Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Patrick woke up smiling before he’d figured out why.
It took him a second: Asher’s arm slung heavy across his ribs, the rest of him warm and solid and still asleep, morning coming in gold around the edges of the sheers.
Patrick lay there and let himself have it, the ridiculous fact of waking up happy, instead of doing what he usually did with mornings, which was get up and get moving before he had to feel anything about them.
Nobody was leaving this bed. He’d already decided that.
Asher stirred, blinked awake, and found Patrick watching him. Whatever crossed his face was slow, a little stupid, entirely undefended, and it made something in Patrick’s chest go warm and simple.
“Morning,” Asher said, voice wrecked with sleep.
“Morning.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m allowed.” Patrick’s mouth curved before he could stop it. “Turns out I like having you around.”
“Turns out. Huge shock.” Asher grinned, the real one, the one that took over his whole face, and pushed up onto an elbow, hair a disaster. “Say it again. I want to hear you be sappy on purpose.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Coward.”
“I already said it once. Don’t want you to get spoiled.”
Asher laughed, delighted, and kissed him before he’d even finished the sentence, slow and easy, no urgency in it at all, just two people with nowhere else they needed to be.
The sheets were tangled from the night. Asher’s hands found Patrick’s chest, palms flat, the contact drawing a line of warmth down his sternum. Asher kissed his collarbone, his mouth going back to a place it already knew.
Patrick ran his palm down the length of Asher’s side, hip to ribs, and Asher’s hand mirrored the motion, slower than Asher ever moved anywhere else.
“I want to take my time,” Patrick said.
“Take whatever you want.”
Patrick kissed him long and thorough, no counting seconds, nothing held back at all. His hand moved between them and wrapped around Asher’s cock, and the sound Asher made—a low, ragged exhale that broke against Patrick’s lips—registered in Patrick’s spine.
He stroked Asher with intention, slow and firm, his thumb tracing the head on each upstroke, learning the rhythm that made Asher’s hips press forward and his breath come apart. Here Patrick led because he wanted to give this, wanted Asher to feel it.
Asher’s hand covered his and adjusted the grip—tighter, here, like this. Patrick followed the instructions. Asher’s head fell back, his throat exposed, and Patrick kissed it. The pulse hammered under his mouth, the salt of sweat gathering in the hollow above his collarbone.
“Patrick.” His name came out of Asher, wrecked and open. “I want to ask you for something.”
“Tell me.”
“I want you inside me.”
The words hit Patrick low in his body. His hand stilled. His whole frame recalibrated around the offer. He looked at Asher’s face. The brown eyes were dark, pupils blown, steady. The night before, in the lot, Asher had said leaving was the only thing he knew how to do. He wasn’t leaving now.
“Yeah,” Patrick said. His voice sounded foreign to himself, stripped, unhesitating. “Yeah. I want that.”
Asher reached over to the nightstand, where a condom and a small bottle were sitting out.
Patrick had packed them in Chicago, along with everything else he hadn’t let himself think too hard about.
Asher pressed both into Patrick’s hand and lay back, eyes staying on Patrick’s face, and the deliberate offering of it was more exposed than the nudity.
Patrick took his time getting there. He kissed Asher’s throat, then the flat of his stomach, and felt the muscles jump under his mouth. By the time he settled between Asher’s thighs, Asher was breathing through his teeth.
“You’re allowed to hurry,” Asher said.
“I know.” Patrick bit the inside of his thigh lightly. “I’m not going to.”
He slicked his fingers and warmed the lube between them first because the bottle had sat out all night in the air conditioning and he wasn’t going to start this by making Asher flinch. Then he put his mouth back on Asher’s hip and slowly circled his hole with one fingertip, no pressure at all.
Asher’s hips lifted. “Patrick.”
“Hm.”
“You gonna make me ask twice?”
“Maybe.” He kept circling, light, watching the muscle in Asher’s thigh twitch. “You talk when you’re worked up. I like it. I’m in no hurry to make it stop.”
“Okay. That’s evil. All that quiet, and underneath it, you’re evil.” Asher bore down against his finger, shameless. “Inside. Now. Please.”
Patrick pushed in to the first knuckle. Asher tensed around him, a full-body clench, and Patrick went still, his mouth on the inside of Asher’s knee.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.” Asher blew out a long breath and went loose against the mattress, knees dropping wider. “Keep going. It’s been a while, is all.”
Patrick kept going. He worked the finger deeper, drew it back, pressed in again, and the heat of him was staggering.
He watched Asher’s face the way he read a two-on-one developing, tracking the tells: the flutter of his lashes when the angle was right, the hitch in his breathing when it was better than right.
When he crooked his finger and found the spot that made Asher’s whole body jolt, he held his hand exactly there and did it again.
“Fuck.” Asher’s fist closed in the sheets. “Right there. You found that fast. Of course you found it fast. You probably scouted it.”
“You’re loud,” Patrick said and heard the smile in his own voice.
“You knew that. You’ve known that since the phone.” Asher’s hips were moving now, riding his hand in slow rolls. “More. I can take more. Give me another one.”
He gave him another one. The stretch of two fingers pulled a groan out of Asher that Patrick felt in his own cock, and he had to stop for a second, forehead pressed to Asher’s hip, and breathe. Asher’s hand came down and settled in his hair, unsteady.
“You okay down there?”
“You’re ruining me,” Patrick said into his skin. It came out more honest than he’d meant it to.
“Good. That’s been the plan for months.” Asher gently tugged his hair until Patrick looked up at him. His face was flushed, his cock hard and neglected against his stomach, and he was grinning. “Keep going. Stretch me open. I want to feel it tonight every time I drop into my crouch.”
Patrick exhaled hard and got back to work.
He spread his fingers on the withdrawal, added lube, opened him with the same patience he brought to everything he cared about doing right.
He pressed the spot until Asher’s thighs shook, eased off, built it again until the filth ran out of Asher’s mouth and all that was left was “Patrick” and “Please.”
“Now,” Asher said. “I’m ready. Now.”
Patrick rolled the condom on, and the first press in was slow and controlled and required every piece of the restraint he had left.
Asher’s body took him in by degrees, tight heat closing around him inch by inch.
Asher’s breath punched out when Patrick seated himself, and his legs wrapped around Patrick’s hips, ankles crossing at the small of his back, pulling him deeper.
Patrick held still. Asher was beneath him, around him. The light from the window fell across the bed, illuminating the sheen of sweat on Asher’s chest and the concentration in his eyes, matching Patrick’s own.
“Move,” Asher said. “Please.”
Patrick moved. The first stroke drew a sound from both of them, and he set a pace that was controlled and deep, each thrust deliberate, the withdrawal slow enough to feel every inch and the return firm enough to punch the breath from Asher’s lungs.
Asher’s hands roamed his back, his legs tightened with each push, and the bed shifted beneath them, rhythmic and real.
The pace built. Patrick’s control frayed with every lift of Asher’s hips to meet his thrusts. He dropped to his forearms, and the shift in angle was immediate, deeper. Asher’s gasp was sharp and his hand flew to the back of Patrick’s neck.
“Right there. God, right there, don’t stop.”
Patrick didn’t stop. He reached between them and wrapped his hand around Asher’s cock, hard and leaking against his stomach, and stroked him in time with his thrusts. Asher’s entire body went taut.
“I’m close,” Asher said, the words broken against Patrick’s throat. “Patrick, I’m—”
“Come for me.”
Asher came with a sound Patrick would remember in specifics, the vibration against his throat, the clench of his body around him in waves.
Patrick buried himself deep and followed, the orgasm hitting with a force that whited out his vision and emptied him with a groan that came from somewhere lower than he thought existed.
They lay tangled in the aftermath, Patrick’s weight on Asher’s chest, both of them breathing hard. Patrick pressed his face into Asher’s neck and felt the rapid pulse slowing. Asher’s fingers traced patterns on his back.
Patrick eased out, dealt with the condom, and lay back down. Asher rolled into him and pressed his forehead to Patrick’s shoulder, and Patrick wrapped his arm around Asher’s back and held him there.
“Hey,” Asher said after a while. His voice was rough. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“That day in March. The lakefront, then your kitchen. You said something in French, twice. I asked what it was and you told me it was something your mother says.”
Patrick’s chest stilled under Asher’s hand. The memory surfaced whole: the wind off the lake, the kiss he’d stopped fighting, the words out of him before he could stop them. And again that night in the kitchen.
“I remember,” Patrick said.
“You said it wasn’t important.”
“I lied.”
Asher’s finger paused on his sternum. Then resumed, slower. “I know. I knew then. I let it go because you needed me to.”
“Je suis foutu,” Patrick said aloud, in the morning light, to the man it had always been about.
“And that means?”
“I’m screwed.” It came easier than he expected. “It’s what you say when something’s already happened to you. When it’s too late to get out of the way.”
Asher went still against him. “You said that the day I kissed you.”