39. THIRTY-NINE
THIRTY-NINE
“Who, Gray? What are you talking about?”
I cup his face with both hands. “I would keep your secret and be your secret. I would do it without hesitating if I knew…if you could…”
Strong arms curl around my back, holding me tight, encouraging me to keep talking.
“If you can promise me that you won’t…that it won’t be…
” My throat clogs around the ball of emotions.
I don’t like being this vulnerable. Every survival instinct inside me is throwing a fucking fit over how I’ve just rolled over, belly exposed.
I’m baring my throat, hoping there won’t be a killing blow.
Wetting my lips, I try again, “You can’t treat me like Brent.
Or Leonard. I’m not… disposable. ” It’s a whisper, a bitter confession.
It’s a dream.
A wish.
Please don’t throw me away like everyone else.
He’s quiet, staring at me like I’ve given him the biggest puzzle to solve.
What I’ve said seems to have paralyzed him until the cigarette between his fingers burns.
He hisses, chucks the butt, and returns to holding me.
With a tiny shake of his head, he blows out his lips and presses his forehead to mine.
“You’re making it exceptionally difficult to do the right thing, sweetheart. ”
“So you don’t want that?” I’m ready to rip myself out of his arms, but he squeezes me tighter.
“I do . I want it—you. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore. The only thing I do know is you deserve more—better—a man who isn’t afraid of his own shadow. I could never be more than what I reveal behind a closed door. That isn’t much to offer.”
Because he won’t even try, he’s crippled by what if .
What if his dad freaks and disowns him? What if he’s proven to be a disappointment?
What if the only parent to never leave him, does?
I don’t know his dad—I know very little about him, but Hunter is a truly impressive man. What’s not to fucking love?
“I don’t want what you have to offer,” I say adamantly. “You could’ve been another homeless dude on the street. It’s the way you didn’t turn away. It’s the way you proved to me that not everyone is an evil motherfucker,” I growl.
My hands paw at his face, trying to get us closer. Eventually, I settle on carding my fingers through his hair, keeping him sealed to me. “Please,” I whisper.
“We could never show PDA,” he starts, kissing my forehead. “We could never touch like this or hold hands. No one could know you’re staying here. You would have to fake an address for mail.” He drags his lips over my cheek. “Is that what you want, Gray? To give up any notion of a real relationship?”
He’s right. I know he is, but his lips are close to mine, his hands are on me, and his stupid cologne is in my nose.
He feels good, smells good, and most of all, he feels fucking safe.
So safe that I know without a shadow of a doubt that he’d never hurt me.
He’d never make me do anything I don’t want to.
Everything about my life has been public.
Nothing is a secret when you are on the streets.
The world has a front row view of everything you do.
But just like he’s hesitant to agree, I’m reluctant to say that I could tolerate the alternative for any length of time.
“I’ll be honest, sweetheart,” he rasps, peppering tiny kisses on the corner of my mouth.
My brain turns to mush in my skull as my body jolts with emotion-based reactions.
“You should say it isn’t what you want. You should say that you want more, that this would never work.
” I gasp when he grabs my ass, tugging me impossibly closer.
“Tell me to fucking stop and I will.” I try to kiss him, but he nudges my face to the side so he can press his nose to my pulse point.
His breath hits my skin as he talks. “But I hope that you don’t.
I hope you’re willing to sacrifice a conventional relationship so that I can keep you. I just want to keep you, Gray.”
Now he kisses me.
The brutality with which he attacks my mouth throws me for a loop.
He’s always been so gentle with me, but now it’s like a switch has been flipped and the gloves are off.
He’s taking what he wants, spearing his tongue in between my lips and swallowing my breaths.
With one hand firmly over my asscheek, the other holding the back of my head, I’ve got no choice but to drop my arms around his hips, and let him lead.
“God, you drive me crazy,” he growls as he comes up for air. The smack of our mouths, the slick heat of our tongues, and the possessive grip on me turns me fucking feral.
I pour myself into the kiss, digging my nails into his back, sucking his bottom lip between my teeth hard enough to make him grunt.
Our sounds quickly grow too obscene to stay out in his backyard.
Walking me backwards until my back hits the glass sliding door, Hunter wedges his leg between mine.
Flashes of last night pound through me, reminding me that I make stupid decisions whenever we kiss without hesitation.
And fuck do I want to make some right now.
I want him to touch me, let me touch him—show me what he likes. I’m not necessarily wanting to get fucked, but I’d do it for Hunter. I’d let him have every inch of me. Instead, he grinds his thigh against my dick, coaxing it to full mast.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I breathe, using his body as leverage as I thrust against him. “I don’t want to.”
“Let me take care of you,” he begs, pressing on my asscheek, squeezing it and helping me just like he did last night.
“We should go inside.” We kiss more while he doesn’t stop making me fuck his leg.
“No, because if we go inside, I won’t stop.”
“ Please .” It’s a pathetic beg, but this is the first time in forever that I want more than heavy petting—if you can even call it that.
His hand drops from my head, quickly slipping up my shirt to palm my chest. Those smooth fingertips brush over my nipple before pinching it into a stiff peak.
I moan, and he swallows it. My dick hurts , rubbing against my briefs and wishing it was his cock instead.
Tossing my head back against the glass, I open myself up for Hunter’s mouth on my throat.
He licks a stripe over my Adam’s apple before sucking on it.
“ Fuck ,” I pant.
“Use me,” he demands. “Use me, baby.”
If I could think straight, I’d ask if this is some kink of his, making me come in my pants.
But I don’t get a chance to think or ask.
He burrows his tongue down my throat, playing with the barbell pierced through mine, and I do exactly what he said to.
Shifting my hips to get a better angle, I grind into his thigh harder, keeping a rhythm that makes him moan so loud it vibrates my uvula.
I paw at him desperately, needing more but overstimulated as it is. My dick is throbbing, balls bunched up tight. His nimble fingers keep tweaking my nipples while his fantastic mouth steals every rational thought from my skull. I’m free-falling off the edge within seconds.
“I’m coming,” I gasp, clinging to him as hard as I can. “Oh fuck .”
Hot pulses of my cum hit the fabric of my briefs, staining through it while my balls empty.
I shiver and shake through the aftershocks, still slowly grinding against him.
Each thrust sends jolts of bliss through me, each pass of his lips over mine brands his flavor on my tongue, and the reverent way he holds up my sagging body confirms everything I already knew.
I don’t want Hunter to be mine anymore.
He already is. He’s been mine.
“God, you’re gorgeous,” he praises before kissing me again—the gentlest, sweetest kiss possible. “So gorgeous,” he whispers.
I’ve never been gorgeous to anyone before, but I don’t need to say that. One look in my eyes and he knows.
After my shower, we ended up back in Hunter’s room.
Side by side on his bed, he shows me how to save things on his laptop, which he so generously said I could use for job applications.
I’m trying to pay attention—truly, I am—but his shoulder keeps brushing mine.
The contact is nothing compared to what happened in the backyard, yet it feels just as electric.
When he glances at me to make sure I’m following, I nod, letting my eyes drift to his mouth.
Without thinking twice, I plant a soft kiss on its corner.
Hunter smiles, the dimples in his cheeks popping despite his beard’s attempt to hide them.
I brush my finger over the right one. He sighs, closes the laptop, and places it on his nightstand.
Now his full attention is on me.
“We should take things slow,” he tells me.
It makes sense. “Okay.”
“In case,” he swallows hard, “you change your mind.”
“I won’t.” It’s the truth. I’ve buried my claws deep and don’t plan on retracting them.
“Okay,” he parrots me from a second ago. “But the point still stands. Slow. ”
“Hasn’t it been slow already?” I’m poking the bear, hoping for the moment I’ve seen in all the movies my mom loved.
The infamous ‘fuck it’ moment. But it doesn’t happen—not with Hunter. I've come to find out that I won't ever get a movie moment.
Instead, he brushes a stray strand of my overgrown hair off my forehead.
Searching my face, his jaw tics like he is debating whether to say what he’s thinking.
Eventually, his gorgeous lips part, and he speaks.
“Not slow enough,” he whispers, those pretty hazel orbs tracing over me like soft caresses.
“There’s so much I don’t know about you, but at the same time, I feel like I know it all.
I don’t want what we have to be muddled by sex. ”
“Why would it be? That’s just how it goes.”
He hesitates, taking the moment to find my hand and hold it. “Because that’s how I operate—how I’ve operated. There’s an attraction—usually physical—and then once I act on it, there’s nothing else.”
“But that was with them ,” I say with a bite to my tone. The fact that there were even others irritates me.
“True,” he admits, bringing our hands to his lips and kissing the back of mine. “But this is you—us.”
“Would you really turn me down? If I wanted it right this second, would you?” Just the thought has my pulse pounding.
When he blew up on me before, I vaguely remember him saying that the guy made him top his first time, and he didn’t like it.
But Hunter seems like he might now. How easily he takes charge—how much bigger he is than me.
“Yes,” he says immediately. “I would.”
I try to pull my hand away, but he doesn’t let me go. “You’re worth more than that, Gray. And you might not realize it, but what happened to you does affect how you act around me.”
I frown deeply, hating how right he always is.
Since Dan’s minions attacked me, I have been ignoring it all, pretending it didn’t happen.
Doctor Perry's examination made me feel all wrong, but I blocked it out. I still have been. I’m healed, able to do what I need to down there, but I can’t talk about it—don’t fucking want to.
The fact he’s bringing it up means he might expect me to.
For four years, I managed to avoid anything of the sort happening to me, I thought I’d live on the streets forever without… that . What a stupid thing to think. My stomach sinks as a rogue sniffle slips free.
“Hey,” he coos, brushing the moisture off my cheeks. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“It wouldn’t matter. I’d be fine. Even if…even if you wanted me to bottom.” The words come out, but I can hear the fear in my own voice.
His finger slides under my chin, lifting it so we are eye to eye. “I’d never ask that of you, not because of this, but because I don’t like it.”
“Y-You don’t?”
“I don’t.”
“But you seem so…so…” I gesture at him.
The tiniest smirk forms on his lips. “So what?”
I don’t know how to word it right, so I blurt out the first thing that pops into my head. “Too controlling to submit.”
His eyebrow quirks, surprise on his face. “Just because I like a cock up my ass doesn’t mean I’m submitting.”
Confusion takes hold, mixing with the weird anxiety in my chest. Taking pity on me, he pulls me into his side, wrapping an arm around me and pressing a kiss to my temple. “We don’t have to talk about this,” he mumbles.
“I do,” I huff. “So when we do more, you’d want me to top?
” The idea of it is just as nerve-wracking as everything else.
I’ve never done that before. I'll probably suck at it—might be the worst lay he’s ever had.
My thumb is in my mouth without hesitation, and I find the microscopic strip of new nail growth with my teeth.
“Why are you so focused on this? It doesn’t have to even go that far, sweetheart. There are other ways to pleasure your partner that don’t involve penetration.”
Flustered, I rip at the nail and blurt out, “Because I have always been at the bottom. Bottom of life. Bottom of society. The bottom of men. I didn’t get a say in any of it either.
No one allowed me even to consider where I wanted to be.
It’s important to me because of how I feel.
I’d stay beneath you if that’s what you wanted. If it’d make you happy.”
Hunter takes my spit covered, chewed to fuck thumb, and kisses it. “I don’t want that from you. Never sacrifice yourself for me, Gray. Never. ”
“But I would.”
His chest heaves with a heavy breath.
“I’d do whatever I needed to make you keep me,” I admit in a whisper.
His silence should warn me. It should matter to me in this moment, but it doesn’t. I confessed something that I can’t take back. He’s got a front row seat viewing directly into my scarred heart.
All he has to do is reach for it, and it’s his.