Ryker
RYKER
I have zero idea what to expect from Lake’s meeting with Scott. Up until Lake told me about him, I didn’t even know Scott existed. John never once mentioned him the whole time he was married to my mother, which makes sense considering the circumstances.
Based on what Lake has told me, I gather Scott used to be pretty immature, with too much money, which isn’t a good combination. But it’s been years. He might’ve changed. Or he might’ve gotten worse. I have no idea.
Lake sent me a good luck text before the game, but I haven’t heard anything from him since, and he didn’t pick up the phone when I called him before I got on the plane.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about the outcome of his meeting with Scott, which means I do my best to get off the plane fast, and into my car even faster. Lake couldn’t drop me off yesterday because he had class, so I drove myself.
It’s past midnight when I unlock our front door and quietly drop my bag in the corner, too tired to do anything else with it right now. I peel off my clothes on my way to the bathroom, so my path there is littered with items of clothing, and once I close the door behind me, I’m naked. I take a lightning-fast shower before I grab my toothbrush. I stand on one leg and absently scratch my shin with the toes of my other foot.
I flick the light off and quietly pad into the bedroom. Lake’s sprawled over my side of the bed. I smile when I look at him. He does that when I’m away. Gravitates toward me in his sleep, even though I’m not there.
I try to be as quiet as possible, but in the end, I wake him up anyway.
He lifts his head, all messy hair, sleepy gaze, and sleep-warm skin. He makes room for me and then immediately rolls back against me once I’m settled.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” I whisper.
“Yeah. Bad, bad husband,” he murmurs back while he plants a kiss on the corner of my mouth, hand already roaming over my pecs. “Now you have to make it up to me.”
“Oh, no.” I roll us over swiftly, so that I’m on top of him. “This will be torture.”
He laughs, still with that soft sleepiness in his tone, and stretches while I start kissing his neck.
He throws his leg around my hips and arches against me, hard body and soft skin. My dick bumps against his as if in greeting. Nice to see you. Where’ve you been?
I slide my tongue into Lake’s mouth, and he melts against me, opening up. He holds on to me tightly, hips rocking against mine, and the kiss grows hot and wet and wild.
I swallow his moans, and he drinks down my gasps.
My fingers find his cock and wrap around it. It’s all so familiar. Lake. My Lake. Thick and fiery hot and silky smooth.
Lake starts to fuck into my fist almost as soon as my hand closes around him.
What starts as sleepy and soft quickly turns into voracious, fast, and desperate. Lake shoves his dick into my grip to the soundtrack of the vicious beat of my heart in my chest. The head of his cock pushes against mine and the contact makes my brain hazy with lust.
I let go of him, and Lake lets out a cry of protest, but I’m already moving lower until I can take him in my mouth. I go all in at once, sucking him, hard and wet. My lips stretch around his cock, and I wrap my fingers around the base.
I suck, and my cheeks hollow. Lake’s fingers grip my hair, and his hips push upward. He thrusts into my mouth, first experimentally, testing the waters. I grip his thigh. Yes. Do it. Fuck my mouth.
The wordless encouragement is all he needs.
He thrusts into my mouth. I shove his thighs wider apart, and he digs his heels into the mattress. I suck as hard as fast as I can, and the loud groans and gasps of pleasure that spill from Lake’s lips make my balls painfully tight.
It’s unbearably sexy the way he offers himself for me. The way he’s desperate for me to take him.
Lake’s heel digs into my back between my shoulder blades, and it urges me on until I’m practically choking on his dick, eyes watering, desperate to take all of what he’s giving. I want him deeper.
Garbled, wild noises escape my throat as I suck him. Lake’s watching me with his gaze burning hot. I cup one of his ass cheeks and hold him up as he thrusts into my mouth.
His fingers twist in my hair, and he pulls my head up.
His icy blue eyes are wild and desperate, and he only says one word.
“Please.”
I move up his body as fast as I can, while Lake also scrambles upward. He reaches blindly toward the bedside table and searches around until he gets his hands on the bottle of lube.
“C’mon, c’mon,” he mutters as he fumbles with the cap, voice wrecked and hoarse. He eventually manages and coats his fingers until they’re shiny and wet. He turns on his side and prepares himself. The sight of his fingers disappearing in his ass is so fucking hot it makes me shiver with anticipation. He’s quick and methodical about it, working first one finger inside, then two. His cheeks are flushed, and his breaths are heavy and panting.
My dick hurts from how hard it is, but it’s the good kind of pain. I jerk myself a few times while I watch. Lake’s eyes almost glow as he takes me in.
“Need you,” he says, again with that edge of desperation in it.
He doesn’t have to say it twice.
I grab the lube and coat my dick.
Lake flips onto his stomach and turns his head so he can look at me. His eyes are heavy-lidded and hazy with desire.
“I missed your ass,” I say, palming the cheek and kneading it.
A soft chuckle leaves Lake’s lips. “I know you did, baby. So, get in there.”
My lips press against the nape of his neck, and I flick the soft skin with my tongue. I rub the pad of my thumb over his opening, and he pushes back. The head of my cock leaks against Lake’s ass cheek and leaves behind a trail of precum when I move.
“More,” he demands, pushing his ass up.
I bite into the soft flesh where his neck and shoulder meet.
“Dick,” he says, but he’s laughing.
I rub said dick against his opening.
“You called,” I say, and Lake laughs again.
“That was terrible.” He buries his forehead into his arms.
But then I start to push inside, and he’s not laughing anymore. I have every intention of going slow, but once the head of my cock is past the tight ring of muscle, Lake pushes back, and I sink inside him with a loud groan.
His long fingers wrap around one of the slats of the headboard, and my hand covers his. Our breaths are labored and loud in the otherwise quiet room.
“Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck,” I babble, nearly incoherent with pleasure. “I love you so fucking much.”
“Don’t you dare be gentle with me,” Lake replies in a tense, gravelly voice.
It’s a command, and I don’t have any arguments.
I pull almost all the way out and then snap my hips forward, sinking back inside him. It takes us no time to build up to a pounding rhythm. I thrust into him from behind, hips moving sharply, my balls smacking against his ass when I drive into him.
Soon we need both hands to brace ourselves against the headboard.
By now, I know Lake’s body almost better than my own. I know it drives him crazy with lust when I suck his earlobe into my mouth while I’m inside him. I know the growled out “Fuck” means he wants to jerk off, but I’m holding both his hands trapped on the headboard. And I know just how to angle my hips on my next thrust, so I hit his prostate.
“Ryk,” he pants while I pound his ass. “I need you.”
I swiftly turn us so we’re on our sides and snap my hips forward again.
He cries out.
I take his rock-hard dick in my hand.
“Come, baby,” I gasp into the side of his neck. “I need you to come.”
It’s as if he’s been waiting for the command, because he comes with a loud howl. He soaks my hand and the sheet below us and then collapses against me as shivers rack his whole body.
I wrap myself around him and push in as far as I can go. My cock jerks inside him as I spill my release, and then I collapse on the bed, Lake still wrapped tightly in my arms.
It takes us both several minutes of panting to come down from the high of the orgasm.
Eventually, I pull myself slowly out of him. Lake groans and closes his eyes. I can feel my cum on him, hot and slick. I play with his hole, gently inserting the tip of my finger and moving it around the rim.
Every now and then, Lake’s body trembles, and his muscles twitch, and he lets out soft, contented sounds.
It’s one of those moments when I love him so much that it feels impossible.
I found you. Out of the billions of people in the world, I found you, and you found me. How stupidly lucky did we get?
“I’m sorry about your game,” Lake says in a sleepy voice.
I shrug one shoulder. “You win some, you lose some.”
The loss stings, but most of my brain has been occupied with Lake ever since I got off the ice earlier tonight.
He lets out a soft laugh and throws me a look over his shoulder. “Stop being so mature. You’ll make the rest of us look bad.”
I kiss his shoulder blade and roll off him. Lake lets out a sound of protest, but then he turns around and burrows against my side. I tug the comforter over our naked bodies and hug him even closer.
“How did your meeting with Scott go?”
He’s silent for a while, and I don’t know what he’s thinking. It’s a bit of a rare occurrence these days. Lake’s… He’s my other half, so I can read him like my favorite book. I can guess his thoughts from the look on his face or the tone of his voice. If he has a bad day, I usually notice the moment he comes home, even if he tries to hide it from me.
Now, I suddenly find myself in the dark.
I’m not a fan.
“It was good,” he says slowly before he raises his head a bit and looks at me. He’s frowning. “Yeah, I think it went well?”
Relief. That’s all I feel right now. It’s not that I expected this meeting to be an unmitigated disaster, exactly. It’s not even that I had any real expectations. But there’s a small part of me that was worried about the possible repercussions if it had all gone to shit.
Lake has been let down by too many people in his life already, and he still struggles with trust, so the possibility of Scott jumping in and fucking him up for no reason at all makes me feel violent.
“That’s good,” I say, as neutrally as I can.
“He says he wants to get to know me,” Lake adds with the kind of dubious expression he gets on his face whenever somebody expresses any interest in him as a person. And now I feel violent again.
It’s not just that John abandoned Lake when he found out Lake wasn’t his biological son. No. It goes much deeper than that. By abandoning Lake, he also shattered all the self-confidence Lake had. I don’t even think Lake himself realizes just how much it screwed him up as a person when his father—the man who raised him since birth—suddenly disappeared from his life and made damn sure to show Lake just how much he rejected him.
Lake was so busy trying to survive his messed-up home life for the better part of his childhood that I don’t think he ever stopped to map out the exact ways his parents’ shitty decisions have affected him as a person.
But that’s not really the point.
Lake is happy.
With me, the two of us together, in this life we keep building for ourselves, he’s happy.
I’ll be damned if I let anybody take it away from him or ruin it for him.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure he means it,” Lake continues, still with that frown. “But I guess I’m taking the chance. We went out to dinner, and it was pretty nice. He asked about my life, and I told him about school and where I live.” He sends me a quick look. “Not about us,” he adds quickly, and I hate that he feels the need to do that.
“You could if you wanted to,” I say.
“He hasn’t earned it. At least not yet.”
I leave that topic be for now. On the one hand, I agree he hasn’t earned it yet. On the other, we do need to have that talk. About these secrets we’re keeping and how they affect us in the long run. I can’t keep him hidden forever. It’s so fucking unfair to even ask him that, and the more days pass, the more I feel that it’s unfair to ask me that, too.
But that’s a discussion for another day. Right now, we have a full plate.
“Okay,” I say. “What’s his plan, then?”
“No idea. I mean, he said he’d call next week because he’ll be in town again. Some kind of meeting or something. Whatever.”
His tone is, for all intents and purposes, bone dry. But I can hear the hope. That faint, so, so careful hope that rings through the sardonic edge of his voice.
I hurt because of that tiny increment of hope. It shouldn’t be there. It should be something irrefutable and undeniable and absolute that Lake is wanted. A law of nature.
A law of Lake.
“I won’t get my hopes up,” he says. “Scott’s not exactly known for being reliable. At least he didn’t used to be back when I knew him. He once promised to take me go-karting. It was Christmas, and I was eight, and he gave me one of those gift cards to our local track and promised he’d take me once spring hit. I’m still waiting for that.”
“People change,” I say carefully. I’m not sure if feeding Lake’s hope is something I should do.
“Yeah, I knew you’d think that. It’s half the reason I was willing to hear him out. You’re ruining me.” He sends me a grin, and I chuckle softly.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he says through a wide yawn. “I love you, so it’s not like I’d hate being more like you.” There’s a short pause before he hides his face against my side and mumbles, “You’re the best person I know, so asking myself, ‘What would do?’ is kind of my way of aiming for the moon and landing among the stars.”
I blink at the ceiling for a few seconds, digesting what Lake just said. Then I wiggle lower and turn on my side so I’m facing Lake. He makes a face at me and blushes furiously. Saying sweet things and being open about his feelings isn’t my husband’s strong suit. Which is to say that in any other circumstance, he’d most likely pick torture instead of this kind of vulnerability. Not with me, though. He makes that effort for me.
Nobody else. Just me. How’s that for being special?
I press a kiss to the tip of his nose, and he rolls his eyes.
“You’re everything,” I say.
He holds my gaze and doesn’t look away. He moves his head closer until our noses are touching.
We fall asleep like that.
Forehead to forehead.
Nose to nose.
Heart to heart.