11. Chapter Ten #2
“Then let’s get out of here,” he said as he got up.
Quentin left a tip on the table and took Joe’s hand as they headed for the door. As they ducked through it, they bumped into a tall, scruffy guy on his way in. They traded sorrys in passing, and before the door fully closed, Joe heard the guy ask plaintively, “Anyone drop off a bag for Harry?”
Huh. It looked like everyone was going to get what they wanted tonight.
The door shut behind them, and they headed to the car.
They didn’t get much further than the car, which was luckily parked down a dimly lit side street.
It was probably for the best, Joe realized as he dragged his T-shirt clumsily over his head and nearly strangled himself with the collar. Quentin’s place was an hour away, and Joe’s…he still slept in the same bed he’d shared with Alan.
That would be… inappropriate, disrespectful, sort of cheating-adjacent… weird.
Before he could get bogged down in that line of thought, Quentin brushed a warm, wet kiss over his chest. His fingers were still cold from the bottle as they trailed up Joe’s side, from his hips to his ribs, and his tongue was warm as Quentin dragged it over the taut bud of Joe’s nipple.
Pleasure spasmed between Joe’s ribs, sharp and prickly, and made his breath catch. It didn’t help with the coordination required to get out of a T-shirt, either. He made a low, strangled noise into the damp cotton across his face and felt Quentin’s laugh tickle against his chest.
Joe finally managed to get out of the tangle of cotton. He tossed it into the back seat and looked down at Quentin, sprawled back in the driver’s seat while Joe straddled his thighs. The steering wheel dug into the small of his back as he shifted position.
“That was cheating,” he said.
The corner of Quentin’s mouth turned up in a smirk as he traced the arch of Joe’s lower ribs with his thumbs.
“Wait until you play a board game with me,” he said.
That could happen, Joe realized. The image of it flickered through his head, firelit domestic bliss as they ate marshmallows and argued over who got to be the top hat/go first/had the right answer. It was…
…tempting.
…terrifying.
Joe shrugged the idea away as he tangled his fingers in Quentin’s hair and pulled his head back. The angle pulled his skin taut, the line of his jaw razor sharp. A scruff of stubble darkened the skin, rough against Joe’s mouth as he leaned down for a kiss.
It wasn’t their first kiss. At this point, not that Joe planned to stop and do the math, they had to be well into the double digits. He knew the faint chip in Quentin’s incisor, the way he drank Joe down like he needed him to breathe, and the control that meant he never pushed for more.
This time it was different.
No kids. No cats. Nowhere else to be.
And neither of them pretending that this thing between them, however impossible or over-romanticised or never going to work in the long term, wasn’t real. Not that Quentin had ever done more than pay lip service to that.
This time, this kiss, didn’t come with safety wheels.
Quentin slid his hands around and down to grab Joe’s ass, fingers hard through worn-thin denim, and pulled him closer.
A low groan escaped him, lost between their mouths, as he let Joe set the pace.
It was messy and clumsy. Teeth scraped against each other, lips got bitten and mashed, and Quentin cursed around Joe’s tongue as he bashed his elbow on the door.
“Next time,” Quentin muttered as he reached down to pull the lever that moved the seat back. His thighs tensed under Joe’s as he braced his feet to shove it back as far as it would go. “We try a bed.”
“Maybe,” Joe said, mouth grazing Quentin’s jaw as he spoke. “Or this could be our thing. You and me and the side of the road somewhere.”
Warm fingers brushed from the small of his back and up along his spine. It was barely a touch, but it sent a shudder of pleasure jabbing right down Joe’s spine and into his groin. He gasped, fingers twisted in Quentin’s shirt, as his ass cheeks clenched and his cock ached.
“There’s hotels,” Quentin pointed out. He curled his fingers around the nape of Joe’s neck and rubbed the pad of his thumb in the hollow behind his ear. “With beds or couches or carpet…”
Joe scraped his teeth down Quentin’s neck, the taste of the cologne that smelled of citrus and sea salt sharp and biting on his lips.
“We could wait?” he offered as he reached down to pull Quentin’s shirt free of his pants. His knuckles grazed over smooth skin and lean muscle that twitched under his touch. “Until we found one.”
The noise that came out of Quentin might have been a laugh. Or a groan? It could have been some combination of both. Whatever it was, it was followed by a choked “no” to Joe’s suggestion.
Part of Joe wanted to yank on Quentin’s shirt, the imagined satisfaction of ripping cotton and the ping of buttons against windows giving the knot of heat in his stomach a nudge, but…
it was a really nice shirt. Nicer than Alan’s, and he’d prided himself on his fashion sense.
Joe could feel the quality in the fabric as he bunched it up in his hands.
He pulled it up instead, exposing Quentin’s lean, long torso as the fabric slid up.
Quentin lifted his arms to accommodate the removal.
The long straps of muscle under his arms stretched against his ribcage, sliding visibly under the skin, and his collarbones angled up sharp and hollowed against his throat.
The cuffs caught around his hands at the end, and he had to twist his arms, all elbows and angles, to free himself.
It was undignified and intimate in a way that made Joe’s heart hitch in his chest for a whole different reason. He left that unexamined as he took advantage of Quentin’s distraction to admire a body he’d only been able to map out in segments of collarbone and lower stomach until now.
He was long and lean, more spare than muscular, although still defined enough that Joe’s fingers itched to touch.
His body was paler than his face and hands, a v of tawny skin on his chest giving way to his natural pallor and a light scruff of body hair that spread over his pecs and then narrowed into a sparse arrow that ran down the line of his stomach.
Joe gave in to the temptation and dragged his finger down the treasure trail of hair from breastbone to navel. Goosebumps prickled Quentin’s skin under his touch, and a guttural noise escaped him before he swallowed hard.
The outline of his cock was visible under his chinos, hard and ready.
Joe felt something in his chest relax at the visible evidence of Quentin’s interest. It was only as the fear released that he realized it had been there, the thought that Quentin hadn’t pushed their relationship because he didn’t want to.
Whereas, clearly, he did.
The shirt was finally untangled and tossed to the side, sleeves flapping.
Quentin’s face was flushed, his eyes even darker than normal in the dim light, and his hair sticking up in unruly spikes.
His mouth was flushed and red, lips tender-looking and wet, and he took shallow, eager breaths as he looked up at Joe with a slow, delighted smile.
Joe hooked his fingers into the top of Quentin’s trousers, knuckles pressed against the flat plane of his stomach.
“I should have asked,” Joe said. “Do you have—”
He hesitated, lips parted, as he tried to think of a euphemism. It occurred to him that he didn’t need to—no little pitchers around for once—but Quentin had already put together what he meant. He steadied Joe with one hand on his hip as he stretched across the car to pop the glove box.
In no mood to make it easy, Joe leaned down to chew kisses over the tight tendons of Quentin’s throat.
He shifted forward so his weight pressed his cock against Quentin’s, the slow, teased rock of his hips making Quentin stop for a second and bite the inside of his lip.
He took a shaky, ragged breath to steady himself long enough to pull out a bottle of lube and condoms.
“Are you sure you weren’t a Boy Scout?” Joe asked.
Quentin laughed, a breathless catch of amusement, as he twisted his head around to slant a quick kiss over the corner of Joe’s mouth.
“Afraid not, but I’m pretty sure I got the gist from the movies,” he said.
There was a pause as he rested his head against Joe’s, his hand loose and relaxed against the small of Joe’s back.
He inhaled, slow and appreciative, before he asked reluctantly.
“This is what you want? It’s not the ‘buying you’ thing? ”
Joe squeezed his eyes shut. He should have definitely put that better.
Despite that thought, he did take a second to be sure.
This would be the first time since…everything…
that he’d get off without his own hand playing a major role.
It should have been daunting, but for every doubt and worry racketing around Joe’s head, that wasn’t one of them.
This felt right…and that felt scary, but still.
“Quentin, I don’t need a knight in shining armor tonight,” Joe said as he unbuttoned Quentin’s trousers. “I just need you in me.”