Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Skylar
My eyes wouldn’t have moved from where they were glued to Ezra’s face even if someone dangled a rope of canary diamonds in front of me. Every hour we spent together, I had the breathtaking privilege of watching him trust me more and more. With every gain in trust, he let me see more of him, like his worry he’d fall short because he wasn’t the world’s best conversationalist, and his quiet but pointed territorialism.
With how much he let me see in his dark eyes, he didn’t need to say much.
I stroked his jawline softly with my thumb and nodded at him solemnly.
“Cute staring contest, but, like, are you going to introduce me, Sky?”
Tiegan’s sharp voice ruined the moment.
Actually, he’d ruined my whole day, if I were being honest. And if you couldn’t be honest inside your own head, where could you be honest? He’d shown up unannounced and uninvited at campus before noon, since we still shared our locations with each other, run his judgy eyes over the library where I was working with a few people in my cohort, and waved a dismissive hand at it all while he said, “Surprise, babe. Take the rest of the day off.”
I’d then spent two tiring hours escorting Tiegan around Wildflower, which he said was off the beaten path and used words like quaint to describe all my favorite places I showed him. There were plenty of visitors who came here and looked happy about it, but Tiegan had had the air of an art critic being forced to go to a flea market, his nose stuck in the air. When I first got here, I’d never made fun of anyone, not even when I’d been at my lowest.
Then he’d complained about needing to go to my place to take care of Scooter, asking why I’d want a pet when this little adventure is surely overcooked . My jaw had creaked with how hard I held back. We’d known each other long enough that I could hear his fear of losing me to this place—this life —that he didn’t understand. But by the time I’d seen Rocky bounding joyfully toward me, I’d been about at the end of my patience, and once I’d realized Ezra wasn’t in sight, I’d practically told Tiegan to shut up while I fixed it.
Now I watched Ezra’s eyes shutter as they moved to Tiegan.
Pushing to his feet in one slow, lazy show of strength, he held out his calloused hand. “I’m Ezra,” he said calmly as Tiegan laid his fingers over Ezra’s for a split second, like the pope offering his ring to be kissed. “Thank you for helping Skylar keep my dog safe.”
“Yes, yes, a happy occasion,” he said, quick and fickle, eyes zig-zagging away from Ezra. “Can we go out? I’m dying to see your new favorite bar here .”
The way Tiegan dismissed Ezra was the last straw, and I felt this huge wave of disappointment and shame hit me. Was this what I’d been like before I moved here, judgmental and always looking for the next thing, not truly caring about anyone at all?
I knew I’d grown since I got here, but I sucked in a quick, panicked breath at the idea.
But then Ezra was there, wrapping an arm around my waist, his fingers slipping under the hem of my tee shirt to tease my skin. “No, we’re not going out,” he told Tiegan.
“What?” Tiegan pouted. “Then what are we doing?”
Ezra shifted his weight and a tiny frown pulled at his mouth.
Biting back an annoyed sigh, I ran my hand up Ezra’s back and told the person who I’d considered my closest friend up until today, “Ezra and I already have plans, and I’m not canceling them because you decided to come here without even telling me.”
Tiegan’s mouth fell open and he gasped. “Why are you so mad? I’m your best friend and I flew all the way out here to visit you, and you can’t rearrange one little day for me?”
“Why did you fly all the way out here to visit me?” I asked, channeling Ezra’s outward calm like a fiend, because all I really wanted to do was throw a tantrum. Rocky pressed against my legs, knocking me further into Ezra’s side, and I patted the dog’s head fondly.
“To see what the hell is going on with you,” Tiegan replied, flinging up his hands.
I laughed and looked over at Ezra, finding his gaze already fixed on me curiously. My heart tripped because he should look smug as fuck right now, not curious. If he was curious, then that meant he didn’t know. How could he not know what was going on with me?
Without taking my eyes off him, not caring whether Tiegan listened or not, I confessed everything to him softly, “My life was stagnant before I came here, and now I’m all the way down happy. School and my trivia team are amazing. I’m not running around pretending like being busy and gossiping is happiness for me. I have this amazing man who’s never gotten sick of listening to me, whose loyalty and the way he cares for his loved ones is so inspiring. I’m doing my best to take care of him too, because he deserves it so much.”
Ezra swallowed hard, taking my hand and pressing it to his chest, his heart thundering.
“I’m not going back to Florida when I’m done with school, because I love who I am here and the life I’m making,” I finished, hearing my conviction and certainty loud and clear.
“Rude,” I heard Tiegan huff.
“Yeah, but you are too,” I said. I’d probably feel like shit about it later and text him to say my piece about how I didn’t appreciate his surprise visit or his attitude, and then try to make it right. Maybe it would work and maybe it wouldn’t, but right now, I didn’t care.
A muscle ticked in Ezra’s jaw and as soon as my front door gave a resounding slam behind Tiegan, Ezra’s strong, safe hands took hold of my face and searched my eyes. It felt like they were truth-seeking missiles, beaming into my eyes and through to my soul.
“You rescued my dog,” Ezra informed me, his voice raspy with awe and thanks.
“Well,” I said with a very modest shrug, not arguing, “you saved Scooter… and me.”
Our mouths slammed together. I had no idea who’d moved first. His tongue thrust into my mouth while my fingers wound through his dark hair. Our bodies strained to get as close as possible with our clothes on and a dog in the mix. Unabashed whines poured out of me whenever there was a sliver of space between our lips. Ezra’s hands shifted to my hips to guide me into my bedroom, shutting Rocky out.
He tumbled me onto my unmade bed, his kisses voracious as he stripped us. Our chests and stomachs met and our legs tangled and tightened like we were making a knot. His body hair rasped my skin as we rubbed and rocked, and his mouth worked its way from mine to tease my earlobes and that spot on my neck that made me shudder. Nestled deliciously under him, it took everything I had to focus solely on the sensations he caused. I hadn’t even met his loved ones yet—it was too soon to blurt out lovesick pleas like keep me forever .
Not that I could silence myself completely , of course.
When he slid down to torture my nipples, I wrapped my arms around his head like I was trying to protect it from banging into something. Every tug and slurp sent a bolt of pleasure to my cock and my ready and willing hole until I was losing my mind. My back bowed and I pushed his head shamelessly, wordlessly begging him to go farther south.
It was presumptuous and bossy, but he could’ve easily resisted.
Instead, he gasped and went down, his hands kneading and plumping my thighs. We’d learned his gag reflex was exceptionally sensitive, but neither of us cared because he was wildly into the taste of my come and still obsessed with my cock. So when his tongue swirled over my tip and his hand closed around my shaft, I bowed my back even higher and spread my thighs wider. He sucked on my tip, letting spit drip so he could pump me for as long as he wanted me to last without rubbing me raw in a bad way.
“You’re going to make me come so quick,” I praised breathlessly.
He groaned, the vibrations making me grip his hair tighter. With my head on my pillow and his shallow sucking, I had a stunning view. His lashes fluttered in bliss as he drooled, sucked, and groaned, his cheeks flushed and hollowed out. I could see his ass flexing over his shoulders as he humped the bed, and if I wasn’t already two seconds from coming, I would’ve had him flip around for a sixty-nine.
As if he knew how close I was, he pulled his swollen, shiny lips off me and crawled up to kiss me rough and deep while he straddled my thighs and frotted against me desperately. The way my patient, steady man lost his mind in bed with me drove me wild. The way he rode me roughshod, his cock fucking against mine, his balls swinging into mine, was everything . Where typically making love meant going slow, for Ezra, it was the opposite; this was frenzied, pure emotions overriding his thoughts to show me how much he needed me.
“Skylar,” he gritted out, looking at me so intensely, I took our cocks in my hand to stroke us off together, too far gone to wait another second. “You’re staying? You’re staying ?”
The joy and hope and relief in his words had me crying out, my hand flying over our cocks until he unloaded all over me with a roar of devotion and triumph.
Then he fell on my cock again like an animal, eating his own come and urging me to come in his mouth too, and seeing the last of his inhibitions and shyness fall away shoved me over the edge. I blew against his tongue and bottom lip, wringing out every last drop for him to swallow and lick up before I dragged him up to kiss me until my lips were numb.
I clung to him, my breaths still wheezing faintly.