9. Chapter 9
Chapter 9
GRIFF
“That was actually kind of fun,” Ledger says cheerfully, tugging his shirt up to wipe the sweat off his face after we’ve tossed the last of the damaged drywall into the now overflowing dumpster in his driveway.
My back and shoulders are aching again after another long workday, so all I can do is choke on the amusement that rises up to vibrate in my throat.
“If three hours of tearing down drywall is your idea of a good time, you must be a cheap date.”
“Oh, extremely cheap.” He laughs, his eyes dancing with humor. “Easy too.” He winks, and a lick of heat sears through me.
I don’t want to expect anything. I definitely don’t want to ask and have him think I’m a pushy, demanding creep. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been wondering all damn day though what kind of ‘payment schedule’ Ledger had in mind for this little exchange he cooked up. Does he plan to give me a massage and a handjob after every night spent working on his house?
My cock swells in the confines of my jeans and I resist the urge to reach down to adjust myself. Ledger kind of sways towards me, bumping his shoulder against mine and then lingering there, teasing his fingertips along the inside of my forearm and resting his chin on my shoulder. The warmth of his skin tempts me to lean right back. It’s like hopping into a steaming hot shower after spending hours outside in the snow. Just being close to him feels like it’s thawing out my ice-cold skin.
I swallow hard and clench my fists involuntarily, and he drags his fingertips over the taut muscle in my forearm again. The light touch sends sparks dancing over my skin.
“I should—”
“Come back inside.” He cuts me off before I can finish, and relief swells in my chest.
I grunt in agreement. Ledger wraps his fingers around my wrist to tow me back into the house, and I’m all too happy to go. As pathetic as it sounds, I don’t think I even realized just how fucking much I missed being touched by another person until he touched me last night. I found a way to make myself numb to the needy feeling of wanting… anything . But now I can’t remember how to turn it back off and I’m fucking aching for it. Like my chest might crack wide open if he doesn’t press his body up against mine and whisper more sweet lies to me.
We stop inside the door to take our shoes off, and he stops for just a second to scratch TP behind the ears and promise her treats later, his fingers tight around my wrist the whole time, like he’s afraid I might bolt if he dares to let go. I’m sure I’m projecting though. Ledger’s sweet and kind of silly, and he likes to gas people up; that’s probably all he’s doing now without even realizing it. He’s playing into my fantasy that someone’s as desperate to touch me as I am to be touched because he’s nice like that, because somehow he can see that I need it.
He straightens back up and TP scampers off. Ledger turns towards me and studies me for a minute, cocking his head and nibbling on his bottom lip like he’s deep in thought. Shit, maybe he’s already rethinking things. Maybe last night was more than enough to satisfy his curiosity about what it would be like to hook up with his older neighbor and now he’s trying to figure out how to blow me off and still get the work done within his budget.
“We don’t have to—”
Ledger cuts me off again, this time with his lips against mine. I can taste the slight, salty tang of blood from his nervous chewing right before his tongue sweeps into my mouth. I groan in surprise, and he swallows the sound eagerly, pressing his whole body up against mine and backing me into the door. The stiff, heavy shape of his cock nudges at my own swelling erection, one of his hands still wrapped around my wrist while he tangles the other in my freshly trimmed hair.
“Do I strike you as the kind of guy who does a damn thing he doesn’t want to do?” he asks, bumping his nose against mine and quirking one eyebrow.
I shake my head, my chest heaving embarrassingly hard and my thoughts spinning from the ghost of his tongue in my mouth, hot and wet, tangling with mine. A needy moan tightens my throat, and I tilt my mouth towards his again in a silent plea for more. And Ledger isn’t stingy. Of course he’s not. I hardly know him, but I can’t imagine him holding something back that he thought someone else needed or wanted from him. I wonder how often that’s blown up in his face. The whimper is replaced by a broken growl and the urge to crush anyone who’s taken advantage of him or hurt him in his life.
He lets me pry his lips open with my tongue again and lick greedily into his mouth. He lets me lap at his tongue and test the softness of his mouth against mine, murmuring low words I can’t quite hear in that sweet, patient tone of his in between kisses.
Okay, so he wasn’t trying to figure out how to blow me off, but he was thinking about something a minute ago. I dig my fingers into his hips and savor one more slow, exploratory kiss before I manage to gather the willpower to break it.
“What did you want to say?” I ask, my voice full of gravel and my whole body humming with the taste of his mouth and the feeling of his cock dragging against mine.
He blinks in a daze and a smile spreads slowly over his damp lips.
“I was thinking about how sweaty we got and that I can still feel the itchy little hairs all down my back from my haircut…” He bites his lip again, resting his forehead against mine and meeting my eyes. It’s too much up close like this, like he’s going to find some way to look right into my soul and see all the pathetic, embarrassing shit I don’t need anyone to see. I close my eyes and breathe in slowly, and he keeps talking and gently scratching my scalp like it doesn’t bother him at all. “And I was wondering how weird it would be to ask if you wanted to hop in the shower with me.”
My heart jumps and my eyes fly open.
“Sure,” I say hoarsely, my hips twitching involuntarily to nudge my cock against his again. His erection twitches and he lets out a breathy sound that tightens around my balls and stokes the heat building inside me.
“Oh good.” He smiles again like I just made his night. “If you were hesitant, I had this whole plan to pitch it as a ploy to get you to renovate my bathroom after you fix my living room.”
I frown. “You want me to renovate your bathroom?”
Ledger chuckles. “No, that’s what I was going to tell you to lure you into the shower with me.”
“I… don’t get it.”
He leads me down the hallway to the bathroom right next to the main bedroom, the same one he cut my hair in earlier. He flips on the light and then gives me a cheeky smile.
“That’s the beauty of my plan. You would have been so busy trying to figure out what inviting you into the shower had to do with renovating my bathroom and whether I was being serious or just fucking with you, that you would have forgotten to feel weird about it and then bam , there we are, all wet and soapy together.”
I rasp out a laugh and Ledger grins even wider, like that was his plan all along. He releases his hold on my wrist finally and reaches to turn on the water. I glance around the small bathroom, taking in the chipped tiles and the fixtures stained with years of hard water buildup and rust. It wouldn’t be that much extra work to fix it up after I finish his living room.
He’s already naked by the time I’m done with my quick assessment of the room. I rake my eyes over him, taking in his tan lines and the freckles on the back of his shoulders, the dark hair on his thighs and chest, the firmness of his muscles—from labor rather than hours at the gym. He reaches to push my shirt up and a sigh slips past my lips, an audible release of the tension in my shoulders and the relief of having his hands on me again.
I let him tug my shirt over my head, raising my arms to make it easy for him. Then, I reach for the button on my jeans. He’s been so damn sweet to me, but I doubt he’s getting a lot out of having to lead me around and do all the work here. He bats my hand away before I can get my pants open though.
“Hey now, you don’t go to someone else’s birthday party and unwrap their presents, do you?” he asks, bumping his nose against mine and smirking as he tugs my zipper down slowly, making me feel the vibration of each tooth releasing over my cock.
“If I’m your present, you might want to keep the receipt,” I joke with a rumble of a self-deprecating laugh.
Ledger nips at my lip, and I hiss.
“You’re not allowed to undermine my compliments either.” He soothes the stinging spot with his tongue.
“You have a lot of rules all of a sudden.”
Not that I’m complaining. If he told me I had to stand on my head and say the alphabet backward to keep his hands on me, I’d do it happily. I know he can see how starved I am for attention, I just hope he thinks it’s charming and not as pathetic as it feels. He just chuckles, hooking his fingers around my jeans and briefs at the same time and shoving them down.
With my dirty clothes in a pile on the floor right next to Ledger’s, we stumble into the shower together. A groan slips out as soon as the hot water starts to beat against my sore muscles. He reaches for a bottle of bodywash that has an extremely phallic palm tree and coconuts logo on it and pours it into his hand. My nose twitches and I grunt in surprise.
“Wow, that smells exactly like being at the beach.” I sniff again as he rubs his hands together to create a lather. “Not just the overpowering smell of coconuts like most beach scents, but it actually smells like…” I shake my head because I can’t quite describe it.
Ledger smiles.
“Like sunshine and sand and palm trees,” he says with a happy sigh. “It’s like taking a vacation without having to leave the house.” Ledger chuckles and then closes the small amount of space between us.
I gasp at the hot, slippery feeling of his bare skin against mine, his cock finding its way to mine again like they’re magnetized, his chest pressed to my chest. Then he brings his soapy hands to my shoulders and starts to work the suds into my skin. I moan and sag against him, probably trusting him more than I should with my weight on a slippery surface, but I can’t help it. The feeling of him digging into my sore muscles turns me to jelly instantly, and all I can do is get closer to him.
“Aw, there he is. That’s what my big bear needs, isn’t it?” he coos, his cock twitching against mine as he runs his slicked hands up and down my back, digging into my muscles as I press my face into the crook of his neck.
All I can do is whimper in response. I do need it. Fuck, it’s humiliating and sad and I’ll do any-fucking-thing I can to keep him from stopping.
“Big, strong bear,” Ledger purrs, running his hands down until he reaches my ass cheeks.
He digs into the muscles of my glutes just as enthusiastically as he massaged my shoulders, working out the tension. Every kneading grasp tugs me against him, rocking our cocks together, hard and wet and aching. I nuzzle his throat and give in to the gasping, needy little whines building on my tongue.
“There you go, just relax and let Ledgie take care of you.” He hums, slipping his soapy fingers into the crease of my ass. “How about a little story?” His fingertips tease over my hole. “Have you ever heard of Palm Island? It’s where the soap came from. I went a handful of years ago with my best friend, Jericho, for my twenty-first birthday. That place is wild, like gay paradise. Nude beaches crawling with hot guys… Of course, none of them were nearly as sexy as you.”
I want to tell him he doesn’t have to keep flattering me. If my throbbing dick wasn’t enough of a clue, I’m obviously a sure thing. But I don’t want to risk breaking his rule, so I just wheeze out a laugh against his shoulder.
“One night while we were there, we got so drunk we fell asleep on the beach. We woke up to this behemoth of a man standing over us, blocking the morning sun with his massive body. He didn’t say a word though, just handed us a bag of donuts and a couple of to-go coffees from the donut shop there called The Tasty Hole. Then he just walked away.” Ledger laughs at the memory, the sound as warm as sunshine. “Where’s your favorite place to vacation?” he asks, doing his best to soap up my arms and chest while I cling to him like a barnacle. When he can’t reach anywhere else, he puts his hands on my hips to ease me away. I tighten my arms around him, and he chuckles. “It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere, let me just turn you around so I can reach your front.”
I want to laugh at how ridiculous I’m being. If he doesn’t go running for the hills after this, there might be something wrong with him. But I let him spin me around carefully, and then he’s right up against me again, just from behind this time. His cock nudges between my ass cheeks, his chest against my back, his chin resting on my shoulder. He adds some more soap to his hands and then gets right back to work, lathering up my chest and running his hands slowly down my belly.
“The U.P.,” I answer, leaning my weight into him again, my cock twitching as his hands move closer without actually touching, the rich lather of the soap running down my belly and clinging to my pubic hair. “My favorite place to vacation,” I clarify when he doesn’t respond right away.
“Oh, I’ve never been.”
“Seriously?” I try to turn my head to look at him and he just grins and kisses my lips. Then, he slips his hands even lower and wraps one around my cock.
Heat jolts through me and I buck into his grip with a moan. My shaft slides easily through the loose channel of his soapy fingers, with just enough friction to make my knees quake and my balls feel heavy without any relief.
“Lots of good camping and state parks up there, right?” he asks conversationally, moving his hand up and down my length with that same loose grip.
“Uh-huh.” I grunt, canting my hips again, chasing every teasing stroke.
“Do you like to camp, Griff?” He darts his tongue out to lap up the water streaming down the side of my neck.
“Uh-huh,” I pant again.
Ledger flattens one hand over my hip to hold me against him, and I can feel the throb of his cock trapped between my ass cheeks. He rolls his hips and grinds into my crease, tightening his grip just a little when he reaches my cockhead.
“Maybe we could plan a camping trip together sometime. We could take a weekend off and go up to the U.P., check out some hiking trails, sleep under the stars…” he murmurs as he kisses along the slope of my shoulder and strokes me faster.
Honestly, I don’t have the first clue what he’s saying. He could be trying to teach me calculus or telling me the secrets of the universe, but all I can focus on are the feeling of his hands on me and the achy, horny tension building in my gut.
“Uh-huh.” I bob my head agreeably.
He flicks his tongue against my skin and ruts against me a little faster, his breath just as heavy as mine as his grip gets tighter and tighter around my cock.
“You’d agree to anything right now just so I’ll get you off, wouldn’t you?” I can feel the shape of his smile against my shoulder and a heated shiver runs through me.
“Uh-huh.”
“Sweet teddy bear,” he purrs, dropping all teasing and giving me what I need.
His panting breath ghosts against the shell of my ear as he humps and ruts against me, jerking me in the same frantic rhythm with a little twist of his wrist every time he reaches my cockhead. My toes curl and I let my head fall back, my legs barely holding me up. No, most of that work is being done by Ledger, his body sturdy against mine from behind, his arms firm around me, touching me, holding me.
In spite of how heavy my balls are and how tight the heat is in my gut, my orgasm manages to take me by surprise.
“Ledge,” I gasp out his name, my knees quaking and my eyes flying open as my balls finally constrict and my cock starts to pulse in his grasp, spilling thick ropes of cum down his fingers to mingle with the soap still coating his knuckles and filling his palm.
His hips snap again and then he shudders against me with a guttural groan, spilling his release over my ass cheeks and the small of my back. We writhe and grind and pant through the waves of our orgasms, our shouts echoing off the tiled walls, the smell of sex filling the bathroom, as thick as the steam.
I stumble forward when he loosens his hold on me, and I brace my hand against the nearest wall to steady myself. Ledger isn’t far behind, still brushing kisses against the back of my neck and murmuring sweet words I can’t hear over the rush of my pulse in my ears.
A new weight settles in my gut that I can’t swallow down though. What happens when Ledger gets bored with this whole thing? What happens once I’ve finished fixing his living room and renovating his bathroom? I’m sure he has no shortage of guys who would gnaw an arm off just to spend five minutes basking in his addictive attention, but what happens to me? What if I can’t lock down the neediness again? What if I’m broken now and it’s all his fault?
LEDGER
“I have never seen anyone go from cum-drunk to scowly that fast. It has to be some kind of record,” I tease, reaching for the bodywash again so I can clean myself up.
I’m still enjoying the loose, satisfied feeling in my bones from that lovely hump-fest, but Griff’s shoulders are tense again as he sticks his face under the shower spray and just grunts in response.
Damn. Did I push him too far? Did I say something stupid? It’s hard to remember what exactly my mouth got up to while I was so focused on playing with his dick. I could have proposed marriage for all I know. Sigh . An outdoor wedding in the spring would be nice, wouldn’t it? If I promise to give him handjobs and belly rubs every day, is there a chance he would say yes?
The water goes from hot to lukewarm, which means I only have about a minute before we’re blasted with ice water. I shake off the cozy fantasy and hurry to turn the water off. I want to wrap my arms around him again and kiss that frown right off his lips. I want to towel him dry and then drag him to my bed and snuggle him all night like he’s my favorite stuffed animal. But what I really want is to magically know the right words to unlock whatever thoughts have him pulling back and shutting down.
Is this what Jericho meant when he said I go for guys like Griff so I can’t get hurt? The softness never lasts long enough for me to get used to it, and maybe there’s some safety in that.
Griff towels off and gets dressed in a hurry while I take my time, lingering so that once he’s ready to bolt, I won’t make it weird by following him out. He pulls his shirt over his head then stops right by the bathroom door with his shoulders tense.
“Hey, Griff.” I nibble on my bottom lip, still waiting for those magic words to pop into my head; some way to unlock whatever’s holding him back. But maybe there’s nothing. Some guys are just fucking terrified of intimacy, and maybe that’s all this is. “This was fun.”
He grunts, putting one hand on the doorknob but not running for it yet.
“I’ll do the bathroom reno,” he rumbles.
I cock my head, not sure I heard him right.
“The…”
“The bathroom. Unless you were joking and don’t want it done.” He turns back to glance around the small bathroom with a look on his face that says it all.
I sputter a laugh and my heart jumps.
“Okay,” I say easily. “I’m sure we can work out a payment plan.”
He rumbles with amusement and cranes his neck to look at me without turning around. His lips are still turned down, but his eyes have softened a little. He drags them over me slowly then nods.
“Have a good night.”
“You too, big bear.” I grin.
He grunts one last time and then he’s gone.
Okay, so he can’t talk about his feelings, but if he wants to do more work for me that has to mean he wants to keep hanging around me, right? That’s a start. It’s definitely a start.