Chapter 19
MILES
Joel:
how’d it go?
The message from Joel was timestamped four hours ago, and I’d only just had a chance to check it. I wanted to nap. I wanted to hide in the woods forever. I wanted to cry.
I wanted Booker. I wanted him to hold me again, like he had on Sunday, and idly play with my shirt.
Maybe run his hands through my hair. I wanted to tilt my head back for a kiss and feel him smile against my mouth and bask in the presence of someone who made me feel so safe and comfortable after what had been, I was pretty sure, the worst day of my career so far.
Miles:
there was a slight hitch in my plans
That was an understatement.
I had no idea what the council had thought. Seth had been in my corner, playing up the things I’d accomplished, but all five of the other council members had taken it all in without so much as blinking, as far as I’d seen. No enthusiasm for anything.
I felt like I was letting Seth down. Like I was letting Otter Bay down.
Joel:
well, you know what they say
if at first you don’t succeed…
Try, try again.
My feet took me to the bar without conscious thought. As soon as I stepped inside and heard Booker’s voice calling out to me, I made up my mind. I knew what I wanted. It was time to ask for it.
There was no one else in the bar yet, just the sound of Andre setting up in the kitchen. We were alone. This time, no one was going to interrupt me.
I was behind the bar a second later, still operating on autopilot. I didn’t need to think about this anymore. I’d done all my thinking already.
Booker’s brows were knitted together as I approached him, but they softened when I took his injured hand and he laughed softly.
“Still haven’t lost a patient,” he said. “I’m here.”
“I know,” I said, looking up at him, meeting those steady grey eyes and feeling as though a weight had lifted off me.
Booker was here. He was right here.
“That’s why I’m here,” I said.
And then I kissed him.
Or... I kind of crashed into his mouth. But it was the best crash I’d ever experienced. Nothing, I was pretty sure, had ever felt as good as this. The soaring sensation of finally flying after a lifetime of not knowing what the hell my wings were for.
At least, for the three seconds it took me to realize he was frozen still, tense as an elastic band about to snap.
I swallowed past a lump in my throat as I backed off, cold horror rolling down my spine. I’d ruined everything. Booker wasn’t... Booker didn’t...
“I—I’m sorry,” I stuttered. “I... shouldn’t have... just because you’re gay doesn’t mean... I’m so sorry Book, I didn’t mean...”
Booker’s hand tightened around mine, squeezing firmly. I looked down, taking a deep breath, trying to gather my thoughts.
He wasn’t kicking me out, at least.
When I looked up at him again, he was looking at me like he’d never seen me before.
And he was still holding my hand.
“Too much to hope that this is what you were about to ask for earlier?” he asked. Had his voice always sounded like that? Like it was curling up in the pit of my stomach?
“I was,” I admitted. “It’s too much, I know, but you’re so safe and comfortable and—”
Booker cut me off with the brush of his thumb over my lower lip.
“Nothing is too much for you,” he murmured. No, his voice hadn’t always been like this. I’d unlocked a secret, even sexier Booker voice and I wanted him to use it to whisper in my ear while he peeled my clothes off. “Tell me what you want.”
“Take me upstairs?” I asked, hopeful.
“Now?” Booker raised an eyebrow.
“I could wait,” I said.
But I didn’t want to. I’d been waiting my whole life for this, and I didn’t want to wait a minute more.
I watched Booker take his phone out of his pocket, tap on it for a handful of seconds, and then tuck it back in. “You don’t have to,” he said. “If you’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said. I’d never been as sure of anything in my life.
My breath hitched as he stepped forward, and then all of a sudden my feet lifted clear off the floor.
Now that I was sitting in Booker’s lap, I didn’t ever want to be anyplace else.
I had both his hands on me, one pushed up under my sweater vest, warm through the thin fabric of my shirt. The other was splayed over my thigh, high up but not quite on my ass.
Booker was being so gentle with me.
He felt so good I could’ve cried. If I’d thought kissing Joel was a surprise, this was a revelation.
I laughed into his mouth between needy kisses, learning something new with each one. What felt good, what felt great, how I could make Booker grunt and sigh and squirm under me.
There was so much to talk about, but I didn’t feel like talking right now. We were both saying everything we needed to with touches and kisses and the comfort of being together.
This was what I’d been missing. The right person.
My heart skipped as I shifted my weight and felt Booker hard against me, unmistakably turned on. By me.
I wasn’t sure that’d ever been true for anyone before.
I had to tug my own shirt out of the way to get his bare hands on my skin, but as soon as he made contact he gripped me tight, like he was afraid I’d disappear.
I wouldn’t. This was exactly where I wanted to be, exactly what I needed. Booker, and his warmth and kindness, his safety, and the chance to finally figure out what I’d been missing out on.
His breath hitched as I ground down against him. I wanted to hear that sound over and over and over again, as many times as I could get him to make it.
“Ignore it,” he said, choked and breathless and holy shit the thought that I was doing that to him was enough to make my head spin.
“I want it,” I said, impressed with myself, my own confidence. But then I was confident. With Booker, I could be confident that nothing bad would happen. That I could have whatever I wanted and it’d be okay. It’d always be okay.
Booker made another needy sound I wanted to hear a million times and surged forward to kiss me again, grip tightening, the hand on my thigh sliding up to squeeze my butt and pull me closer.
Everything about him felt so good, even as my thighs strained, even as my heart pounded like it was trying to escape my ribcage.
I didn’t quite have experience with this situation, but I had Ryder’s book, and luckily, Warren and Ryan had been in exactly this position.
Booker gasped—another sound I wanted more of—as I reached for his jeans, fumbling with the button, breaking the kiss to pant for breath and look at what I was doing because I barely knew how to operate a jean fly on myself, let alone another person. I hadn’t owned jeans in a decade.
Booker hissed as I got his fly open. I was planning to make notes about all of this later, when there was more blood in my brain and I had a pen handy.
What made him gasp, what made him sigh, what other reactions I could get from him.
I wanted a record of all of it so I’d know what I was doing again and again.
I ran the tip of my finger along the length of his cock through his underwear and his head fell back like I’d flicked a switch.
“Thought you hadn’t done this before?” he rasped, rough and perfect. I hadn’t imagined he could somehow get sexier, but I was starting to get why Ryan had loved having Warren at his mercy so much.
“Research librarian,” I said, bending forward to catch his mouth again, swallowing a throaty groan as I palmed Booker and he melted into the couch cushions like I’d turned him into a liquid.
Yeah. I was really getting the appeal of turning a big, safe, reliable man into a puddle of want.
I nearly melted, too, as I shoved his underwear out of the way and got my hands on warm skin.
Booker gasped into my mouth as I pinned him to the couch and curled my fingers around him.
He felt huge in my hands and I wanted to look, but I also didn’t want to stop kissing him.
I wanted all of this and more, everything I could get, but I didn’t want to move.
Not now, maybe not ever. Maybe I’d just live out the rest of my life in Booker’s lap, making him feel like this.
Booker’s hands felt so good on my skin, gentle again now but still searingly hot, grounding me as I forced myself to look down between us, watching my own hand move up and down the length of his cock, precome beading at the tip, rolling down the length.
I was doing that. Booker was hard and leaking and so obviously turned on and enjoying this, and it was all me.
I wanted him to come for me. There was nothing I wanted more in the whole world, right now, than to feel Booker come in my hand.
“Will you come for me?” I asked aloud. I’d meant it to sound like a confident command, like Ryan had sounded when he asked Warren to come for him, but it’d come out hopeful and pleading.
Booker didn’t seem to mind, already nodding, fingers tightening on my butt as his head fell back again, chest heaving with every breath.
I remembered something else I’d read and leaned forward to follow him, tilting my head to press a kiss to the base of his throat, just barely scraping my teeth against the sensitive skin there.
All at once, Booker jerked up into my hand, a sharp gasp punched out of him, and I got what I’d asked for. A hot rush of fluid spilling over my fingers, Booker’s throat vibrating against my lips as he groaned, low and long, rocking his hips as he rode out his orgasm.
That had probably not been the most skillful handjob ever performed, but Booker made me feel like an expert.
A moment later there was a hand in my hair, Booker dragging me up for a messy, needy kiss. Then his fingers brushed against the front of my pants and I saw stars.
I hadn’t been paying attention to my own body, too focused on Booker and everything I was learning about him and myself. Turned out I was also painfully turned on by watching him, so much that the slightest pressure was agony.
I whimpered into his mouth, hips jerking into his hand as he stroked me again, firmer this time, more pleasure than pain. He shushed me, so gentle and caring like he was in everything else, even as he fumbled with my fly.