Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
LYRIC
The poker game breaks up pretty late, and I end up with a couple hundred extra bucks in my pocket.
I still don’t have a damn clue what the rules are, but it was fun as hell.
I’m lingering on the sidewalk outside of The Sand Bar, watching a couple of drunk tourists stumble towards the beach and finishing up a joint when I hear the door open behind me.
“Oh,” Yuri says quietly. “I didn’t know you were waiting for me.”
I glance over my shoulder with a grin. “Just taking my time.” I shrug. “You want company for the walk home?”
“I guess I won’t complain about it,” he teases, plucking the nearly spent joint from between my fingers and finishing it off with one long drag.
I get stuck staring at the shape of his lips for a few seconds, my cock hardening and my brain short circuiting.
But then he’s done, and his mouth curves back into a half smile and he stubs the joint out against the side of the building, before flicking it into the trashcan a few feet away.
“Nice shot.”
“I’m world renowned for my athletic prowess,” he jokes, and then his face lights up a little more in that way that always tells me he’s remembering something.
“Holy shit, do you remember that Hula-Hoop class you dragged me to every week for, like, two months? By the end, I still couldn’t get the damn thing to stay up for more than two rotations, and you were teaching the instructor new techniques. ”
I laugh, my hand bumping against his as we walk.
“I remember. Those skills came in handy. I won a Hula-Hoop contest in the Palm-lympics.”
“You’ll have to show me your gold medal sometime.” Yuri nudges his shoulder against mine playfully.
I chuckle again, but then my smile falters. “I don’t know, it sounds like you’re going to be pretty busy.”
Yuri cocks his head. “What do you mean?”
I shake my head. I don’t know what I’m doing getting salty and shit about the stupid bachelor auction.
Except, I kind of thought Yuri and I talked about not seeing anyone else.
Maybe that conversation we had in the shower a couple of weeks ago meant something different than I thought.
Fuck, I want to just ask, but it feels like whatever we have going on right now is made from nothing but loose threads, and if I tug on the wrong one, it all falls apart.
I don’t want to think about Yuri with anyone else. I don’t want to think about Yuri leaving. I just want to keep pretending that these few months I’ve had him back for can last forever.
“You want to see something?” I ask.
“Sure.” He agrees without any hesitation, curling his fingers around mine as soon as I reach for his hand.
“Come on.” I tug him the opposite way, back down Main Street.
He looks confused, but he follows me without asking questions, past all the buildings with their lights off.
The window over Raven’s café has a light on, but I’m pretty sure that’s his apartment.
Everything else is dark and quiet now that everyone has either gone home or to the beach for a few more hours of late-night partying.
The museum is just a small brick building right at the end of the street. I pull on the door handle, and it rattles but stays closed.
“Ah, shit, it’s locked.”
Yuri snorts a laugh. “What is it?” he asks, leaning in to peer through the window into the darkness inside.
“It’s the museum I was telling you about. It’s got all kinds of stuff about the history of the town, and letters between Harold and George. There’s a piano and some other stuff they owned. It’s pretty cool.”
“We’ll have to come back during the day sometime.” He squeezes my hand and keeps trying to squint through the large window.
“Yeah, I guess we can come back another time when it’s open.”
I sag a little bit though. Maybe some part of me thought that the museum could be the thing that would make Yuri realize that he wants to stay here.
“I’d really like to see the letters. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be gay back then, to feel like you had to run away and buy an island together just to be happy.”
“Buying an island is a serious commitment.” I chuckle, and we start back towards home again.
YURI
“You want anything to drink?” I ask as we step inside my place and I kick my shoes off. Cooper isn’t wearing any, and I have no idea if that’s because he lost them somewhere this afternoon or if he’s been walking around all day without any.
Asking if he wants a drink feels so much easier than asking if he wants to stay over tonight, like a no won’t hurt as much if I haven’t actually asked the real question.
“I’m alright, thanks,” he says, and damn, there’s the flaw in that logic, because now I have no idea where we’re at. All I know is that something feels just a little off between us right now, and I can’t put my finger on what it is.
“Coop, listen—” Before I can finish what I was going to say, his mouth comes down on mine. I sigh against his lips and wrap my arms around his neck, melting into him.
His hands slide down my back to grip my ass while I slip my tongue into the heat of his mouth, my cock hardening rapidly between us.
Why isn’t everything as easy as this? There’s nothing complicated or confusing about our relationship or what either of us want when our hands are on each other and our tongues are tangled.
I can feel his cock hardening too, thickening and stiffening against mine as he walks me backward until I bump into the kitchen counter.
He lifts me up and sets me back down on the counter, and I wrap my legs around his waist to drag him close again, threading my fingers through his long, messy hair and deepening the kiss.
I’ll never get enough of the way his mouth feels against mine.
I’ll never get tired of the feeling of being devoured by him, of being the full focus of his attention and desire when he kisses me like this.
He rocks his hips, grinding the hard length of his cock against mine through our clothes, swallowing the muffled moans I let out around his tongue.
“I need you, Coop,” I groan, tugging on his shirt. “Every second I don’t have your bare skin against mine is like fucking torture.”
“Pretty lips, filthy mouth.” He smiles against my lips, breaking the kiss just long enough to get both our shirts off and toss them aside.
“That wasn’t filthy.” I suck his bottom lip between my teeth. “You want filthy? I’ve lost track of how much time I’ve spent writhing on my bed with my hand around my cock and two fingers in my ass, gasping your name and wishing you were there to fuck me.”
He moans and grinds harder between my legs, making my cock ache and precum soak my briefs. I tug on his hair and our kiss gets rougher, with more teeth than tongue and years’ worth of unspoken frustrations bubbling just below the surface.
I think maybe I’m mad at him for not stopping me from taking that job.
Sure, I wouldn’t have won a Nobel Prize, but I would have had him.
And maybe I’m a little mad at him now for being so fucking relaxed about everything when I just want some sign, any sign, that all of this means something to him.
I bite his lip and he hisses before shoving his tongue into my mouth again and tugging on the button on my shorts.
I fumble with the tie on his board shorts at the same time, yanking it loose easily.
They sag on his hips for a second and then fall, pooling around his feet until he kicks them off.
I wrap my hand around his cock, and he groans into my mouth.
The skin is hot and silky, the shape of it so familiar in my hand that my body aches and my hole gives a needy clench. Precum slicks my palm on the upstroke.
Cooper hauls me halfway off the counter to get my shorts down.
The kiss downshifts again, from aggressive to playful and horny as I laugh against his lips and we work together to try to get my shorts off with only one hand each while I keep stroking him and he tries to keep from dropping me on the floor.
I’m sure we could make this a lot easier, but where’s the fun in that?
We finally manage to get them off and he slides my bare ass back onto the countertop.
I wrap my legs around him again and our cocks find their way to each other, with nothing between us this time.
I dig my heels into his ass cheeks, grinding us together in a wild, desperate rhythm.
His cockhead catches against mine with every thrust, our precum mixing and sliding down our shafts—not enough for any real lubrication, just enough to feel hot and dirty.
His hands are all over me, like he’s trying to memorize what every inch of my body feels like, all at once. Between hard, frantic kisses, we pant into the sliver of space between our mouths and murmur each other’s names over and over again.
His balls swing against mine with every jerk of our hips, our thrusts getting faster and wilder.
Our kissing turns to biting again, then back to kissing, and both of us start to get slick with sweat.
Cooper ducks his head and licks a bead off of my collarbone, then sucks roughly on my skin, tugging it between his teeth.
I’m sure there will be a mark there in the morning, and that thought makes my cock even harder.
Fucking claim me. Tell everyone that I’m yours. Tell me not to do this stupid bachelor auction. Tell me to stay.
I don’t say any of that though, and not just because my brain is too scrambled by the bone-melting drag of his cock against mine, but because I’m a fucking coward and I’m afraid if I say any of it, it will ruin everything.
“Fuck, Yuri, you feel so good. You—ugh—need…”
It almost feels like an answer to all the thoughts in my head. It’s enough to chase them away for now, anyway. He kisses his way back up to my mouth and slams his lips into mine for another kiss, sloppy and eager and stilted as he pulls me halfway off the counter again, into his arms.
I brace one arm behind me so I can use the counter for leverage and grind my cock against his, throwing my head back and gasping as my balls tighten and my body starts to quake.
Cooper digs his fingers hard into my ass cheeks and moans around my tongue, and then I feel the hot splash of his release and the shudder that racks his body.
“Yesssss,” I wail, fucking against his cock until the hot, sticky slickness of his cum and the pulsing of his orgasm push me over the edge right along with him.
My toes curl and I let out a raw, breathless moan as my cock starts to spasm and my cum joins his, painting our skin and dripping down our shafts together. We pant and hump and gasp out wordless sounds until Cooper’s legs start to quake, and he slides to the floor, taking me with him.
I collapse on top of him with a laugh, still breathing heavily against his lips.
“Yur?” he murmurs, bumping his nose against mine and running his fingertips slowly up my spine, “do you really want to do that bachelor auction thing?”
A spark rushes through my body.
“Do you not want me to?”
Tell me not to. Please, just tell me I’m yours.
He stares at me for a long, quiet second and I can see it in his eyes when he goes from warm and happy to distant.
Panic squirms in my gut and I want to rewind and give a different answer.
Why do I need to wait for him to say it?
Why can’t I just tell him that I don’t want anyone else?
I can’t make myself say it though. I need to know that he wants it too.
“You can do whatever you want. I’ve never stopped you.”
I frown, and all of the frustration that didn’t get worked out through rough kissing and toe-curling orgasms comes rushing right back to the surface.
“Maybe that’s the problem,” I mutter.
“What does that mean?”
I shake my head and climb off him, reaching for my underwear a few feet away and using it to mop the cum off of my soft cock and out of my pubes before it can get crusty and uncomfortable. And maybe also as an excuse to not look at him for a minute.
“Just say you don’t want me to do it,” I say once I’m cleaned off, still not looking at Cooper. I can hear him pulling his shirt on behind me though, and the panic writhing in my gut starts to pulse, it starts to well up in my chest, making it harder to breathe.
“Why, so I can feel like an idiot when you do whatever you want anyway?”
“I’ve never…” I gasp, finally whipping around to look at him. “Cooper fucking Reed, you look me in the eyes right now and tell me one single time I did something you told me you didn’t want me to do.”
He stares back at me with his jaw set and uncharacteristic anger shining in his eyes for about half a second before his shoulders sag and he looks away.
“Never,” he mutters, hauling himself to his feet and pulling his shorts on. “I’ve gotta go. Do whatever you want though.”
He doesn’t slam the door on his way out, and somehow that’s worse. It just closes quietly while I’m still sitting on the kitchen floor, naked, clutching cum-smeared briefs and gasping for breath as I fight an impending panic attack, already knowing I’m going to lose.