Chapter 5 #3
“Which kind?” Pax replies quietly, his lips skating lightly over several vertebrae in Blake’s back. “The kind that comes back?”
Suddenly wide awake, Blake leans back, tipping his head up and forcing Paxton to readjust how he’s sitting so that he can look into his eyes.
It’s a bit of an awkward angle, but the water lets Blake slide to the side and be buoyed a little more easily.
“I wasn’t,” he answers seriously. “Before all this, I didn’t know how to be better than that. Didn’t see a reason to.”
“And now?”
God, this conversation would be so cheesy, so ridiculous if he were having it with anyone else.
This kind of shit belongs on reruns of badly scripted hospital soaps, not in Blake’s very real life.
But the reality is, there’s not a damn thing about Pax that’s insincere.
He’s not asking because he’s trying to create some kind of desperate, romantic moment or because he’s hoping the clip will go viral and make him internet famous.
No, Blake’s pretty friggin’ sure Pax just wants to know if this is real. And Blake would be lying if he said he didn’t have the same damn question, so answering it isn’t hard at all.
“Can’t wait to come back to you, Pax,” he says simply, wet limbs slipping against Pax’s equally slick skin as Blake gropes for something that his nervous hands can hold onto.
“Not to scare you or anything, and not that I’m not looking forward to getting you into bed, but you did ask, so…
Here’s my answer.” Blake stops to take a deep breath, holding Pax’s eye contact bravely, even if his voice shakes a little.
“Pax, our ‘what comes next’ has me excited in a way nothing in my life ever did before. I got… not much to offer you, back home. But whatever I do have, if you wanted to share it? Shit, Pax. I can’t think of anything — anything — on the damn planet that would make me happier.
My whole apartment is about the size of this suite, but when I think about you in it? Damn.”
Blake shakes his head. “I think about you sitting on my couch when I get home from work, TV on and Chinese takeout from the place down the block on the table. I think about you maybe washing up in my shower, using my shampoo. I think about you doing yoga in the patch of sunlight in my living room under the bay window in the morning. I think about you waking up next to me, maybe stealing a pair of my sweatpants from the drawer before going to put some coffee on. I think about you, in my space, and — and I can’t put into words how much I want it, how much that means to me. ”
There’s a long, heavy moment of silence where Blake’s stomach ties itself into a tight knot and dual waves of horror and humiliation begin to rise in his body, but then Paxton blinks hard, and twin tears track down each of his cheeks.
“Blake,” he whispers, pulling his hands from the water to frame Blake’s face and kiss him hard. “Yes, please,” is all Pax manages to say between presses of lips and swipes of tongue, but Blake’s never felt so relieved in his life.
And truthfully, he doesn’t want to fuckin’ talk.
He said what he needed to say — so long as Pax feels the same, Blake doesn’t need a big damn flowery speech.
He should have known that Pax talks with his body, though, that he’s used to using sex to communicate, that he likes it that way, Ava be damned.
“Will you fuck me?” Pax asks, near-panting into Blake’s mouth, barely wanting to pull away enough to ask the question. Blake can feel his breath hot on his lips, and Pax’s hands are both still cupping his face.
“‘Course, Pax,” Blake replies with a little nod, stealing short kisses in between his replies. “If that’s what you want.”
“I want it all,” Pax says, eyes dark, blue barely even visible under his half-opened lids.
Blake’s never seen him so lust-drunk, so carried away, and he has a sudden, fierce urge to take care of him, to show Pax that he’s both wanted and worthy.
This is what the Retreat took away from them, and Blake’s quickly realizing that while that had to be done to get them here, it’s equally important to take back.
“Let’s have it all, then,” Blake suggests, sitting up and turning to face Paxton more fully, since his neck is starting to hurt.
The water sloshes around them in the tub, slapping at the walls in violent, pink-frothed waves.
“Really get our money’s worth. Hey, if we’re only getting charged for one thing, might as well do it up right. ”
Paxton’s brow furrows as he takes in what Blake’s saying, and then his face lights up. “Flip fuck?”
“Why not?” Blake agrees with a shrug.
“Why not, indeed,” Paxton replies, a devious smirk spreading across his face.
“Race you to the shower.” Before Blake can so much as blink, Pax is hitting the drain for the tub and hopping out, skidding dangerously on wet feet to grab lube from one of the drawers in the vanity Rachel pointed out earlier.
He’s got the shower on and is under the spray before Blake even gets one foot firmly onto the shag carpet next to the bath.
“I love this idea,” Pax calls to him over the running water. “You’re brilliant. Beauty and brains, what are the odds?”
“If you think that’s impressive, you should see me order parts for vintage cars,” Blake tells him.
He slips into the shower behind Pax and making at least a token attempt to pretend he’s going to wash his hair or something.
“Lots of fancy-sounding names, have to know all kinds of part numbers off the top of your head. Very sexy.”
Paxton grins up at him before pulling him close and into another stupid-hot kiss.
Pax knows how to kiss, is so good at it Blake honestly wouldn’t mind if that was all they could do tonight.
He sinks into Pax’s warm embrace, wishes he could tell Pax how much he likes kissing him without sounding like a tool.
It’s perfect — just enough tongue licking against his own, the perfect blend of nipping and sucking and lingering presses that take Blake’s breath away.
“Yeah, Pax,” is what makes it out of his mouth, breathless and goofy, but Blake supposes it’s better than nothing.
The heat between them escalates quickly now that they have a known destination, all worry about the rules and what they should or shouldn’t be doing to break them left completely behind.
It’s new and it’s exciting, and Blake kind of feels like a teenager stumbling into his first time.
Thing is, Blake has felt Pax hard in his pants plenty of times and even while lying next to him in bed, but it’s different like this.
Now, there’s nothing between them save for water and friction, and no one to stop them or get in their way.
“Pax,” Blake groans, “Pax, I can’t believe—”
“I know,” Pax replies, pulling back from where he’s been mouthing at Blake’s jaw to blink up at him warmly, eyes bright.
It makes Blake feel a little less silly for being sappy and overly enthusiastic about this whole thing himself.
Makes him war with dueling impulses to either shove Pax down and ravage him right there, or spread him out and take his time delicately discovering every last inch of skin.
A happy compromise, maybe, which Pax essentially makes for him when he dives back in to continue their make-out session. This time, it’s with his long, capable fingers wrapped determinedly around Blake’s cock and stroking.
“I like the way you feel in my hand,” Pax purrs. “I knew that I would.”
The height difference between them is perfect.
Those two inches Blake has on Pax give him just the smallest bit of leverage he needs to really slot their bodies together when he gets Pax backed up against the tile.
Pax seems to dig it too, from the way he holds onto the back of Blake’s neck and grinds up against him, little grunts of satisfaction escaping from his lips as he rocks his hips.
He’s fluid, and graceful — everything Blake fantasized he would be.
Blake is intoxicated by him.
The kisses he sucks from Pax’s face and shoulders, over his sharp jaw and down his neck, taste of water and Pax’s clean skin.
The stubble on Pax’s face burns Blake’s cheeks, and he can’t wait to feel it on the sensitive skin of his thighs.
Can’t wait to feel Pax for days, long after this night is over.
And still, he thinks: it’s just sex, isn’t it? It’s just two bodies rubbing together. Flesh and blood and muscle and bone; different shapes and sizes and some with varying parts, but all more or less the same in the dark.
Blake has done this more times than he likes to admit anymore; been with hundreds of people on hundreds of different nights, mornings, afternoons.
In bar bathrooms and on soft beds, under the spray of showers and on couches and hardwood floors and splayed over kitchen counters.
Men, women, people who didn’t identify as either — Blake’s never been picky, has seen and been with, kissed, licked, and fucked it all.
So touching Pax should be like all those other times, each and every one of those experiences.
Pax is a man, he has a body, a dick like Blake’s.
Sensitive spots just beneath his ear and around his hip bones that make him shudder when someone caresses or tongues at the skin there.
Blood pumping through his veins, making him hard, driving him to get off, to get off with Blake.
It’s not, though — it’s not the same, and Blake already knew that, should have expected it, but he didn’t.
It takes him by surprise, the emotion he feels being curled into Pax’s arms, the way he bends and breaks having Pax wrapped up in his.
The pull between their bodies, the need to get and stay as close to Paxton as possible, to kiss and consume, to show him what being genuinely wanted is like.
Blake’s been aroused, he’s been hungry many, many times in his life.
It’s never been like this.