Chapter 21 #2
Gus dropped his gaze, heat spreading over his face. “It was how we started. I thought it would hurt, but we’d get past it. And maybe someday…” He sounded bleak and lost, his voice trailing off as his thumb stroked my cheek. My breath hitched.
“Someday what?” I asked, and I didn’t sound any better.
“You’d come back all on your own. Because you wanted to be here. Not because you had to.”
And I couldn’t help it; a small, half-hysterical, inappropriate chuckle bubbled out of me.
That was…it was so Gus to believe we could simply take our feelings and lock them calmly away, to pick them up years later if I ever came back.
Never mind that he would never have truly expected me to, because he’d always been selfless beyond reason.
My heart pounded in my ears, and I was so angry I wanted to shake him and yell and let out all the pain choking me.
He’d done it for me, for his family. Cut out both of our hearts and set me adrift rather than risk chaining me to him.
He’d done what he thought was right, but I didn’t know how to handle the revelation.
If he had explained everything to me instead of nothing my life would have taken a drastically different course.
What if I’d never left? What if I’d stayed and taken any job I could find, bored and yearning for more?
Would I have joined the army like John and Henry rather than let them go alone?
If I had, would John and I both be dead now, leaving Gus to mourn two more people he loved instead of one?
My throat itched with raw despair.
“And it never occurred to you,” I said, struggling to keep a quiver out of my voice. “At any point since then, even once, to try explaining it to me?”
Gus’ hands dropped, sliding into the pockets of his trousers.
His gaze went dark as he stepped back, the walls around his heart rising once more.
“If you’d read any of the letters I sent, you’d already know.
I didn’t stop sending them for over a year, Kit.
Not until they started coming back undeliverable.
By the end of the first month, I couldn’t bear letting you think I didn’t want us.
Did you even open a single one of them?”
Tears I didn’t want to feel were welling in my eyes, burning and wet, and I blinked hard, trying to force them away. “I couldn’t.”
“Why the hell not?” Gus asked, voice hard. “I needed you, even if I couldn’t be who you needed. You never gave me the chance to admit I was wrong and apologize, and then you stayed gone. Fair or not, I’m still fucking angry.”
Everything I thought I knew about Gus and how he felt was topsy-turvy, teetering precariously on the ledge of my assumptions. I didn’t know what to think. Nor what to say. My breath caught in an embarrassing half-choked sound.
And then Gus crowded me again. His firm mouth came down hot on mine, all the forlorn misery and conflicted longing caught up with us in a kiss that ached right to my bones like my magic burning me from the inside out.
His palms cradled the back of my head and my hip, capturing me, but he didn’t need to.
I clutched at his shoulders and dragged him closer, a needy whimper escaping as my squeezed-shut eyes forced out the tears I’d been holding at bay.
I didn’t have time to care, too wrapped up in the sensation of Gus’ tongue plunging into my mouth, gliding over mine, and the way his body surged against me when I sucked on it.
We broke off, gasping for air, but Gus didn’t let me go; he hauled me back in and kissed me again, like the only thing he wanted in the world was to be as deep inside me as he could get.
And I wanted him there. My cock stiffened in aching bursts of too-quick pleasure, and I rubbed against him, chasing sensation, revelling in the groan I drew from his chest. I needed this, needed him in ways I could barely wrap my head around.
My heart felt bruised and battered beyond repair, but this was familiar, this was comfort and Gus caring about me, wanting me. It was everything I missed. Everything I wanted, too.
Well, nearly everything. I bit at Gus’ bottom lip and tried not to be distracted by his moan. “Come upstairs,” I whispered, soft and low and inviting. “I need you to make me feel good. Like you used to.”
Gus rested his forehead against mine, his body heaving with his harsh breaths, eyes still shut. “Maybe this is a bad idea, Kit. We’re just going to keep hurting each other.”
Bad idea or not, I didn’t want to stop. I wanted the feeling of his hands all over me, his mouth on me, the pressure and intensity of Gus filling every part of me with breathless desire and the sweetest race to oblivion.
I wanted to lay down everything I was carrying and to do the same for him.
The aftermath was a distant concern. “Don’t you want to be inside me again? It's been so long, and—”
Gus cut me off with a groan, his mouth crashing over mine like if he didn’t shut me up, he was going to lose it, and the thought made my cock throb.
Watching him climax from little more than the sound of my voice was something I couldn’t stop revisiting.
I wanted to see it again almost as badly as I wanted him upstairs right now. “Please,” I begged against his lips.
“Okay, yeah. I want that. I want you, want to be in you.” Gus’ eyes were glazed and sparking with desire, his mouth red and puffy, and the sight of him made me want to bend over the counter and let him in right now.
Somehow, I pushed him back a few steps with my hand against his chest, and then took him upstairs, his fingers laced in mine.
There was a charge in the air, a tension as I closed the bedroom door behind us, shutting the world outside. I could feel the weight of Gus’ stare burning me up.
“Come here,” he murmured from next to the bed, and I did, reaching for him as soon as he was in range.
We collided like meteors in the night sky.
Brilliant and breaking apart. He wrapped me in his arms and his desperate kiss was a key turning all the locks on my heart, letting him sneak in where I’d sworn he’d never go again. Where I’d never let anyone go but him.
I slid my hands along his strong shoulders, up his neck and into his hair, scratching on my way back down, just hard enough to make him hiss into my mouth. My pulse ricocheted wildly off my ribs, so loud I could hear it.
Gus brushed his mouth along my jaw, sucking gently as he slid my suit jacket from my shoulders and let it drop to the floor.
I didn’t care if it would wrinkle, not when he was already fumbling with the buttons of my waistcoat.
I tugged my tie loose and pulled it over my head, tossing it in the direction of the chair by the window.
I wanted to make my voice work, to say something, he was probably expecting me to, but I couldn’t get a word past my lips.
The next thing I knew, Gus was on his knees in front of me, staring up with those grave, dark eyes filling with the same eagerness as the first time he’d done this.
“You look so good like that,” I murmured, running my fingers through his hair. “On your knees for me.”
He muffled his moan in the front of my trousers, his mouth rubbing over the ridge of my cock, cascading shivers of arousal through my abdomen.
His fingers trembled slightly as he unfastened my pants and tugged them off along with my underwear.
My socks were last and then it was all I could do not to let out a whine at the sight of him in his disheveled clothing, looking half-ready to explode any second.
Where was all his control and distance now? Like this, he couldn’t hide how much he wanted me, how much everything I did affected him, and it undid me like nothing else.
“Go on,” I urged, and he let out a soft sigh that sounded like relief. “Suck.”
Gus scraped his teeth over his bottom lip, then darted his tongue out to get his mouth wet before surrounding me in soft, slick heat.
My head dropped back on a moan, my hips held still by Gus’ strong hands.
His hair tickled my fingers, and he let out a pleased sound when I tightened my grip.
“Your mouth feels so good, Gus. Like feeling my cock in there?”
That made him groan low and sexy as he sucked harder, up and down, slowly like he was savouring the taste and sensation.
Like we had forever to be together, and he was in no rush.
A flush tightened my cheeks as ripples of hot pleasure uncurled low in my belly and and rocked through my groin.
“Mmm, keep doing that. Show me how much you love it.”
His hands caressed from my hips to my backside and I couldn’t help pushing into them when he squeezed, digging his fingers and thumbs in.
My breath stuttered as sparks burned in ten bright points, and I wanted those fingers in me, wanted the pressure and slide in a way I hadn’t for years and years, because no one was allowed to touch me like Gus was, no one was allowed to be that close. That primed to destroy me.
“Gus,” I panted, and he hummed. He pulled off and sucked two fingers into his mouth until they were wet.
Before I could catch my breath, he swallowed me down again, his fingertips sliding into the crease of my ass and finding my hole, circling gently.
My cock throbbed, heavy and full and so hard I could cry.
Gus swirled his tongue around the head as he pressed the tip of his finger into me.
Nothing about this was the same as the first time we’d done it, but the pleasure rushing through me brought me right back.
Still wet from the pond, we’d been sticky-hot from the summer heat, curled together in a tent.
Just the two of us camping, alone for the whole weekend and we’d made good use of it.
My heart ached exactly the way it had after, realizing Gus used his body to say words he couldn’t manage.
This was different. This was using each other for distraction, for pleasure. It wasn’t love, or at least not the same kind of uncomplicated, easy love we’d had.
I wanted it anyway.
I tugged on Gus’ hair and he pulled back, looking up at me, eyes hazy with lust, waiting for me to tell him what to do. “Take your clothes off and get on the bed. I want to do it like I said. You lie back and I’ll do the rest.”