Chapter 24 Liam #2
"What are you gonna do about it?" he said. Not moving. Voice low. The composure still in place but something underneath it shifting—the way ice sounds before it cracks.
"Depends."
"On what?"
"On whether you're going to sit over there all night."
His mouth twitched. "Maybe I like it over here. Maybe I like you looking at me."
Something hot crawled up my spine. Because he did. He liked being looked at. Not the way he endured being watched by scouts and coaches and his father—the performance, the mask. This was different. This was Alex letting himself be seen and wanting the heat it created.
"You have no idea what you do to me," I said.
"Tell me."
His voice was quiet. Steady. But his eyes were dark, and I could see the way his chest was moving—faster now, the fabric of his t-shirt rising and falling. And lower. The grey sweats doing absolutely nothing to hide the fact that this conversation was landing exactly where he wanted it to.
I watched him get hard. Watched the shape of him press against the cotton. My mouth went dry.
"You're getting hard," I said.
His gaze intensified. "Yeah."
"From me just talking to you."
"From you looking at me like that." A beat. His hand moved to his dick and he rubbed it. "You make me feel—" He moaned gently. "You make me feel like I don't have to hold everything together."
That cracked something open in my chest. Because that was the thing about Alex.
The thing underneath the composure and the risk calculations and the Harrington armor.
He was so fucking tired of holding it all together.
And here, in this room, with the door locked and the city humming outside and nobody coming—he could let go.
"Come here," I said.
He sat next to me on the edge of my bed.
Close. His knee touching my thigh. His face level with mine. The lamp on the nightstand casting warm light across the left side of his face, the right side in shadow.
I put my hand on the back of his neck. Fingers curling into the hair at his nape. He closed his eyes. Leaned into it like a person who'd been waiting all day to be touched.
"We should probably sleep," he said.
"Probably."
"We have a race tomorrow."
"I'm aware."
"Hale would kill us."
"Hale would have to find out first."
His mouth twitched. "You're a bad influence."
"You love it."
His eyes opened. Blue. Clear. Holding mine with the intensity that made my chest crack open and my brain go quiet and every carefully constructed wall I'd ever built feel like paper.
"Yeah," he said. Soft. "I do."
He kissed me.
Not desperate. Not the frantic collision of mouths we'd had in dorm rooms and closets. This was slow. Deliberate. His lips finding mine with the precision he brought to everything—the same careful attention he gave to his catches, his drives, his perfect recoveries.
I pulled him closer. My hand on his neck, his hand on my chest—flat, fingers spread, feeling my heartbeat. Reading me.
"Liam." Against my mouth. My name like a question and an answer at the same time.
I pulled his shirt over his head. He let me. Raised his arms, the fabric clearing his face, his hair falling messy across his forehead. The lamplight on his skin—the definition in his shoulders, his chest, all the lean muscle.
He pulled my shirt off. His hands on my ribs. Tracing the lines of muscle with his fingers, following a body he already knew by touch but was learning again.
I leaned back on the bed. He followed. His weight settling over me—chest to chest, hip to hip. The pressure of him grounding and electric at the same time. His mouth on my neck. The spot below my ear that made my hips jerk.
"There," I said.
"Here?" His mouth on the spot again. Teeth scraping.
"Yeah. Fuck. Yeah."
His hips rolled against mine. Both of us hard now, the friction through thin cotton sending sparks up my spine. I grabbed his hips and pulled him tighter against me. He groaned into my neck—low, broken.
"I want—" he started.
"What do you want?"
He pulled back enough to look at me. Hair wrecked. Lips swollen. Eyes so dark the blue was almost gone. "I want to feel you. All of you. I want—" His throat moved. "I want us to take our time."
"Then let's take our time."
I reached between us. Palmed him through his sweats. He hissed—a sharp intake of breath, his hips pushing into my hand.
"Fuck, Liam."
"Yeah?" I squeezed. Felt the full length of him, thick and straining against the fabric. "Tell me how that feels."
"You know how it feels."
"I want to hear you say it."
His eyes locked on mine. Something flickering behind them—the old instinct to deflect, to calculate, to perform. Then it died. Replaced by something raw.
"It feels like I've been thinking about your hands on me since the bus," he said. "Since you sat next to me and your shoulder was right there and I couldn't touch you and I wanted to so badly I could barely breathe."
My hand tightened on him. His back arched.
"Keep talking," I said.
"On the bus—" His breath caught as I stroked him through the cotton. "I was hard the entire time. Thirty teammates around us and all I could think about was this. Getting you alone. Getting my hands on you."
"Jesus, Alex."
"You asked."
I pulled his waistband down. Freed him. The sight of his cock—hard, flushed, leaking at the tip—hit me like a punch to the chest. I wrapped my hand around him. Skin on skin. He made a sound that wasn't a word.
"You're so fucking hard," I said. My voice rough. My own cock throbbing against my shorts.
"Because of you." His hand found me. Gripped me through the fabric and I bucked into his palm. "God, Liam—you feel—"
"Take them off."
He pulled my shorts down. My cock sprang free and his hand was on me immediately—firm, certain, his thumb swiping over the head where I was already wet. Both of us stroking each other now. Both of us breathing hard. The room shrinking to the space between our bodies.
"Shower," Alex said.
"What?"
"Let's shower." He kissed the corner of my mouth. Then my jaw. Then my ear. "I want to feel you under the water."
I didn't need to be asked twice.
We stumbled to the bathroom. Alex turning on the water—hot, the steam rising immediately, fogging the mirror. My hands on his waist. Kissing him while the water heated and the room filled with steam.
We stepped in together.
The water hit us. The urgency softened. Not gone—just transformed. Alex tipped his head back under the spray and I watched the water run down his neck, his chest, the ridges of his stomach. Following the lines the way my hands wanted to.
"Turn around," I said.
He turned. I pressed against his back. My cock against his ass, my chest against his shoulders. I grabbed the hotel soap—small, white, smelling like something expensive—and lathered my hands.
Started with his shoulders. The muscles knotted from weeks of training, from carrying every expectation ever placed on him. I dug my thumbs into the tension and he dropped his head forward.
"God," he breathed. "Right there."
My hands moved down his back. Over the planes of muscle, the dip of his spine, the dimples above his ass.
I soaped every inch of him—slow, deliberate, my slick hands learning the landscape of his body the way I'd learned the landscape of the river.
By feel. By attention. By showing up every day and doing the work.
"You're so good at that," he said. His voice had gone thick.
"At what?"
"At making me feel—" He turned his head. Profile sharp in the steam. Water on his lashes. "Amazing."
I kissed his shoulder. Then the back of his neck. Then that spot behind his ear where his pulse hammered.
He turned around to face me. Took the soap from my hands. Started washing me the same way—careful, thorough, his palms sliding over my chest, my stomach, the cut of muscle at my hips. His hands moved lower. Soaped my cock, my balls, stroked me until my knees almost buckled.
I rinsed the soap off both of us. Let the water run clear. Then I dropped to my knees.
He looked down at me. Water streaming over his shoulders, running down his chest in rivulets. His cock hard and flushed in front of my face. His eyes wide—not performing, not calculating. Just wanting.
"Is this okay?" I asked.
"Liam. Please."
I took him in my mouth. The taste of him—clean from the soap, salt underneath, the taste that was just Alex. I took him deep, my tongue flat against the underside, and the sound he made echoed off the tile walls.
"Fuck—" His hand found my hair. Not pushing. Just holding. "Your mouth. Jesus, your mouth."
I worked him. Slow at first, then building. Reading the way his body responded—the hitch in his breathing when I sucked the head, the jerk of his hips when I took him all the way down. Communicating through touch the way we communicated in the boat. Listening. Adjusting. Finding the rhythm.
"That's so good," he said. Wrecked. "Liam, that's so—"
I pulled back. Licked from base to tip. Let my hand take over—slick, tight, stroking him while I looked up. His chest heaving. His stomach clenching. His eyes on mine like I was the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.
My other hand moved. Behind his balls. Finding the space between. My finger traced lower—found his hole and pressed against it.
Alex's entire body went taut.
"Oh my god," he whispered. His voice cracked on the last word.
I kept stroking him. Kept my finger there—circling, pressing, rubbing the tight ring of muscle while my other hand worked his cock.
His legs were shaking. His hand fisted in my hair.
The sounds coming out of him were nothing I'd heard before—desperate, undone, the sounds of a person who'd stopped thinking entirely.
"More," he gasped. "Liam—right there—don't stop—"
I pressed harder. His hips rocked—forward into my hand, backward against my finger. Chasing both sensations at once. His whole body trembling.
"I'm close," he said. The words barely audible over the water. "I'm so close—wait—"
He reached down. Grabbed my wrist. Not pulling me off. Just stopping me.
"Not yet," he said. Breathing hard. Eyes glassy. "Not yet. I don't want to finish yet."
"Yeah?"
"I want—" He pulled me up. Kissed me under the spray—messy, open-mouthed, tasting himself on my tongue. "I want more of you first."
We turned off the water. Didn't bother with towels.
Stumbled back to the bed, both of us dripping, leaving wet footprints on the hotel carpet.
He pushed me down onto the mattress and I went—fell back against the sheets, water from my hair soaking into the pillow.
He stood over me. Naked. Dripping. Hard.
The lamplight and the bathroom steam making him look like something out of a dream.
Then he dropped to his knees at the edge of the bed.
"My turn," he said.