Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Remy
I’ve been living in my brand-new apartment for days, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed that Grayson and I have yet to christen the bed. Or the couch. Or really any horizontal surface in this place.
I know I got a little carried away with my talk about mind-blowing orgasms the other day, and I did a spectacularly terrible job of trying to explain what I actually meant. I hadn’t meant to give him an impossible standard to meet—I’d been trying to explain that he’d already given me an epic first kiss. Probably the best kiss I’ve ever had. And why couldn’t I have just said that to him?
Annoyed with myself, and my stupid-ass sterile apartment, I sit down on my couch and sulk. Before I can really commit to it, my phone rings. Already anticipating that it’ll be Alex, and knowing I’m not in the mood, I let it go to voicemail. When a text message comes through a couple seconds later, I pick it up and see Grayson’s name.
Grayson
Hey, you home?
Remy
Hi! Yeah, why? What’s up?
Grayson
Do you want some company? I’ve got a housewarming gift.
Remy
Is it your dick?
Grayson
All right, I have two housewarming gifts.
I laugh out loud, the noise echoing in the relatively bare space of my apartment. Please come over, I respond to Grayson, I’m on the top floor, 5C.
Tossing my phone onto the couch, I go into the bathroom to do a quick inspection. My armpits don’t smell, and I haven’t eaten anything since I brushed my teeth this morning. My hair is kind of a mess, so I run a comb through it quickly, before messing it up with my hand. There is a fine line between bedhead and artfully styled. The rest of me looks okay, and I’m not about to put on anything fancier than the sweats I’m wearing when hopefully I’ll be naked soon enough.
That done, I do a quick kitchen cleanup and put the dishes I’ve left in the sink into the dishwasher. My mom always lights a candle when she has guests coming over, but I don’t have one. The best I can do is spray multi-purpose cleaner into the air and hope that the room really does smell pine fresh. I sit down on the couch to wait, fingers tapping idly on my knees. When there is a gentle knock on my door, I have a sudden, panicked thought about the state of my pubic hair. When was the last time I fucking manscaped?
Resigned that it’s probably too late now—with Grayson waiting patiently at the door—I go to let him in. The low ceiling of the hallway makes him look massive, and he ducks a little bit when he walks through the doorway. There is nothing special about what he’s wearing: the same grey sweatpants I’ve seen on him a thousand times and a well-worn T-shirt that looks soft with age. It’s practically the uniform for hockey players on off days, yet he makes it look delicious somehow.
“What the fuck are you doing to me?” I wonder, accidentally out loud as I close the door behind him.
“What?” he asks politely. He’s carrying a large reusable shopping tote, which he sets gently on the floor near the kitchen table.
“You! You come over here looking like that, and your face is all scruffy, and I can’t remember if I shaved my junk when I showered yesterday. It’s a lot to deal with, that’s all I’m saying.”
He looks like he wants to laugh, but is pinching his lips together to keep it inside. His eyes travel down to the crotch of my pants before landing back on mine, alight with mischief.
“What’s in the bag?” I ask him.
“A razor,” he jokes, and I shove him back a step as he laughs. Bending over, he picks it up and hands it to me. “Housewarming gift.”
As I dig through the bag and pull out a plethora of goodies, he strolls around the small apartment. I watch him out of the corner of my eye, enjoying the way the light hits him as he pauses to look at the view out my window. He turns to face me when I let out a cackle as I pull a candle from the bag of gifts. Popping the lid off, I smell it.
“Right before you got here, I was thinking about how I wished I had a candle to light,” I tell him.
“So, you didn’t shave and you don’t have a candle.” He shakes his head in disappointment. “Are you sure you’re ready to be entertaining guests, Remy?”
Flipping him off, I get back to the seemingly endless housewarming gift. The last two items are a box of condoms and a giant bottle of lube. When I look up at him, he’s watching me and grinning. I wave the lube in the air, trying to feign confidence even though a small flutter of nerves were just birthed in my stomach.
“What shall we lube up first?” I ask, heart rate kicking up as I watch Grayson walk toward me and hold out his hand. I place the lube in his palm and he discards it on the kitchen table with all the rest of the stuff he brought.
“Nothing,” he says, making me frown. Just because I’m nervous doesn’t mean I don’t want to do anything.
We’re standing close, but I still close the distance a little further and even go so far as to put a hand high on his hip. His eyes are moving so rapidly over my face, he might be trying to memorize it.
“Gray,” I start, but he stops me by the simple expedient of putting his hand flat on my chest. I immediately look down, staring at his splayed fingers and big palm. He can probably feel how fast my heart is beating.
“Do you mind?” he asks.
“No,” I answer, and find myself walked gently backward until my back hits a wall.
Now, I know I’m well below the average height and weight for a professional hockey player. Even so, I’m not an easy guy to push around. But Grayson is big . With my back to the wall and him in front of me, I’m completely hemmed in. Physically, I could probably get him to back off if I really needed to, but it wouldn’t be easy. Resting my head back against the wall, I raise my chin until I can lock eyes with him. The position we’re in has me feeling a little afraid but a lot excited. I really want to see where this is going.
He slides his hand up to my neck, mimicking the exact way he touched me at the club when he kissed me. My nervous system is whizzing with excitement as he leans down. All I can think about is that damn scratchy chin of his.
At the last moment, he uses his thumb to push my jaw to the side and his mouth lands on my cheek and not my lips. I try to turn my head back, but he holds me in place as he kisses down to my throat. I’m about to complain about the change in trajectory when his cheek scratches against the sensitive skin of my neck, and my eyes practically roll into the back of my head.
“Do that again.” I gasp, sounding exactly as needy as I feel. I want to feel that sensation on every fucking inch of my body.
He laughs—the bastard actually laughs—and instead of dispensing with the kissing and rubbing his face all over me, he coasts his lips across the line of my jaw. I’m not sure exactly how long he spends kissing my neck, but it feels like a goddamn eternity before he lifts his head and kisses my actual lips. I groan, already too keyed up from the little we’ve done.
When Grayson’s hand touches the skin low on my stomach and slides up inside my shirt, I realize my arms are hanging loose at my sides. We’ve been making out for fucking minutes , and I’ve just been standing here like an idiot. I reach for him, intending to find out exactly how his chest hair feels against the calluses on my hands.
He stops me. Deftly catching my wrists, he traps both of my hands in one of his and pins them to the wall above my head.
Oh my fucking god.
The unholy noise this pulls from me has Grayson breaking our kiss and resting his forehead against mine. We’re standing a lot closer than before, and I’m gratified to feel that I’m not the only one excited about what we’re doing. I’m hard, Grayson is hard, and if I rock my pelvis forward, I can feel just enough friction to keep me repeating the motion. I want to dry-hump him into oblivion.
“Okay?” he murmurs, and I try to laugh, but it comes out sounding strangled and a little bit unhinged.
“Fuck, yes.” I strain a little bit at the hand holding mine against the wall. He tightens his grip. “Holy shit. Holy shit, don’t stop.”
Unlike me, Grayson has a free hand which he puts to good use by sliding my pants down my hips. He goes back to kissing me as he does it, languid and gentle, as though he’s not blowing my mind right now. I feel like I’ve been electrocuted—my entire body hums with energy, and my skin feels too tight and overly sensitive.
When he’s got my pants down to mid-thigh, I shimmy my legs until they fall the rest of the way to the floor. I mindlessly struggle to free my hands, thinking that it would be nice to be able to touch him back, but the moment his fingers wrap around my dick, I can’t think of anything else. He works me slowly and kisses me even slower. I’m not sure anything could make this man move faster.
“Gray.” His name comes out as a whimper, but I’m so far gone at this point I can’t even bring myself to care how needy I sound. He stops kissing me long enough to whisper instruction.
“Hands on the wall.”
I barely have time to think through that sentence before gentle hands are on my waist, spinning me around. Putting my hands flat on the wall, I lean my forehead down and shiver as Grayson strokes his fingers down my spine. I turn my head just enough to watch him spit into his palm before he’s stepping forward and pressing himself against me. This time, my eyes really do roll into the back of my head when he wraps his hand around my dick.
He doesn’t mess around anymore, but strokes hard and fast. I’m biting my lip—eyes squeezed closed—as I desperately try not to come. I want this to last. I want Grayson’s hard, muscular body pressed against me without the presence of clothing. I want to feel him on me. Unfortunately, I am a mere mortal and cannot be expected to resist Grayson Brody.
It’s the kiss he places to the top of my spine, right above the neck of my shirt, that does me in. I explode, and cum paints the wall of my new apartment. Groaning, I lean forward and pant as Grayson’s hand continues to move. Wrapping his free hand around my chest, he pulls me off the wall and back until I’m leaning on him instead. When his hand finally stills, I drop my head back against his shoulder. We stand there, pressed together back to front, and breathe.
Holy shit.
I blame post-orgasm insanity on the fact that I let Grayson leave my apartment without returning the favor. It’s hours—fucking hours —later when I realize that he didn’t come. Picking up my phone, I call him. No answer. For a few seconds I contemplate just grabbing a cab over to his place, knocking on the front door and offering to blow him. Instead, I send a text.
Remy
Hey, I need you to come back.
I wait, staring down at my phone for a full minute while I wait for a reply that doesn’t come. Did he go home and go straight to bed? Maybe his notifications are off and he hasn’t seen the text. I call him again. I can’t fucking believe I just let him walk out the door, hard up and unsatisfied after giving me the world’s greatest hand job.
I decide calling him again would be a little too needy, so I compromise by calling Alex. He answers with a request to hold on before he mutes me. I wait, checking my text messages every five seconds to see if Grayson has replied. I really, really want him to come back. What the hell kind of person lets their friend with benefits leave without getting their benefits? I’m such an idiot.
“Hey, sorry.” Alex comes back on the phone abruptly. “What’s up? How’s Canada treating you?”
“It’s good. Cold, though.”
“Pussy.” There is the sound of shuffling papers in the background, and Alex sighs.
“Long day?”
“You have no idea,” he says. “Actually, you might have an idea. Imagine the worst hockey game of your life, but a divorce court dispute. ”
“So, you’re exhausted? Why do I get the impression that you’re still at the office instead of home, having a bath and a foot rub?”
He laughs, which was my goal. “First of all, as hard as my job might be, I don’t require an ice bath afterward. Second, Serena would sooner eat live bugs than rub my feet. If anything, I need somebody to rub my brain.”
“I can let you go, if you’re busy. I was just calling to tell you what a jackass I am.”
“Oh, goody. What idiocy were you involved in this time?” Alex sounds disproportionately excited. I cringe, already envisioning the shit he’s going to give me for this.
“Well, I just experienced what is probably the best hand job ever given in the history of hand jobs and then I let him leave without reciprocating.”
“Him being that giant monster you play hockey with?”
I sigh. “He’s not that big. But yes, him.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is I came and he didn’t. He got me off and apparently all of my brain cells were orgasmed to death because I let him leave without doing anything in return. Like…I didn’t even get to touch him.”
“You blue-balled the guy on your first round?” He laughs.
“It’s not funny! I texted him to come back, but he hasn’t replied. I feel like I need to make it up to him.”
“Okay, okay, calm down. You are so fucking dramatic, sometimes. First of all, glad to hear you enjoyed your first hand job from a man. Second—how the hell did you have a sexual encounter and not even touch your partner? I’m picturing you just standing there like an idiot.”
“No, he was pinning my hands to the wall,” I tell him, and Alex whistles .
“Well, well,” he says, and his smile is evident in his voice. “I have to say, though, if a guy that big pinned me to a wall, I’d probably shit myself.”
“It was fun. For me. I feel terrible.”
“It’s not a big deal. He knows you’re new to the world of dude-on-dude action, so he was probably wanting to focus on you. Ease you in a little bit. I doubt he’s sitting at home bemoaning the fact that you didn’t touch his dick.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I agree, hoping he’s right. After hearing from Amanda how unsatisfying I am in bed, I’m not feeling too great about my sexual prowess at this point. Letting Grayson go after our one-sided affair isn’t exactly tallying points in my favor.
“Stop stressing, you can make it up to him next time. It’s sex, not a transaction. I’m sure he had just as much fun as you did. Now, tell me more about how he pinned your hands.”
“No.”
“Developed a taste for being manhandled?”
“Thanks for chatting, but I’ve got to go to bed. Early start tomorrow, okay, bye!”
I hang up before he can respond. There is a message from Grayson asking if everything is okay and why does he need to come back. I can already anticipate his response when I type out an explanation for the text. If he was standing right in front of me, I bet he’d be grinning.
Grayson
Don’t worry about it. Today was about you.
I sigh at the typical Grayson response. Too bad I’m all worries, and that’s unlikely to change just by telling me not to. All I can do is hope there will be a next time .
And god, I really hope there will be a next time. It wasn’t even the hand job that was the best part. No. It was Grayson locking my wrists together above my head and keeping them there. It was Grayson’s body—big and indisputably male—pinning me. If I’d known how much fun it was, I would have asked him to throw me against a wall sooner. I can’t fucking wait to do it again.
Maybe next time we’ll be in a bed. Naked.
Reaching down, I adjust myself. Little more than a thought about Grayson lying on top of me in bed, and I’m hard and ready to go once more. Getting up, I grab the bottle of lube he put in my housewarming package and sit back down on the couch. Instead of pulling up porn on my phone, I tip my head back and close my eyes. I need nothing but thoughts of Gray.