17. Leo #2
Not my shoulder, not my arm, not anything that could be mistaken for incidental or brotherly or any of the other things Alex Whitlow might have tried to tell himself it was.
His palm came down against the curve of my hip, over the thin fabric of my shorts, and rested there with a deliberateness that made my breath catch in spite of everything I’d been doing to convince us both that I was asleep.
I didn’t move. I didn’t give him anything.
His hand moved. Slowly. With that same focused attention I’d felt in the dark of his room during the storm. His fingers traced the line of my hip, the small of my back, the curve of my ass through the thin fabric. He was thorough about it. He took his time, as if memorizing every inch.
My heart was doing something violent and irregular inside my chest that I was working very hard to keep my breathing regular.
His hand moved again, lower now, tracing the back of my thigh. Then up again, slow and unhurried, following the line of me with a patience that was almost unbearable. I heard his breathing change, a fractional acceleration. I knew that sound and what it meant, and my body tingled from head to toe.
He reached the waistband of my shorts and paused.
The pause lasted long enough that I thought he might pull back. That whatever argument he’d been losing for the past several hours might reassemble itself in the dark and drag him back across the hall to his side of the divide. I lay completely still and waited, holding my breath.
His fingers slipped beneath the fabric.
I bit the inside of my cheek.
He was slow about it, careful in a way that felt like apology and hunger in equal measure.
Like he was trying to take something back and offer something else in the same motion.
His hand curved around me and I felt the warmth of his palm against bare ass and I stopped pretending to be asleep entirely, my breath leaving me in a long, unsteady exhale that I had absolutely no hope of containing.
He stilled.
We both stayed like that for a moment, suspended. Him with his hand where it was, me with my face half-buried in the pillow and my lungs doing their best impression of a man drowning quietly.
Then he continued.
His hand slowly worked my shorts down as if he were trying not to wake me.
Then, with a gentle touch, he rolled me to the side, my fully-hard cock rocking with the movement.
He seemed to stare at it for a moment before his fingers wrapped around my shaft.
I couldn’t help but let out a small sound. It didn’t deter him.
He stroked me with a patience, like he had all the time in the world. This version of Alex, unperceived and cloaked in darkness, was quiet and deliberate and entirely focused. And goddamn did it feel good.
I didn’t say anything. Neither did he.
That was the thing about the dark, I’d learned it during the storm and I was learning it again now. It felt safe. It came with its own set of rules. Things that couldn’t be said out loud could be said in the dark without words, without the consequences arriving immediately on their heels.
His thumb swiped over the sensitive head of my cock and I made a sound low in my chest that surprised even me.
He kept going, slow and steady, with that focused attentiveness that I was beginning to understand was just how Alex did things he cared about getting right. And there was something in that, something I was trying very hard not to feel too much about.
I reached back without thinking and found his wrist. Not to stop him. Just to hold on.
He let me. His wrist was warm and familiar under my fingers. I felt his pulse against my thumb, fast and uneven, and I held onto that because it told me what I needed to hear.
He was just as desperate for this as I was.
He worked me slowly until I was shaking with pleasure, until my hand had tightened around his wrist and my breathing was entirely beyond my control.
I’d turned my face and pressed it into the pillow to keep myself quiet.
I didn’t want to break the moment or this silent conversation happening between us.
When I came it was almost silent. It moved through me like the tide coming in, and I held his wrist through all of it and felt his pulse hammering against my thumb as I coated his fingers in cum.
Afterward, neither of us moved for a long moment.
The night pressed in warm and close around us. His hand was still where it was, loose now, resting. His breathing was audible in the dark, slow and deliberate, like he was managing it carefully.
I looked up.
I couldn’t see him. The room was too dark, the shutters were closed, and there was no candle this time. But I could feel him there, very close, seated on the edge of the mattress. I could make out the approximate shape of him, the broad shoulders, and the angle of his jaw turned slightly away.
I didn’t say anything.
He didn’t say anything either.
After a long moment, I felt the mattress shift under his weight as he stood. His footsteps crossed the room slowly. At the door he paused, the way he’d paused on the way in, and I heard a long slow exhale.
A heartbeat later, he was gone, leaving the room empty and quiet.
I lay there on my bed, naked, spent, and with my shorts around my knees.
For a moment I wondered what all that was about and why Alex would do that in the dead of night without uttering a word.
But the instant I had the thought, I already knew the answer.
Alex was apologizing. But he wasn’t ready to say it out loud just yet or admit he was wrong.
As much as I wanted to run to his room and wrap myself around him in the dark, I forced myself to stay where I was.
It was a step in the right direction, but not exactly the apology I needed to completely give in just yet.
But I wouldn’t mind if he apologized like that two or three more times either.