Chapter 12 River #2
I heaved a steadying breath and shook out of my jacket while he went to the kitchen.
Holden’s place was as big as most apartments.
The front room had a couch, chair, and coffee table facing a small gas fireplace that was buffered on both sides by full bookshelves.
The fire cast dancing shadows across the walls.
Under a window on the right sat a huge desk with a small desk lamp glowing over a journal and pen. The pen I’d given him for Christmas. On the left side of the fireplace wall was a small, open-concept kitchen with a hallway that presumably led to a bedroom and bathroom.
I stopped in front of his bookshelves. Classics shared space with modern stuff I’d never heard of, plus volumes of poetry, Greek plays, Latin dictionaries, and at least three encyclopedia sets.
“You’ve read all these?” I asked. “Even the encyclopedias?”
Holden approached with two IPAs and handed me one. He was standing close to me; I could feel the heat emanating from his skin. I took a deep pull of cold beer.
“You can’t be a writer and not read,” he said. “To put it in automotive terms you might appreciate, writing is driving the car, and reading is refilling the tank.”
“Sounds about right. What’s your favorite?”
Holden set his bottle down—I was glad he was drinking just beer tonight—and pulled out a huge, floppy softcover book from the shelf.
“Calvin and Hobbes? Are you kidding?”
“I never kid about Calvin and Hobbes.” Holden flipped through the collection of comics about a young boy and his stuffed tiger.
“This isn’t just a comic strip. This is a philosophy manual on human nature.
It just so happens to use snowman monsters and imaginary rocket ships to illustrate its point. ”
“Okay, what makes it your favorite?”
“Because I like things that seem simple on the surface but are complicated and deep if you examine them up close. Like you. You’re like Superman who never takes off his Clark Kent costume.
How many of your so-called meathead friends know you read Joseph Heller?
Or that you know how to find derivatives using the chain rule? ”
“I don’t go shouting it from the rooftops.” I shot him a dry look. “Or tap-dancing on dining room tables.”
“Because you don’t need to,” he said. “And don’t get pissy. I’m paying you a compliment. I’d give anything to have a steady mind instead of”—he waved a hand in the general vicinity of his head—“this.”
I sipped my beer, washing down the anger for all the people who’d made him feel less than he was.
He scrutinized my gaze. “Throwing me a pity party? Don’t.”
“I’m not. I feel sorry for your parents. They fucked up. Hard.”
Holden’s pale skin warmed, and he looked away, no snappy comeback.
Before I could let myself think, I took the beers out of our hands, and I cupped his jaw like I had the night at the pool.
Only this time, I was deliberate. This was not a stolen time-out from real life where we could blame the heat of the moment.
He let me turn his face to mine, and I kissed him. Deeply. Thoroughly. Kissing him just to kiss him, because if nothing else happened but that, I’d be happy.
I felt Holden sink into the kiss, leaning against me, letting me prop him up. A groan rumbled out of my chest at how the earth fell into perfect alignment when I was with him.
Holden breathlessly wrenched his mouth from mine. “That’s not keeping it casual.”
He brushed my hand aside and crashed his mouth against mine, igniting the heat that was constantly simmering between us.
It exploded in a white-hot blaze that began where our mouths were crushed together and surged through my entire body.
We kissed as if we were starved for each other, the hard, biting kisses that he preferred.
Holden lifted my sweater off while I pushed the robe off his shoulders and tore at his shirt, wanting skin. To see and touch him but careful not to lose myself in the moment. To be there with him.
He let me pull his shirt over his head, and my breath caught at the sight of so much smooth skin over lean muscle, honed to perfection. Not as big as me, but strong. Strong enough to take whatever I had to give.
And what is that? What is happening?
“Wait, wait…” I breathed, my forehead leaning against his.
In that small space between us, Holden’s eyes were warm. “We can slow down. I keep forgetting you’re new at this.”
“So do I,” I said. “I don’t want to get carried away and regret it later.”
“Regret for getting carried away is the best kind. But we don’t have to do anything. I think my aunt and uncle left some board games here. We can have a rousing game of Parcheesi—”
I kissed him to shut him up. To slow everything down and let us catch our breaths. I let my mouth move over his gently while my hands slipped around his back.
“So that’s a no on the Parcheesi.”
“Let’s go to your room.”
Outside, the storm was waking up. Silvery light streaming in between lashes of rain at the windows was the only illumination as we reached for each other in the dark, making our way to the bed. We lay on our sides, kissing and letting our hands roam.
“Are you nervous?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I thought I’d be, but I’m not.”
Just the opposite. Every kiss and touch was like reclaiming a piece of myself I’d broken off and given to my fake life.
“What do you want?” Holden whispered hotly against my neck. “You can do whatever you want to me.”
“I don’t want to do whatever I want. We should do what we want. What feels right.”
He pulled back to study my face as if he couldn’t believe I was real. As if no one had said something like that to him before. Worse, as if it had never occurred to him that he deserved to hear it.
“Don’t get all noble on me now.”
“I don’t feel noble,” I said. “I feel like ripping your clothes to shreds with my teeth.”
“Good God, man. What are you waiting for?”
I laughed a little and shook my head. “Not tonight.”
“What’s happening tonight?”
“I don’t know. Just…stop talking.”
I kissed him, pushing him back and lying over him. We tugged at my jeans and his sleep pants until we were both down to our underwear, our erections brushing and rubbing through the material. I let my gaze wander over him in the dimness and slid my hands over the bare skin of his chest.
Holden lay back, watching me explore him, his abs tightening as my fingers trailed down toward the erection that strained against his boxer briefs. I hesitated, but he nodded quickly, his neck tight.
I held my breath, my heart crashing against my ribs, waiting for lightning to strike me dead or shame to engulf me. But I slipped my hands inside, wrapped my fingers around him, and felt only relief and lust. Wanting this for him and for me and for the years I’d spent denying myself.
Holden released a sound deep in his chest, and I groaned. His cock filled my palm, soft skin sliding over hard flesh.
This, a thought whispered in and out of my head. This is what I want.
“I want to make you come,” I said thickly. “And I want to watch.”
Holden groaned. “And here I thought you’d be shy.”
He slipped out of his underwear, my hand still wrapped around him. I increased the pressure on him, squeezing hard through the stroke, then releasing, over and over.
“What about you?” he managed.
I shook my head, my hand working faster. “Just you.”
Again, confusion flashed over his face, and I sort of hated anyone who’d been here before me, taking and taking and giving nothing back.
Instinct guiding me, I let my mouth wander down his neck, inhaling the clean warm scent of him, tasting the faint salt of his skin. I dragged my tongue down his chest. The smooth texture changed as I found one small nipple.
“How do you know how to do that?” Holden gasped out as I bit, sucked, and then swirled my tongue over the sensitive nub, all while my hand worked over his cock.
“Don’t know,” I murmured. “Just want this.”
For you.
Holden’s breath caught, and I knew he was close.
My own cock ached as if it were my orgasm ready to explode.
I kissed him, a wet lashing of tongues, and then my fingers were in his mouth again.
His tongue slid between them while I milked him, driving him higher and faster, until his head fell back, hands clutching the sheets.
“Oh fuck…” he gasped.
I sat up while his hips rose and fell with increased desperation until he tensed all over.
He came hard, spurting hotly over his stomach and over my fingers, and I claimed it.
It was mine. His every pounding heartbeat and hitched breath and agonized groan, all mine.
I coaxed him through the orgasm with long, slow strokes until I was on the verge.
With a groan, I sat on the edge of the bed and yanked off my underwear.
I took myself in hand, letting Holden’s climax lubricate me.
I felt him behind me, his mouth on the slope of muscle between my neck and shoulder.
He bit down like the vampire he was, sending tingling electricity down my arm, then reached around to slide his fingers over mine until they were coated too, his release slick and warm over my cock.
“Dirty,” he whispered and took over.
He curled his hand around me and began to move—a sensation I’d felt a thousand times by myself and that was now completely raw and new and better than anything I’d imagined.
“I need… I need…”
“You need to come,” Holden whispered against my ear. “In my mouth.”
I nodded mutely, mindlessly as Holden gracefully slipped to the floor. He knelt between my knees and took me in his mouth in one slow swallow.
“Fuck,” I hissed. “Oh fuck…”
Holden’s mouth enveloped me in the only wet heat I ever wanted, the grunts in his chest unmistakably masculine and hard.
His fingers dug into my thighs with force, the pain adding a layer of sensation I didn’t know I craved.
I gripped a handful of his hair, and he groaned, working over me like a man possessed.
“I’m coming,” I breathed, one hand planted on the bed, gripping the sheets, the other in his hair, holding myself in that perfect delirium that was Holden.
“Come,” he breathed between deep, long sucks. “Come for me, baby.”
Baby…fuck.
My body obeyed. The cresting wave crashed, and I gritted my teeth, spilling myself into his mouth. He took it all, slowing his sucking strokes, dragging his tongue up and down my length.
“Jesus Christ…” I fell back on the bed, drained and yet alive in a way I’d never felt before.
Holden climbed up and flopped on his back beside me.
“River Whitmore,” he murmured to the ceiling. “There was nothing fucking casual about that.”