Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Elton’s alarm was trilling.
From the wrong side of the bed.
Maybe he’d left it on the other—
Twisting toward the sound, his train of thought and his body hit a solid wall of warmth.
He opened his eyes and met a pair of sparkling, wide-awake hazel ones in the early morning light.
Realization dawned and he cursed, eyelids fluttering closed in embarrassment. “I fell asleep before you got back, didn’t I?”
Archer held his phone out to him. “Make this thing stop, and I’ll forgive you.”
Elton entered the code required to do anything on his phone and silenced the alarm. He twisted half around, tossed the device on the nightstand, then rolled back to face the smirking winemaker whose bed he’d fallen asleep in last night while waiting for him to return. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“You were snoring so peacefully.” Archer chuckled, and Elton reached out to touch the sneaky dimple beneath his salt-and-pepper beard, to investigate and confirm it was real. Archer’s voice was both rougher and softer when he spoke again. “What time were you up yesterday morning?”
“Five-thirty flight,” Elton said as he mentally cataloged everywhere else that he and Archer were touching.
His chest, bumping into Archer’s whenever they inhaled at the same time, the thin fabric of his tee no match for the heat of Archer’s bare skin.
His legs, naked and tangling with Archer’s, sliding along hard muscle and coarse hair, the sensation new and electrifying.
His aching cock, tenting his boxers and pressing against Archer’s hip as the wave of desire that had been riding him for months crested, drawing them even closer.
Maybe now.
“So you were up at three,” Archer was saying. “Two, even, no wonder—”
Elton slid his fingers over his mouth, halting his words.
Archer’s lips were soft, unlike his perpetually chapped ones. How would they feel under his? How would they taste? Like the wine last night? Like the vineyard he spent all day tending to? Like relief?
Now.
“I want to kiss you,” Elton admitted, then, after a hard swallow to clear the gravel suddenly in his own throat, confessed another truth. “But I don’t know how.”
Archer’s eyes widened and his lips parted under his fingers, momentarily surprised, but then he schooled his features and took Elton’s hand in his, drawing it away from his mouth. “You were married.”
“To a woman.”
“You’ve never kissed a man before,” he correctly surmised.
Blushing, he ducked his face and nuzzled against the comforting strength of Archer’s solid jaw. “I’ve wanted to. I’ve always been attracted to men.”
Archer rocked his hips, and Elton gasped at the friction. “You don’t say.”
“Not fair.” Elton rolled back, then made another confession.
“I’ve thought about checking the bisexual box on dozens of forms, but it’s always felt like a risk just checking the Black box.
With my job . . .” He squeezed the hand in his, taking strength from the stronger man. “I never checked the other.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re any less bi.” Archer gently lifted his chin. “And doesn’t mean you don’t know how to kiss.” When he lifted his gaze to Archer’s, the heat staring back at him was scorching. Hand cupping his face, grip tightening on his jaw, Archer wasn’t giving him an out. “Kiss me, Elton.”
Elton didn’t need any outs. The chance to turn fantasy into reality was in this bed with him, and Elton was determined to take it.
Finally.
Now.
He leaned forward and brushed his chapped lips against Archer’s soft ones, tasting his breath and all those things he’d wondered about.
Last night’s wine, misty vineyards, and relief.
So much relief.
He sighed, body relaxing into Archer’s, into a future he’d been chasing for months, a truth he’d known even longer.
And then Archer slid his tongue between his lips, and every inch of Elton raced from relaxed to tense, on the edge of exploding in a split second.
Archer tightened the hand around his, grounding him, giving him a counterpoint to focus on, some place for all the crackling energy to go as he, tentatively at first, returned the kiss, then deepened it, pursuing Archer’s tongue, dipping inside his mouth, hungry for more of that relief.
For Archer.
Kissing him the way he’d dreamed about, wild and desperate.
Loving the way Archer responded in kind, seeming to be as needy for him, for this moment they’d been building up to and dancing around for too long.
Following when Archer rolled onto his back, tugging Elton over him, one hand still clasped, the other flailing until Elton pinned it to the mattress.
Archer groaned and arched beneath him, same as he’d done outside the restaurant last night when Elton had restrained him then.
Parts of Elton’s brain and body that he’d turned off years ago came back online.
“You like that,” he mumbled against Archer’s lips. “Restraint.”
“It’s a start.”
Words laced with a challenge, the tone with a smirk that, when Elton drew back, he was unsurprised to find on Archer’s face too.
Along with pupils that were eating up his hazel irises and a rosy blush that bled all the way down to his heaving chest sprinkled with freckles and salt-and-pepper curls. “Fuck, you’re beautiful.”
Smirk deepening, Archer hiked up his legs on either side of his hips and rolled, his hard cock sliding the length of Elton’s. “Imagine how beautiful I’ll look covered in come.”
Elton groaned as he ground against him. One part of his brain told him there should be dates, steps, making out, getting to know this man’s body better before they jumped to orgasms. Another, louder part of his brain told him to fuck off with that shit; they were two middle-aged, consenting adults.
The loudest part to his brain had him glancing to his phone on the nightstand.
“We have four minutes before my backup alarm goes off.”
“Can you ignore it?”
“No,” Elton embarrassingly whined as they continued to rut. “I’ve got a flight to catch.”
“Bring me your cock.” At Elton’s raised brow, he added the directions Elton’s offline executive assistant director brain needed. “Straddle my face, pin my arms with your knees, and feed me your cock.”
He nearly came right then, only Archer’s knowing laugh backing him off the cliff. “Are you sure?” he asked the man beneath him.
“I’m fifty-five and know what I want. Your cock. In my mouth.”
The echo of his own thoughts, the challenge that Archer seemed to know he needed, propelled him upward. He stripped his boxers off, then straddled Archer’s face, pinning his arms and giving that still laughing mouth something else to do.
And holy fuck, the second Archer’s soft lips closed around his cock, he was a goner. Lost to the hot, wet suction, to the tightening of Archer’s throat around his tip, to the darkened hazel gaze that locked with his.
To the rock of Archer’s body beneath his.
Elton reached behind himself and clasped Archer’s erection. Found the tip soaked with precome that he spread down it like he would his own before he began to stroke it in time with his thrusts into Archer’s mouth.
Harder, faster. Power back and forth between them. Archer’s throat and tongue, his fist and knees. Giving each other what they needed.
Bodies colliding until they came together, Elton with a shout, and Archer with a groan Elton felt all the way to his balls. That prolonged his orgasm and made him shout a second time.
Right along with the blaring backup alarm.
Curses led to laughter as they untangled, Elton turning off the alarm and Archer turning on the light beside the bed. When Elton twisted back around, he couldn’t resist making a slow sweeping gaze over Archer’s come-covered body. “You weren’t lying,” he said. “You look amazing.”
“I try not to lie,” Archer said. “At least about sex.”
Excellent, because Elton didn’t have time to spare and he needed to be sure Archer was recovered before he left, more of his brain from his time on the Scene coming back online.
He reached up and massaged each of Archer’s arms, from the red areas where his knees had pinned Archer down all the way to his wrists, stimulating blood flow that might have been cut off. “These are all good? You’re good?”
Archer flitted his fingers on both hands, demonstrating feeling, then lifted one to palm Elton’s cheek. “I’m better than good,” he said, craning up for a kiss, then flopping back onto the bed, not the least bit shy or bothered by the mess they’d made.
Fuck, what Elton wouldn’t give for that kind of confidence, for that freedom.
He’d tasted a little of it when he’d been young and on the Scene.
Now, he wanted more, with the man beside him. He just had to figure out how.
Archer laid a hand on his thigh, drawing his attention back to the here and now. “Will I see you next month?”
Elton covered his hand, tangling their fingers, then lifting Archer’s hand and guiding it beneath his tee, high enough to reach his nipple.
Where he’d been wearing one of his favorite toys the night that he’d first locked eyes with the come-covered man in bed beside him.
He laid Archer’s hand there and laid himself bare, confessing, “I came back here for you.”
Archer’s eyes widened with understanding, then his smile did too, and Elton couldn’t resist bending over and tasting it. Couldn’t wait to taste more of it and this man in the future. “I’ll be back as soon as I can get here.”