Chapter 14McCormick
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
MCCORMICK
Stripped down to nothing but my boxers, I brush my teeth a second time and study my reflection in the mirror. I’m just wasting time in here, fucking around because I don’t have the balls to get in bed with him. All night I’ve built up this blow job in my head and now it’s this big thing, this main event, and I’m the star of the show. I feel a little sick to my stomach.
“Come to bed, Mac,” Stiles calls. “You’re just drawing this out and making me more nervous.”
So I’m not the only one. Good.
Switching off the light, I come out of my hidey-hole and sit on the edge of the bed. Should I take my leg off or leave it on? I feel a little more confident leaving it on, more… whole.
Stiles climbs out of bed and kneels at my feet. Is he gonna do it right here? Like this?
He reaches for my prosthetic and slides it off, propping it next to the nightstand. “Wait, I was gonna?—”
“No, you’re not. You don’t need it.” He rolls the sleeve down my thigh and reaches for the lotion on the nightstand, massaging a dollop into my skin like he’s seen me do a hundred times.
My stomach flips. Stiles’s fingers, warm and calloused, glide over my skin, and it feels more intimate than the blow job he promised me. Maybe because he’s touching the most vulnerable part of me. It's never been an issue between us, not once in four years, but tonight is different. Tonight, he’s seeing me through new eyes. Not as a best friend, but as a lover. And I want to feel perfect for him. Be perfect for him.
That’s what Stiles deserves in a partner, someone that rocks his world, someone who robs him of breath and makes his knees weak. Someone other than me.
Even in the dim lighting, I can see his heart in his eyes when he looks up at me, full of emotions neither of us knows how to put into words. His throat slides, and I realize he’s as nervous as I am.
Is he worried he won’t do a good job?
Is he worried he won’t like it? Or that I won’t?
His head dips, and he presses a kiss to the tip of my thigh, to the bundle of scars left over from my surgery where they closed up my leg. His lips are soft and reverent like he’s honoring the part of me that was lost to war. My sacrifice to my country, my team. I want to pull him up off his knees, but I’m frozen, my throat convulsing because I can’t stop swallowing past the lump of nerves gathered there.
This was supposed to be hotter than hot. Two friends getting off with each other. At least, that’s what Stiles agreed to, it’s what he said he wanted. This doesn’t feel like a hot quick blowie. This feels like… more, with feelings and shit.
Stiles knows I always get nervous when hooking up with a new girl for the first time, wondering what she’ll say when she sees my leg. Maybe he’s just putting me at ease to show me it’s not an issue with us. So that I can relax and enjoy the rest. I thread my fingers through his thick dark hair and turn his head toward me.
“I got something else you can put your mouth on.”
He grins wickedly. ”I’m getting there.”
Oh yeah, he’s definitely nervous, and the trail of kisses he places up my thigh is his way of working up to it. I spread my legs wider so he can fit his head between them. Stiles puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes me back. I straighten and shuffle my body to give him room to join me up on the bed, and he crawls slowly between my legs.
He’s in no rush to remove the safety barrier between my skin and his mouth. His warm moist breath puffs over my balls, making my dick kick. It must embolden him because he chuckles and licks a stripe up my shaft over the cotton, now hard behind my boxers. Raising up on my elbows, I look down at my best friend's dark head nestled between my legs, and my mind is blown. Never thought I would see him there, but the sight of it has my heart hammering away at my chest. He’s barely gotten started, and I’m already ready to finish.
“Get there faster before I blow.”
He chuckles again, deep and throaty, and flashes his grin at me. “Your stamina is impressive.”
I laugh, and just like that, much of the tension is dissolved. It’s just me and my best bud, cracking jokes and making fun of a situation to lighten the mood.
“Should I get myself off first? So I last longer?”
“Hell, no. Nobody’s touching this but me tonight.” To emphasize his point, he cups my junk, cradling my balls in his palm.
Stiles works his mouth over the hard ridge, soaking the thin cotton until it plasters to my dick like a second skin. The tease is killing me. Pure torture. Finally, he puts me out of my misery and peels the waistband of my boxers down my hips, chucking them to the floor.
But does he finally put his mouth on me? No! He just hovers like a creeper, breathing warm air over my sensitive dick. I’m dying to buck my hips up into his face and shove it down his throat. If it wasn’t his first time, I’d consider it.
“Stiles, man, come on. Don’t leave me like this.”
He chuckles again. I’m glad one of us is enjoying this. Stiles stretches his tongue out, placing teasing licks that criss-cross my shaft. He coats each vein and ridge with his thick saliva before delving his tongue into my slit to capture his first taste of me.
It’s not enough. Not nearly enough. I need a hell of a lot more.
He grabs the base of my dick, pointing it straight up toward his mouth, and slides his lips over my cock head. The sound that leaves my mouth is unintelligible. It’s that first lick of pleasure, going from nothing to the wet heat of his mouth, the gentle suction and glide of his velvety tongue. It’s almost too much. He does it again, and all of the air I was holding in my chest leaves my body in a rush, leaving me empty and gasping for my next breath.
Without giving me time to recover, he continues to swallow me inch by slow torturous inch, easing off and gathering more saliva in his mouth before descending again. By the time he reaches three quarters of the way down my shaft, my toes are curled tightly and I’m fisting the sheets, trying to hold back from grabbing the back of his head and fucking his mouth.
Stiles works up a rhythm and I can tell he’s concentrating hard because he’s wholly focused on my dick.
Look up at me, just once. Meet my eyes so I can try and read you.
But he doesn’t, or won’t. Instead, he rasps, “Feel good?”
“Fucking incredible.” My breathing picks up, coming as hard and fast as my heartbeat. His beard tickles my balls and I groan. “Hphmm. Fuck, your mouth.”
I wish he could go on and on and last all night. I wish he never had to come up for air. I hope he loves it as much as I do because I never want this feeling to end.
Stiles finds a rhythm, syncing his hand with his mouth, working in tandem to bring me off.
Burnt crispy dried up hotdogs that taste like charcoal.
Girls with lipstick on their teeth who try to kiss you.
Toe lint and flaking skin that smell like day-old cheese.
I’m trying my best to hold off, but nothing, not even the most disgusting thoughts, are putting me off of my desire.
I can feel heat gathering in my gut, the muscles in my ass and thighs tensing, and I know without a doubt my orgasm is coming for me like a freight train. I’m unable to slow it down or stop it. Nor do I want to. I just want to feel it roll through me.
“Don’t stop. I’m close.” Is he going to swallow me? I want him to. Need him to. Didn’t even realize it was something I needed until now. It’s a possessive thought, a selfish, greedy thought, but I want my load in his belly, marking him from the inside.
My last thought before he sucks all conscious thought out of my head through my cock is that if his mouth feels this good, what does his ass feel like?
Stiles makes a choking sound as he tries to swallow me, and I raise up again on my arms, so I can watch his struggle. I rub my thumb over his lips, parting them to see a drop or two of milky white seed drip down his chin. I swipe it up and push it back inside his mouth, and he sucks on my thumb, his eyes finally focused on mine.
The urge to kiss him is undeniable, more insistent than my need to breathe. Sitting up all the way, I lock my arms around his neck and draw him forward, crushing our mouths together in a kiss that makes my frantic heart slow down, my breathing even out, and everything inside of me settles and makes sense. Nothing has ever felt so right and natural.
This kiss.
This moment.
This man.
This is what I’ve been searching for. What I’ve been waiting for for thirty-four years.
Fucking fuck. I’m in love with him. I’m in love with my best friend, and I agreed to this ridiculous fucking deal that all we were doing was trading blow jobs. I told him it didn’t mean anything.
I lied.
Across the hall, a dog stops barking. The diesel truck on the street below my window moves off into the distance. The water running through the pipes in the wall, separating my apartment from my neighbor’s, turns off. As the house grows quieter, my mind gets louder. Thoughts, doubts, voices from the past, haunt me like ghosts.
Beside me, Stiles stirs, deep in sleep and oblivious to the war raging in my head. His warm breath puffs over my shoulder, as reassuring as a weighted blanket. How did I ever sleep soundly before we shared a bed? His bushy brows and dark lashes twitch before smoothing out, and he rolls over to find a cool spot.
Throwing off the covers, I reach for my crutches and make my way as silently as possible out to the kitchen. The cold, hard linoleum floor beneath my ass soothes me, grounds me. So different from the shifting desert sand or my soft bed. This feels safe.
I tip my head back against the cabinet door behind me and close my eyes. Tonight, I did something that will change the rest of my life. And I don’t know if it’s a change I can live with.
What if I ruined everything? What if my feelings push him away? If we’re on two different pages, and can’t come together, then I’ve…
Never once have I contemplated taking my life. Not when I lost my leg, not when I lost Danny. Not the grueling lonely months of rehab that followed by surgery. Not even when I found myself out of the Army, displaced like a fish without a bowl, not knowing what came next for me. But tonight, the thought crosses my mind like a dark shadow dancing along the wall. If I’ve lost him? Done something to irreparably damage our friendship? There’s no coming back from that. I can’t live without Stiles, there just isn’t enough good left over after him worth waking up for every day.
Without Stiles, there would be no point.
He would kick my ass for feeling that way, which is further proof that I need him. He’s the best thing I’ve got going for me, and I would do anything to keep him in my life, even if it means lying to his face every day about my feelings.
Loneliness takes root inside of me, and spreads like a cancer, affecting every part of my body and mind.
“Thought I’d find you out here.”
Stiles doesn’t turn on a light or try to pull me to my feet. He just sits down beside me in the dark, shoulder-to-shoulder against the cabinet.
“What’s going on inside your head?”
I want to reassure him that I’m not stuck in the past, in a flashback that makes me dangerous to myself and to him, but I also don’t want to tell him I’m thinking about us. If he thinks, even for a second, that I regret what we did, he’ll blame himself, and I’ll never forgive myself for putting that doubt in his head.
Stiles doesn’t deserve that. This is all my fault. I’m the one that pushed and pushed for this, that couldn’t let it go. I dared him to kiss me.
“Everything.”
He grunts, like he understands. Bending his legs, Stiles braces his arms on his knees and leans his head on my shoulder, eyes closed.
The fact that he’s seeking comfort from me or reassuring me instead of freaking out or second-guessing everything between us reminds me how solid we are.
Ride or die.
Tears burn my eyes and I fight to hold them back. I can’t believe I threatened our foundation because the idea of kissing him thrilled me so much.
What in the ever-loving-fuck is wrong with me?
This is Stiles. He’s straight. He kissed me, he sucked my dick, and maybe he liked it, maybe he didn’t, but he would do it again just because it’s me. Is he even capable of saying no to me? Why am I taking advantage of him?
“Stiles, I—” I choke on the words, my voice sounding like I ran it through the garbage disposal.
“Don’t,” Stiles murmurs, not even opening his eyes. “I know you liked it. You fucking loved it. Don’t pretend like you’re sorry. I know you’re not.” He lifts his head and looks into my eyes, and even though the kitchen is dark, I can see what little light there is reflected in his dark eyes. “And neither am I. Tonight was… eye-opening. I laid awake in bed for a long time running shit through my head.”
“Yeah? What did you come up with?”
“I don’t want to do this again.”
I knew it. I fucking knew it!
“At least, not as casual friends,” Stiles explains. “There’s nothing casual about us, or about what we did. The next time I put my mouth on you, you’ll know it means a whole lot more than friends helping each other get off. Deal?”
More than friends? “Fucking deal.”
His lips find mine, and I lose my battle with the tears I’m trying to hold in. They roll down my cheeks as my tongue slides along his, sealing our bargain.
More than friends. We have our whole lives ahead of us to work on the rest.