Chapter Eleven #2
His chest was lean, defined without being built, the kind of musculature that came from utility rather than vanity. His skin was creamy white, almost luminous in the low lamp light, and the contrast with the dark sheets behind him was severe enough to hurt.
I stripped my own shirt off without thinking about it.
The fabric caught on my watch—the Patek, heavy on my wrist—and I freed it with a quick twist of my arm.
The shirt landed on the chair. My skin felt too tight, too warm, the rut humming under the surface like a second pulse. The room’s temperature was perfect.
My body disagreed.
The distance between us was maybe four feet. I closed it in two steps, my hand coming up to cup the side of his jaw before either of us had time to overthink it. His skin was warm. Slightly damp at the hairline. I tipped his face up the inch it needed and kissed him.
Not gently. Deliberately. My mouth found his and I took my time with it, slow and thorough, the way you’d approach something you’d been thinking about for longer than was strictly healthy.
His lips parted on a half-breath, and I tasted cherry blossom and heat and the faint, clean edge of the toothpaste he used.
His mouth was soft in a way that contradicted everything else about him—the sharp tongue, the quicker wit, the bone-deep stubbornness that had been driving me insane since the day we met.
He made a sound against my mouth. Low. Surprised. The kind of noise that started in the back of his throat and traveled straight down my spine, settling somewhere below my belt with the particular weight of something I had no intention of ignoring.
My hand slid from his jaw to the back of his neck, fingers pressing into the short hair there, and I felt him lean into it. Not surrendering. Choosing.
The rut pushed harder. The heat behind my eyes intensified, a dull, insistent pressure that made the room feel smaller.
I kissed him deeper. Slower. My tongue traced the line of his lower lip and he made that sound again, softer this time, and his hands came up to grip my shoulders.
His fingers dug in. Hard. The kind of grip that said I am here, I am present, and I am not going anywhere.
I broke the kiss. His breath came fast. Mine didn’t, because I’d spent thirty-five years learning to control my breathing under conditions considerably worse than a pretty man’s mouth, but it cost me.
It cost me more than I wanted to admit.
I mapped him with my mouth. Throat first. The line of his jugular, pulsing under my lips, warm and alive. I pressed my mouth to the spot and felt his pulse jump against my tongue.
His head tipped back. His hands tightened on my shoulders. I worked my way down the column of his throat to the sharp cut of his collarbone, teeth grazing the bone—careful, careful—and the sound he made was closer to a groan, rough and unfiltered.
His chest came next. Lean muscle under warm skin. I took my time. My mouth found his left nipple and closed over it, tongue circling, and his back arched off the bedpost he was braced against.
His fingers twisted in my hair, not guiding, just holding on, and the small, broken noise that escaped him was worth every second of restraint I’d exercised since the moment he walked into my office with a baby in his arms.
“Fuck,” he said, voice ragged. “Jesus Christ, Wolfe.”
I moved to the right nipple. Same treatment. Slower. His hips jerked forward, seeking contact, and I felt the hard line of his cock through his jeans press against my stomach.
The rut flared, bright and hungry, and for a second the only thing in the world was the heat of his skin under my mouth and the sound of his breathing coming apart.
I dropped to my knees. The hardwood was hard under my knees, but I barely registered it. My hands found his belt, worked it open with the same focused efficiency I brought to everything, and then his jeans were open and his cock sprang free, hard and flushed and perfect.
I wrapped my hand around the base, gave him one slow stroke from root to tip, and watched his face do something complicated—jaw clenched, eyes half-closed, the expression of a man trying very hard not to come apart at the seams.
“You’re going to kill me,” he said. His voice was wrecked. “You know that, right? This is murder with extra steps.”
I almost smiled.
I didn’t.
Instead, I leaned forward and took him into my mouth. The taste of him was clean, salt-bright, the particular heat of skin that had been waiting. I moved with the same patience I applied to negotiations, to territory disputes, to the thousand other things I wanted badly enough to wait for.
Slow. Deliberate.
My tongue traced the length of him, flat and firm, and his hips rolled up against me without warning, his cock hitting the back of my throat. I didn’t pull back. I took it, let my throat open, and the sound he made was somewhere between a gasp and a curse, raw and completely undone.
His hand found the back of my head. Not pushing. Anchoring. His fingers twisted in my hair, grip tight enough to border on pain, and I welcomed it.
The rut hummed louder, the heat building behind my eyes, and every sound he made, every twitch of his hips, every ragged breath fed into it like fuel on a fire I had no interest in putting out.
I could feel him getting close. His breathing fractured. His thighs tensed under my hands. His cock pulsed against my tongue, and the small, broken sounds falling from his mouth were the kind that lived in the space between pleasure and desperation.
I wanted to take him over the edge. I wanted to watch him come apart on my tongue, wanted to taste every second of it, wanted to file the sound he’d make away in the part of my brain reserved for things I planned to revisit.
Instead, I drew back. Slow. Deliberate. My mouth left him with a wet sound that hung in the quiet room, and his cock jerked against the cool air, flushed and desperate and nowhere near finished.
He stared down at me. His chest heaved. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide, and the expression on his face was the particular mix of disbelief and raw want that did things to my self-control I wasn’t prepared to examine.
“You,” he said, voice shredded, “are a fucking menace.”
I stood. My knees protested. I ignored them. The rut pressed against the inside of my skin, a live wire running from my sternum to my cock, and the look on Jai’s face—sharp, wanting, completely fucking done with my patience—was almost enough to snap the last of my restraint.
Almost.
Not yet.
The lube was in the nightstand drawer. I’d put it there three days after Jai moved in, along with condoms I had no intention of using. The bottle was cold in my hand.
I warmed it between my palms, watching Jai from the edge of the bed where he’d stretched out on his back, one arm thrown above his head, chest still heaving, jeans open and pushed down to mid-thigh.
His cock lay hard against his stomach, flushed and wet from my mouth, and the sight of him like that—spread out on my sheets, eyes dark, mouth parted—nearly undid me.
The rut pressed harder. The heat behind my eyes had graduated from pressure to something closer to pain, a dull, insistent throb that made the room feel two sizes too small.
My cock strained against my pants, hard enough to hurt, and the rational part of my brain—the part that still functioned when the rest of me was running on instinct—registered that I needed to go slow.
That Jai was smaller than me in every dimension that mattered.
That the rut turned careful into careless if I let it.
I didn’t plan to let it.
Not yet.
I slicked two fingers with lube, warm now, and reached for him, pulling his pants the rest of the way off. His thighs fell open without being asked. Trust, or recklessness, or the particular brand of courage Jai Flynn carried that made him look danger in the eye and ask it to hurry up.
I pressed one finger against his hole, slow, deliberate, and felt the tight ring of muscle give way under steady pressure. He was hot. Tight. His body resisted for half a second before accepting me, and the sound he made was low and ragged, caught between his teeth.
I worked the finger in to the second knuckle, then deeper, feeling the way his body clenched around me, hot and pulsing. His hips rolled up, seeking more, and I added a second finger alongside the first, scissoring gently, watching his face the entire time.
The shift was visible. His jaw, which had been locked with that familiar tension, went slack. His eyes, which never quite shut all the way—some habits died harder than others—dropped to half-mast.
His breath came faster, shallow, and the small, broken sounds falling from his mouth were the kind that lived in the space between control and its complete absence.
“More,” he said. His voice was wrecked. “Christ, Braham, more.”
I added a third finger. Slow. Careful. The stretch was significant—my fingers were not small—and I watched his face for any sign of discomfort, any flinch, any moment where pleasure tipped into something else.
It never came. His body took me, clenching and releasing in rhythm, and the way his cock jerked against his stomach with every movement of my fingers told me everything I needed to know about how close he was.
The rut hummed louder. The heat under my skin had reached the point where it crossed from discomfort into something that bordered on delirium. Every sound Jai made fed into it. Every twitch of his hips. Every ragged breath.
My cock ached, hard and desperate, and the rational part of my brain was getting quieter by the second.
Jai’s hand found my wrist. His grip was tight, fingers digging into the tendons, and when he spoke, his voice had that edge it got when he’d reached the end of his considerable patience.
“Braham.” Direct. Flat. The way he said my name when he was done negotiating. “If you don’t fuck me right now, I am going to do something we’ll both regret.”