Chapter 19 #2
I peered down at him. “Tell me what you’re thinking?”
“That’s my line.”
“It’s a good one.”
He smiled. “I’m thinking… This is all I need. This is all I’ve ever needed, Reece. And no matter what happens tonight, I just want you to know—”
“No,” I cut in firmly. “No. We’re not doing that.”
He pressed his hand against my heart. “I’m afraid,” he whispered.
“I’m afraid we’ll push whatever’s keeping me here too far.
Or that remembering will wear me out again, like when we first met.
I’m afraid I won’t be able to come back for days or weeks.
I told you, time is different there. What if I come back too late?
What if you’ve left? Or moved on? What if I come back and something’s happened to you, or it’s been another forty years, and—” his words broke off in a sob.
I wiped the tears from his cheeks and kissed his temple, a few of my own escaping. “I love you.”
When he looked ready to reply, I cut him off.
“Shh, no. Not yet. You don’t get to say it back yet, because we don’t have your twinkle lights on, and I want to spatchcock another chicken for you first. But I need you to know I will do everything in my power to carve out a life for us, whatever that looks like.
There is no moving on from you. I’m not going to let you go, no matter what happens tonight. ”
He pressed his trembling lips to mine. “I promise I’ll always be able to find you. Wherever you go, I’ll be there, too.”
I kissed him, and it was different than all the others we’d shared. It burned, and time slowed, like Charlie and I were all that remained in the world.
“Reece…” he breathed, fingers finding the hem of my shirt and lightly scratching through the hair on my belly. “Do you feel okay enough? Your head—”
“Yes,” I panted, gripping his waist and moving over him. “Please.”
We were a match lit too soon.
Rushed and immediate, our hands raked over each other like we only had seconds before time ran out.
He wrestled my shirt over my head—a considerable feat, seeing as I didn’t want to stop touching him.
I straddled him and shoved my tongue back into his mouth, one knee slipping between the cushions and digging in painfully to the frame of the pull-out bed below, but I didn’t care.
I needed to have him close to me. Needed the reassurance that we were both still there. Still together. Still real. He did too, judging by the near-feral gleam in his eyes when he nipped and tugged my bottom lip, like he wanted to consume me before it was too late.
“Fuck,” I said, trying to pull out my cock in the tight squeeze of bodies and clothes and stuck limbs. “I need to feel you.”
“Up. Get up,” he said, hands moving over me just as frantically. I stood long enough to kick off my pants and grab the lube I’d stored in the front pocket of my backpack.
This wasn’t supposed to be a rushed fuck. We should’ve had more time.
“Stop thinking, Reece,” Charlie commanded, lifting his hips to slide off his pants until they dangled from one ankle. He flung his own T-shirt across the room. “Come here. Now.”
Stretched out on the couch, cock already half-hard and beckoning me closer with open arms, I could do nothing but obey.
I covered him again, grinding my pelvis down into his until I saw stars. He shifted beneath me, eyes rolling back from the friction.
“Keep doing that,” he panted, palming my ass with both hands. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him, and the way that impossible dusting of pink flooded from his cheeks all the way down to his chest drove me wild.
When I looked back up, his eyes were already locked on mine, full of something needy and desperate. My chest tightened, and the urge to be inside him grew overwhelming. “Charlie. Can I—”
“Yes. Now. I want you, now,” he said, hooking one leg around my hip. He kissed me, pouring gasoline over the fire in my blood.
Too impatient to let me prep him as thoroughly as I should’ve, he barely took my searching, slick fingers before rushing me along. Still, I secretly enjoyed watching him gasp and shiver beneath me when I lined up and pushed every inch of my hard cock inside.
“God, I’ll never get used to how tight you are,” I said through gritted teeth.
Maybe we’d both been impatient.
Unable to help rocking into the hot squeeze of him right away, I stuttered to a halt when he made a sound that wasn’t entirely pleasure.
“Too much?” I panted.
“I like it,” he rasped.
I knocked my forehead into his. “That’s not a no.”
“I’ll be better once you pick up the pace,” he snarked, swatting my ass.
I bit his shoulder in answer, braced a hand against the arm of the sofa overhead, and drove into him, hard.
“Better,” he gasped.
He didn’t sound better, though. He sounded… Frantic. Not in an I need you now kind of way, but in a rushed way. I buried my face in his neck, because even though I was literally inside of him, it still wasn’t close enough.
“Reece,” Charlie said after a few thrusts, patting my side. “Reece, hold on.”
I stopped and quickly pulled away to look at him. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, eyebrows narrowed in concern. “Nothing, but it feels like I should be asking you that. Are you ok?”
I blinked at him, willing the tightness in my chest to ease. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just uncomfortable,” I said. “The angle’s wrong. I keep jamming my knee into the bed frame.”
His eyes searched mine, and he brushed a thumb across my cheekbone. “Then let’s move.”
I pulled out and stood. Quickly, he sat up and twisted so he was on his knees, facing the back of the sofa. The muscles from his neck to his hamstrings were one long line of tension, and he eyed me over his shoulder. “This good?”
Tongue-tied, I could only nod. Aching to be back inside him, my cock throbbed at the sight of his plump ass presented just for me. The arch of Charlie’s back belonged in a painting. I wanted to bite the meaty, soft part of his inner thighs and spread his cheeks to watch while I tunneled inside.
He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, and he was real. He was mine.
For now.
“What are you waiting for?” he asked with an impatient huff, almost irritated.
My brow furrowed. I took a deep breath and sidled up behind him, bracing one knee on the sofa. My weeping cockhead tagged the cleft of his ass, and I pressed my thumb into the sticky wetness, smearing it across him.
Gently, so gently, I traced my fingertips along the swell of his bottom and up the planes of his back to soothe those tight muscles, trying to find the words to describe that squeezed feeling in my chest. “I don’t want to take you like it’s some quick back-alley hookup.”
Close. But not quite.
He blinked. “What’s wrong with that?”
“With you? Nothing. But that’s not what I want right now.”
He shrank away from me. “You don’t want me?”
I leaned forward and laced my fingers through his on the back of the sofa, cradling his entire body with mine.
“I love you, Charlie,” I whispered into his cheek.
He pressed his face into my words, his body melting into mine.
“I want you so much. But I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to be inside you when you’re looking at me like it could be the last time. ”
Bullseye.
He looked away. “That’s not—I wasn’t—”
“Because it’s not,” I said, bucking against him.
He moaned and arched his back, pushing his ass into me. “Reece, please. Come back. I need you.”
Desire consumed me again. I swiped even more lube over my dick and pulled his cheeks apart, lining back up. “Say it’s not the last time.”
Charlie dropped his head forward. “Reece…”
I banded an arm around his middle to hold him up. “Say it.”
“I’ll always find you,” Charlie breathed.
Close enough.
I drove back inside him in a powerful thrust. He gasped at the intrusion, his whole body adjusting to how big I’d feel like this, but there was no pain in his voice this time.
Setting a steady pace, I leaned over and wrapped my other arm across his middle to keep him close. I fit one hand around his throat, holding his face to the side so I could kiss away his tears between the vows I breathed into his skin.
“Don’t be afraid,” I rasped. “I love you. There’s only you. We’ll figure something out, I promise.”
A promise for him, and a promise for me.
He arched into me. “More. Please. More.”
I obliged.
We were both too emotional, too overwhelmed for it to last long after that. I sucked and nipped along his neck, and his fingers dug into my thigh and ass, clawing at me to go harder, to give him more.
I’d pour all of myself into him if I could.
Once I found the angle that made him cry out, I didn’t let up, hurtling us both toward the edge.
“Reece. Reece, I’m close,” he croaked, arms braced to push back into each of my thrusts. His cock bobbed in front of him, but he didn’t seem to care, only tilting his hips so I tagged his prostate over and over.
“Me too. Come for me, baby,” I begged.
I couldn’t hold back anymore, and let each one of his breathy “Oh’s” shove me right off the cliff into oblivion. I gasped, coming deep inside him.
Claiming him.
All it took was one pump of my fist before he came too, spilling into my hand. I leaned on him heavily while we breathed through the come-down, until I gathered my wits enough to realize I was probably crushing him.
“C’mon,” I whispered, dropping kisses along his shoulders. “Let me take care of you, this time.” I gingerly pulled out and offered a steady hand to help him off the couch.
Once we faced each other again, Charlie wrapped his arms around me. We stayed like that for a long time, before he eventually tilted his head back to kiss me, slow and deep. “Thank you,” he whispered when he pulled away. “I know it’s difficult for you to open up like that.”
“I don’t mean to keep things from you. I just get caught up in my head. But I’ll try, for you.”
He kissed me again, and a spark of that sly wit I loved so much peeked through. “For the record, I would thoroughly enjoy a quick back-alley tryst with you.”
I laughed and ushered him into the bathroom, forever buoyed by the way he could lighten any burden. “The Biofreeze probably applies there, too.”
Upon seeing the shower, he groaned. “A shower? Oh, fuck yes.”
“I can leave you two alone, if you’d prefer privacy.”
He tugged me into the stall by the wrist. “Not a chance. Soap me down while I sizzle under the hot water.”
“Yes, Chef.”
My phone rang an hour later.
Lying on the couch with Charlie on top of me, I carded my fingers through his soft, still-damp hair, and contemplated turning the ringer off and letting it go to voicemail.
Along with the next call, and the next.
I thought about living out what half the town had accused Charlie of doing nearly forty years ago, and driving out of Ponderosa, with him right next to me in the passenger seat. We could start over brand new, somewhere we’d never be found.
It’d be enough just to have each other, wouldn’t it?
As if in answer, Charlie propped his chin on my chest to look up at me and whispered, “You should answer that.”
I thought of Bobby. And Mom, Dad, Keith, and everyone else who loved me. Everyone who would love Charlie, too, if given the chance.
He pressed his hand over my heart, lightly scratching the hair there.
I’ll always be able to find you.
I reached over, answering just before the call went to voicemail. “Hello?”
Tate’s somber voice crackled through the line. “It’s time.”