17. Chapter 17
Chapter 17
GRIFF
Ledger is practically vibrating, staring at the flowers in my hands and opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. I’m hoping that’s a good sign. My heart is in my throat waiting for his answer though.
Jericho appears behind him, coming around the corner and leaning against the wall at the opening of the hallway. His eyes are narrowed and his lips are puckered like he just tasted something particularly sour and didn’t care for it one bit.
“Oh.” I swallow and tighten my grip on the bouquet, the paper crinkling in my sweaty fist. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I was interrupting anything. I can come back tomorrow or…” I should have called first. I assumed Ledger would be waiting around for me to show up and start tearing up the ruined living room floor tonight, but why would he when I left him hanging this morning with nothing but a lame note?
“No.” Ledger lunges forward to grab my arm before I can turn to leave. The second his fingers touch my skin I’m hit with the urge to melt into him and start to purr. I don’t care if his friend stands there with his lemon face the whole time, I just want to pull Ledger into my arms and beg him to tell me I didn’t ruin everything. “Jericho’s leaving.” He looks over his shoulder at his friend, tightening his hold on my wrist like he’s afraid I’ll make a run for it. “Bye, Jer, love you, get lost.”
Jericho’s sour face smooths out and he snorts a laugh, uncrossing his arms and sauntering forward. There’s an awkward moment where I step inside and slip off my boots while Jericho puts his shoes back on, continuing to shoot me less-than-friendly looks the whole time. I should say something to him, right? He’s Ledger’s best friend; I don’t want him to hate me. But what would I say? I don’t even know why he hates me, although I could take a guess. He probably thinks I’m not good enough for Ledger, maybe too old, too grumpy… Hell, maybe he wants Ledger for himself. I could hardly blame the guy, but I sure as shit wouldn’t let it go without a fight.
My heart squeezes and I look at Ledger again, hovering next to Jericho, shooting him various looks that seem like he’s trying to communicate wordlessly, but fuck if I know what he’s trying to say. Jericho seems to though, moving his eyebrows and shaking his head in an equally silent response.
I would fight for Ledger . That’s what I’m here to do, right? I stopped at Little Shop of Flowers on my way over and now I’m going to wrench my own chest open, show Ledger all the messy things inside, and hope he wants this too.
Jericho finishes tying his shoes and straightens up. He squeezes Ledger’s arm, gives me one more wary look, then leaves, shutting the front door behind him. No one was saying anything before this, but the silence after he’s gone rings in my ears. My tongue feels too big for my mouth, and I can already feel myself sweating through my shirt, but I’m not going to let that stop me.
“So, he hates me.” I let out a rusty chuckle.
“He doesn’t hate you, he’s just protective of me.” Ledger glances at the flowers in my hand again.
“Oh, sorry. These are for you.” I thrust them forward again, and instead of staring at them this time, Ledger takes them with a soft smile.
“Thank you.” He bites his lip and tilts his head towards the kitchen. “Come on, I need to see if I have anything that can function as a vase.”
“Sorry, I didn’t even think of that.”
He waves the apology off. “The flowers are beautiful. I love that they’re sunflowers. Don’t get me wrong, roses seem nice and everything, but this feels more…”
“Yeah, I was going to get roses, but Lewis, the guy at the flower shop, he said they’re a bit overdone. He asked me about you, what you’re like, and I said…” I clear my throat again, heat rising in my cheeks as I follow Ledger down the hall to the kitchen. “I said you’re like sunshine. Hence the… um… sunflowers.” I wince at how lame that sounds, but Ledger stops in his tracks and spins to face me.
“You told some flower shop guy I’m like sunshine?” I never knew someone could actually look like the watery eye emoji, but he manages it. “Stahp, that’s too cute.” He launches himself at me, crushing the flowers between our chests as he slams his lips into mine.
I catch him with a grunt, hooking one hand behind his neck and tracing the shape of his smile with my tongue. After a minute, he breaks away and checks the flowers to make sure they survived.
In the kitchen, TP is splayed out on the table on her back, her chubby belly rising and falling as she snoozes without a care in the world, clutching a toy fish in one paw. Ledger chuckles and shakes his head at her, then rummages through his cabinets until he finds a glass pitcher to fill with water.
“Sooooo, what did you want to talk about?” He puts the flowers into the makeshift vase and carefully smooths out any petals that were crushed when he kissed me.
I don’t know where to start. Maybe I should have spent more time figuring out exactly what I wanted to say and less time worrying about flowers. I run my tongue over my bottom lip and the lingering taste of Ledger’s mouth gives me the courage I need to just start babbling and hope for the best.
“I was like this even before Riley died. On the rare occasion I tell people about him, I always notice this flash of pitying understanding, like they’re thinking ‘ah, so that’s why you’re such an antisocial, scowling asshole.’ But the truth is, this is just my face and even when I was young and nothing bad had ever happened to me, I was still a moody dickhead.” I chuckle and look up to see Ledger leaning against the cabinet opposite me with an arched eyebrow and an expression like he’s trying to hold back laughter of his own. “I never did figure out what he saw in me, and after…” I shake my head, my chest tightening with the confession I’ve never made out loud, only ever to myself. “I mean, come on, who wins the lottery twice, right? For the past decade I figured I’d had the little slice of happiness I was going to get and wanting any more would just be greedy. What were the chances someone else would be stupid enough to fall for a grumpy asshole like me anyway?”
Ledger makes a strangled sound in his throat and pushes off the counter.
“Hi, it’s me, the stupid park ranger obsessed with grumpy bears,” he mumbles as he crashes into me.
I rumble another laugh, feelings expanding too rapidly inside my chest, until I’m sure I’ll burst. He cards his fingers through my beard and nuzzles his nose against mine.
“So…” I cup his face and search his eyes. “This thing, whatever we’ve been doing, it’s about more than just free handiwork, right?”
He slips a hand under my shirt to stroke over the soft swell of my belly and bumps our noses together again, a smile twisting his lips. The heat of his touch goes straight between my legs, making my cock swell and my balls get heavy.
“Now who’s the stupid one?” He brushes his lips against mine in an aching almost-kiss, and a whimper tightens my throat. “I’m your secret admirer, silly. And if I’d known getting my hands on you would be as easy as flooding my living room, I would have taken a sledgehammer to the pipes the same week I moved in.”
“You’re…” My mind spins over his confession. He was the obvious answer the whole time, but letting myself see that would have meant admitting that this was more than just a little bit of fun and light prostitution between neighbors. I’m still struggling to catch up with the timeline though. “No, the flowers came weeks ago, before I started fixing your living room or anything.”
He nods, bumping our foreheads together. “It’s possible I’ve had a teeny tiny, stalker-adjacent obsession with you pretty much since I moved in.”
“Since you…” All the words he’s saying make sense on their own, it’s just the whole context that I’m struggling to absorb.
Ledger grins and kisses me again, full and slow, stroking his tongue over mine as he pets my belly and grinds our swelling cocks against each other.
“I was unpacking my stuff, and I saw you through the window, shirtless on your deck, sipping your coffee with this look on your face like it had offended you. I saw your lips moving, so I cracked my window open to see if I could hear what you were saying, and you were grumbling about too much sunshine.”
“You were moving in, saw me being a grumpy asshole first thing in the morning, and… decided you had a crush on me?” I frown and he cackles, sinking into me a little more, like he can’t get close enough but he’s willing to try.
“What can I say? I like what I like.” He shrugs unapologetically, and my heart does that thing where it feels too big, like it might burst, again. “Does this mean I can stop playing it cool, big bear? Please tell me that’s what this whole conversation is leading to. Tell me I can openly swoon over all of your grunts and scowls, and the next time we go out we can call it a date.”
“This whole time has been you playing it cool?”
“Oh, baby, you have no idea.” He grinds against me again and smirks. “Are you my boyfriend?”
I nod and it feels like the bubble in my chest bursts, flooding my body with warmth. Ledger practically shrieks with happiness, the sound ringing in my ears until I drag him in for another hungry kiss.
LEDGER
Griff likes me. He brought me flowers and he used all of his big feeling words and damn, this is way too exciting, I think I’m going to scream again. Except, screaming would require getting my tongue out of Griff’s mouth, and that sounds like the worst idea of all time. Like, Titanic levels of tragic. So I settle for making a muffled noise of excitement against his lips and trying my damnedest to climb him like a tree.
Unfortunately, we’re about the same height and I’m oddly denser than I look. Griff’s laughter vibrates around my tongue and against my lips, and happiness fizzes inside me. I stop trying to climb him and settle for undressing him instead. We tug at each other’s clothes, only breaking our kiss to get our shirts off before falling right back into the rhythm of trading our tongues back and forth and devouring each other’s lips.
A happy purr vibrates in Griff’s chest, pressed right up against mine, sending quakes of pleasure through me. My cock is hard and aching, straining in my jeans to get closer to Griff, just like every other part of me is desperate to do. He groans and drags his mouth away from mine to kiss along my jaw as he works my jeans open. I can’t stop running my hands over his chest and belly long enough to unbutton his pants. His nipples are stiff, and the gasp he makes when I run my fingers over them is so addictive I do it a couple more times just because I can. His belly trembles a little with every heavy breath and grumbly moan that slips out of his throat, and all I want to do is rub my face in all his soft hair.
“Want to go to your bedroom?” he murmurs, nipping and sucking on the stubbled skin along my jaw.
“And miss out on kitchen floor sex with my boyfriend? Absolutely not.” I finally manage to work one hand down to tug at the zipper on his jeans. I chuckle and flick my tongue against the shell of his ear.
“Kitchen floor—”
I cackle and drag him down onto the cool tile floor. We both kick our jeans and briefs off before I scramble on top of him, straddling him so our bare, hard cocks find each other. I moan, canting my hips so I can feel the length of his erection throb against mine. Precum drools from my slit and catches on his cockhead, and I return to my favorite activity—groping his sexy fucking body.
“Fuck, I want you, Ledge.” He groans, rolling his hips and burying his face against my throat.
“I couldn’t tell,” I tease, wrapping my hand around both our cocks, pressing them together and gasping at the toe-curling pressure and silky heat.
“No.” He sucks on my pulse point then kisses his way up towards my lips again, stopping when he reaches my chin and looking me in the eyes. “I mean, yes, I want you like that.” His beard tickles my lips and my free hand rests against his chest, where I can feel his heart pounding wildly. “But I want more than this. I want you waking up in my bed and talking too damn much before coffee. I want to know every stupid thing about birds that’s stored in that brain of yours. I want to tell you all the shit that’s hard to say to anybody else.”
Emotion clogs my throat, and for once, I’m speechless. All I can do is sniffle and nod before sinking into another kiss. We buck and rut, the tiles underneath us quickly warming to match the heat of our skin. We trade hungry, muffled sounds, rolling to switch positions so Griff’s weight pins me to the floor as we grind our cocks together, both panting and gasping at the feeling of our hot shafts dragging against each other.
“Any chance you have supplies stashed in your pockets again?” He plants wet, greedy kisses up and down the column of my throat.
“Uh…” My sex-fogged brain buzzes as I search for the answer to what I’m sure is a simple question. His cockhead catches on mine and heat rushes through me, my hole fluttering and my insides aching with emptiness. Oh, supplies, right. “No, not on me.”
It’s not like I was expecting to get ravished in the kitchen tonight. I absolutely will not make that mistake again. From now on, there will be a condom and lube in my pocket everywhere I go just in case my sexy, growly boyfriend gets the sudden urge to maul me. But future planning isn’t going to do a damn thing to help us right now.
I could get my horny ass up off the floor and go to my bedroom to get supplies, but, ugh that sounds so far away right now with Griff’s hot mouth worrying my collarbone and his naked body crushing me to the floor. I cast my gaze around the kitchen, stupidly expecting a solution to present itself on a silver platter.
… or a butter dish.
My eyes land on the room-temperature stick of butter sitting on the counter a few feet away.
We can’t.
Griff stops sucking a bruise onto my collarbone and cranes his neck to follow my gaze.
“We can’t,” he echoes my thoughts.
“Right, of course not. I mean, what kind of animal would slick up with butter to fuck someone?” I rasp out a laugh, my eyes still fixed on the butter, Griff’s cock throbbing eagerly against mine.
I’m sure there are less messy alternatives. I’ve got a bottle of olive oil around here somewhere. But that poses the same problem as the lube—sure, it exists, but we’d have to put a pause to all of this glorious, filthy groping to actually do anything about it. And the butter is right there .
Griff shifts his weight and we both groan as our balls slap together. He catches my eye with a furrow in his brow.
“We still wouldn’t have a condom,” he says. I can tell he’s waiting for me to cave and suggest we move this to the bedroom, but come on, where’s the fun in that?
I bite my lip and trail my fingers down the slope between his pecs, all the way to his belly.
“That’s fine,” I say hoarsely. “If it’s okay with you.”
His gaze darkens and his cock spasms, a quiet, horny growl vibrating in his throat.
“Fuck it,” he mutters, pushing off of me for half a second to rise on his knees and plunge two fingers into the soft stick of butter.
My laughter turns into a surprised gasp as he grabs my calf with his clean hand and flips me over. I was wrong, the tile isn’t quite as warm as I thought, in spite of my ass having been ground into it for the last ten minutes. The shock of the chill to my cock and balls makes me gasp a second time, but I don’t have the chance to complain or even make a joke about my poor life choices before Griff’s fingers dig into my ass cheek, and seconds later, his wet, scorching hot tongue slithers across my rim.
“Oh fuck yeah,” I pant, shoving my ass towards him with a greedy whimper.
He hums, lapping at my hole with sloppy, deep strokes of his tongue. “One upside to the butter…” he murmurs, easing two slicked fingers into my hole at the same time while still nibbling on my rim. “Unlike lube, it’s edible.”
He immediately proves his point by licking me deeper as he strokes his fingers in and out, his knuckles tugging at my rim, his fingertips ghosting teasingly over my prostate. My cock throbs and twitches against the cool floor, which is getting increasingly slick beneath me with the precum gushing from my slit and the drool running down my chin.
“Fuck me.” I claw at the floor with nothing to grab on to. “Fuck me,” I plead, shoving my ass back towards him again shamelessly.
He growls against my hole and fucks his fingers deep, twisting and scissoring them a few times to stretch and relax my muscles.
“Griff,” I whine.
With a chuckle at my impatience, he eases his fingers out and crawls up my body. The head of his cock taps on the swell of my ass cheeks and the hair on his chest and belly tickles my back. I push myself up off the floor an inch, just so I can feel more of him, and he makes one of those happy, grumbly sounds and nuzzles my ear.
“Ready?” he asks, notching the bare head of his cock against my buttery hole. This is exactly the kind of thing I’m going to wince in horror and disgust over later when I have some post-nut clarity, but right now… fuck, it’s kind of hot. Scratch that, it’s extremely fucking hot that I make this man so out of his mind horny for me that he’s willing to butter me up and stuff me like a Thanksgiving turkey. Gobble gobble, motherfucker.
“Yes,” I groan, my hips twitching as I rub myself against him like a cat in heat, trying to find the right way to squirm underneath him that will end with his dick inside me.
Luckily, he takes pity on me. With a needy growl, he reaches over my head to lace his fingers through mine, then rolls his hips and fills me in one breath-stealing, ball-clenching, moan-inducing thrust.
I wail his name again, a new mixture of need and relief igniting in my gut and between my legs as he stretches and fills me.
“Ledge,” he growls right next to my ear, and holy fuck, has my name always sounded so sexy? Or is it just because it’s on Griff’s lips, mixed with huffs and grunts and quiet moans as he rocks his hips in search of the perfect rhythm.
My cock glides against the smooth, slicked tile with every thrust as his cockhead tags my prostate, forcing even more precum out of me to flood the floor beneath me. I’m sure it’s all psychological, but it feels different with nothing between us. It’s like I can feel each throbbing vein in his cock as they pulse against my rim, like he’s dribbling that endless stream of precum inside of me, getting me all wet and slippery so he can fuck me deeper and harder.
His fingers curl around mine and the slap of our bare skin fills the kitchen as we rut together wildly, lost to a symphony of horny, animal noises neither of us can hold back. He tags my prostate over and over until my eyes roll back and my whole body starts to tremble. My balls tighten with every thrust, my cock getting stiffer and more sensitive, dragging against the floor.
Griff rumbles possessively in his chest and uses his knees to shove my legs apart a little wider. He roars with satisfaction and fucks me deeper, so deep I swear I can feel him rearranging my guts with every jarring thrust. I buck my hips and babble mindlessly as the hot coil of pressure builds and builds inside me. He slams deep one more time and I’m done for. I let out a strangled cry and my balls clench so tight it almost hurts, before pleasure explodes through me so intensely it makes my head spin. I gasp Griff’s name as my cock pulses, spilling hot rivers of cum onto the floor, smearing it onto my belly and my cock as he keeps fucking me right into it.
He presses his face into the back of my neck and clenches his fingers around mine, and then I feel his answering pleasure, his cock twitching hard inside of me, the heat of his cum spilling into my guts. More waves of pleasure crash over me and we writhe together like that, wringing out every drop of our orgasms until we’re both breathless and completely spent.
Griff collapses on top of me and I let out an oomph . He chuckles and kisses the back of my neck, gliding his lips down to my shoulders to pepper a few kisses there, then rolls off of me. He splays out on the floor next to me on his back, and I roll out of my own mess to swing a leg over him and rest my head on his chest.
“I can’t believe we used butter,” he mumbles.