Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
taylor
I couldn’t hear my own thoughts over the relentless pounding of my heart. The irregular, overachieving pace my heart was setting flooded me, thumping in my throat, in my stomach, in my head, and…well. Everywhere.
I stood in the doorway, halfway in the bathroom, halfway in Harrison’s cute jungle bedroom. He turned around slowly after taking his shirt off, and I watched him. For the first time, I really watched.
Maybe I’d seen some guys in passing, in the many locker rooms where I’d strolled around wet and naked, and maybe I’d glanced this way and that out of sheer curiosity. And maybe I’d felt, somehow distantly, that someone was objectively attractive.
It had never translated into this.
I stared at the defined muscles of his arms and torso, at the compact build of his body, at the strength and grace with which he moved, and I felt it in my stomach, this unwavering pull toward him.
It had been present for longer than I’d paid it any attention. It had always been there, from the moment I’d come to the table in the corner of my favorite bar, where he looked at me with a dare in his eyes and a challenge on his lips.
And at the gallery, when a girl’s mere presence threatened everything that was dear to me without me realizing how dear it was, and when I kissed him so stupidly that it nearly shattered the one thing I wanted to keep intact, I should have known.
I should have realized it then, if not sooner, that I wanted so much more than to dance paces away from him, only watched, never held by him, never joined in dancing, never kissed in everyone’s plain sight.
But I knew now, even if I no longer considered myself a trustworthy source on what I felt, that this was real. It had to be. Only I could be so stupid as not to realize it sooner.
I let my other foot step into the bathroom and pushed the door shut as steam began to build along the ceiling.
Harrison reached for his belt and unbuckled it, biceps tensing as he did so. His gaze found my eyes and locked on them, and he waited for me to take a step toward him.
I only hesitated because I was stunned. Stunned by myself, my own ignorance, my own lifelong illusions, my total lack of self-awareness. And stunned by Harrison himself. His beauty, his attraction, his wit, his sheer existence in the same time and place as my own.
“Are you nervous?” Harrison asked.
I shook my head, not taking my eyes off his face.
“Good,” Harrison said.
And then I did take that step. With each second that ticked away, each fraction of an inch I got closer to him, my resolve grew, as did the heat soaring through my body.
Ignoring some remnants of shame that had clouded me for so long, I dropped my gaze to Harrison’s chest. Short, trimmed hair covered his torso, neat and foreign and so, so attractive.
I reached for my belt, but Harrison’s hand moved there first. “Let me,” he said.
As his fingers brushed the skin of my abdomen, my dick throbbed hard and stopped me from breathing for a long moment. A choked, barely audible moan dragged through my throat and surprised Harrison as much as it surprised me.
He looked up and tugged me closer by the belt before unbuckling it. “What happened?” he asked, letting go of the belt and tracing the seam of the waist of my pants from my hips inward, slowly reaching for the button above the zipper.
“I…” My voice was low and husky, just a touch above a whisper, only a little louder than the pattering of water against the tiles in Harrison’s shower. “I’ve been lying to myself.”
“Are you sure? If you’re not—”
“Oh, I’m sure,” I said, placing my hands on Harrison’s waist and pulling him in.
He undid the button and pulled down the zipper, his hand brushing against the growing bulge in my underwear. He smiled and nodded. “You really are,” he agreed.
His hand moved along the length of my cock deliberately, his eyes sparking with lust that was so unmistakable I wondered how I hadn’t realized he’d been looking at me like this earlier.
I leaned into him; the feeling of his hand inside my pants, tracing the fabric of my underwear, made my knees weak. “Don’t stop,” I whispered.
He continued to drag his hand back and forth, following my cock all the way to where it pushed my underwear off my body, then back, fingers moving lightly down to my balls, teasing, promising, offering, asking for the things we could give one another.
Harrison pulled his hand up, tracing the line from my cock to my belly button. “Take off your clothes, Taylor. I want to see you.”
“You first,” I said.
A corner of his lips ticked up a tiny fraction, and then he stepped back from me and peeled his pants down his legs, bending over to pull them off his ankles and feet.
When he straightened, he was magnificent.
He wore pastel pink boxer briefs that made my heart skip a beat.
Not the color I’d associated with Harrison before, but a color that fit him perfectly now.
His underwear wasn’t what my gaze lingered on.
It was the size of the bulge stretching the fabric thin that made me stop.
I hadn’t thought ahead this far. I hadn’t been thinking at all.
The only thing I’d been following was the growing certainty that we had been circling around this for a very long time, never daring to cross the invisible lines that held us caged in our designated places.
When I’d seen the moment of jealousy turn his face red earlier today, this certainty flew off the charts.
After that, every interaction only pushed me further.
It was all one big confirmation: Harrison wanted me as more than a friend.
And when I felt wanted by him, I allowed myself to want him back.
Harrison lifted the waistband of his boxers and pulled them down, dragging them down his big quads and letting them drop to his ankles.
His dick rose straight and proud before him, long and hard, swinging gently with its own weight as Harrison turned a little sideways, his ass sculpted and curved so nicely.
“How does this make you feel?” he asked.
Something grew so unbearably tight in my chest that I couldn’t speak. Instead, I pulled down my pants and underwear in one move, yanked them off my feet, and stood up, riding whatever courage I could muster for this.
I was achingly hard already and desperately needy for his touch, so I moved toward him without a pause, pushing him into the shower and under the pouring hot water.
It sprayed us both instantly, soaking his hair and mine, and Harrison’s back slammed against the tiles as I pressed myself against him, relishing the feeling of his dick touching my abdomen as our bodies touched and merged.
I crushed his mouth with mine, kissing him freely, lips parted and tongue venturing into his mouth, searching for his tongue.
Harrison didn’t hold back. He kissed me just as hard, tongue meeting mine with brutal force and heated breaths moving between us.
By the time my hands found his ass, we were both drenched, and my skin was raw from the heat of the water. It was perfect. It was absolutely fucking perfect.
Harrison’s arm flailed through the air, and the glass door of his shower shut behind me.
He took a decisive step away from the wall, turning us around and pinning me against the tiles instead with one hand splayed across my chest. Breath left me abruptly, and I inhaled slowly as I looked at him, water trickling down his face and muscled torso.
He leaned in, pressing his body hard against mine, trapping me in the best place I could want to be in.
I refused to give this any more thought than it needed.
I let my brain operate on automatic, not letting my thoughts stray into the questions still swirling around us.
What mattered, just here and now, was that Harrison’s weight squished me against the tiles, and his mouth found mine, and his hands moved down to my ass.
Tension soared through me as his fingers sank deep into my flesh, holding my cheeks firmly at first, then pulling them apart a few seconds later.
I could feel him smiling. He pulled his head back just enough to whisper against my lips. “Does that scare you?”
“No,” I huffed. But then, “It’s just…not what I had in mind.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked, a little more playful than his usual self.
I liked this version of him. I felt like I knew this version, but it had been hidden beneath the surface, and he didn’t show it to people as much.
But I’d met the real him before. The Harrison who would stand in a crowded room and gaze at me because he was lost in the moment; the Harrison who would hold my hand and dance with me; the Harrison who would gladly let me run my wet fingers through his hair so people would think we’d had sex.
“And what did you have in mind?” he asked.
I bit my lip and moved my hands down the sides of his torso, over to the small of his back, and down his firm ass. “Something more like this.” My fingers pressed into his flesh, nearing the middle of his ass, and tugged him closer.
I could feel his body react to it, a throb so hard it heated my abdomen, where his cock was trapped between us. Upon feeling it, mine reacted just as hard.
Harrison wore a mysterious little smirk that looked almost like a dare. “You think you can top me?”
“I think I want to try,” I said. The mental image appearing before my eyes was hot enough to fuel me through the night.
I wanted him splayed on his bed, chest pinned against the mattress, ass lifted high, arms spread out, legs shaking with exertion while sweat broke over both our bodies.
Nothing less than that would put out the wildfire that consumed me just now.