Chapter 22 #3
Multiple things happened at once. Dominos falling into place. Joe’s eyes completely shut. His frame collapsed forward. He buried his face in the side of my neck, body hunched over mine, weight leaning onto me—like calling him that, calling him the best—had knocked him right off his feet.
I caught him, though it was a bit of a struggle to hold him up.
I managed, though. Truthfully, I loved it.
Loved how big he was. How powerful he could be.
Loved the fact that his mass didn’t make him scared of submitting.
Loved that he was practically twice my size and still chose to let me carry his weight.
Loved the way he was leaning on me like it never once occurred to him that I wouldn’t be able to support him.
I was on top of the world when Joe chose to let me in.
It was easy.
Effortless.
It felt good.
He felt good.
And I was never more confident, or more happy than I was now—with him trusting me to carry him.
“Let’s go to the back, yeah?” I murmured into his ear. “Madison won’t mind if we swap. She gets paid either way.”
At that, he huffed out an amused laugh. He didn’t move though—just kept clinging to me.
“I gotta move, big guy,” I murmured. “You don’t need to let go. Just…help me a bit, okay? One foot in front of the other, baby.”
Joe didn’t let go, but he did lift enough of his weight that we could shift.
“Good boy.”
He sighed, this airy, needy sound. I ached to pull him right back on top of me.
But…privacy was a better option. As I stepped away from the counter, Joe let me go.
It only took a second to figure out why.
He grabbed his apple bushel, countenance docile as I led the way toward the back of the store where the break room was located.
“Won’t your manager be angry if you let me in the break room during store hours?” Joe asked when we paused just outside the door. The last time we’d been next to this door together had been when this whole thing had started. When I’d held him for the first time.
It was heady how different things were now.
“I’m pretty sure he’s fine with it,” I grinned.
“How do you know?”
“I’m the manager.”
“Oh.” Joe blinked.
I pushed the door open, swinging around to keep it wide so Joe could come through with his apples. He’d need to restock the shelves afterward. After…what? I still wasn’t sure. A cuddle for sure. Maybe more kissing?
I forced myself not to think too hard about it.
Joe entered the room with trepidation. That trepidation faded as he took in the space.
I tried to look at it from his perspective.
At the well-worn but cushy couch. At the giant coffee corner that Madison had covered in stickers.
At all the creamers and syrups. At the pictures on the walls—of food drives, community events, Madison’s graduation (which I’d obviously attended).
It looked old but well-loved.
The kind of space I’d found myself gravitating toward, especially as I got older.
If I was being honest, it felt more like home than my current house ever had.
Probably because of the memories I’d made here.
Madison was bent over the coffee station, filling her tumbler from the ridiculously expensive machine she’d blackmailed me into buying. Beside her elbow, my hot pink cup was sitting filled as well. Like she’d thought of me before she’d even thought of herself.
I softened immediately.
Was I irked she’d spilled one of my secrets to Joe? Yes. Of course I was. But…it was hard to be mad when she was so little. And young. And just a tiny-itty-bitty-baby-who-made-me-coffee-when-she-felt-bad—
“Stop looking at me like that, ew.” Madison turned around to glare at me. She rose to her full height, curled around her cup like the gremlin she was.
“Boss-man says you’re needed outside,” I told her. “And not to come in here. For reasons.”
Joe snorted. Probably because he now knew I was the boss. As we’d walked, that fogginess in his eyes had faded. I would’ve mourned its loss if I hadn’t known I was about to put it back tenfold.
“If you two are going to make out, I don’t want to know about it,” Madison said, face pinched. “I don’t like thinking about your mouth.” She was practically green. “At all.”
“No one asked you to.” I pointed to the door. “Go, go. Before I stick my tongue down Joe’s—”
Madison was out the door before I could finish.
I cackled gleefully.
That glee was short-lived. Shyly, deliberately, Joe locked the door behind him. My laughter died pretty damn quickly as I eyed the lock, then him, then the lock again.
“Oh,” I said, surprised by how low my voice had gotten. “So that’s what’s happening, huh?”
Joe’s cheeks flushed a dark, ruddy red. He ducked his head, staring at the corner of the room blindly, too embarrassed to meet my eyes.
“You said you’d…”
“That I’d what?” God, teasing him was so fun.
“Give me…” Joe squirmed.
“Attention?” I filled in for him. “Yeah. I did.” My eyes dragged over his body. Across his shoulders. Over the tits I could picture behind his basket. Past his belly, to those thick thighs, down worn denim to his yellow work boots. Scuffed beyond repair. Paint splotches, now, too.
“Put your apples down, Joe-by,” I commanded, heat pooling between my legs.
“Joe-by?” Joe blinked, confused.
“You know. Joe and baby. Mixed. It made sense in my head.” I grinned, cocking his head to the side. “What, you don’t like it? You’re a classic ‘baby’ guy?”
I wasn’t stalling, so much as I was giving him time to formulate what he wanted.
“It’s not that,” Joe huffed, scowling. “I just…I don’t get why you’re trying to call me anything but my name. You keep doing that.”
“You never heard of a pet name before?” I asked, anticipation fizzling beneath the surface of my skin.
“Of course I have.” Joe gave me that look. His grouchy look. My favorite. (Okay, yes, they were all my favorite.)
“Explain it to me.” He gave me another look. Unamused. “Now, Joe.” At that, Joe stood up a little taller. The flush had traveled to his ears now, down his throat, too. “And put your apples down. Don’t make me ask you a third time.” He put his apples down.
God, that was heady.
My dick twitched, and I had to bite back a groan.
“A pet name is…something you use when you like someone.”
“Right,” I agreed, intoxicated by the look Joe was giving me. Half frustration, half need. Desperate to hear what I had to say next, even if he wasn’t ready to admit it. “So, when I use them it’s because…”
“You like me,” Joe deduced.
“Mhm.” All I had to do was cock my head toward the couch, and without uttering a single word, Joe complied. He headed toward it. When he sat down, the cushions wheezed a little. It was delicious. He was delicious.
I rounded on him, feeling a little drunk on power. Drunk on this. On him. When he looked up at me like that, everything else in my head quieted. I was drowning in him, and I never wanted out.
Joe’s lips pressed into a line as I approached, slow and deliberate, only stopping when I was standing between his spread thighs.
“I like you,” I repeated, going for goofy and chipper to add some spice to the heat in the room.
“You know another reason I like to use pet names for you?” Joe shivered.
“Because…” I was testing the waters here.
Riffing. The way I loved best. And Joe was loving it.
My voice dropped low, sultry sweet. “Because you’re my pet, Joe. ”
Oh.
Yes.
Oh fuck yes.
The thought hadn’t occurred to me until now, but now that it had, I couldn’t unthink it.
Joe’s eyebrows furrowed, nostrils flaring as he processed this. “Your…pet?”
“That’s right,” I agreed. “I found you in an alley. I brought you food. I gained your trust. I earned your loyalty.” I was both wary and excited to see what he would say in response.
“You make me sound like a lost puppy.” Joe’s voice cracked.
“Maybe that’s what you are—were,” I corrected myself. “But you’re not lost anymore. I found you. And as scared as I am—I don’t want to let you go.”
“You don’t need to be scared of me,” Joe repeated his words from that day on his porch. And then, hesitantly, like he wasn’t sure what he was saying was the right thing, he added, “I won’t bite.”
He was playing along.
I hadn’t expected that.
“You biting me isn’t what I’m worried about.”
I cupped his face, holding him, fingers slipping behind his ears to tickle that golden, thick hair. I swear to god, I never felt more steady or sure than I did when we were like this. Like there was nothing I couldn’t do. Nothing in my world was wrong or scary or dark.
I wasn’t confused or lonely or scared.
“You don’t know everything about me, Joe,” I said. “What if you don’t like what you find out?”
Joe gave me that look again. The one that told me he thought I was an idiot. “I don’t know who made you think that their affection was conditional,” he whispered. “But mine isn’t. You earned it, remember? You did.”
Throwing my own damn words in my face.
And then he kissed me.
Surged up to capture my lips, nearly dislodging my hands in the process.
It was the second time he’d initiated things.
And this time was just as clumsy and darling as the last. Joe didn’t know what he was doing.
He wasn’t graceful or practiced. But he was needy enough to keep going despite this.
The kind of needy that drew me in, wound me up, before it made me unravel.
I pushed him back down, hands sliding to his shoulders. Only to get him where I wanted him though, as I gave chase. Kissing him harder now than I had before, tasting him in the way I’d been dying to for months.
It didn’t feel wrong. Didn’t feel off. Didn’t feel the way I’d felt with Mary, like I was smashing a puzzle piece into the wrong place.
Just like the first time I’d kissed Joe—hell, even more so than the first time—this felt…good.
Joe felt good.
Fire blazed beneath my skin, a sense of rightness settling over me as one of my hands tangled in the back of his hair, pulling taut to keep him in place. I didn’t introduce tongue. I wasn’t sure Joe was ready for that.
With every flutter of our mouths he was struggling to get the rhythm right. Clumsy earnestness that made my dick throb where it pressed into my zipper. His nose was smashed into mine, and when I twisted, he did too—maintaining the awkward angle.
Joe was the one that tried to pull back this time.
I let him, but only a little.
Both of us were panting. Breaths hot, mingling together as his thick body shuddered from just that. Just a kiss. When I glanced down, I had to fight a groan. Because Joe was hard. Rock fucking hard. We’d barely been kissing for a minute and he—
“I’m…” Joe’s voice was hoarse.
“Should we stop?” I asked. Maybe he was overwhelmed. Maybe this was too much. Maybe when he’d asked for my attention this hadn’t been what he meant.
“What?” Joe blinked, confused. “No. We just started.” Again, he gave me stink-eye. “I just…” His tongue flickered out to wet his lower lip, and I groaned. “Can you show me?”
“Isn’t that what I’ve been doing?” I teased, hand tightening on his hair. His lashes fluttered, hands spasming where they sat in fists on his spread thighs.
“No…I mean…” Joe’s grumpiness faded. “Can you teach me?”
“As in…explain how to kiss?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” I’d never had someone ask me that before. It was funny. I knew Joe was good with his hands, and I’d always figured he was a hands-on learner. It was pretty cute to discover that instruction was the way he learned best.
Hopefully, I’d be a good teacher.
“Was this what you wanted?” I asked him, because I figured now was the time to check in before we went further. “Kissing…more than kissing?” My heart skipped a beat at the thought of getting to touch him.
I’d wanted to touch him since the day I met him—even if I hadn’t understood the feelings. And I may have been surprised by my attraction to him, for a plethora of reasons. And I probably should’ve been nervous about getting it wrong, seeing as he was the first man I’d been with.
But I wasn’t.
How could I be anything but pleased when Joe wanted me back.
I’d decided to let him call the shots, and I couldn’t be happier with how he was doing it.
“More…than…” Joe croaked, obviously embarrassed to admit that was what he wanted. His face was bright red, even his ears practically glowing. “If that’s what you want.”
“I want what you want,” I told him, outright groaning this time when his eyes met mine again, and that sweet, sweet look was back. No more snark for my Joe-by. No sirree. “You probably don’t know the term,” I added. “But I’m a bit of a service top.”
I’d done my research.
Again, because I did, in fact, know how to Google.
Besides…I’d been around long enough to catch a few things even if I hadn’t put them into practice till now. “Pleasure dom?” I offered. “Either or.”
“And that means…”
“That means making you feel good…is what makes me feel good.”
Joe took that in, eyes searching mine for a moment as he processed it. “Okay,” he breathed out, the tension in his frame sagging once more. “So you’ll…”
“Take very, very good care of you,” Jason promised.