Chapter 25
Oliver
Iclosed the final inch of space, our lips met in an experimental and discovering touch before deepening. Luke’s mouth molded to mine as if it had always been meant to fit there. His palm drifted to the back of my neck, his thumb caressing my jawline as I moved closer, sighing into him.
Every kiss that came before this one was paltry by comparison.
This kiss didn’t demand; it invited. It didn’t take; it offered.
Trembling with possibility, it held everything I’d ever wanted.
Luke kissed in dichotomies—tender yet possessive, gentle yet guiding, sweet yet edged with hunger.
It was everything I’d ever hoped for in a kiss.
His other hand circled around my back, fingers tracing up and down my spine. I melted into his touch, into his mouth, into the man who had stood steady in my life from the moment he entered it and who now kissed me as if I were the most precious thing he had ever been allowed to hold.
I could spend a lifetime exploring his mouth, tracing every curve and sigh, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted the wildfire. I wanted to know the sounds he made when he came undone, and I wanted to be the reason he let go.
Shifting my weight, I eased him down onto the couch. He went willingly, an open, trusting surrender, stretching his legs out in front of us. Crawling between them, I settled on top of him.
Our mouths found each other again as his arms came around my back. He opened for me, breath catching as my tongue swept against his. The lingering notes of chai lived in his mouth, a blend of spice and heat and comfort. I became drunk on it. Drunk on him.
Still, I wanted more. More of his mouth. More of his body. More of the tension coiling tighter and tighter in my abdomen until it had nowhere left to go but out.
“Luke . . . can I . . . would it be alright to take this further?”
“Yeah. I’m good. I want more with you, just go slow with me, okay? I’m open right now, but I’m not sure where the line might get drawn.”
“Of course. Let’s use the same color system we use in my self-defense training. Green is ‘I’m all in, no complaints.’ Yellow is ‘slow down, we need to assess what’s happening, I’m not sure I’m okay with it.’ Red means we stop.”
He leaned up to kiss me. “Yeah, okay. My light’s green, Ollie. You can drive through.”
“And if I rub against you like this, that feels alright?” I asked, rolling my hips down into him in a slow test.
His breath caught on a low, startled exhale, like the pleasure surprised him. His fingers tightened at my back. “Yeah,” he murmured, voice low and a little shaky. “That feels really good. You can do that. But keep kissing me? The closeness is what’s doing it for me.”
Kissing him, as requested, I pressed my hips into him again. Each roll drew another quiet sound from him, each one sparking through me like a lit fuse. And then I felt it, the undeniable press of his hard-on straining upward against me through his jeans.
“You’re hard,” I breathed in awe, not from disbelief in his attraction, but because some part of me hadn’t let myself believe this moment could exist for us. That he’d want me this way.
“Turns out when someone you care about a whole hell of a lot kisses you like you’re the only thing in their world .
. . Yeah, you’ve got my dick’s attention.
He’s very on board with the combo of emotional connection, feelings, plus spicy situation happening right now.
This sorcery you’re pulling doesn’t even come close to how I imagined this would go. ”
“Wait, wait, back up. You fantasize about me?”
“Yeah, but like soft fantasies. Where the sexy stuff, the physical stuff, is like an extension of these huge feelings I have for you. It’s more about the emotions than the act itself. Does that make sense?”
My lips brushed his temple, his brow, his nose, before pressing a tender kiss to his mouth. “Tell me.”
“About my fantasies?”
“Yes.”
“Well . . . I’ve imagined about a thousand versions of kissing you.
Some soft and sweet. Some where I’m hanging on because if I let go, I’ll straight-up lose my mind.
All of them were good, like, premium material, but I gotta say my mind didn’t get me anywhere near the real thing.
The way you kiss?” He made a little explosion sound and mimed his hand blowing apart. “Next level.”
“Got it. Your brain’s going kaboom over my lips. So I guess I’m a pretty okay kisser, then?” I whispered, tugging his lower lip between my teeth in a teasing nip.
“You know, I might need another sample to say for sure.”
I answered him with my mouth. The kiss carried the exhale of every moment I had swallowed my feelings, every night I had silenced the ache in my chest. I poured every unsaid moment into it.
A feral sound rumbled from deep in his chest, vibrating against my sternum like a tremor of thunder wrapped in lightning. Luke absorbed my quiet confessions, my long-buried want, and redefined my longing, turning it into a promise.
“Sample sufficient?” I asked, when we broke apart.
“Barely scratched the surface. We’re gonna be doing that a lot. Kissing is . . . yeah, I love that part.”
I chuckled. “Noted. More kissing on the agenda. Do your fantasies only involve kissing?”
“There are others,” he murmured. “My head’s kinda been filled with you. Of all the ways I can be close to you.”
“Do tell. Are we talking soft-focus daydreams from cozyland or . . . . something else?”
“Cuddles and soft stuff are my home base,” he admitted. “But I have definitely wandered into steamy territory.”
“Define steamy.”
“Let’s just say some of the fantasies involve your mouth. And your hands. All over me. And me maybe losing my ability to form complete sentences because of you.”
“Tell me.”
He ran the pad of his finger along my lower lip. “I think about your lips, these pretty lips, and how good it would feel to have them on me, like on me on me. Wrapped around my dick.”
My cheeks burned, but I held his stare, emboldened by the honesty in his. “That can be arranged. I love giving head. Anything else?”
“Yeah. The one that’s been on repeat lately is where you’re inside me. Thrusting into me, slow, fast, desperate, gentle, doesn’t matter. What matters is the way you claim me, how you being inside me would write yourself onto me forever.”
This had to be a dream, right? Or some weird alternate multiverse where Luke was telling me everything I wanted to hear. “You’d . . . you’d bottom for me?”
“I told you, I’d yield for you if you asked.”
“I wasn’t sure if you realized how that could’ve been interpreted.”
“That, surprisingly enough, had been intentional. Okay, maybe not entirely. I hadn’t been talking about sex at the time, but now that we are, I find it applies.”
“You really do defy every expectation. Vincent never let me top. He said that a real man, a man with a body like his, didn’t bottom. He made it sound like something degrading. Like something to be ashamed of.”
“Vincent’s an asshole. Probably overcompensating for a micro-dick and an ego the size of a molecule.”
“Did you just growl?” I said, entertained and a bit endeared.
“I did not growl, I grumbled. There’s a difference. A technical distinction, mind you, and one I will defend. Ezra already calls me a bear often enough, I don’t need you joining the chorus.”
“Ez calls you a bear?” I asked, half teasing, half curious, because the word arrived preloaded with the glossary of queer connotations, and my brain sprinted there first. By certain metrics, Luke qualified, but I doubted Ezra had meant it in that sense.
“On occasion,” Luke answered. “He jokes that beneath my intimidating exterior, I’m just an oversized, overgrown snuggle-bear.’”
Ah, that too, apt in its own lane. Luke could be a terrifying damaging force when the situation called for it, but in his den, with his people, he was nothing but gentle power, playful, warm, and cuddly. “He isn’t wrong. You’re basically a giant teddy bear.”
“That’s Lukie bear to you. I don’t see any Theodore’s around.”
“You’re such a dork.”
“Maybe. But I still say my grumble was totally valid. Even I—in all my obliviousness and with my brand-new ‘wow, I’m bi’ badge—know you can’t look at someone and guess what they’re into.
That’s just toxic-masc brain rot. The kind of garbage controlling people like him buy into.
A real man doesn’t waste a second on that crap.
What you like in bed doesn’t make you weaker or less of a dude.
It doesn’t define your value or your strength. It’s just one part of you.”
“You’re sexy when you get all righteous and sex-positive.”
“Yeah? And what am I the rest of the time?”
“You’re still distractingly sexy,” I murmured against the curve of his mouth, kissing him.
“Unbelievably good.” My lips trailed down to the edge of his jaw.
“You’re disarming in the best possible way.
” My mouth continued its descent, brushing over his Adam’s apple.
“You dismantle defenses, not with force, but with gentleness and that unique blend of steadfast strength and soft-hearted kindness of yours.” My hand slid down his chest, resting lightly over the beat of his heart.
“You’re security, and safety. You’re the kind of man I always hoped to find. ”
A flash of rare self-consciousness crossed Luke’s face. “And am I the kind of man you’d want to do that with?”
“To top, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to. I haven’t had many chances to top, only a handful of times in college, but the thought of being inside you, of watching you come apart because of me, of bringing you to climax, makes me harder than steel.”
To prove my point, I rolled my hips. He released a ragged exhale, his hands tightening at my waist. Our cocks ground together through the layers of our clothes, the friction as divine as it was overwhelming.
He surged up, hands framing my jaw. His thumbs stroked my cheeks as his fingers slid toward the nape of my neck, drawing me into him.
His mouth met mine with a consuming tenderness.
Intent, attentive, kissing me the way he listened: fully present, learning every shift of my breath, every answer I offered him.
“How do you feel,” he murmured between kisses, “about making this a topless situation?”
“Very much on board,” I said, lifting my arms.
He peeled my shirt over my head, tossed it somewhere on the floor, then tugged his own off in one easy movement, my eyes catching on the scatter of hair across his chest and the dusky line down his abdomen.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, his lips skimming my collarbone, drifting lower, brushing his nose against my sternum, while resuming his thrusting against me.
We moved in concert, grinding, rutting, and chasing the finale with abandon. Each thrust sent lightning lashing up my spine. His fingers tangled in my hair. His mouth found the curve of my neck and sucked.
A loud, helpless sound escaped me. It started as a moan but twisted into something else, overtaken by the sensation of being claimed and wanted, here and now, by Luke, of all people. By the time it reached my lips, it was no longer a moan but a pleading, wrecked whine.
Rhythm dissolved, losing all semblance of control. Our hips met in wild, discordant pulses, our bodies having long abandoned coordination in favor of raw desperation. Our mouths sought each other in intervals, the kisses broken by gasps and moans.
“I’m close. I . . . fuck,” I said.
“Me too,” he breathed, forehead pressing to mine. “Want to cum with you, Ollie.
A few more frantic thrusts and it hit, pleasure flooding through me. Galaxies were summoned into my occipital lobe, my vision fracturing into stars. Every atom in my body came undone and reassembled in the space of a single breath.
Luke came as I rode out the waves, the sharp intake of his breath melting into a low, shuddering moan as he buried his face against my neck.