Chapter 12 #3
Still, maybe it just came down to the one truth he could say out loud. “When I skated today,” he said, hating how his voice trembled, but he couldn’t help it, not anymore, “I was so fucking happy. And you were the first person I wanted to tell. That’s not bullshit.”
Nate didn’t say anything. He just leaned in and kissed Ramsey again, hands rising to frame his face. Ramsey’s eyes fluttered shut. Feeling everything and nothing at the same time.
The kiss spun on and on and then broke and then re-formed and formed again. Like Nate had also been storing up each and every time he’d wanted to kiss and he’d buried the impulse down instead of indulging, and now there were so many to share.
Nate’s hands buried in his hair again and this time he did tug, tilting Ramsey into the position he wanted. One and then another and finally, a third.
It was amazing how he’d kissed before, but it had never felt like this before, like Ramsey was being turned inside out every time Nate’s mouth slanted over his, sure and true.
Ramsey didn’t know who moved first, but it felt like the most natural progression in the world to shift his weight to lead—or follow?—Nate down the hall to his bedroom.
He’d been in here once before, last June. So much of it felt the same. Ramsey’s knees giving out and landing him on the edge of the mattress and Nate looming over him.
But everything felt new and different, too.
“Take this off,” Nate murmured against Ramsey’s mouth, tugging up the hem of his sweatshirt. “Need to see you, sweetheart.”
Ramsey let Nate tug the thick fabric up and over his head, and then they were kissing again, hot and heavy. He reached for Nate, pulling his T-shirt off, finally getting to map out all that hot skin, rippling with muscle, with his palms.
When Nate crowded him on the bed, fitting himself between Ramsey’s thighs like he was born to be there, the skin-to-skin contact made Ramsey lightheaded.
He’d wanted before. Sex was something he could always fit into easy-to-process boxes, but that was sex with strangers. Just two bodies—or sometimes more—colliding together.
But everything with Nate felt heightened, like it was too big to hold, nevermind to fit neatly into a label that Ramsey understood.
He’d be okay just making out like this, rubbing up against Nate’s gloriously muscled thigh, even coming in his pants, when six months ago, he’d have laughed at something so childish.
But the actual act mattered less. The way he looked mattered even less than that.
He wasn’t worried about making a stupid face or being too desperate or letting all his naked desire show.
He just wanted to feel it. Wanted to keep feeling it.
“What do you want?” Nate asked in a hushed, rough whisper. His hand was still buried in Ramsey’s curls but it had gentled. The way he was looking down at Ramsey was reverent. Almost awed. Like he couldn’t quite believe that they’d made it back here.
That made two of them.
“I just . . .” Ramsey panted in the air between them. Why had they stopped kissing? He didn’t want to stop. He never wanted to stop.
And maybe it was okay for Nate to know that. A kernel of real truth, something Ramsey had buried and buried and couldn’t any longer, because it was sprouting, growing past his control.
“Tell me,” Nate said gently. Ramsey reached over and tugged Nate’s T-shirt off.
Nate’s gaze softened, even as it heated more. “Tell me,” he insisted again.
The kernel cracked open. “Kiss me,” Ramsey begged.
“Always,” Nate said and leaned in, pressed skin to skin, and kissed him.
They collapsed onto the bed, Nate pressing him down into the mattress, and Ramsey groaned into his mouth as Nate’s thigh wedged between his legs again.
They were both in sweatpants, but just the pressure was glorious. Lighting him up from the inside out.
Another Ramsey, an old Ramsey, would be already thinking of how to flip the power in the situation. How to shift focus, because Nate was all over him, every single bit of his attention like a laser on Ramsey.
Impossible to hide.
He dug his fingertips into Nate’s broad shoulders and let himself relax into the feeling of Nate’s mouth sliding over to his neck, then lower to his collarbone. To his chest, then his abs.
By the time Nate hit the waistband of his sweatpants, Ramsey was sweating and squirming.
Nate’s eyes flicked up to his. They were so dark in the dim light of the room. “You want me to touch you?”
Ramsey swallowed hard. He knew what Nate wanted. He wasn’t going to go past the point of no return without Ramsey’s permission.
But speaking it out loud would make it real. Would mean he couldn’t hide any longer.
No more pretending that it was just sex.
That Ramsey just wanted to get off. If that was all it was, he’d have been hooking up the whole summer and through the fall.
He wouldn’t have pressed the big red button blinking in the back of his mind, and made Nate pay attention to him the only way he could.
Because what he’d intended was to tell everyone they knew that they weren’t just fucking, or even friends with benefits, but romantic.
Maybe Ramsey didn’t know how to do this. Maybe he’d be absolute shit at this—he’d certainly never done it before, never even wanted to do it before—but Nate made him want to try.
“I want you to touch me.” Ramsey expected his voice to come out wavering and unsure. He felt unsure, like the concrete foundation he’d set his whole life upon was suddenly trembling. But instead, he sounded unbelievably certain. Desperate yes, unsure no.
Nate’s whole face melted, fond affection blooming across it. This was what Nate had been hiding the whole time, behind a front of annoyance and frustration. He’d wanted this too, and he hadn’t thought he could have it.
“God, baby, wanna touch you so bad,” Nate murmured, and didn’t waste any more time. He tugged Ramsey’s sweatpants and his briefs down, and a second later, Ramsey gasped out loud as Nate’s mouth licked up his length, sinking him into that tight white heat.
His whole adult life, and frankly probably before that, Ramsey prided himself on his self-control. His ability to keep his shit locked down, when the moment came, and to only lose it when he chose to. But he already knew that wasn’t going to happen right now.
Right now he was going to lose himself, not just at how skillfully Nate was sucking him down, because he was, but because it was Nate.
Ramsey groaned, pleasure spiking, hips rolling restlessly, because he couldn’t figure out how to keep his shit together.
Reaching out, Nate pinned Ramsey’s hip with a hand, hot and heavy. Strong. Ramsey made a questioning noise.
Nate lifted his head and his gaze met Ramsey’s. “Stay,” he said gruffly. “Just . . .take it, baby. Okay?”
Ramsey’s mouth dropped open a little. That was the last thing he’d expected Nate to say.
It was Nate’s turn to groan, deep in his throat. “Shit, I need you to be less . . .” He trailed off.
“Less?”
“Less hot. Less fascinating. Less infuriating.”
“I’m not—I’m letting you—” Ramsey didn’t understand. Wasn’t this what Nate wanted? He’d assumed, sure, but Nate had seemed to very much be enjoying the situation until this point.
“Exactly,” Nate said.
It hit Ramsey like a blow to the chest.
Nate understood that this was not how Ramsey usually conducted his hookups.
He understood that this was an exception. That Nate—as a concept, as a persona, as an experience—was an exception.
And Nate craved it.
“God,” Ramsey whined and fell back against the mattress. Undone, and that was before Nate even got his cock back in his mouth.
“So fucking gorgeous like this,” Nate murmured, between long sucks, pulses of heat vibrating through Ramsey’s limbs.
He still couldn’t feel his fingers or his toes, and he’d worried for a split second that meant something was wrong, but now, he was beginning to see that maybe that meant something was very right.
This, Nate, was very right.
He was on a hair trigger, barely able to hang on to the self-control he’d spent a lifetime curating, and then Nate tucked him deeper into his mouth, tongue curling around the head, and Ramsey lost it.
If he was being honest, as he groaned out his orgasm, he hadn’t even wanted to hang on to it. Not anymore.
Maybe he’d had more skillful orgasms, but he’d never had one that felt like that before, like he’d been emptied out. When Ramsey glanced down at Nate, that cavern at the center of him filled back up, all lightness and joy.
Nate was hot, sure, definitely one of the more attractive people that Ramsey had ever slept with but that wasn’t why he wanted to sleep with him.
It didn’t even feel like it made the top ten.
Ramsey made a greedy hand motion and kicked him gently on his back with his heel as he crawled up Ramsey’s body.
They kissed, Ramsey tasting himself on Nate’s tongue.
Then Nate pulled back. Ramsey didn’t need any more instruction.
He reached down and was about to wrap a hand around Nate’s cock.
Wanting, more than anyone else, to make him feel good—to make him feel like this—too.
But before he could, Nate batted his hand away and did it himself.
Ramsey couldn’t help the way he pouted about it.
“Sweetheart,” Nate said roughly, “I just want you to lie there. Look perfect.”
Yeah, that was not a surprise. Nate was not the first guy to want that.
But then Nate kept going. “So fucking beautiful when you smiled at me tonight. Like I was seeing the real you. Like you wanted me to see the real you, and I—”
“You did,” Ramsey said and watched, mouth hanging open, as Nate began to come, then, spurting all over his chest in hot wet pulses.
“Fuck,” Nate said with feeling and collapsed against him. Not crushing him, not exactly, because Ramsey wasn’t small either, but hemming him in.
Any other time, Ramsey would’ve kicked him in the leg. Told him to get up. Insisted on them cleaning up.
But this felt . . .well, it felt nice. Especially when Nate tucked his face into Ramsey’s neck. As the seconds ticked by, Ramsey could feel Nate’s heartbeat slowing, and then somehow, aligning with Ramsey’s own.
Ramsey knew he should say something. Ask the inevitable question. Does this change anything? But he didn’t need to ask it, because the answer already felt like it was reverberating inside him, like someone had just hit a gong: it changes everything.
Finally, Nate lifted his head. “Are you freaking out?” he asked.
Ramsey did smack him then. “No.”
“You get that this . . .” Nate hesitated. “We can’t—”
“We can’t go back, I know. I get this changes everything, yes.” Ramsey barely held back an eye roll. Of course Nate was going to ruin this perfectly nice post-orgasm cuddle session by stating a bunch of obvious truths.
“And you’re not freaking out,” Nate stated rather than asked. His gentle tone was both touching and frustrating.
And yes, Ramsey did understand why he might be worried. God knew they’d both fought against this—in particular it felt like he’d done everything in his power to both bring it to fruition and also push it away as an impossibility—but it had happened, now.
No changing it, even if he wanted to change it. And he didn’t.
“No, I am not freaking out,” Ramsey said carefully, with as much dignity as he could muster with come smeared across his stomach and a two hundred and fifty pound football player plastered across him.
Nate pushed up onto an elbow and stared down at Ramsey. He was grinning. “Good. ’Cause I’m gonna want to do that again.”
“You said so,” Ramsey said.
Nate frowned in confusion. “When?”
“After you kissed me in the hallway,” Ramsey reminded him.
“You did mean it, didn’t you?”
Ramsey nudged him again. Sure, this was all new to him, but he didn’t like or appreciate how many times Nate was questioning him. “You know I meant it.”
“God.” Nate sighed happily. “I was the first person you wanted to tell.” He flopped over onto the mattress next to Ramsey.
Ignoring the mess he was making, Ramsey rolled over, unable to help his own answering grin. “You gonna take out a billboard about it?”
“I should. I bet there’d be a lot of disappointed guys out there.”
“A lot,” Ramsey agreed, smirking.
Nate just laughed though, which settled another part of Ramsey that he hadn’t realized he’d needed settled.
Ramsey couldn’t change his past—it was part of him, and he wouldn’t even necessarily want to change it—but he couldn’t date someone for real if they were going to stew about it. If they were going to be jealous.
Instead, Nate just seemed smug about it.
“That shouldn’t be cute, but it is,” Ramsey admitted.
“What, feeling damn good about the fact that it’s me?”
Ramsey nudged him again. “Yes.”
“Get used to it, baby.” Nate leaned in and kissed him again.
“That should also not be cute,” Ramsey said.
“Me calling you baby?”
Ramsey nodded, and Nate’s expression softened into seriousness.
“Do you not like it? I can call you something different—”
“No, no,” Ramsey said. “I . . .I wouldn’t think I would, but I do. I do like it. It feels good. Real. Like you’re really dating me.”
Nate’s brown eyes softened into fondness. Ramsey didn’t think he could look away even if he wanted to. “Baby, I am dating you for real.”
Ramsey had known it. He’d known it from the moment he’d told Nate the truth about how he’d been dying to tell him about today.
He’d known he’d wanted it for even longer.
Nate had to know that, but Ramsey still felt he should say it. “I want you to know how much it kills me to say this, but I’m not going to be good at it.”
“Dating me?” But Nate just started laughing without even waiting for Ramsey to answer. “I don’t want you to be anything but you, okay?”
“Easier said than done, when you get annoyed with me,” Ramsey grumbled.
“And I’m still going to want to date you, even if I get annoyed. That already happened, didn’t it? You freaked out and ran away, and I was annoyed about that for awhile. Few months, easy. And guess what, the moment you showed up again? Boom. Still wanted to fucking date you.”
It was impossible to keep the smile on his face from growing bigger and wider, completely breaking through containment.
“Yeah, baby?”
Nate just chuckled. “Yeah, baby.”