Chase

20. Chase

CHASE

Every last shred of doubt leaves me as Logan pushes up into my kiss, responding like he’d just been patiently waiting for me to take control.

I’d been on such good behavior.

I showed up here today to be a photographer and only a photographer, wearing my professional hat and very ready to keep my hands off of him.

But one word from him about it and all of my plans were obliterated.

There’s not much he can hide when his cock is on display and very hard for me. My body feels charged like a fucking battery, lying on top of Logan like I’m trying to touch every inch of him, and I’m one hundred percent sober.

I’m lit up by him, by the way he hitches his breath every fucking time I push my finger deep into him or when I press my lips on his.

“I don’t want to be your friend,” I say against his lips, pulling up for just long enough to speak. Something inside me is too ravenous. “I want you like this.”

“Pretty fucking friendly when you make me feel this good,” Logan says.

I let out a frustrated groan, because of course that’s not the answer I wanted.

“Logan.”

“I’m listening,” he says, holding my gaze. “What do you mean, you don’t want to be my friend?”

I search my mind for the answer and it feels impossible to express.

“I want us to talk for real. I want to fucking know you.”

His eyes glimmer. “You’re saying that while you’re inside me?”

I push my finger deeper into him, stroking him, and he moans beneath me.

“Yes. I’m saying it. Right now.”

“You know me,” he whispers.

My heart is like a drum. I feel feral, a little crazy, but at least I know I’m completely in control, with no poison in my blood this year.

I want him to say what I feel.

We’re not fucking friends, because we’ve been more than that since the day we met.

That’s what I want to hear.

But Logan’s life is a labyrinth compared to mine, and his mind and heart may as well be a fucking fortress. Every cell in my body still wants him like he’s the only intoxicant in the world that I give a damn about anymore.

I straighten my back, sitting up again so that I’m looking down at him from above.

His jawline looks like it was carved, arching up toward his cheekbones beneath his golden, tanned skin.

The freckles that dot his body stand out.

I trace a line from the freckles on his stomach up to his neck, and I’m obsessed with the contrast of my canvas of tattooed skin up against his untouched vast planes of muscle.

I reach up to curl my fingers through his silky hair, giving it a tug.

I give him a little nod, trying to collect myself before I fall into him for the rest of the night.

“Touch yourself.”

His eyes dance across my face. “Forgot how bossy you can be.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Fuck,” he says as he concedes, reaching down to grip the base of his cock. He starts to stroke, and I watch his movements, marveling at the beauty of his body as he works into a rhythm.

I use my free hand to steal a little more precum from his tip, bringing it to his hole.

“This is going to be a stretch,” I tell him.

I use the slickness to try adding a second finger to his hole. It’s not quite enough, and I wish like fuck I had some sort of lube, but of all the things I keep in my art studio, that’s not one of them.

As my second finger pushes past his tight muscle, Logan leans his head back onto the floor, squeezing his eyes shut.

“I can take it,” he whispers.

“You sure about that?”

“Do it.”

My cock throbs under my pants at his insistence. I can’t even begin to think about how much I want to take him raw and split him with my cock right now, and the self-restraint feels like something I should get a goddamn award for.

I push my second finger in slowly and I feel him start to relax into the pressure.

“That’s it,” Logan gently murmurs.

He looks like a fallen god.

His eyes flutter closed again and I push a tiny bit deeper, leaning closer to his face.

“Stay with me,” I tell him.

His eyes open again, meeting mine. I feel like I can see a whole world in the flecks of silvery grey, like there’s a whole ocean behind his gaze, glittering like the water’s surface.

“I’m here,” he says.

My heart lurches in my chest.

Fuck, why does that feel so good when he says it?

I shove my fingers a little further in, trying to ignore how strong of an effect he’s having on me. I pay close attention to every hitch of his breath as I move, making sure I stretch him, but never hurt him too much.

“I like it when it’s like this,” I tell him, hanging a few inches above his lips. “When you’re really with me.”

“I know,” he whispers.

Christ. I feel like I’m slowly coaxing something from him at all times, drawing him out toward me, again and again.

I hold his gaze, cocking my head to one side as I finally press two fingers inside him all the way. His breath catches as I hold it there, then when I push on him from the inside he exhales.

And words just keep spilling out of my mouth.

“I thought I got over it. I thought I fucking got over it, Logan, and then I realized I didn’t when I couldn’t even get myself hard for another man.”

His eyes widen, just a little. “I didn’t know that.”

I let my head dip low, burying my face in the crook of his neck for a moment. I pull in a long breath, drawing in his scent, wishing I could stay in a cloud of him forever.

“I used to fuck whoever I wanted, whenever I wanted,” I tell him. “But after you… nobody got to me. Not in the same way.”

He swallows, and I’m pressed up against his neck in a way that lets me feel his throat move.

“I know the feeling,” he says softly, like he’s confessing something.

Something sparks inside me.

“Logan, are you saying…”

“Nobody’s touched me in a long time, Chase.”

“Oh my God,” I murmur, my insides skittering like I’m full of tiny explosions. “Don’t tell me that—”

“You were the last person I was with,” he admits.

Every nerve in my body goes molten.

It had been a question I’d been afraid to ask him.

Neither of us owed each other anything, and the only reason I had a year-long dry spell is because my body felt like it couldn’t respond to anyone else, anymore. I thought something had broken inside me. Gotten irrevocably fucked up, because for some reason I was fixated on one man.

But if Logan hasn’t been with anyone, either…

Too good.

Don’t do it, Chase, just don’t fucking do it.

Don’t fall deeper into a blind obsession you know you can’t control.

I let out a frustrated groan as I bite against his bare shoulder, moving up toward his ear.

“I need you to come for me,” I demand. “Touch your cock. I want you to come while I’m inside you.”

He breathes. “Impatient again?”

“You know me so well. By the way, next time it’s my cock, not my fingers,” I utter as I pull almost all the way out of him and then shove back in again hard.

“I have to fuck you. You can hold back any secret from me forever, but it won’t change the fact that I want to fuck you more than I’ve ever wanted anything before. And I know you want me, too—”

“I’m so close,” he utters, and I can feel him picking up the rhythm on his cock.

“Give it to me.”

I fucking love how Logan responds when I give him the command.

His body tenses up beneath me. A moment later, he’s letting out a moan right next to my ear. I lean upward as he paints white streaks across his stomach, over and over, and I watch as he loses control.

“All yours,” he breathes.

Fuck.

Fuck.

I hang in the moment, leaning back down and pressing a slow, hot kiss to his lips. I’m suddenly acutely aware that he’s finished, now, and whatever hypnotic spell we were both under could evaporate.

I slide my fingers out of him slowly as the weight of everything I said to him falls on me all at once.

And I said way too fucking much.

Back in the day, I used to wake up after wild nights and have the familiar feeling of burning guilt, as puzzle pieces slowly slid back together to form the actual fabric of my world.

This is a little bit like that. Only it’s worse, because I have almost no excuse.

I told him I can’t get hard for any other man.

Told him I don’t want to be his friend.

I told him I need to fuck him senseless.

In Logan’s world, where everything is carefully compartmentalized, I may as well have gotten down on one knee and proposed to him with a goddamn ring resting at the tip of my cock.

Logan is going to remember all of those things I said, and if I don’t do some damage control now, he’s probably going to go running for the fucking hills after tonight, because I showed my cards.

He can’t know that I’m getting pulled back into his orbit.

That I’m getting obsessive again.

I pull in a long breath of air, trying my best to shove away the tornado of thoughts inside me.

“Better now?” I ask him.

Because I was only doing all that to help you with your big fucking pesky problem of a hard-on.

That’s all.

Just business there, too, right?

He exhales, still catching his breath.

“Much better,” he says. His eyes scan across my body, and he nods up at me. “Do you need to come, too?”

I shake my head. “Nope. I’m your photographer today.”

I stand up slowly, looking down at him. The truth is that my cock is aching like hell, mashed up against the front of my pants, but I can prove to him that I’m able to go without.

I actually do have a full schedule tonight, anyway.

I want Logan’s photos to be incredible. And I’m going to make that happen.

I walk down the short hall to the bathroom a minute later, grabbing some wet paper towels to help Logan clean himself off.

But the moment I pick up my camera again, I start to relax.

Something has shifted. Finally.

Logan is at ease now, and he seems completely comfortable in my space for the photoshoot.

He tries a few poses without any guidance from me, first lying back on his elbows, then sitting, then standing up.

I start to snap test shots that quickly turn into real shots when I realize how good they look.

The clouds outside are scattering and golden light is pouring through my studio, and having Logan as my subject makes the whole thing a whole lot easier because he looks good no matter what he’s doing.

“Is this okay?” he asks after standing up for a while, leaning against the windowsill.

“Your entire body is made to be on camera,” I tell him. I reach out and tuck a piece of his hair behind one ear, then step back to frame the photo. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”

It’s a shot of him gazing out the window, his ass facing the camera. I swear he looks like he could be an ancient Roman ruler, looking out over his empire.

We fall into an easy back-and-forth, with Logan posing and me occasionally directing him on what to do.

Logan even starts to smile in some of the photos we take, and at first I think I’ll just save those pictures for myself. But some of the pictures where he’s laughing are the ones where he looks the most radiant.

The smoldering, serious ones look hot, too. Obviously. But in the ones where he’s smiling, he’s never looked more like himself. I can’t think too hard about it or I’ll slide back out of my professional mode and start to freak again.

“Okay,” I tell him as the sun is just starting to set behind the city. “The final shots we need to get are the ones where you’re spread eagle, gripping your ass to show the world your hole.”

He snorts. “If you want pictures of my ass, all you have to do is ask, Chase.”

“I was kidding. But you can feel free to text me pictures like that anytime.”

Logan reaches his arms up above his head, stretching. He strides around the studio, looking at my art more closely now.

“What are these?” he asks, pointing at some black-and-white photos in a stack.

“Oh. Those are for a little event I entered into. It was just one of those little photography competitions where you can win a spot in a gallery show. They wanted pictures of ‘Old New York,’ so I went around with my medium format camera and shot the oldest buildings I know. Not just the famous places, but also older convenience stores and stuff.”

Logan starts to card through the photos, his eyes closely focused on them. “These are amazing,” he murmurs. “They’re like living history. It’s not like the stock pictures of the city you always see. How old was this guy?”

I look over and see the picture of an elderly man working in a tiny flower shop. “I didn’t ask, but he said he’d owned that shop for 75 years, so he has to be well into his 90s.”

“Incredible. I’m sure you’ll win a spot in the competition.”

I nod. “Oh, I already got in.”

He glances up at me, his eyes shining in the last remnants of the sunlight. “Wait. Seriously?”

I wave my hand through the air. “It’s really not a big deal. Trust me.”

“How many times have you had your work shown in an art gallery?”

I run a hand through my hair. “Well, this will be the first time I’m in a real gallery, and not just a friend’s house party or something. But I’m telling you, it’s just a small independent place.”

“When is the gallery showing?”

“Tomorrow night. That’s why I have these shots out on the table, I really need to put mats behind them and get them into their frames, like, the minute you head out tonight.”

He nods, looking back down. “What’s the gallery called?”

“Fractal Gallery. It’s on the Lower East Side.”

Logan still looks far more impressed than he needs to be by this information.

I didn’t expect him to even notice my black-and-white city shots while we’re in my studio that’s overflowing with all of my usual loud, colorful paintings, but it makes sense that he’s the most drawn to the art that’s less… confrontational.

“I’ll stop by,” Logan says.

I blink at him.

I set down my camera on the table, eyeing him.

“You sure you’re not afraid you’ll get spotted there?” I ask.

“I will be spotted there. But famous people go to art shows sometimes. I don’t see any reason why I couldn’t be seen.”

I feel like I’m trying to shove a fireworks show into a box inside my chest right now.

“Cool,” I say, giving him a nod. “I’ll tell them to add your name to the list.”

And I keep acting like I’m not absolutely fucking screaming inside, because Logan just told me he’s going to go to a public goddamn event just to see my work on display.