Chapter 6
Sasha
Three knocks. Quick, hard, the kind where someone’s fist hits the door before their brain can talk them out of it.
I cross the suite barefoot, marble cold under my feet, and open the door.
Aaron pushes past me before I’ve finished turning the handle.
He’s fully dressed — jeans, sneakers, a gray shirt pushed to the elbows, his hair a mess from his hands running through it. His jaw is clenched so tight I can see the muscles working. He stops in the middle of the living room like he doesn’t know why he’s here.
I close the door. Click the deadbolt.
“Aaron.”
“I came up two hours ago.” He’s not looking at me.
“Two hours ago. I stood outside your door like an idiot and knocked and you didn’t answer, and I couldn’t just stand in a hotel hallway at midnight outside your room, Sasha, someone could have seen me — so I went back downstairs and I’ve been pacing around my room like an idiot ever since. ”
“I was in the shower.”
He blinks. Looks at me for the first time — really looks — and his gaze drops to my bare chest, the sweatpants slung low on my hips, my hair still damp. His throat bobs. He drags his eyes back up.
“The shower,” he says flatly.
“The shower.” I walk toward him. “You could have texted me if you were having a crisis.”
His jaw tightens. “I wasn’t having a crisis. Diego is on my floor. I had to make sure he didn’t see me coming up here.”
He exhales, sharp, and his hands go into his hair again. He’s wired. Every line of him is vibrating — the tension in his forearms, his weight shifting like he’s about to bolt.
“Aaron.” I try to pull him closer. “Come here.”
“I’m right here.”
“No. Come here.”
He doesn’t move. I close the distance between us, take his wrist — his pulse hammering with either anticipation or anxiety or both — and pull him toward the windows.
“Look at the city, Aaron. It’s beautiful. Let yourself enjoy it.”
We take in Chicago at two in the morning. The lake black and still to the east. Our reflections in the glass — him wound tight, me loose and half-dressed.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “It really is. And I’m glad we’re here. Together, I mean.”
I kiss his forehead, closing my eyes. His skin is so warm. “Me too.”
Six weeks since New York. Six weeks since I had him alone in a room.
We’ve both signed with Diego — contracts inked, the money finally real — and this is our first sponsorship together.
A clothing brand photoshoot that starts at five in the morning.
The hotel is nothing like the Pemberton — just a business hotel near the studio, beige walls, stiff mattress, the kind of room that smells like cleaning products.
But it has a door that locks, and Aaron Kelly is in it with me, and I intend to make the most of it.
“I keep thinking about tomorrow,” he says. “The shoot. What if my face does something I can’t stop? What if someone sees?”
I put my hand on his jaw. He freezes — then leans into it, slowly, his eyes closing.
“Right now,” I tell him. “I am the only person who can see your face.” My thumb traces his cheekbone. “And I like what your face does. Very much.”
I kiss his mouth. Soft. Giving him time.
His lips are tense for a second, then they aren’t.
His mouth opens under me and the sound he makes — quiet, almost pained — goes straight to my cock.
His hand comes up and grips the bare skin of my waist, fingers digging in, pulling me closer.
I deepen the kiss, take his lower lip between my teeth, and his hips press forward — hard against my thigh through his jeans.
When I pull back, his cheeks are flushed. The ears first, then the neck. I’ve memorized this.
“I believe we have unfinished business.” I trace my thumb along his jaw. “In New York, you left before I could teach you anything. You ran out of that penthouse suite like the building was on fire.”
“I didn’t run —”
“ Your shirt was inside out.” I hold his gaze. “You owe me a night. And we only have this one.”
His breath catches.
“Aaron.” I step back, taking charge. “Take off your shirt.”
He almost laughs. Then his hands go to the hem and he pulls the shirt over his head in one motion and drops it to the floor. And I let myself look.
Broad shoulders. Defined chest. Abs that clench when I look at them. Fair skin flushed pink across his collarbones. The dark trail of hair below his navel.
My mouth waters.
“Jeans,” I say.
Belt, button, denim pushed down his hips. He steps out of them and he’s in black boxer briefs, and God — he’s hard. The fabric is stretched tight across the thick outline of his cock, a damp spot darkening where the head presses against the cotton.
He got hard from a kiss. From me telling him to undress. All of that for me.
“Now mine.”
His fingers hook the elastic of my sweatpants and push them down. Nothing underneath. His inhale is sharp and audible. His eyes drop and stay there.
I’m hard for him. Thick and aching, already leaking at the tip. I let him look. Let him take his time.
“Touch me,” I tell him. “Wrap your hand around my cock.”
His fingers close around my shaft and I moan softly. His hand is warm and rough — callused from years of gripping a stick — and the texture against my skin makes my hips jerk forward.
“Firmer.” I cover his hand with mine and tighten it. “Like that.”
He strokes. His thumb drags through the wetness at my tip and spreads it down my shaft, and the slick friction pulls a groan out of me.
“Good,” I manage. “Now get on your knees.”
He settles on his knees, looking up at me with amusement. “Now what, Sasha?”
Damn. This is going to be fun.
“Are you going to say please for me?” I tilt his chin up with my thumb. “Something about the way you said please when we were in New York… I can't get it out of my mind. I want to hear it again. Such good manners.”
His face is going pink at the idea. But his eyes don’t leave mine.
“Please,” he says, urgency in his voice.
“Please what?” I ask innocently.
“Please let me —” He swallows. “Let me put my mouth on you.”
My cock throbs so hard it hurts.
“Well,” I say, already breathing hard. “Since you asked so nicely. Yes.”
Aaron Kelly is on his knees in front of me. Looking up at me with those green eyes, lips parted, waiting to be told what to do.
Aaron, who competes with me for every goal. Who argues with all of my game strategy. On his knees. Waiting to be told what to do.
“Start with your tongue,” I tell him. “The underside. Long and slow.”
He leans in. The first touch of his tongue — tentative, flat, tracing up the underside of my shaft — makes my abs clench so hard I stop breathing.
“That’s it.” My voice is ragged. “Again.”
He licks again, bolder. A long stripe from base to tip. When his lips close around the head, the wet heat of his mouth pulls a groan out of me that’s louder than I intended.
“Oh fuck,” I say. Because apparently that’s all I’m capable of right now.
The pleasure of his mouth on me is so intense, I have to grip the windowsill behind me.
He takes me deeper — too fast. I feel his throat close and he pulls back, coughing, his face going red.
“Sorry — shit, sorry —”
“Don’t apologize.” I run my thumb along his jaw. “Breathe. Don’t try to take all of me yet.”
“I can handle it.”
I laugh. “You’re on your knees for the first time in your life and you’re already arguing with me?”
He looks up at me. His eyes are watering from the coughing and his mouth is red and wet and his hair is already a disaster — and he laughs too. A real laugh, soft and ridiculous.
He takes a breath. Tries again. Slower this time — his lips closing around the head, his hand wrapping around the base the way I showed him. Mouth and hand together. Not perfectly coordinated, but trying, and the combination of wet heat and firm pressure makes my thighs clench.
“Better?” he asks, pulling back just enough to speak. His lips are slick. His eyes are focused.
“Better,” I manage. “Much better. Now seal your lips tighter. Stroke the base with your hand while your mouth works the head.”
“I don’t want to just be better.” His jaw is set. Those green eyes locked on mine. “Tell me how to make you lose it.”
My cock jumps. He feels it — I see his eyes flick down and back up.
“Careful what you ask for, Aaron Kelly.”
“Tell me.”
So I do. “Seal your lips. Tighter. And swirl your tongue.”
He takes every instruction and executes. My breathing changes. Faster. Rougher. He can hear it — I know because he goes deeper when I groan. Reading me. Adjusting.
“You are treating this like a practice drill,” I tell him. My thighs are trembling and he’s barely started. “One instruction and you turned it into a scoring play.”
He pulls off just long enough to say, “Is it working?”
My cock twitches against his lips. “Get back to work.”
He does.
“Good boy,” I breathe.
His shoulders shudder. A moan vibrates around my cock and his rhythm falters before coming back harder. Faster.
“You like being told that,” I say. It’s not a question.
He moans again. Louder this time. My cock throbs against his tongue.
I test it once more. “You’re doing so well, Aaron.”
His grip tightens on my shaft. He takes me deeper, sucks harder, and the wet sound that fills the room makes my balls tighten.
“You’re taking me like you’re made for this.”
Another moan. His hips shift — his cock straining against his boxer briefs, untouched, leaking through the fabric. Every time I praise him he sucks harder. Takes me deeper. Wants more.
Christ. I’m going to use that until he begs me to stop.
He takes me deeper. I watch him figure out how to breathe — pulling back when he takes too much, adjusting the angle.
“Oh, God. Yes.”
My abs clench.
“Right there,” I manage. “The underside, just below the head. Press harder — fuck, Aaron —”
He finds the spot. Works it with the flat of his tongue while his hand strokes the base. My fingers grip his hair.