Chapter 23
Wilder
By the time I got my mama off to bed and settled for the night, the urge to crawl out of my own skin was overwhelming.
Glancing at the clock did me no favors. Nor did it keep my stomach from giving a nauseating tug the second I realized it was well past seven.
In my eagerness to get things ready for Asher to come over tonight, I hadn’t thought of the possibility of him blowing me off. That maybe after the heat and high of everything that had happened between us, reality had finally caught up with him.
Now that I was standing in the silence of my kitchen, watching out the window like a lonely dog, I couldn’t believe I’d been so damn naive.
Our spur-of-the-moment moments were just that: all impulse and laced with tension that, when lit up with a match struck too close to gasoline, burned everything around it. Spontaneous didn’t mean sustainable.
Maybe Asher had finally realized that none of this was worth the fallout that might happen afterward. Sleeping with your boss came with all sorts of consequences I’d been obsessing over right up until I’d finally gotten a taste of him and had decided the risk was worth it.
To him, it might not be.
I’d have to respect that even if it felt like a knife to the heart.
Sighing, I hooked my finger over the light switch to flick it off, dousing the kitchen in darkness. I left the back porch light on, not having the heart to turn it off and plummet my mood even more than it already was rapidly diving.
Running into him tomorrow was going to be awkward but that was the risk I’d run doing all of this. I’d be mature enough not to mention anything or make him feel bad about his decision, though it’d probably be best to keep my distance. Just until I got my head screwed back on straight.
Or until I could look at him without remembering how he sounded when he begged me to fuck him.
A knock at my back door had me spinning on my heel instantly.
I was at the door in two strides, yanking it open by the time the third rap hit the wood. The porch light cast a halo around the figure standing under it, bathing him in a warm glow.
Asher blinked up at me, a little startled, before a wide, boyish grin slid across his plush lips. “Hey there.”
I gripped the side of the door hard enough to hurt my hand.
He looked comfortable. Relaxed. Freshly showered with the damp strands of hair curling slightly at the ends. His dark sweats hung low on his hips and his hoodie swallowed up most of his frame.
Forcing myself not to ask why were you so late?
was harder than I thought it’d be. I wanted to know, badly, if he’d come here late because he was second-guessing everything.
If he’d paced around his room in the bunkhouse, debating whether any of this was worth the hassle or if cutting us both loose was the smarter decision.
We could come back from messing around. It’d take some time but we could bounce back.
We could pretend it never meant anything and let the past stay where it should.
It was just burning off tension. Curiosity tempting us over the forbidden fruit.
The two of us making a poor decision in the heat of the moment.
Sex, though?
That, I was positive would change us both, permanently.
Before I could dwell on that too long, he pulled his hand from the front pocket of his hoodie, holding up a plastic baggie in the air right by his head.
“Sorry I’m late. Got caught up helping Hazel with meal prepping for tomorrow.” He gave the bag a little shake, the warm cookies inside smearing melted chocolate against the plastic. “But I did manage to score us some dessert.”
My gaze flicked to the cookies, three of them, as his grin widened. He looked damn proud of himself.
“Dessert, huh?” I drawled, giving myself time to fight the sharp urge to reach out and drag him in by the front of that hoodie he was wearing and pull him into a kiss that would absolutely end with me stripping him down right in the middle of my goddamn kitchen.
“I figured it was a good excuse to give if your mom was still up,” he said as he stepped inside. “Who would turn down a freshly baked cookie straight from Hazel’s oven?”
Amused, I swung the door shut behind him, clicking the lock into place. “No one, I’d wager.”
“Exactly.”
What I wasn’t expecting, was Asher to move first. For him to step into my space and crowd around me the second he tossed the baggie onto the counter next to us.
I cupped his cheek and leaned in, expecting the kiss to be chaste—some brief moment of our lips meeting while we kept things quiet as my mama slept only a few doors down from the kitchen.
But he gasped against my mouth, leaning into me heavy and so damn eager that I couldn’t help gliding my tongue against his the second I had the chance to.
I pushed him back against the door, our hips colliding to grind into each other. He smelled like soap and a faint whiff of laundry detergent. Clean and ready to be made a mess.
Through his sweats, I could feel his cock hard against my leg, a needy little moan tumbling out of his lips when my mouth slid from his down to his throat.
I focused my teeth on the skin at his neck, wanting a fresh mark to bruise his throat.
The other one was already starting to fade into a pale yellow I didn’t at all like.
He moved his hands up to press against my chest, pushing me back just enough to get a good look at him. He looked wrecked already, panting softly while those usual deep honey-brown eyes were blown a pitch black.
I had to get him up to my room before I got carried away.
If my poor mama walked in on this, she was going to end up in the grave next to my father’s.
Giving his ass one small squeeze, I untangled us from each other and got a good grip of his wrist to pull him out of the kitchen. He went quietly, following me up the stairs to the second floor where my room was.
It was hard not to pick him up and toss him onto my bed, even more so not to shut my door and then slam him back against it. But I managed to behave. Managed to get him inside and close and lock the door behind us before I was all over him again.
His delighted laugh eased me, the worry from earlier about him ditching seeming trivial now.
Of course Asher would come. He never would’ve left me high and dry like that, even if he was having second thoughts.
He was the kind of man to be upfront with his feelings—hell, had been this entire goddamn time even while drunk at a party.
Being too wound up in my own head, I’d forgotten all about that. Let my own fears paint over the person I knew him to be.
I really had to stop doing that.
My mouth found his again while I turned us around, backing us up toward the bed as I tasted and savored every little needy noise he released. The second the backs of his knees hit the bed, I folded us both down on top of it, my hand snaking under his hoodie to skim over his stomach.
He shivered. “Oh...”
His nipples were perked, hard little beads that I pinched between my fingers. He squirmed under me, his lower half grinding up into mine in the same way he had back down in the kitchen.
I pinned him with my hips, keeping him right where I wanted him while I used my other hand to grab the hem of his hoodie to push it up near his chin.
Asher bucked under me when I wrapped my lips around one of his nipples, teasing the tight bud with my tongue and teeth. His fingers threaded through my hair, tugging at the short lengths with each swipe of my tongue.
I fought back a groan.
He drove me wild. He really did.
“Come on,” he whimpered. “Let me touch you.”
This time, I’d give it to him. I’d find another time to savor him, take my time and really taste every single inch of him. My cock was throbbing with the need to be buried inside him anyway.
Popping my mouth off of his skin, I leaned back to sit on my feet.
His lips were a little swollen, making it hard not to lean over and kiss him again.
He had his legs already kicked apart for me, displaying his very obvious arousal that his sweats were doing him no favors hiding.
A wet mark was left circling his nipple, shiny in the dim lighting of my room.
I tugged my shirt off and watched as he slid his tongue over his bottom lip before dragging it between his teeth as he eyed my solid frame. “Damn, you really can throw me around like a ragdoll.”
While I chuckled, I dipped two fingers under the hemline of his pants. “Is that what you’re into? Bein’ tossed around?”
He shrugged, lifting his hips up just enough to help me slide his pants off of him. “Don’t know. It’d be my first time.”
My hands stilled. “In... general?”
A slow grin worked onto his face. “No. But we can pretend if you want.”
He was teasing, of course, but that didn’t stop the jolt of want that suddenly coursed through my veins.
It was a problem how easily he could flip the switch on me without even trying.
One minute, he was all sweet and begging, the next he was saying shit that made my thoughts turn dark and possessive.
Normally, I didn’t go for baby gays.
Not because I had some kind of rule against them, but because they tended to come with complications I didn’t have the energy to deal with—clingy texts, misplaced expectations, the wide, doe-eyed look the next morning, like they’d already planned out our wedding and were measuring the closet space for two.
Realistically, I didn’t have time to deal with that kind of shit.
If the mood hit and I was feeling restless, I’d drive into town, find someone with a nice mouth and no emotional baggage and get it out of my system.
There was something so goddamn primal about what Asher had said, though. Pretending my mouth was the only one he’d ever had on him. That my hands were the only ones to ever touch and map out every inch of his skin. It was ridiculous how much that turned me on.
I never cared about any of that until right now. Never gave a shit who someone had been with or how many notches they had on their belt.