Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Nash
I’m not sure why I stayed.
Maybe it was because his eyes asked me to, maybe it was because I wanted to bask in his realization.
Maybe it was because a small part of me likes the way it feels to have his body pressed against my own.
With the little Fowler’s arms still wrapped tightly around me, I pull his hand away, bringing it to my mouth, and I press a kiss to his palm. He stirs behind me with a sleepy groan, and I kiss him again.
Again.
One more time.
He rolls away from me and I hear him fumble with something on his nightstand before he mumbles, “It’s not even six yet.”
I flip myself to face him, and I take in the mussy sleep that covers him with a chuckle as he scrubs a hand over his face. If it’s not six, that means that we’ve only been out for three hours or so; but I don’t really give a shit.
I climb over him and drop my mouth to his, trailing my hands over his strong chest and feeling his heart thump away just beneath the surface.
“I gotta go take a shower,” he grumbles. “And you gotta get out of here before my family starts waking up.”
“We can manage both,” I muse.
The confusion on his face is replaced with mischief as he scrambles out of the bed and toward the door, poking his head out and gesturing for me to follow him.
I keep my eyes glued to the perfect, perky ass that he always hides under those damn slacks.
I really need to have my stylist get him into something better-fitted to his shape.
As childish as it may be to be sneaking through a house as a grown adult, there’s something thrilling about hiding under Colt Fowler’s roof and fucking his son behind his back.
The two of us slip into a bathroom down the hall and he quickly locks the door behind us. Fowler Junior flips on the overhead fan, which fills the room with a low mechanical hum, then he reaches in past the glass sliding door to turn the shower on.
I wrap my arms around his waist, trailing kisses from the top of his shoulder up to the space behind his ear.
He flinches with a quiet laugh, just like he did the last time that I touched him there; it does tickle.
I fight a smile against his skin as I log the information away in the back of my mind to use later.
The water drenches us as we step into the shower, which is nearly a snug fit with the two of us, but I don’t think either of us care about that at all.
I let Fowler Junior take the lead as he pushes me backward against the shower wall and he draws my mouth into his. I bring my hands to his arms and slide them over every curve of muscle, following down the length of his toned back.
“We only have, like, ten minutes,” he tells me. “We have to hurry.”
I bite down a chuckle, tracing a thumb over the sharp angle of his jaw. “Now, I’m taking my time,” I croon. “I don’t like to do what I’m told, either.”
My teeth graze his lower lip and I leave a trail of kisses down his neck, his chest, the carved plane of his stomach, teasing him as his cock swells under my touch.
Dropping onto my knees, I grab onto the base of his shaft and drag my tongue over it, keeping my touch featherlight.
He gasps at the contact and plants a hand firmly onto the wall next to him for support.
I pull his cock into my mouth, feeling his body tense and relax in just moments, and I wrap a hand around it, stroking as I tease the tip with my tongue.
“Christ,” he breathes as his hips give small thrusts, pushing more of his shaft into my mouth.
I bring my free hand up between his legs and use it to cradle his balls, teasing for just a few seconds before I gently massage them against my palm. A strained whimper pours from his lips, and I moan my own approval as my tongue laps at his slit.
He’s at war with himself, and I know it.
I fought the same war twenty-four years ago; the fear, the shame, the insistence that a part of him doesn’t exist. I’m all too familiar with it, and I can feel it in his body; in the small moments where he tenses, trying to deny himself the pleasure of letting go rather than give himself over to it wholly.
He whispers something – maybe nothing more than nonsense – and I can’t hear him over the splash of the water, but his body jerks and his stomach tightens as his tip angles down the back of my throat.
“Nash, shit,” he pants, orgasm in his grasp. “I—”
If he’s going to deny himself pleasure, then I’ll deny him, too.
I pull his cock from my mouth and stand, slapping a smirk onto my face as he gapes at me, his chest heaving.
“What are you doing?”
“I told you,” I tease. “I’m taking my time.”
“Oh my god, you’re such a prick. I was so close.”
His right hand flies down to his shaft, wrapping around it, and I let him get in two long strokes before grabbing onto his wrist and bringing his hand to my mouth instead, kissing his palm and ignoring the daggers that he’s staring at me.
I enjoy teasing him.
And he enjoys being teased.
I wrap my own hand around his cock, applying a gentle pressure, and I lean in close to growl into his ear, “Does the pretty boy want to get fucked? You have to tell me what you want.”
“I—” he hesitates. “Fine, yes, Christ.”
It’s not exactly the enthusiasm that I was hoping for, but I’ll take it.
I chuckle and meet his mouth with mine, running the palm of my hand across his tip as a reward.
He buckles and pushes his hands through my hair before turning his body away from me.
He keeps his eyes on me, watching over his shoulder as I settle behind him, firmly pressing a hand between his shoulder blades to angle him forward against the wall.
I push my cock inside of him and he tenses, grunting as I slowly fill him up. I give him a few careful thrusts and feel him relax, pushing himself back against me.
He feels so fucking good wrapped around my dick, I could stay here for the rest of my life.
My arm snakes around his middle while my hips work, and he bites back a moan, trying to keep himself quiet…the effort is kind of charming, really.
“I told you you would let me fuck you again,” I croon at him, my lips pressed against the shell of his ear. “And again, and again, and again...”
“Just shut up,” he orders through his teeth, and I bury my face in the crook of his neck to hide my laughter.
The embers of his fire coming home to him might just be my new favorite thing. It’s like a shiny new toy, and I want to see just how far I can take it.
Heavy pounding lands on the door of the bathroom, followed by Colt Fowler’s irritated voice. “Emmett!” He shouts, and his son freezes; forcing me to still, as well. “Let’s go!”
“I’m—” he clears his throat, “I’m in the shower!”
“You’ve been in there for half an hour! You’re clean! Let’s go!”
“I just need another minute!” He hollers to his father, and I grab onto his hips, slowly pushing every inch of my dick inside of him with a deliberate thrust of my hips. He whimpers and shakes as I touch his most sensitive spot, throwing a glare over his shoulder. “Go on without me!”
Silence hangs on the other side of the door for several moments too long before his father finally yells back, “You had better be there in forty minutes! Not a second longer!”
“We can count to forty, pretty boy,” I tease quietly, thrusting deep inside of him with each number that I count. “One…two...three…”
“I will be!” He answers, his voice cracking as a moan breaks through. He mouths ‘I’m gonna kill you’ over his shoulder at me, and I offer him a playful smile in return.
We sit in silence for thirty seconds to make sure that we’re alone again before Fowler pushes his beautiful ass back against me and groans, “Hurry up, I’m fucking dying.”
You asked for what you want, so your wish is my command, pretty boy.
I drive into him over and over again, hitting his new favorite spot, and I watch as his body falters and his breath leaves him.
A strained moan is the only sound that he’s able to make as his cock pulses, shooting jets of cum at the shower wall.
I hold his hips tight to my body as I follow suit, biting my tongue until the copper taste of blood fills my mouth in an effort to keep his name from slipping past my lips.
·
“Remind me why you’re staying here?” I ask him, pulling a comb through my still-damp hair and shaping it as I go. “Didn’t you buy a house not that long ago?”
He bounces in place to pull his slacks over his legs and buttons them. “It’s complicated,” he tells me as he pulls the zipper shut. “Dad thought I should come home for a while.” I level a look at him, silently prying for more information. “I wasn’t doing well.”
“Wasn’t? Past tense?” I grab my Rolex off of the nightstand next to his bed and slide it over my wrist. “Why not go home then?”
“He’s keeping an eye on me, okay? Drop it.”
What?
Something tugs in my chest, and it fucking burns.
He grabs a shirt from his closet and hurries through the room while he slides his arms into the sleeves, clearly agitated by the conversation. Picking up my own pants from the floor, I follow him down the stairs and into the kitchen.
“Did you do something to yourself?”
“No,” he snaps.
“You’re lying to me,” I bark, shoving his shoulder. “What did you do?”
Why the fuck do I even care so much?
He looks almost as surprised as I feel.
“You’re Nash Montgomery,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “You wouldn’t get it.”
“Would you like to place money on that wager?” I ask him. “Try me – you’ll lose.”
Reaching for a bag of coffee grounds in a high cabinet, he tells me, “I go underwater sometimes and trick my body into thinking it’s drowning so I can reset, and then I come back up. My dad came over and saw me and he made me come home.”
“You hurt yourself.”
“It’s not hurting myself. It’s—” he stops himself, heaving a frustrated sigh. “Never mind.”
I watch as he carefully measures the grounds, adding water to the machine next, and I perch on one of the stools resting against the island with my arms crossed over my chest and arch in my brow.
I’m not sure why it matters to me what he does or why he does it.
I’m not sure why a part of me feels compelled to tell him about my own hardships.
“Why were you doing it?” I ask him.
“Because my mom ditched me twenty-five years ago,” he answers with a humorless chuckle.
At his words, my own family comes to mind; too many memories flooding in from all directions.
And then it hits me.
The man standing before me is not a broken toy at all.
He’s a concentrated, tangled ball of agony and chaos, hidden beneath a carefully-crafted veneer of the person that he wants to be.
The perfect student, the perfect son, the cool guy with all the friends who never does anything but smile and have a good time.
That veneer was cracked, and now all of the painful ooze inside is seeping out, and he doesn’t know how to stop it; doesn’t want anyone to see it. The vulnerability scares him, so he drowns. He makes the outside match the inside.
His mask is just as important to him as mine is to me.
Why show me what’s underneath it?
“So,” he continues, “once that’s all handled, I’m good to go back.”
What? Oh, right. He mentioned something about graduation and his house.
“And when you go back?” I ask him. “What happens then?”
“You mean, about…this?” He responds, gesturing toward himself, “I don’t know. It’s not like I can tell anyone about it.”
“Not even your father?”
“No,” he shakes his head. “No, I’m not telling him. Ever. I can’t.”
He moves through the kitchen, reaching for a mug from one of the many cabinets to fill with coffee, combing his fingers through the damp hair which is not yet styled that keeps falling over his eyes.
He really is a very pretty boy.
“He’s known me one way my entire life,” he continues. “I can’t just change that on him.”
“You can’t change it on him? Or on yourself?”
Studying me for a moment, he slides the filled mug in front of me and reaches for another. “Both.”
I watch him move around the kitchen, never staying still for longer than it takes to pour a splash of creamer into his mug, not even as he pulls it to his lips to take a drink.
The wheels turning in his head are visible from here; I’m not sure that he even realizes that he’s fidgeting as much as he is.
He grabs my wrist, turning my watch to face him, and curses under his breath. “I have twenty-five minutes to get to work and the office is twenty away in good traffic. I should go.”
“Pretty boy, sit down for a minute,” I instruct him, and he pauses for a moment before he resumes his constant state of motion. I move toward him, leaving my mug untouched on the countertop, and I grab his face in my hands, pressing my lips to his. “Stop.”
“What’s that for?” He asks.
“You needed to reset,” I tell him as I give his cheek a few gentle pats.