Chapter Nine #2
He didn’t move for three full seconds. Pure Sterling—operating on his own timeline, always, demonstrating that the timeline belonged to him and not to the man currently lying on his bed with his heart doing something complicated behind his ribs.
Then he got his hands on my jeans and stripped them off in one smooth motion, the fabric sliding down my thighs, and the cool air hit my skin and then Sterling’s hand was wrapping around my cock and—
“Holy shit,” I said, or something like it. My hips came off the mattress before my brain caught up to what was happening, and Sterling’s grip was firm and warm and exactly the right amount of pressure, and he stroked once, slow, from base to tip, and my entire nervous system short-circuited.
“Easy,” Sterling said. It came out rough. His voice had dropped that particular half-octave that meant he was working harder than he wanted to admit.
“You’re telling me to be easy,” I said, breathless. “You. Sterling Callahan. The man who once stared at a fence post for forty-five minutes because it was two degrees off plumb.”
The corner of his mouth did the thing. That small, stubborn warmth I’d been collecting since week two, spreading from the crease beside his left eye to the whole left side of his face, and it landed in my chest with the clean, tactical certainty of something I had wanted for a very long time.
He did it again. Slow. His thumb dragging over the head of my cock, spreading the wetness there, and I grabbed his wrist, not to stop him, just to hold on to something solid while the room did that thing where it tilted slightly to the left and stayed there.
Sterling watched my face the whole time. Cataloguing.
His mouth found my throat. Slow, deliberate, his stubble rough against the sensitive skin under my jaw, and I tipped my head back and let him.
His tongue traced the line of my collarbone, warm and wet, and then lower, to my chest, and his mouth closed over my left nipple and I made a sound I hadn’t planned on making.
Teeth. Gentle. The careful combination of tongue and pressure that Sterling applied to everything that mattered—thorough, patient, exact—and then he moved to the right one and did it again, and I was arching up off the mattress with both hands in his dark, thick hair, holding on like he might change his mind, which he wouldn’t, because Sterling Callahan did not change his mind once it was made, and his mind, currently, was very made.
He dragged his mouth down my stomach. The jut of my hip. The crease of my thigh, his stubble rough against sensitive skin, and I said, “Sterling,” because his name was the only word my brain had access to at the moment, and it seemed worth spending.
“I know,” Sterling said, against the inside of my knee.
I laughed. Short and genuine, the sound bouncing off the low ceiling, and Sterling looked up at me from between my thighs with an expression that was warm and a little undone, his eyes dark in the lamplight, and the sight of him there—Sterling Callahan on his knees, looking at me like I was something worth looking at—did more to my chest than anything that had happened so far.
He reached for the nightstand. The drawer slid open, and his hand came back with a bottle of lube that had been living there since approximately the hallway incident, because Sterling was nothing if not prepared, and the preparation, right now, was extremely appreciated.
He slicked his fingers. Settled between my thighs with the same unhurried certainty he brought to everything, and his first finger pushed in slow, careful, the burn of the stretch immediate and perfect, and I breathed through it the way you breathe through anything that matters—deliberate, focused, feeling every inch of it.
He crooked his finger. Hit the spot that made my whole body clench, and I gasped, and my thighs fell open wider without me telling them to, and Sterling said, “Good,” quiet and certain, like I had done something right, and the word landed everywhere at once—in my chest, behind my sternum, in the warm hollow place that had been waiting for this exact thing for longer than I wanted to admit.
A second finger. Scissoring, stretching, the burn deepening into something richer, and I pressed my face into the pillow and said, “More,” because more was what I wanted and asking for it seemed like the responsible thing to do.
“Not yet,” Sterling said.
He added a third finger anyway.
I registered this as evidence—concrete, quantifiable evidence—that Sterling Callahan was also not entirely in control of himself, and that thought did more for me than I had expected.
The man who moved through the world like he was carved from something harder than everyone else had just overruled his own operational directive because he wanted to, and the wanting was plain on his face in a way I had never seen before.
By the time Sterling was satisfied, I was shaking slightly.
I had said his name four times. I knew this because Sterling counted everything, and he would remember the number, and tomorrow he would probably tell me, flat and declarative, like it was a piece of intelligence he had collected, and I would laugh and he would not, and that was exactly the dynamic I had signed up for.
He slicked himself. One big hand wrapping around his cock, spreading the lube, and the sight of him—Sterling Callahan, hard and thick and ready, his jaw set, his eyes dark—was something I filed under its own category: Worth The Wait. Possibly Worth Several Waits.
He lined up. Pushed in slow. One hand braced on the mattress beside my head, the other guiding himself, and I breathed through the stretch and the heat and the fullness of him, my body opening, taking him, the weight of Sterling inside me a thing my brain had been imagining for months and my body was now confirming was even better than advertised.
He stilled. Checked my face. His jaw was set, his hands braced on either side of my head, holding himself together by what looked like a very thin margin, and the restraint in him—the sheer, disciplined restraint of a man who could stop when every instinct said go—was its own kind of heat.
“Move,” I said.
Sterling moved.
The rhythm built from careful to urgent in increments. Each thrust deeper than the last, Sterling’s weight braced over me, one hand pinning my wrist above my head, his grip firm and warm.
His hips drove into me with the same long, unhurried stride that covered ground at a pace that surprised people, and right now it was surprising me in approximately seventeen different ways, all of them excellent.
“I’ve been thinking about this for months,” I said, breathless, the words coming out between thrusts, unplanned and entirely true.
“I know,” Sterling said. Rough and low against my temple, his breath hot against my skin.
“That is the most arrogant thing you have ever said.”
“You told me.”
I laughed. Short and genuine, the sound catching in my throat, and Sterling’s mouth found mine and swallowed it, and the laugh turned into something that had nothing to do with amusement and everything to do with the particular angle he’d just found, his cock hitting that spot inside me that made the room tilt and stay tilted.
He got his hand between us. Wrapped it around my cock, warm and firm, and worked me in time with each thrust, his rhythm exact, relentless, and I got my free hand on his back and felt the shift and pull of muscle underneath my palm, the heat of him, the scars—raised lines and smooth patches, the topography of a life lived hard and without apology.
I said, “Don’t stop,” because stopping was not an option I was willing to consider.
“I’m not stopping,” Sterling said.
He didn’t.
I came with his name loud in my mouth, my whole body pulling tight, his hand on my cock, his cock buried deep inside me, and the warmth spread through me from somewhere behind my sternum and didn’t stop, rolling in waves that clenched around him and pulled him deeper.
Sterling followed close behind, burying himself to the hilt, his forehead dropping to my shoulder, a low, rough groan pressed into my skin like a confession he’d been carrying for months and had finally decided to spend.
We stayed there. Breathing. His weight partially on me, partially braced, his arm across my middle, and the wood stove ticked in the main room and the lamplight stayed low and the bunkhouse held us the way it had been holding people since before any of us arrived, steady and patient and entirely unconcerned with whatever had just happened inside its walls.
Which, from where I was lying, was considerably more than I had dared to hope for.
Sterling didn’t move immediately. He stayed where he was, his breathing slowing against my shoulder, his weight partially on me and partially braced on one forearm, and I could feel the rhythm of it—Sterling Callahan coming down from something intense and doing it with the same measured control he applied to everything, which was considerably more impressive than it had any right to be.
“You can stay there,” I said.
“I’m aware,” Sterling said.
Which was not the same as moving. His arm remained across my middle, warm and solid, and I stared at the ceiling and felt thoroughly, specifically pleased with myself in a way that probably warranted some kind of humility and was getting absolutely none of it.
The lamplight stayed low. The wood stove ticked, holding the night’s heat against the March cold, and the bunkhouse settled around us with the particular quiet of a building that had seen worse and better and was reserving judgment on which category tonight fell into.