Chapter Eight
Our hands are still interlocked, so I leave one to pull him along as I make my way deeper into the bowels of the hotel. I have no idea where I’m going; the way to the elevators and our rooms was behind us, but all we need right now is a private room with a lock on the door.
The first door we find is a bathroom. The next—a custodial closet, filled with racks of cleaning supplies, mop buckets, and not a soul in sight. Perfect.
I hold the door open, using it to block us from the staff up the hall, and loosen my grip on Alexo’s hand as I motion to the room, the single sad bulb hazing the cleaning supplies in a gray-white.
Super romantic, Monroe. Well done.
“Only if you’re okay with this,” I say. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable again.”
“You didn’t.”
One of my brows lifts.
“I mean—it wasn’t from that.” Alexo’s breath goes out in a resigned slump, and when he speaks again, he’s talking to the floor between us.
“I need to keep … certain clothes on. I don’t—it isn’t—ugh.
” He pushes his hands into his pink curls with an aggrieved moan.
“Never mind. Moment’s dead. Want to know how many hookups I’ve killed with conversations like this? Fucking all of them. Gods damn it.”
He spins away when I seize his wrist. But he doesn’t meet my eyes. His cheeks are so red they look painful.
In the pause, his words corkscrew into my brain.
Is he saying he’s a—
Holy shit.
No one’s ever—
And suddenly I feel inexperienced and unsteady, my throat turned to sandpaper and skin too hot, too tight.
There’s that beast again. Mine, mine, it says, ever feral.
“I’m not going to fuck you in a cleaning closet,” I say, my grin lopsided. “And there’s plenty we can do without getting naked.”
Alexo peeks up at me, surprised but guarded. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I want to kiss you. And if you want, if you’ll let me, I want to make you feel good.”
He swallows, his neck contracting. “H-how?”
“Can I touch you over your clothes?”
Another swallow. This one comes with a pinch of his brows, a pulse of want that flares heat in his eyes. “Yeah.”
The hand not holding his wrist lifts, and I take one of his curls, tuck it behind his ear. His skin’s rosy still, warm under my fingers.
“Can I kiss you over your clothes?”
He shudders. Hell, I do, too. My fingers rest against the pulse point in his neck and it flurries like mad.
“Y-yes,” he stammers.
“Can I—” I lick my lips, willing my breathing to stay level, to not vibrate the question before I even get it out. “Can I have you in my mouth? Clothes stay on. Just your cock.”
He looks like someone socked him in the stomach. Chest concaving, lips gaping.
Then he’s the feral one.
He leaps at me, arms locking around my neck, and the force has me stumbling back into the custodial closet.
My half a brain cell not currently absorbed in what’s happening reminds me to lock the door, fingers fumbling the bolt until it clicks.
I barely hear it over the frantic, panicked whimpers Alexo’s making as he kisses me just as frenzied, just as rattled.
It’s a heady, overwhelming barrage of his apple scent and the flavors of him dancing across my tongue, the shift and wriggle of his body in my arms. His legs clamp around my waist and he’s hard, and so am I, have been since I saw him in this outfit on the red carpet.
I rotate, resting his back on the door, and kiss my way across his jaw, to his neck, to where that gold chain starts its descent across his chest and down under his tank top. It’s a shooting arrow streaking over the night sky, and I make my wishes on it, every single one.
His head throws back with a staccato cry as I lick at one of the places where the chain rests on his collarbone, and I’m quick to slam my lips back over his.
“You gotta be quiet for me, all right?” I ask. “Can you do that?”
Eyes shut, he gasps into my mouth. “I can be quiet.”
He’s squirming as he says it, restlessly thrusting, yanking at my shoulders, and when I stop rocking against him, he whines in a high, frustrated pitch.
I grin. “You sure about that?”
Another frustrated whine. “Yes. Yes, I promise. I can be good. I can be so good for you.”
My hips stutter forward of their own volition.
“Fuck, Alexo,” I groan, head dropping to his shoulder. “You can’t just say stuff like—”
“No.”
I pull back. He’s not squirming anymore, stationary, and it’s enough of a contrast that I’m instantly alert.
But he’s not pushing me away. He’s looking up at me, breathless determination warring with uncertainty.
I brush my thumb against his hip bone. “What’s wrong?”
“Can you—” He winces. “Can you not call me that? Not while we’re—doing this.”
Call him what? Alexo?
Huh.
I offer him a smile. “Would you prefer Alexo the Magnificent?”
Confusion breaks him out of his net of emotion like I hoped it would, and he rolls his eyes. “Oh gods. My karaoke name? Really? No, that’s not what I meant. Can you … call me something else? When we’re like this.”
I bump my nose against his. “Okay. Gimme a sec.”
Baby is out—Seb and Thio call each other that. Sweetheart? Not too bad. Or maybe something with his hair—Pink? Meh.
What have the press called us? Oroxo? Or, wait—Beauty and the Beast.
“What about Belle?” I ask.
He’d been immobile since asking his question. But he tenses now, winding up, and the way he gapes at me is—afraid? No. Baffled?
“The reporters,” I explain quickly. Is he offended by it? “They called us Beauty and the Beast. So, Belle. That was her name in the movie, right?” Gods, it’s been years since I saw it.
But Alexo nods, and I think his eyes are tearing. Or maybe it’s the shit lighting in here making him look glassy and fraying.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Belle. Call me Belle.”
“All right.” I lean in. “My Belle.”
The air disappears between us. What little there was left. I’m not sure what’s changed—everything’s trapped in quiescence on the surface, but something’s roiling within him, and it sucks me in, has me pressing a kiss to his lips like an inevitability.
He doesn’t whine this time. Doesn’t claw at me. It’s slow and sweet, his mouth parting and moving under me in drowsy palpitations, both of us just—just feeling.
Before I can resume my trail down his body, he squirms again so determinedly I peel back and allow him to sink to his knees.
Breath yanks out of my chest. “I was going to—”
“I know.” He tugs at my belt. “Change of plans.”
Kneeling before me, he still has to reach up a little to get at my crotch. And that view, him straining for me, those pink curls and his big, glassy eyes, rosebud lips kiss-swollen and slick—
I teeter forward, one hand going out to brace on the door behind him, the other grabbing myself through my pants.
He gives me a questioning look.
“You sure?” I huff a slightly deranged laugh. “This is going to be fast. Like, two-pump-chump fast.”
He smirks. “Did you miss the part where I said I’m a virgin? Trust me, I won’t be breaking any records either.”
My turn to whine. It’s excruciating, but it makes him smile, and anything, anything that makes him smile is worth it.
Then he’s back to work, tugging my pants down, pushing my shirt out of the way, and I let it happen as I focus on how to inhale because I seem to have dropped that ability somewhere.
He pulls me out of my boxers, and the sight of his pale, pretty fingers around my dick has me slamming my eyes shut, digging my knuckles into the cold metal of the door, and going over rawball plays in my head.
But—this is his first time, yeah? So step up.
I manage to pry my eyes open, breath punching holes through my lungs, to see him—well, gawking. At my dick.
Which is a little validating, not gonna lie.
I have giant ancestry. Proportionally.
But for someone’s first blow job, a giant cock is kind of like being chucked into the deep end.
Pun intended.
Fuck, now’s not the time for stupid nervous jokes.
A blush creeps up the back of my neck and I reach my free hand out to touch his jaw. “You don’t have to—”
His rounded eyes ping up to me.
There’s that ferocity again. The Alexo who tackled me into the closet. The hunger.
“I might have a bit of a size kink,” he says with the same straightforwardness as if he’d said, It’s cold out, wear a jacket.
I sputter a laugh that gets immediately bitten off in a stunned moan when he sucks the head of my dick into his mouth.
“Belle,” I shout. “Holy shit—mmph—”
His cheeks hollow as he pulls back and my vision goes spotty. “Now who needs to be quiet?”
That smirk.
“Don’t think you can—oh fuck—”
He swallows me down, taking a good few inches into his mouth before he gags—only he doesn’t pull off.
Just lingers there, choking and fighting it, his eyes watering, spit pooling over the edges of his lips and dripping down his chin.
Each contraction of his throat squeezes more, and more, and he holds through it like he’s trying to force-train himself.
I’ve died, I think. This is death. This can’t be happening in reality.
“B-belle,” I stutter, and my hand slips behind his head, gripping his curls for something of this world to hold on to. “Fuck, you don’t have to—your first go—fuck.”
He pulls away with a wheeze and blinks up at me, eyes dewy and spilling tears that streak black makeup down his cheeks, saliva glistening all over his mouth, his chin, hell, down his neck.
“Good?” he asks, voice raspy.
I nod, can’t form words, can’t think.
He smiles, a cute little half tilt of his mouth that pushes at one of his dimples, and he’s diving back in, humming in pleasure as he sucks me down again.
Another gag, holding, holding, then he suckles on my head and twists his hand around the length he can’t reach.
It’s sloppy but the best thing I’ve ever felt, and him disheveling himself for me is my undoing.
“Careful,” I croak out, muscles clenching down my spine, the tingle building, building in my groin. “Back off, sweetheart. Gonna come.”