Chapter 54 Owen
OWEN
This is not how this was supposed to happen. Not that I had a plan, although now I am seeing how that might have been a good idea. I just, wrongly, apparently, assumed that George would be here when I got here and then… yeah, I don’t know. I think maybe I was afraid to think beyond that.
Doesn’t matter anyway because he’s gone.
Where did he go? Who did he go with? Is he coming back?
He might be on a train halfway to New York right now.
Maybe he found out I was coming up here and fled before I could get to him.
I really don’t think Zoe would have tipped him off, though.
She seemed pretty invested in me coming up here begging him to give me a second chance.
Okay. So maybe he hasn’t left for New York.
Or, oh shit, it’s just occurred to me that maybe he’s been inside for the last five minutes listening to me knock and hiding in there waiting for me to go away.
Which I would totally deserve. Fuck. I think I might be sick.
“Owen!”
I whip my head up to see George, halfway down the driveway, walking towards me.
I swallow. “Hey.” My voice comes out in a croak, and I realize I haven’t spoken to anyone in over six hours.
“Hey, you okay? I was calling your name, and you,” he stops short a few feet away. Sticks his hands in his pockets. “You didn’t seem to—”
“I’m sorry.”
“I—what?” He shifts his weight. Looks at me warily. “Are you… Did you want to swap back early? Is that ‘sorry I’m kicking you out’ sorry?”
I blow out a breath. “No. No, I… Jesus. Now I know why I’m a hermit. I do not know how to talk to people.”
A little laugh puffs out of him. He studies me. “Is it a ‘sorry, I broke your complicated espresso machine’ sorry?”
Now I laugh. I look at my shoes. “No.”
“Is it”—he’s closer now, on the porch with me. I can feel the heat coming off him, but I keep staring at the boards below us—”a ‘sorry I told Zoe you’re secretly into really terrible heteronormative reality TV and now you’ll never hear the end of it’ sorry?
I grin. “No.” And now I look up at him. He’s right there. After all this time. So achingly familiar and completely new all at the same time.
We’re locked in each other’s gaze now, a whole conversation happening in the mere inches between us. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t figure out what to say. It doesn’t matter how badly I fucked this up. It just matters that I’m here. He’s here. And we’re—
“You’re wearing my tie.”
I look down. Oh, yeah. Then I look more closely at the little triangle of red peeking through the opening of his coat.
“Isn’t that my sweater?”
He looks down. Then he looks up at me and grabs me by his tie. “Shut up and come here.”
He pulls, and I stumble forward, knocking him back as our lips meet. I wrap my arms around him, drawing him close, away from the steps, so he doesn’t fall.
His mouth opens, his tongue slides against mine. Someone lets out a little moan, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out which one of us it is.
There are things to say. I know there are.
“Too many clothes,” George mumbles into my mouth.
Like that, for instance. I dig in my coat pocket for my keys, not breaking the kiss. Damn, though. I think I left them in the truck.
“Here,” George says, shoving his set into my palm. I grin against his lips. As always, we seem to be on the same wavelength.
There’s no way to get the key into the lock from this angle, though, so I pivot us around so I’m the one facing the door now. I should open it, but I can’t resist pinning him against it first.
We’re pressed together, no space between us. He grinds against me, and I think it’s safe to say, he doesn’t mind this slight delay. I pull back for a second to look at him. “Hi,” I whisper.
“Hi.” He grins and kisses me again.
He shifts, and I feel the full length of him pressing against my thigh, and now I mind the delay. I reach behind him, fumbling with the key while he does very distracting things with his teeth against my throat. Finally, the door opens, and I grunt, “Inside.”
For two people whose entire relationship up to now has been word-based, we seem to be down to the bare minimum.
We somewhat awkwardly maneuver through the door, still locked together.
“Where?” His breath ghosts over my lips.
“Anywhere.”
By silent agreement, we immediately start shedding our layers.
George’s coat, my coat and the suit jacket I’m still wearing underneath it.
We hit a minor hiccup when George’s glasses snag on his/my sweater as he pulls it over his head.
I set them back on his face, then tug his t-shirt up and off, careful to avoid the frames.
Under his clothes, he’s lean, fit, not that it matters; I am utterly drunk with wanting him. His body is just a bonus.
There’s just a sprinkling of hair on his chest, and I run a thumb over a nipple, then bend to lick the other one. He emits a very satisfying groan of frustration, and I smile against his skin.
We seem to have made it to the bottom of the spiral staircase somewhere along the way, not that either of us seems anxious to stop this long enough to climb the stairs.
Instead, George pushes me so my back is up against the railing, then reaches up to start undressing me.
This, unfortunately, is way more complicated than it was with him, given that I’m still half in formalwear.
But any annoyance I feel immediately dissolves when I get to experience the sexy slide of George Knight slowly loosening my(/his) tie.
He starts on my buttons, and I slide my hands down the warm, smooth skin on his sides, dragging one hand around to palm him through his pants. He sucks in a breath.
“Fuck”
“Maybe later.” I grin.
He groans but with unmistakable fondness, and then we’re back on each other.
My shirt goes, then my t-shirt, and we’re skin on skin.
There’s more tussling and reaching and grabbing and touching, and now we’ve both got our pants undone. George starts kissing a trail down my chest, sliding my jeans lower as he goes. Then his hands are on me, his breath. My own breathing stutters, but I pull him up to me.
“I need you here.” We’ve spent too much of our time at a distance, right now, for this, I need him right here with me, as close as he can be.
He leans his face against mine, forehead to forehead, nose to nose, so close he’s all blurry, but he looks at me anyway, and he seems to understand. To agree. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
I tilt my head and brush my lips gently across his. He opens for me, and we’re kissing again, and everything is right.
Well, not everything.
I pull back, just an inch or two, and hold up my hand. “Lick, please.”
He cocks an eyebrow, but then he turns and drags his tongue in a broad stripe up my palm.
I reached down, shuffling with his waistband. Then I wrap my hand around both of us. He leans up and takes my mouth again, tangling our tongues while I stroke us both together, finding a rhythm.
It doesn’t take much.
I glide a thumb across his tip. He shudders, then topples over the edge.
And then it’s my turn. My release hits me so hard, my knees start to buckle.
He grabs me, pulls me against him. We stay like that, both panting to catch our breath.
We are both a mess. Neither of us seems to mind.
I bend down and rest my forehead against his shoulder, waiting for my heart to stop pounding.
He whispers, his words tickling my ear, “Nice to finally officially meet you.”
I laugh. And then he laughs. I pull back, dragging my hands up to hold either side of his face and just look at him. He’s here. He’s real. He’s… everything.
“Likewise.”
I bend to kiss him, and the sound of a phone buzzing with a text comes from somewhere on the floor in the vicinity of George’s coat. We look over in unison, then turn back to each other. “Ignore it.” He leans up. His lips are just brushing mine when it buzzes again. And again.
“Some kind of publishing emergency?”
George sighs, snatching his t-shirt from the ground and giving his front a hasty wipe before handing it to me. He shuffles his pants back on as he goes over to his coat and pulls the phone from the pocket. “Either that or—” He looks at the screen before holding it up to me.
“Zoe,” we say in unison.
He looks like he’s contemplating whether or not to write back when the phone actually starts ringing. He shakes his head and rolls his eyes, then looks at me with a question.
“Go for it. You know she’ll just keep calling.”
“She probably calculated your arrival time down to the minute and figures enough is enough, and she needs a report.” He taps the phone and brings it to his ear. “Hi, Zoe… Why yes, he is here.”
He grins at me while he listens, but then his whole expression changes. He looks up at me. “Did you leave your phone in the truck?”
“Oh, yeah. I guess I might have. Why?”
He shakes his head. “Yeah, hang on a second,” he tells Zoe.
He goes over to the pile of clothes by the door and starts digging around in the suit jacket.
A second later, he produces a couple tiny velvet bags from inside one of the pockets.
He dumps them into his hand. Out fall two gold rings.
He looks up at me in horror. Into the phone, he says, “Yeah. We’re on our way. ”