Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GAGE
I was not meant to be the big spoon in a relationship.
By the time Knox and I had picked ourselves off the floor, we’d barely had the energy to stumble into Knox’s bedroom, all sticky and sweaty.
Knox had shucked what was left of his jeans before pulling me down and rolling on top of me, and we’d fallen asleep just like that—in a naked, tangled heap on top of the blankets—while it was still light outside.
Fortunately, nobody came to collect us for dinner, which meant no Sunday eyeballs had to be bleached from the horror.
A couple of hours later, though, when it was fully dark and quiet outside, we’d woken up to shower and eat toast standing up in the kitchen.
I’d snort-laughed when Knox had stepped on the missing button of his jeans and gone hopping around the room on one foot, because I was a sympathetic individual that way.
Knox had retaliated by holding my toast in the air with one hand—the tall bastard—and not giving it back until I’d said the words “Knox Sunday is a sex god,” but the joke was on him because I would have said it anyway, especially if I’d known he’d kiss me breathless afterward.
We’d ended up back in his bed, curled up with me behind him for some reason, watching a boring-as-fuck zombie movie.
Knox had fallen asleep almost right away, which left me tired but wired, sleepy but awake, lying on my side in the cramped valley between Knox’s broad, warm back and the wall, unable to move his bulk without waking him.
It was a breeding ground for overthinking.
I was not an overthinker by nature. In fact, several people who shared my DNA would probably say I was an underthinker when it came to certain things—case in point: me ending up trapped in a bed, in the apartment over a barn-slash-gift shop, in a little orchard, outside a tiny town, an hour away from the closest city, fifteen hundred miles from home, with the lumberjack lover of my dreams, who’d heard me confess that I was upset at his lies because I’d thought I was special to him and had promptly shut down the conversation by fucking me senseless.
I mean, as distraction techniques went, this was a ten out of ten, and I was not complaining. But it was also a reminder that my plan of just enjoying this thing with Knox for as long as it lasted was… you know… flawed.
The kind of flawed that would end in great personal disappointment if I didn’t start drawing some boundaries.
I pushed gently at his shoulder, hoping he’d roll onto his stomach without protest so I could make my way to my own bed, but of course, even in sleep Knox had his own ideas.
“Mm-mm.” He captured my hand in one of his and pulled me so that my arm was around him, curling himself into a ball to do so. It was adorable—or would have been, if I’d had big-spoon-sized arms.
“Knox,” I whispered. “Move.”
He didn’t budge.
For a guy who used to have trouble sleeping, he seemed to have no problem when he was with me… which was both an insult and the highest possible compliment.
“Shove over. I have to get up.”
He made the same negative sound as before.
I huffed out a breath. “Knox, I can’t sleep like this.”
Knox groaned, clearly put out, but instead of rolling away so I’d leave him be, he rolled onto his back, pulled me all the way over him so I was lying flat on the bed on the other side, then locked me in place with his thigh thrown over mine and his arm over my stomach.
He made a satisfied little noise as he drifted back to sleep.
Knox the Stealth Cuddler would not be stopped.
So I did what anyone in that position would do.
I laughed.
I clapped a hand over my mouth to hold it in, but when the full hilarity of the situation—my life with the cows and the dream job I hadn’t snapped up and the gorgeous lumberjack holding me like I was his teddy bear—hit me, I couldn’t help myself.
Giddy mirth bubbled up inside me and spilled over until I was shaking the bed with it and tears were running down my face.
“Wha—?” Knox grumbled, blinking his eyes open. “Wait, is the movie over? Did the zombies live?”
I laughed harder, and his arm tightened around me, like he wanted to pull my laughter into him… or maybe like he just wanted me to shut the fuck up and let him sleep.
“Sorry,” I sighed a moment later. I sniffed and patted his arm soothingly. “Sorry, something just struck me as funny, but I’m done now. Go back to sleep, baby.”
He grunted in reply, but his fingers tensed on my waist.
“Goodman? Can’t sleep like this,” Knox whined softly, repeating my words from earlier. He pushed against me like he wanted me to move, but there was nowhere for me to go while he was holding me except the floor.
“Roll over, then,” I said gently.
“No, I mean… Can’t sleep like this.” He pushed against me again, but this time he gave a roll of his hips that slid his erection against my bare thigh.
“Ohh.” I trailed my hand down his flank to grip him. His cock was sleep-warm and rock hard, already leaking against me.
“Want you so much.”
Damn, his sleepy voice made my chest wobble. “Yeah?”
He fucked my fist gently. “All the time. Can’t ever get enough.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Now that was some damn honesty. And I was as helpless against it as if he’d been writing me sonnets.
“Have me, then,” I urged. “I want you to.” I rolled over to grab a condom and lube from Knox’s side table, handing the condom to him while I remained on my side and prepped myself with shaking hands.
Knox pushed my hand aside and took over the task, his fingers scissoring me open while he alternately gnawed on my shoulder, and licked my neck, and murmured sweet, nonsense words into my skin about how beautiful I was, and how special I was, and how my ass was a miracle.
The last part made me giggle silently again, and when he finally pushed my knee up and slid inside me, my laughter turned into a moan.
“Yeah. Just like that. Want to hear you happy, Gage.”
Tears sprang to my eyes because that was the unlikeliest but best thing anyone had ever said to me, and the fact that it was Knox Sunday, my grumpy, infuriating not-boyfriend, who’d thought it up made it even better.
Made it perfect.
“I am happy,” I said breathlessly. And God, in that moment, it was the absolute truth.
So true that I had to bite my lip hard against all the other true shit I wanted to say that he might remember the next morning, like how much I wished it could last, how much I wanted it not to be temporary. How I’d like to be the guy he picked.
So instead, I twisted my head, searching for his lips, wrapped my hand behind his neck, and kissed him.
At this angle, Knox couldn’t move very fast—more gentle nudges and glides against my prostate than our usual heart-pounding race to the finish—but that was perfect, too.
It felt like every stroke was intentional.
Meaningful. And I knew later on I was gonna realize that was some top-notch wishful thinking on my part, but I’d never had sex this way before—sex that wasn’t just about getting off the fastest or the hardest, but about connecting and appreciating and loving on the person you were fucking—and so I was gonna suspend the hell out of my disbelief and ride this train.
He moved so my head was pillowed on his bicep, and his free hand tugged my cock in time with his slow, gentle strokes.
“So good,” I breathed.
My body flushed and my toes tingled, going from languid heat to impending orgasm like a flash fire.
Knox knew, because of course he did, and he moved to get more leverage, to jerk me faster, to give me what I needed…
but I shook my head. “I want to come just like this. Slow. Perfect. Like we have all the time in the world.” Even if our days were numbered.
“I want… Fuck. Kiss me again, Gage,” Knox demanded.
So I did.
My orgasm rolled through me, curling my toes and then tightening all my muscles one at a time like a wave. I whimpered against Knox’s lips and twisted the sheet in my fingers as I came all over his fist.
“God, you’re so fucking sexy,” Knox growled. “I can’t— I want—”
I bent my leg up higher, twisting myself in half, and he levered himself up on his palms so he was nearly on top of me and could thrust harder, deeper.
A sliver of moonlight slid through the window above the headboard, illuminating part of Knox’s face. He looked positively feral, his green eyes locked on mine, though I was almost sure it was too dark for him to see me.
“Gage—”
He said my name like the beginning of a question that would forever go unanswered because a second later his body locked down and he came with a shout.
“Remind me…” he said breathlessly as he nuzzled the damp hair at my temple. “Never to make fun of your yoga practice again. Ten out of ten.”
I sighed happily and nodded, my eyes drifting shut despite how sticky I was.
I was dimly aware of Knox leaving the bed, then climbing back in again, wiping me down with a damp cloth.
“You gonna tell me what happened in your interview?” He cuddled me up from behind, his voice rough now from sex instead of sleep, and even though I was done—ass throbbing pleasantly, sated as a boy could be—my dick jumped like a happy puppy because its favorite person was getting growly.
Down, boy.
I pried one eye open and almost-whined, “Now? Really?”
“Why not now?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of afterglow? Ugh.” I rolled my eyes and heaved a breath. “It went okay. Jason offered me the job—”
“Wait, really? Congrat—”
“—and I told him I had to think about it.”
“Oh.” I braced for Knox to be annoyed, to tell me I was being ridiculous and shortsighted, but all he said was, “Why?”
“Because I want something that’s right for me, not something that’s going to impress a bunch of people I don’t care about.” I hadn’t even been able to articulate the thought to myself until that moment, but it was true. “And for once, I wanted to think it through before I committed.”
And why was it so much easier to think things through clearly when I was talking to Knox… unless it was about Knox?