Chapter 19
19
ISAAC
Adrenaline spikes at being put exactly where Joe wants me. I don’t fight the way Luke said was only human nature, and there’s no way I’m thinking about fleeing or freezing. What I am one hundred percent on board with is fawning over someone who kisses me like I made his night, his week, his whole year with a single sentence.
I repeat it as soon as his mouth moves lower.
“They should miss you.” That isn’t supposition. It’s been my truth since I was left to hold my brother’s broken heart together. I had to ignore that my own had shattered. Had to keep going through protective motions for someone the justice system had left crushed. Maybe protectiveness is a muscle—mine flexes now for Joe. “They should, because I did. I missed you so much.”
His mouth lifts from the side of my neck. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. All the fucking time.”
I love this smile on him, even if only the moon lights it. It starts small before expanding, and then we’re kissing again, connected from mouth to hips to ankle, and I stop thinking about other people.
Joe’s the one and only man on my mind each time he grinds down, hard and heavy.
I could lie back and take it forever. We have time. I still feel an urgency, a frantic need both to stop time and to hurry. I don’t even try to verbalise that contradiction. I push instead, and here’s more proof that yes, I’ve seen him raise his fists to spar with shadows but gentle fits him so much better. He proves it by rolling off me nice and easy, smiling again as if he’s dazzled when I straddle him and have to kiss him.
I only stop when a frown flickers, then I lift off in a hurry.
“Shit. Too much pressure on your back?” That’s where he’s marked the worst by someone I’d hunt down if our nightly conversations didn’t mean I know that they already served their sentence. It’s the men at the top I’d keep chasing, the ones who gave the order, if I had the power to track and trace them. Joe only shakes his head and twists to reach underneath him.
He pulls out my usual bed partner, moonlight silvering the sprayed edges of a limited edition hardback. Joe squints at the cover. “Dragons do it for you?”
Nope. He does.
Joe’s my incentive to toss a book that I once stood in line for, that I needed to read more than breathing back when fiction was my motivator.
Who needs book boyfriends? Fuck dragons or their riders, even if their onyx eyes promise violence. My man’s eyes are moonlit.
He kneels over me and looks down.
Reading is life, but Joe melting the second I reach up to touch his face is even better. His lips brush the pad of my thumb, all while he hurries to get naked. Joe starts with his fly, and I get to work pulling off my shirt. His hands pause, breath stilling, as if it’s the first time he’s seen me bare-chested.
It isn’t. We’ve fucked already. He’s got up close to me in a shower and on an armchair, let alone via a phone. Heat still blotches my throat at his close inspection—at him soaking up what the moon shows him, which is wild when I’m nothing special. Not like him. I’m lean where he’s all bulk. Narrow where he’s so fucking powerful.
Joe can’t think so.
“Keep going. Take it all off.” He’s so gruff that another crab line pulls tight between us and vibrates. I’m hooked. By his gaze. By him wetting his lips. And by him getting both hands on me to get rid of the rest of my clothes until I’m naked.
He isn’t.
Joe’s shirt hangs open. So does his fly. The head of his cock is visible over the black band of his boxers as he shifts over me, and more books topple from the far side of the bed.
They can fall. All I care about is getting a hand on his dick.More than that, I have to taste him.
I lick a smear of his precome from my palm, and Joe strips in a hurry, his cock thick and bobbing while mine aches. So does my heart, at scars I’d never quit trying to make someone pay for.
I can’t help it, like I can’t help worrying about how and where to touch him.
Joe knows what works for him—we end up side by side. I’m a six to his nine, our matched height in our favour. I mouth the head of his dick while he does the same to mine, getting each other wet and exploring. His balls pull up as I suck and lick, all while tracing fat veins that pulse and inhaling musk that only gets me harder.
I was already aching. Already wanting to thrust each time Joe’s tongue flicks my frenulum before taking me deep, then deeper. I want to fill his mouth, his throat, his whole fucking chest like he fills mine, so I pull him closer, then choke as soon as Joe finds my hole and presses.
He must have wet his finger. It presses again, and I lift a leg, saying yes and more and do me right now without speaking, but Joe still checks in.
He’s gravelly. “Really wanna fuck you.”
I’ve never rolled onto my front faster. Never been laughed at in bed either.
No .
I’m laughed with, like during every evening phone call, only Joe’s chest pressed to my back while he laughs is even better. He’s on top, hot and heavy and happy in a way I can’t imagine ever getting sick of. His breath across my ear slays me all over again. I tingle with each teasing whisper.
“Someone’s in a hurry.” His teeth graze my earlobe, his cock thick against the crease of my arse. “Just resist the urge to?—”
“Do the robot. Yes, yes, keep going.”
He plants his hands on the pillows, only inches from my face, and I don’t think. I kiss a scar on one wrist, then dig under my pillow for lube. I shift, hunting for it, and his cock slides exactly where I want him.
He’s right there, head of his dick hard and wide and a lot. I’ve never been afraid of hard things. Faced plenty in the last year. Now I’m faced with Joe bracing on one hand, and I guess he found the lube before I could.
A much slicker finger takes over pressing.
He gets one inside me. Two. Finds the right spot to circle, and stars join the moonlight. So, so many of them. It’s almost game over before we’ve even started. My toes curl, my hands too, sheets fisted, and a purr rumbles through me.
From Joe.
I feel it. Feel the head of his dick again too, and I almost take it.
He pulls back.
“N-no.” I’m up on my hands and knees in a scrambling instant. “Don’t stop. Do me.” I look over my shoulder, and see why he’s added distance. The trousers he shoved off are in his lap, his hands deep in their pockets for a much better reason than usual. He finds a condom, slicks it, and his next press against me turns the moon into a surprise supernova.
His forehead is against my shoulder, his breaths staggering, and all I can do is take until there’s no divide between us, no telling where he stops and I start.
We’re one, and it’s exactly what I needed.
There’s no thinking. No past. Only this present that shines when he starts moving.
I can’t keep this in. “F-fuck, Joe.”
“Yeah?”
I nod, my head hanging, and like before, he checks in. This time, he does that by pulling me up, an arm around my chest in an action replay of our first time. Tonight, there’s no hurry, and he goes slow, holding back instead of going all out.
I’m in his lap, sinking onto steel. Pierced all the way through, but I need to see him. Need to kiss him.
My mouth is too dry to say so. I gasp. Rasp. Can hardly string words together when it feels like he already reaches all the way to my voice box. “Kiss me,” I finally manage, and twist, reaching around while full and burning, and like always, he helps me.
Joe pulls out, and I shout.
He fills me again, only I’m on my back now, bent almost double, and held down while he’s a study of flushed concentration.
I don’t even try to hold in my groan.
It comes from my heart. My soul. From who the fuck knows where.
He echoes it, then gives me what I asked for—our mouths meet, and it’s messy when he picks up speed, even though he fights it. His pace stutters, slows, then ratchets to a whole new level.
Joe makes the bed slam. Makes my heart slam even harder. The world shrinks to his hold on me and mine on sheets that twist between my fingers. There’s nothing else but him for me.
Nothing and no one.
“Yeah?”
Joe slows. Stops. Doesn’t move a muscle until I nod in confirmation. He kisses me again then, and rocks into me with a deep grind, and if I ever knew how to breathe, I forget now. I shake instead, and clutch him.
He doesn’t wince. Doesn’t stop or stutter. That grind only deepens after he lifts my leg over his shoulder.
Each slow screw in gets me close, then closer. I pant. Sweat. Curse and clutch him even tighter. If I dig nails into his shoulders, his sole reaction is a look I’ve only seen twice.
When he saw me on that beach and the first time I let Lenny see him.
Joe looks at me now as if he can’t believe his eyes or his luck, then kisses me deep and wet enough to drown in.
Don’t try to fucking save me.
I want to go under. Want to sink as deep as I can, as long as it’s with him. I don’t even need air. Joe will do my breathing for me.
“Yeah?” he asks again against my shoulder, and fuck knows what that is in response to. All I can do is nod and hold on.
He fucks me fast, then slow and gentle, and that’s good, but so is him rolling me over again so I’m back on knees that shake, then lock.
The wide head of his dick nudges my hole, slick with more lube.Joe pulls me back onto him, angled so this ingress is one long light show.
All I can do is feel—how we fit, how we sound, how him pulling me up so I’m back on his lap almost tips me over an edge. I’m so beyond full. There’s no end to him, no beginning to me, and his hand barely wrapping my dick spells game over.
I come so hard I can’t see.
Because of him.
Joe’s my cause. My reason. My definition of patience, who waits until I can urge him to finish, and so what if that’s flat on my face and I’m almost smothered.
What a way to go.
I’m blissed out for I don’t know how long after he rolls off to clean up. All I see is him sitting on the side of my bed, his back to me, complete with new marks and bruises.
Because of how hard I held him.
“I hurt you.”
“Hurt me?”
Joe meets my gaze, and all I see is softness. And care. So much so that his final statement becomes a promise I’ll keep forever.
“Mate, you couldn’t.”