Rhys #2
At Kendall’s apartment I let myself in with my spare key, as I’d done plenty of times by that point.
We’d fallen into a lot of comfortable habits, something I couldn’t say was exactly common for me.
Even in my marriage, there’d always been some level of…
expectation? Maybe that wasn’t the right word.
But I could relax with Kendall in a way I didn’t always feel comfortable doing with other people.
Being with him was like being in a little bubble of safety where I didn’t have to worry about being judged.
I pocketed my key, and stretched my arms above my head, basking in the cool air-conditioning and sweet fragrance. No matter how many nights I’d slept over, the aromatherapy stuff he was always refilling was so pleasant. He wasn’t back from the movies yet, so everything was quiet.
I figured I’d take a shower and rinse off the sweat from the walk, but before I could head to the bathroom, my phone vibrated in my pocket.
When I pulled it out, Hailey’s name on my screen had irritation rushing through my whole body.
She wasn’t even supposed to be calling me.
That’s what we were paying lawyers for. Still, part of me must have been a glutton for punishment, because I slammed my thumb onto the accept button before I could talk myself out of it.
“What?” I said, mostly because I knew it bugged the crap out of her when I answered the phone that way.
She’d always complained about my lack of manners, and more than once referred to me as a caveman.
She had a point, but… So what? If she’d wanted some refined and elegant gentleman, why had she even dated me in the first place?
“Ugh.” Her sound of displeasure was immediately clear, and a tiny, petty part of me buried not-so-deep down was happy about it.
She went on to explain she was in the process of trying to change contact information for the insurance on the house. The house that I’d worked so many miserable hours to keep making the loan payments on. It wasn’t even finished being paid off yet, and I was already out of it. Some American dream.
But I’d always been the one who’d handled that stuff.
The payments had always been auto-deducted from my bank account, and all the documentation was sent to my email.
The insurance and escrow were all rolled into the mortgage payment, anyway.
She didn’t even know the account number.
It would have been easy just to give her the information, but…
She sure as hell hadn’t made anything easy for me.
“Why should I help you? We’re not even supposed to be talking.”
My lawyer had drilled that into my head over and over. I shouldn’t have even answered the phone. Why had I done that, anyway?
“Why do you always have to make everything so fucking difficult, Rhys?” Her disdain for me rang through loud and clear in her voice. The sad thing was, it wasn’t even all that different from how she’d sounded when we’d still been together.
“Me?” I asked, with a comical amount of shock. “You were the one who wanted to get lawyers involved. You were the one who didn’t want to split everything down the middle. Oh, and in case you don’t remember, you were the one screwing around with my fucking manager.”
Spoiled princess. The words bubbled to life on my tongue but I swallowed them down, repeating the mantra of my lawyer’s words again and again. I couldn’t let her bait me into insulting her. Losing my temper would only make me look bad in court if she quoted me or used my words against me.
“Yeah, Hailey, I know I was the one who always took care of it. Believe me, I fucking know that,” I said, after her rebuttal.
“All I’ve ever tried to do is help you, but you are seriously beyond help, Rhys.”
As I listened to her gripe in my ear about how this was all my fault, I heard someone clear their throat behind me.
Whirling in surprise, I locked eyes with Kendall.
He’d come in without me noticing. Drawing my eyebrows together, I tried to convey an apologetic look.
He shook his head a little, as if to tell me not to worry about it.
Having him there suddenly put things into perspective. It was stupid of me to be arguing with her. Neither of us could be objective about anything, we were both too pissed off and annoyed with each other.
“You know what?” I said, cutting off her rant. “I have to go. Have your lawyer talk to my lawyer, and I’ll think about handing over the account number. Don’t call me again.”
I hung up the phone, squeezing my eyes closed as a frustrated groan crawled its way up my chest. Even with my little moment of clarity, anger was still coursing through me.
I lifted my phone, barely suppressing the urge to hurl it against the wall.
Kendall scampered up and plucked it from my hand, gently tossing it onto the couch where it couldn’t explode into pieces.
“Hey.” He led me over to the ottoman in front of his cushy armchair and nudged me down into it, putting his hands on my shoulders once I’d sat. Squeezing and massaging them, he nuzzled his face into my neck. “Talk to me.”
“Don’t ever get married,” I said flatly, but rolled my head to the side to give him more access to my skin. “It’s not worth it.”
“Now, now,” he chided gently, pecking kisses up my jaw to just under my ear. “You don’t mean that. You’re just upset.”
The soothing timbre of his voice, his soft lips brushing over my skin, and the strawberry scent my body was starting to associate with calm and happiness was helping to take the edge off my anger. But not completely.
“I mean it. This divorce has been a fucking nightmare.”
“So next time you’ll just marry someone you won’t get divorced from,” he insisted and I scoffed.
“Yeah, well when you find someone who wants to stick it out with someone like me for the rest of their natural born life, let me know.”
He didn’t say anything for a few moments, just gliding his lips across the back of my neck. I felt him smirk at my pleased groan.
“You’re very, very tense, baby,” he observed.
“Gee, I wonder why.”
“I don’t like it when you’re tense,” he murmured, coming back around my body so I could see his pretty face. “You don’t need to think about any of that, anyway,” he tacked on. “Isn’t that what you’re paying a lawyer for? It’s his problem.”
Tilting my head a bit in acknowledgment, I glanced up at the ceiling.
“I guess you do have a point.”
“Come take a shower with me,” he said. My cock twitched with interest at his suggestion, and I cleared my throat.
“Are you going to take care of me, Sparkles?”
He nodded slowly, looking amused. The way the corner of his pouty lips perked up made him look so adorable it should have been illegal.
My perpetual ray of sunshine, always following me around to chase away my shadows.
I’d spent so much time in dark, gloomy depths the last few years, I hadn’t even realized how much I’d needed someone like him.
His particular brand of effervescent warmth wasn’t like anyone else I’d ever known.
It was impossible not to seek it out. Impossible not to keep needing it.
Once we’d stripped down, made more difficult by the way we didn’t want to let our mouths separate as we made out, we tumbled into the shower and he flipped on the warm spray.
He soaped me up and kneaded down my whole body starting with my shoulders, all the way down my back, my ass, and even my thighs and calves.
By the time he was done pressing his palms into all my muscles and rubbing the tension out, I was practically melting against the wall, a pliant puddle of total relaxation as he rinsed me off with the handheld shower head.
When he dropped down to his knees in front of me, taking my stiff cock into his mouth, I hissed out a breath, letting my head fall back to rest against the cool tile.
He worked me with his tongue, teasing the notch on the underside of my head with his piercing, and then taking me to the back of his throat.
I tangled my fingers into his bright hair, groaning at the perfect, wet suction, until I couldn’t stop rocking my hips against his face.
I could feel myself getting close, whimpering when he popped his mouth off, letting my dick smack back up against my abs.
“Don’t stop,” I pleaded, when he looked up at me with his sultry eyes and swollen lips. “I’m close.”
“Turn around,” he ordered, panting as he gave my hips a firm squeeze.
“W-what?” I asked, the haze of lust settled over my brain making it hard to process the request. “Why?”
“Because I want to rim you.”
I felt my eyes pop wide and all my gooey, relaxed muscles tense up again. “Why?”
He gave me an odd look. “Um, because it’s fun? And you’ll like it? You’ll be totally relaxed.”
I’d really thought I was done balking over doing stuff with him, but this was a new one for me. I hadn’t even thought about being on the receiving end of that particular act. Or any act that involved my hole.
“Uh… I-I don’t know, Kendall.”
He snorted, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth to stifle his giggles, like he thought my obvious trepidation was hilarious. “What are you so nervous about? You do this to me all the time.”
“Well, yeah,” I admitted, swallowing hard. “That’s because you… You know, like butt stuff. You’re into that.”
“And you’re not?”
“Ah… I don’t know. Probably not.”
He let out another huff of laughter, stroking his hand up and down my thigh, squeezing it comfortingly. “Don’t overthink it, okay? It’s just nerve endings. It doesn’t mean anything about you. If you don’t like it, I’ll stop.”
“Um… okay,” I finally relented, trying not to wince at my own anxiety as I flipped around to face the wall, bracing my hands on it like I was getting searched by the police.
I glanced down at myself, half expecting that my cock would have gone soft.
But it was still hard as stone, straining up toward my navel.
“This isn’t, like, some gateway thing, right? ”
“Gateway?”