31. Gabriel
GAbrIEL
Noah’s hands find the knot riding along my left shoulder blade, and I groan into the pillow before I can stop myself.
“There it is,” he murmurs, working his thumbs into the muscle. “You’ve been carrying half a mountain up here, sir.”
I don’t answer. I don’t trust my voice right now, not with the way my body’s finally letting go after two days of holding itself together through pure stubbornness.
His palms drag down my spine, slow, deliberate, and something in my chest that’s been clenched since Callahan’s voice crackled through that radio starts to loosen for the first time.
He shifts his weight, working lower, and the friction of him settling against the back of my thighs sends a current straight through me that has nothing to do with sore muscles.
I go still.
“Sir?” His hands pause.
“Keep going,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend.
He does, but I’ve lost the thread of relaxation somewhere between his palms on my shoulders and the weight of him straddling me, and now my body’s doing exactly what it’s been doing for six weeks straight—wanting Specialist Noah Reyes. Any way I can get him.
I’m hard. Full and aching against the mattress within a minute, and it’s trapped beneath me, and every push of his hands down my back rocks my hips into the bedding, and it’s the worst kind of relief because it isn’t enough.
I shift. Try to adjust without making it obvious. It doesn’t work. My hips roll again, chasing friction I have no business chasing while a subordinate massages the tension out of my shoulders. A low chuckle rumbles out of him.
“Sir.” Noah’s hands still completely. “Are you—” Another huff of laughter, delighted, wicked. “Oh my God, you’re humping the mattress.”
“I am doing no such thing,” I grind out into the pillow.
“Sure you’re not.” His weight shifts off my thighs, and for one disorienting second I think he’s leaving, but then his hand smooths down my lower back, warm and sure. “Turn over. Let me massage something else for you instead.”
“Noah—”
“Clearly the back rub isn’t doing the trick,” he says, and I can hear the grin without needing to see it. “But I bet I know something that’ll knock you right out.”
I turn onto my back, but it’s not a massage I’m after anymore. He’s kneeling beside me now, brown eyes dark in the lantern light, taking in exactly what state I’m in, and the sight of him looking at me like that only makes it worse.
I breathe out through my nose, long and slow, and close my eyes.
“I want you to fuck me,” I whisper, and the room goes so quiet I hear the generator outside like it’s inside my skull.
Noah doesn’t move.
“Say that again,” he says finally, his tone cautious.
I open my eyes and look at him. “You heard what I said, Specialist. I want you to fuck me.”
“Gabriel.” He shakes his head, some war happening behind his eyes I don’t have patience for right now. “You don’t have to—I mean, we don’t have to rush anything, I know you’ve only just—”
“I’m ready.” I reach up and catch his wrist before he can pull away completely. “I’ve thought about this. More than once. I want it.”
He studies me for a long moment, searching for a lie or a flinch, something that tells him I don’t mean it. He won’t find one. I’ve spent a night walking through mountains not knowing if he was alive, and more nights before that lying in this bunk running from exactly this want. I’m done running.
“Okay,” he breathes, and his expression changes. Now it’s want, it’s hunger. “Okay. Yeah.”
He reaches for the small tube of lube he’s kept here since that first time, and comes back to kneel between my legs like he’s done this a hundred times, which, unlike me, he probably has.
“Gonna take this slow,” he says, popping the cap. “Tell me if anything’s too much.”
I shake my head. “I’m not made of glass, Reyes.”
“No,” he agrees, spreading lube over two fingers, “but you are new at this, so shut up and let me do my job.”
His first finger presses against me, slick and careful, and I suck in a breath at the strange intrusion of it, the pressure foreign and not unwelcome. He works it in slowly, watching my face the entire time, gauging every twitch.
“Breathe,” he murmurs. “Just breathe, let me in.”
I do, and the burn eases into something else, something that has my hips shifting without my input.
“There you go,” he says, low and warm. “Doing so good for me, sir.”
A second finger joins the first, and I hiss, my hands fisting in the sheet at my sides.
He works me open with a patience I didn’t know he had in him, scissoring, stretching, murmuring filthy praise every time I make a sound I can’t hold back.
My cock is leaking steadily against my stomach, into a puddle of precum, and I’ve never felt anything like this.
I never dared to touch myself there, not once in forty-five years, because touching myself there would have meant admitting I wanted it, and wanting it was the one thing my whole world told me a man never does.
Now I’m pushing back against his fingers, chasing the stretch, and I can’t wait to feel his cock instead.
He crooks his fingers, and the world goes white.
My hips buck hard enough that he has to press a hand flat against my stomach to hold me down.
“Does that feel good, sir?” His voice has dropped into something ravenous and delighted at once.
“Like having your ass played with?” He does it again, and I bite down a sound that would’ve carried through the whole row of huts.
“Just you wait until I hit that spot with my dick. Every single thrust.”
“Noah—” It comes out strangled.
“Almost there.” He works a third finger in alongside the other two, stretching me wider, and the burn and the pleasure blur together until I can’t tell where one ends and the other starts. “Almost ready for me.”
When he finally withdraws his fingers, I feel empty in a way I didn’t know was possible. I close my eyes and breathe through my nose. I hear the click of the cap again, the slick sound of his hand working over his own length, and then he’s pressing against my entrance.
“Last chance to change your mind,” he says, and even now, even hard as granite, he means it.
I open my eyes and capture his gaze. “Reyes. Get inside me,” I command. “Now.”
He laughs, breathless, and pushes in.
I groan at the stretch, deeper than his fingers, deeper than anything, and he goes slow, an inch at a time, watching my face for any sign to stop. There isn’t one. I want all of him, want to feel exactly how full this can make me.
“Fuck,” he breathes when he’s finally seated, hips flush against me. “Gabriel, fuck, you feel—”
“Move,” I order. I need him to move.
He does. Slow at first, testing, one hand braced beside my head, the other wrapped around my cock, stroking in time with the roll of his hips.
“That’s it,” he murmurs against my jaw, dirty and soft all at once. “Just like that, sir. Gonna take such good care of you.”
The slow drag of him inside me is a pleasure I don’t have words for, and when his hips find a rhythm that drags him right against that spot he found with his fingers, I stop being able to keep quiet at all.
“Noah—” My voice cracks on his name.
“Yeah.” He picks up the pace, breath going ragged above me. “Right there. I felt you clench.”
He fucks me harder, the bunk creaking under us loud enough that I should care and don’t, his hips slamming forward now, the drag and slide of him lighting up every nerve I’ve spent two decades pretending I didn’t have.
I’m not going to last. I already know it, feel it building low and fast, and I grip his forearm hard enough to bruise.
“I’m close,” I grit out. “Noah, I’m—come with me. Fill me when you come.”
“Fuck, yes, sir.” His rhythm stutters, breaks apart into something desperate. “Gonna fill you up so good—”
He strokes me twice more, and I come apart beneath him, spilling hot over his fist and my own stomach, my whole body clenching around him as the release tears through me.
Noah follows a second later with a broken groan he muffles against my good shoulder, hips stuttering as he empties into me, warm and claiming and exactly what I asked for.
We stay tangled together, both of us shaking, his weight a welcome pressure against my chest.
“Still alive?” he mumbles finally, lips against my collarbone.
“Barely,” I manage.
He laughs softly, and I feel it against my skin more than I hear it. For the first time in two days, my body finally, completely, lets go.
“That was…” I whisper, lost for words. Noah lifts his head to search my gaze, like he could find them there. I’ve never seen such softness in them. “Incredible, Noah,” I finish on an exhale.
The corners of his lips twitch up into a smile. “Yeah,” he murmurs, then clears his throat. “For me too. I… I love you, sir. Gabriel.”
I blink hard, something in my eye. I’m not sure Noah Reyes has ever said those words before he said them to me. So I pull him in for a soft kiss, my thumb caressing the sharp line of his cheekbone.
“I love you, Noah,” I whisper against his lips. “Specialist.”