned it. “Someone very smart gave this to me. I could never read what it said.”
Dair can. I see him mouthing Elmo’s words, and I’ll have to be a very brave boy soon. For what’s left of tonight, I’ll be strong for both of us. “Keep it and remember this is how I’ll always see you. You’re one brave fucker, Dair Sinclair.”
He sniffs. Wipes his eyes. Feels all his feelings right in front of me, like I need more proof that I’ve given that sticker to someone who deserves it.
Then he yawns and snuggles closer. The shadows can’t hide that he feels better.
I see it in sleepy, shining eyes I’ll never forget.
And I hear it in his promise. “I’ll do it. ”
“Do what?”
“Go home and look at everything through your eyes.” He isn’t the first person to tell me I have good ones.
He’s the only one whose explanation rocks me.
“Because all I had were problems. You keep seeing solutions. I’ll try tae do the same.
” He yawns so hard his jaw clicks. “Just one thing could make going home even better.”
He doesn’t say what. Dair yawns again. Drifts a little. I think he’s asleep until he lets slip what his one better thing would be. He sounds so hopeful. “You wouldnae get lost if you came to see me by train.”
Wouldnae get lost.
I already miss his accent.
Dair opens sleepy eyes. “All you’d have to do is stay aboard until the very end of the line.”
We’ve almost reached the end of ours. Perhaps that fact combined with tiredness is why he mentions the wrong person.
“Charles would give me a lift to the station to meet you.”
I don’t point out that Charles lives in the opposite direction from the Isle of Harris.
Cornwall isn’t in the far north of this nation.
It’s only a few hours away to the south of where we are now.
And I don’t mention that Dair’s Scottish home is so far away I can’t see how to swing reconnecting with him regularly, let alone how I’d find the cash to make it happen as often as I’d want to see him.
Every fucking day, if that was an option.
Or at least often enough to figure out if we have a future.
I can’t help thinking we could if my life was different, but I also know what it’s like to get mixed up.
Did it myself when I mistook Flynn for someone who wanted the best outcome for both of us.
Unlike that dickhead, I do want the best outcome for Dair, so I keep my mouth shut about him mentioning Charles. Instead, I say, “Go to sleep.”
“No.” He fights it. “I can sleep on the train.” He stares at me as if it’s his last chance until his eyes drift closed. Dair does sleep then. I feel it happen—he finally relaxes with my arms wrapped fern-tight around him.
I don’t waste a single second snoozing.
I can’t.
Dair just told me I’m a problem solver.
All I need is one more solution for us.