Chapter Eleven #2
“It’s a terrible idea.”
I shrugged against his chest. “I’m an optimist.”
Sterling made a sound that was half exasperation, half something warmer, and his hands slid under the back of my shirt, palms flat against my skin, and the contact—Sterling’s callused hands on my bare back—lit something low in my belly that had been smoldering since approximately the hallway kiss and was now very much on fire.
I reached into the desk drawer. The top one, left side, where I’d watched him stash things for weeks without comment because paying attention was free and intelligence was useful.
My fingers closed around the bottle of lube—the same one from his nightstand, because Sterling was nothing if not consistent—and when I pulled it out, Sterling’s eyebrows went up.
“You’ve been in my desk,” he said, flat.
“I’ve been in your kitchen, your bathroom, and your personal space for weeks.
The desk was just geography.” I popped the cap, slicked two fingers, and watched Sterling’s eyes track the movement with that focused, assessing look he gave everything, like he was running probabilities even now, even here, with my hand between his legs and his shirt on the floor.
His pants were still on. I fixed that. Got my hands on his belt, popped the buckle one-handed because I’d done this enough times to have the muscle memory, and dragged his jeans and boxers down his thighs in one smooth pull.
Sterling stepped out of them without being asked, his boots staying on because Sterling’s boots stayed on until someone told him otherwise, and the sight of him—Sterling Callahan, half-naked against the ops office wall with his cock hard and his jaw set and his eyes dark on mine—was something I filed under its own category: Better Than Advertised.
I got my hand between his thighs. One slick finger pressed against his ass, slow, careful, and Sterling’s breath caught.
His hand found the wall beside his head, braced flat against the pine, and I watched his face as I pushed in—the rigid control, the set of his jaw, the way his eyes stayed on mine like he was determined not to look away even as his body opened around my finger.
“Breathe,” I said.
“I know how to breathe,” Sterling said, which was very him, and also complete bullshit because his chest was barely moving.
I crooked my finger. Found the spot. Sterling’s whole body clenched, his hand slapping against the wall, and the sound he made—low, rough, punched out of him against his will—was the most satisfying thing I’d heard in months.
“Jesus Christ,” he said again, his voice wrecked.
I added a second finger.
Sterling’s head dropped back against the wall.
His throat worked, Adam’s apple bobbing, and I scissored my fingers slow, stretching him, feeling the heat and the tightness and the way his body resisted and then gave, resisting and then gave, like Sterling himself—fighting surrender until the fight wasn’t worth it anymore.
The third finger was where his control finally cracked.
I pushed in slow, crooking, working the spot that made his thighs shake, and Sterling’s hand found the back of my neck and gripped hard, his fingers digging into my hair, and the groan that came out of him was long and ragged and entirely, devastatingly real.
His cock was hard against my stomach, leaking, and I wrapped my free hand around it and stroked once, base to tip, and Sterling’s hips jerked forward into my grip like he hadn’t meant to move and couldn’t stop himself.
“Fuck,” he said, rough against my temple.
“That’s the idea,” I said.
I pulled my fingers out. Slicked my cock with what was left on my hand, thick and warm, flipped him around to face the wall, and then lined up against him.
Sterling’s breath was coming fast now, his chest rising and falling under my palm where I’d braced it against the wall, and his eyes were dark and wrecked when he glanced back at me over his shoulder, and entirely present in a way I’d rarely seen them.
I pushed in. Slow at first, feeling the heat and the tightness and the way Sterling’s body opened around me, and then harder when his hand found my hip and pulled, his grip firm, demanding, and I drove into him with a thrust that knocked a groan out of both of us.
Sterling’s head dropped backward against my shoulder. His breath was hot against my neck, ragged, and his hands gripped my hips hard enough to leave marks, guiding, pulling me deeper with each thrust.
I got a rhythm going, steady, my hips snapping against his ass, and the sound of skin on skin filled the small office along with Sterling’s breathing and the low, rough sounds he made every time I hit that spot inside him.
His cock was hard and leaking. I wrapped my hand around it, stroking in time with my thrusts, and Sterling’s whole body tensed, his head pressing back into my shoulder, his fingers digging into my hips hard enough to bruise.
“Right there,” he said, his voice rough and wrecked. “Don’t stop.”
“I’m not stopping,” I said, and drove into him harder.
His hand found the back of my neck again, grip firm, pulling me closer as he turned his head.
I kissed him, messy and desperate, our mouths sliding together, and felt the moment his control shattered completely—his body clenching around me, his cock pulsing hot against my stomach, his groan muffled against my mouth as he came in thick, hot stripes.
I followed him over, driving into him hard through his orgasm, my own release hitting with a force that pulled a groan out of me that bounced off the low ceiling and the pine walls and the maps scattered across the desk.
For a long moment we just stood there pressed together, breathing hard, Sterling’s head on my shoulder and my hand still wrapped around his cock, both of us shaking slightly in the warm, quiet dark of the ops office.
The lamp pooled light over the desk where the eastern perimeter map sat, completely forgotten, its grid lines and contour marks rendered irrelevant by the fact that Sterling Callahan was currently holding onto me with both hands and not letting go, his breath hot against my neck, his body warm and spent against mine.
I kissed the side of his head. His hair was short and thick under my lips, damp with sweat at the temples, and he made a small, quiet sound that might have been contentment and might have been surrender and was probably both.
“Okay,” Sterling whispered. One word. Spent carefully, the way Sterling spent all his words, but this one landed where it was supposed to.
I grinned at the wall over his head. Wide and unrepentant, the kind of grin that said I told you so without needing the words, and squeezed his hip once because sometimes touching said more than talking, and Sterling Callahan had always been better at reading touch than words anyway.
Right now, in this room, with Sterling’s weight against me and his breath slowing against my neck and his hands still on my hips like he’d forgotten they were there, none of that mattered half as much as the fact that Sterling Callahan had just come apart in my hands, and he was still here, and he wasn’t running.
And that, right there, was the whole goddamn point.
* * * *
Sterling tugged his shirt back on with the same efficiency he brought to everything—methodical, unhurried, treating getting dressed like a functional necessity rather than a performance.
I watched him button it one-handed, his other hand braced on the desk, and filed the sight under its own category: Sterling Callahan Putting Himself Back Together, and Letting Me Watch.
The lamp light caught the line of his jaw, shadowed with stubble, and the particular set of his mouth—softer now, the rigid control temporarily suspended—did more to my chest than anything that had happened in the last twenty minutes, which was saying something considering what had happened in the last twenty minutes.
I pulled my own shirt down, adjusted my jeans, and leaned against the desk beside him. Close. Not touching, but the option was there, hanging in the air between us like something we’d both decided was worth keeping.
The office felt different. Warmer, somehow, though the wood stove hadn’t changed its output.
The maps on the desk were the same maps, the eastern perimeter still waiting with its cut fence and its boot prints and its diamond tread pattern, but the weight of it sat differently now.
Less urgent. More manageable. Like problems always felt smaller when you weren’t carrying them alone.
Sterling picked up the pencil. Rolled it between his fingers once, twice, his eyes on the map. Then he set it down and looked at me. “You’re going to be a problem.”
The corner of his mouth did the thing. The small, stubborn warmth I’d been collecting since week two, spreading from the crease beside his left eye to the whole left side of his face, and it landed in my chest with the clean, tactical certainty of something I had wanted for a very long time.
I grinned. Wide and unrepentant. “Take the win, Sterling. You earned it.”
“I didn’t win anything.”
“You absolutely did. Several things. In rapid succession. I was counting.”
He shook his head. The motion was almost fond, which from Sterling Callahan was approximately equivalent to anyone else writing poetry, and I stored it carefully, added it to the collection.
We turned back to the map. Side by side now, shoulders nearly touching, and the proximity felt earned rather than accidental.
Sterling’s hand moved across the paper, tracing the contour lines with his fingertip, and I watched the way he did it—focused, precise, the same intensity he brought to everything, but without the rigid desperation that had been there at two in the morning.
“The northeast blind spot is the approach I’d use,” I said.
Sterling’s finger paused on the map. His eyes lifted to mine, recalibrating, the look he gave when someone had said something he hadn’t expected to hear and was deciding whether it was worth taking seriously.
“Explain,” he said.