14. Jake #4
I came deep inside him, my hands sweaty on his shoulders, holding him tight to me. Me buried in this sweet man, this angel without wings. My breath was hot on the back of his neck, and he was breathing hard beneath me.
I pulled out, trailing cum across his thighs, and turned him onto his back. And, dear heaven, he was still hard. Like he’d waited for me. For this moment.
I took his cock in my mouth and licked the head and sucked while I gripped the base of him.
His body moved beneath me, but never away.
His hands were in my hair, light fingers twined through, holding me to him while I sucked on his cock and made love to it with my hands, my tongue.
Saliva trailed down my chin, but I didn’t care.
As long as he was pleased, that was all that mattered.
When he came, his hips lifting from the bed, I opened my throat and swallowed.
Pushed my face to his groin, my nose to the curl of hair between his legs, and swallowed some more.
My hands stroked his hips, his belly. I lifted my head and wiped my chin with the heel of my palm and listened to his hard breaths in the darkness.
“Okay?” I asked.
“Jesus, Jesus.” He just about moaned this as he sat up and tumbled into my arms, a beautiful, sweaty armful of beautiful man. I held him to me and breathed into his hair, pressing kisses to his temple, his cheek, before kissing that lush mouth. Thumbed the sweat from his cheeks. Or was it more?
I kissed his cheek. Tasted the moisture. It wasn’t sweat. It was tears. “What’s this?” I asked.
“Are you always like that?” he asked. His voice sounded choked.
“Like what?” I honestly didn’t understand.
“Opening doors for me. Putting me first.” He swallowed hard. “Making sure of me.”
I sat back, crossed my legs, and settled him in my arms, his head on my shoulder. This was confusing to me, but how else was I supposed to treat someone who made me feel like the sun had finally come up after many years of pure midnight?
“It’s you,” I said, nighttime low. “You deserve the best.”
He tucked his head beneath my jaw, burying his face in my neck. I held him tight.
He wasn’t crying anymore, but he was shook. Somehow, this sweet, confident man, this man with his sunrise smile and summer-blue eyes didn’t think he deserved to have doors opened for him.
This was the same man who’d gotten up before dawn on a rainy morning and brought me coffee made my favorite way. Who’d knelt in front of me and offered it like a gift from his dearest heart.
He’d gotten Ruth into action. Gotten the kitchen opened early, which had never happened before.
Sure, we’d gotten hot coffee in china mugs on those mornings when we’d come in at dawn.
But nothing else, certainly not tall thermoses brought to us in the barn and promises of a Sunday spread hours before the kitchen was scheduled to open.
Even in Walter’s day, after having worked through the night we would have gotten hard-boiled eggs and the like, not fancy Dutch babies or French toast.
Now the reason for Dillon running out of the barn when there’d been so much work to do taking care of the horses made sense. Dalton must have asked Dillon to fetch him as soon as he saw me in the barn. I knew this like I’d been there. I need you to do this, Dalton must have said. It’s important.
If there was anyone who knew what it felt like to come in dead last every single time someone made a priority list, it was me. To find that Dalton felt the same made me want to find every single person who’d ever slighted him and teach them a lesson.
He’d put me first, ahead of himself. He’d made love to me in that cottonwood grove, pulling me into a dreamworld where nothing hurt and I didn’t have to pay for love with my skin. If being put first was new to him, that feeling of belonging, of magic, was new to me as well.
I held him close, and when I sensed his body releasing toward sleep, I lay him on the bed, making sure of the pillow beneath his head. I pulled the sheet and quilt over him and watched over him until he was truly asleep.
I listened to the rain falling on the roof and wondered if they’d ever gotten that bonfire going. Probably not, but I admired the attempt just the same. The idea of saying fuck it to the universe and lighting that fire, anyway.
Right about then is when I found out that Dalton snored. A thin whistle of breath, a sound in his throat. Every five breaths. Which, to me, was as cute as the rest of him, including his adorable pink toes.
It was way past midnight, it must have been, by the time I slithered beneath the covers to lie beside him. Inhale his scent. Match my breaths with his.
Distantly I wondered if I should wake him in case he wanted to sneak back to his own bunkhouse so Dillon and Cameron wouldn’t spread the word that their bunkmate had not come home that night.
But as Dalton snored his cute snore, he moved closer in my arms like he wanted to crawl inside me, and it would have taken a hot poker up my ass to make me wake him up and make him go out into the rainy night.
There was no hot poker in sight, so I let him sleep.
And let myself sleep, with him in my arms.