Chapter 18
Eighteen
At eight thirty the next morning, Mitch blearily followed his nose to the kitchen. It smelled like…bacon? The house never smelled like anything other than used sports equipment and laundry detergent.
An equally bleary-eyed Cody was sitting at the island, one foot dangling off the stool, watching Alex do something at the stove.
Mitch took the stool next to Cody, rubbed grit out of his eyes, admired Alex’s enormously broad back, and croaked, “What’s he doing?”
Cody pillowed his head in his hand. “I think it’s called cooking.”
Alex spun to face them, one hand on his hip, the other wielding a spatula he pointed at them both. “Man cannot live on Cheese Whiz and smoothies alone.”
“Actually, I think we can,” Cody said.
Mitch nodded his agreement.
The spatula pointed at Cody. “You, maybe.” Then at Mitch. “But not an athlete. You’ve lost weight since I last saw you.”
Insulted in the way of the sleep-deprived everywhere, Mitch rebutted with, “No.”
Cody plucked the T-shirt away from Mitch’s chest. “He’s right, you know.”
Mitch turned his frown on his best friend. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I’m always on your side, dummy.”
Alex deposited bacon, pancakes, scrambled eggs, sliced fruit, and little individual containers of yogurt on the island in front of them.
Mitch gaped at it all. “Since when do we have ingredients to make pancakes?”
“I went shopping this morning,” Alex said, placing plates and cutlery on the table. “Eat.”
Yeah, okay.
“Mitch, you’ll want to balance it out, but with more protein than carbs.”
Mitch nodded to show he’d heard and stuffed his face with a crispy piece of bacon.
“You remember when I said you and I could eat Mitch for breakfast?” Cody said to Alex. “This is what I meant.”
On the other side of the island, Alex poured maple syrup onto his pancakes, bacon, eggs, and fruit. Mitch eyed his own plate and the food that must’ve been lonely without all that maple syrup.
“You mean,” Alex said, “that we can tell him what to do and he’ll do it?”
Mitch was drowning his food in syrup when he finally tuned into the conversation.
“Yup!” Cody said cheerfully.
“Hey!” Mitch scowled at his so-called best friend. “Seriously, whose side are you on?”
“Not yours, if you’re going to waste the maple syrup. Jesus, enough.” Cody wrenched the jar out of Mitch’s hands. “This shit’s expensive.”
Mitch’s food was swimming in a pool of syrup. “I need more,” he said.
“You’ve got enough,” Alex said mildly, forking a bite of pancake.
“Yeah, okay.”
Cody grinned at Alex. “See?”
Mitch threw a syrup-drenched slice of bacon at him.
* * *
Visiting Grandpa Forest in the hospital was about as depressing as Mitch expected. Forest was asleep when they got there, a good thing according to the nurses. He’d apparently awoken this morning confused, belligerent, and bullying the nurses into letting him see Joanie.
Joanie, it turned out, was his wife, who’d passed away before Alex was born.
“He didn’t talk about her much,” Alex said. They sat in a pair of chairs next to Forest’s bed. “I think it was too hard for him. Once, he called her his light. ‘Alex, my boy,’ he said, ‘she was my light, your grandmother. You woulda loved her.’” His voice bottomed out and his head drooped.
A weight settled in Mitch’s heart, one that told him Forest would never be the same person Mitch had played chess with last month.
He scooted his chair closer to Alex’s and, hidden by Forest’s hospital bed, he took Alex’s hand.
As much as he wanted to lay his head on Alex’s shoulder, there were too many eyes here.
Alex squeezed his hand tight.
“We can stay as long as you need,” Mitch reassured him.
“Actually, can we go?” Alex ran his free hand through his hair, his movements jerky. “Sorry, I know we just got here, but… The nurses said they had to sedate him, so he’ll be out for hours. I’ll come back tomorrow morning on my way to the airport in Burlington.”
“Whatever you want.” Mitch squeezed his thigh and stood. “Come on.”
Alex placed his hand over Forest’s and whispered, “See you tomorrow, Grandpa.”
It wasn’t until they were back in Alex’s rental car that Mitch asked, “Where to?”
They went to Stowe, where they parked on a side street, then wandered the snow-covered streets and eclectic shops. Alex even bought him an ice cream at a tiny ice cream parlor that hadn’t closed down for the winter.
“Ice cream in January?” Mitch asked.
“I’m Canadian,” Alex said with a shrug. “If I can’t eat ice cream in winter, there’s something wrong with me.”
They talked about everything and nothing. Their favorite foods, their favorite movies, what country they most wanted to visit, their favorite spots in Vermont, if they had pets growing up.
“Are you kidding?” Mitch asked. “I’ve told you about my mom, right?”
Alex winced. “Good point.”
Mitch kept half an eye on Alex as they walked and talked. His mood improved as the day wore on. That evening, as the sun set, they ate at a restaurant in Stowe that didn’t serve anything that cost anywhere close to ninety-five dollars.
When they got home hours after they’d left, the house was dark, but there was music coming from Cody’s room upstairs. They left their boots, coats, and hoodies by the front door, and when Mitch turned to say something to Alex, he found Alex’s eyes already trained on him.
Was his fly open? Nope. No food stains on his T-shirt or jeans either. “What?” he finally asked.
Alex was giving him that you’re-so-adorable grin. One of these days, Mitch would argue that he was most definitely not adorable. He was a tough, badass hockey player, thank you very much.
“What?” Mitch asked again.
Alex cupped Mitch’s neck, tilted his head back, and kissed him.
It was the first time Alex had kissed him with passion and sensuality, and all Mitch could do was hold on for dear life as his toes curled.
Alex walked him backward until he was up against the wall, and Mitch used it as leverage to try and climb Alex’s body like a goddamn tree.
Laughing into Mitch’s mouth, Alex palmed Mitch’s ass and hoisted.
Mitch hopped, wrapping his legs around Alex’s waist. Jesus fuck, he was being hauled up the stairs by a giant, as if he weighed nothing at all, and it was all kinds of awesome.
His cock took notice. Alex took notice that his cock took notice, but just like he’d promised on New Year’s Eve, Mitch’s boner didn’t scare him away.
In fact, he palmed it, right after he dropped Mitch onto the bed.
“Fuck, Alex,” Mitch screeched, his hips lifting off the bed, seeking more friction for his desperate dick.
“Did I do it wrong?”
Mitch’s laugh was desperate. “No. Fuck, no. But—”
“Okay, then.” Alex straddled Mitch’s thighs and unzipped Mitch’s jeans.
“Um,” Mitch squeaked. “Not that I want you to stop—because I don’t. But, uh, what happened to waiting?”
“I did wait.” Alex pulled Mitch’s jeans off, his grin gone from you’re-so-adorable to let’s-have-some-fun. Fuck. “I waited almost four weeks.” He ran the tips of his fingers along Mitch’s painfully erect dick, clearly outlined behind his boxer briefs.
Mitch’s eyes rolled back into his head. “But it was four weeks where—” He groaned when Alex pressed his fingertips in harder. “—we didn’t, um…” He lost his train of thought when Alex peeled his underwear off and his cock sprang out, ready for business.
“We didn’t see each other, you mean?” Alex said, with all the patience of a saint.
Mitch wanted to kill him. And tell him to do something with his dick instead of sitting there atop Mitch’s thighs staring at it as if it were a foreign object.
“That’s true,” Alex continued. “But you know what I realized?”
“I don’t care anymore,” Mitch said. “Take your shirt off.”
Alex did. Wow, score one for Mitch.
“I realized,” Alex said, dragging those damnable fingertips up and down Mitch’s bared erection, “that we’re already pretty solid.
” There was something else that was solid in this room, and it wasn’t their relationship.
“We actually talk to each other. Do you know how many couples talk to each other?”
“Um, all of them?”
Alex snorted, then closed his hand around Mitch. Mitch hissed in a breath through his teeth.
“Too tight?” Alex asked, relaxing his grip.
Mitch shook his head against the pillow. “Not tight enough.”
Alex squeezed and Oh fuck, please! Mitch couldn’t even move his hips, since Alex was still on his thighs and he was too consumed with lust to tell Alex what to do.
“I’ve never done this before,” Alex muttered under his breath in a whisper Mitch wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear.
Alex’s artlessness was obvious in his tentative touches, but at the same time, it was juxtaposed with the fact that Alex had been the one to kiss Mitch, to carry him upstairs, to toss him on the bed and undress him.
His confidence in the face of his uncertainty was fucking hot. Everything about Alex was hot.
Especially that thing he was doing with his thumb on the tip of Mitch’s cock.
“Does this mean—” Gulp. “—um, that…” His cock dripped pre-come and he clutched Alex’s strong thigh.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Alex said, his voice teasing.
“I hate you so much right now.”
“Hmm.” Alex glanced down at Mitch’s hard dick in his hand. “Do you?” He spread Mitch’s pre-come over his cock head.
Fuck, Mitch was so hard, harder than he’d ever been. “Alex, please.”
“Please, what?”
“I don’t…” Alex was going to kill him. Mitch wasn’t usually on such a hair-trigger, but it had been months since his dick had seen any action other than his own hand.
At least, since before he’d met Alex. He was going to die if he didn’t come soon.
That it was Alex giving him a hand job, the guy he’d wanted since they’d met? Fuck. “I don’t know.”
Alex shifted off his thighs to lie next to Mitch, his jean-clad legs rubbing against Mitch’s bare ones. He never took his hand off Mitch’s dick, thank God.
He placed a kiss on Mitch’s temple. “What do you need?”
Mitch cupped Alex’s neck and brought him in for a kiss that was far dirtier and messier than any they’d shared so far.
Alex went with it. In fact, Alex took it further, forcing Mitch’s mouth open wider, slipping his tongue inside.
Mitch was going to have serious beard burn in the morning and he didn’t even care.
“What do you need?” Alex asked again, green eyes gone dark, face flushed.
“I need to come.” The unrelenting circle of Alex’s thumb on the head of his cock was making him crazy, but it wasn’t quite enough.
“’Kay. Tell me how to do that.”
“I can’t… I don’t…” Alex’s hand moved off his cock and he wanted to cry until he felt those fingers ghosting over his sac. “Alex, please.”
“Tell me,” Alex ordered, and fuck his confidence just turned Mitch on that much more. “Assume I’m game for anything.”
Mitch waved a hand at the nightstand. “Lube.”
Alex left him for a second as he grabbed the lube and coated one hand with it. He lay back down next to Mitch, his head propped on his clean hand.
“What…?”
Alex smiled that let’s-have-some-fun grin again. “I want to watch your face.”
Mitch had never, ever, had anyone who cared what he looked like when he came.
Men before Alex had knelt between Mitch’s knees and either jacked him or blown him without care about whether or not he enjoyed one thing over another.
That Alex was eager for his orgasm face was mildly embarrassing, yet also—
His dick twitched. Yeah, that.
Alex noticed and closed his hand around it again.
Mitch’s hips lifted off the bed and heat pooled in his balls, ready to explode. “Harder.”
Alex tightened his hold. Then he started to jack Mitch, slowly at first, gaining momentum, avoiding touching the underside of his tip, as if he knew Mitch was hypersensitive there.
Skin heating to a boiling point, Mitch clutched at Alex with one hand and held onto the bedcovers with the other. “I need… I need you to…” He sobbed, unable to finish as Alex tightened his hold on him further.
“What do you need?” Alex asked. He was breathing as hard as Mitch, sweat dripping down his temple.
“My balls.”
Mitch parted his legs and Alex kneeled between them. Alex kept jacking him, keeping up his steady pace. He didn’t seem to know what to do with Mitch’s balls, and then, to Mitch’s complete and utter shock, he bent and swirled the tip of his tongue around Mitch’s scrotum.
Mitch stopped breathing.
Alex licked Mitch’s balls with the flat of his tongue in long, wet strokes, as if they were as delicious as this afternoon’s ice cream cone.
Then he flicked his tongue endlessly against the skin between his testicles and, combined with the nail Alex ran underneath Mitch’s ridge, the fire blazing through him converged at the base of his dick and Mitch went rigid and came with a loud groan.
When awareness returned, Alex was still lying between his legs, half off the bed, and the heat in his eyes was impossible to look away from.
“You’re fucking gorgeous,” Alex said.
Mitch made grabby hands. “I want to do you now.”
“No need.” Alex suckled the inside of Mitch’s thigh, making Mitch moan. “I came when you did.”
“Fuck, that’s hot.”
Alex still held Mitch’s dick in one hand. He used the other to trace a path through the come on Mitch’s belly.
Mitch’s legs were still twitching from his orgasm. Hell, his dick was still twitching as it sort-of-but-didn’t-really soften. Minutes later, when he’d finally gotten his breathing under control, Alex was still lying between his legs, his hand still on Mitch.
“You barely softened,” Alex said, wonder clear in his voice.
“Alex,” Mitch said with an embarrassed laugh, covering his face with his hands. “It’s been a really fucking long time.”
Alex grunted. “Okay.”
He still didn’t move.
“What are you doing?” Mitch’s thighs were starting to cramp.
“I’m going to wait for you to get hard again,” Alex said seriously. “And then I’m going to blow you.”
“Oh God.” Mitch went fully hard instantly, thigh cramps forgotten, and covered his eyes with an arm.
It was the only reason he was surprised when Alex’s tongue replaced his hand on Mitch’s dick.
Mitch shivered uncontrollably as Alex’s tongue explored him.
When he eventually took Mitch into his mouth, he wasn’t able to take him very far.
But combined with the testicle massage he was giving Mitch, it felt like only four seconds later that Mitch was coming for a second time, swearing under his breath.
“This is so not how I saw this evening going,” Mitch said to the ceiling.
Alex’s voice was hoarse when he said, “I think I could become addicted to this.”
Mitch could only laugh.