Chapter 14 All of It
Luke
I got him as far as the edge of the bed before he tried to take over.
His hands were already at the fly of my jeans, quick and certain, the way he did everything, and I caught both his wrists and held them still between us. He looked up at me. In the light coming off the street his eyes had gone dark, and his mouth had already fallen open on something he didn’t say.
“Not tonight,” I said. “Tonight you don’t do a thing. You let me.”
He didn’t like it. I felt it in his hands, the pull of a man who had spent his whole life being the one who handled things, who cooked and planned and carried and never once let anybody carry him.
He’d run a con this morning and cried in a bar and driven around the city for hours rather than bring it home to me, and now he wanted to get on his knees and make the night about me, because that was easier for him than lying still and being wanted.
I wasn’t giving him that.
“Luke.” His voice came low and rough. “Let me…”
“No.” I brought his knuckles up and kissed them, one hand and then the other, and set them back down at his sides. “You’ve been taking care of me for a month. You’re off the clock tonight. Lie back.”
He toed his shoes off, and after a hesitation, he followed my command.
That by itself did something to me, the sight of him giving up the fight and stretching out on our bed with his hands open and his jaw tight, waiting on me.
I stood over him and looked my fill. Now there was nothing left between us at all, and he was here and he was mine and he was watching me like he’d wait as long as I made him.
“I’m going to take my time with you,” I said. “You should know that going in.”
“You’re going to kill me.”
“Maybe.” I put a knee on the bed. “Stay still.”
I took his shirt off him first, and I did it slow, one button at a time when everything in me wanted to tear the thing open, because slow was the whole point of the night and he was going to feel every second of it.
This body I knew. I’d had it under my hands plenty of nights, learned the weight of it in the dark.
But I’d never once been allowed to just look at it, to take my mouth over it while he held still and let me, and God, I’d wanted to.
I put my mouth on his throat, over the pulse hammering under the skin, and worked down from there, over his collarbone, the dip at the center of his chest, the muscle over his heart where I could feel it going hard and fast under my lips.
I dragged my teeth across it now, and the sound he made was rough and bitten off, nothing careful about it.
His hand came up into my hair on reflex.
“Hands down,” I said against his skin.
“You’re enjoying this too much.”
“I am.” I lifted my head and looked up the length of him.
“I wanted to do this before we were even a thing, and I wasn’t allowed.
Then I was allowed, and there was a wall a mile high between us the whole time and I still couldn’t.
It’s gone now. I’m doing all of it, every part I never got. Put your hand back down.”
He put it down. His breathing had gone uneven, and the muscles in his stomach jumped under my mouth as I moved lower, over his belt, over the coarse line of hair below his navel.
He smelled like a warm spring day and like himself under it, sweat and skin, and I wanted all of it.
He was already hard. I could see it straining against the front of his jeans, and I pressed the heel of my hand down over the shape of him, slow, just to hear the noise it pulled out of him, and he cursed and his hips came up off the bed to chase it.
“Stay still,” I said. “I told you.”
“You’re a bastard.”
“You love me.” I got his belt open, and the button, and dragged the zipper down over the length of him. “Lift up.”
He lifted, and I stripped the jeans and his shorts down his legs together and off, and then he was bare on our bed, and I could see the whole of him.
His cock lay hard against his belly, flushed dark and already wet at the head, and my mouth watered for it and my own dick ached where it was still shut up in my jeans.
I made myself wait on that too. I ran my hands up the insides of his thighs instead, slow, watching his face the whole time, and his thighs shook under my palms, and he swore at the ceiling, and there was not one thing pretty about any of it.
His whole body had gone tight and straining, fighting to hold still for me because I’d told him to.
I took my time learning him with my mouth the way I’d never been let to.
I set my teeth into the muscle of his thigh, not hard, just enough to feel him buck under me, and soothed it with my tongue, and did it again higher up until there was a row of marks going pink on the inside of his leg that he’d feel tomorrow and know were mine.
His hands twisted in the sheets. Every muscle in him stood out with the work of keeping still, and the sight of all that strength handed over to just lying there and taking it went to my head worse than anything he could have done to me with his own hands.
I wanted to wreck him slow. I wanted him to remember, the next time he decided to carry something alone to spare me, exactly what it felt like to let me have him instead.
“Look at you,” I said, low. “Holding still. You never hold still for anything in your life.”
“Luke.” It came out of him wrecked, in some sort of failed menace.
Something had gone across his face, and it wasn’t the wanting. It sat under the wanting. I stopped with my hands on his thighs and looked at him, really looked, and his eyes had gone wet, and his jaw was working like he was trying to keep a grip on himself and losing it.
I came back up over him and got a hand on the side of his face.
“Hey,” I said. “I’ve got you.”
“I can’t believe I almost lost you.” It tore out of him, low and rough, the thing he’d been hauling around all day and all month.
“I’m right here.”
He got a hand around the back of my neck and kissed me, hard and open and desperate, and for a second he tried to roll us, tried to get on top, tried to take it back into his own hands because being held open like this was more than he knew how to stand.
I kissed him back. I didn’t let him move.
I pressed him down into the mattress with the whole of my weight and kissed him through it, slow, until the fight bled out of him and he was just holding on, his hand fisted at the back of my neck.
“Let me take care of you,” I said against his mouth. “For once in your life. Let me.”
“Okay,” he breathed. “Okay. Yes. I’ll let you.”
I kissed my way back down him, slower this time, and this time he let me.
His hands went into the sheets instead of into my hair.
I settled between his legs and put my mouth on the inside of his thigh, right up close to where he wanted me and not on it, and he groaned and his hips gave a helpless little jerk.
“Please,” he said.
“There it is.” I mouthed higher, my breath against him. “Ask me again.”
“Fuck you. Please.”
I took him in my mouth.
He was hot and hard on my tongue and the taste of him went straight through me and settled low in my gut.
I took him deep, as far down as I could, and drew back slow with my tongue dragging along the underside of him, and the sound he made was raw and helpless and nothing at all like a man who had ever run a room in his life.
His hand flew off the sheet and into my hair.
I caught his wrist and pinned it flat to his hip and left it there, and I did it again, took him down and dragged back up, and his whole body shuddered under me.
For a while I just worked him, mouth and hand together, slow and deep, and I watched him fall apart above me a piece at a time.
His stomach clenched. His chest heaved. He leaked salt and heat onto my tongue and his hips kept fighting up for more, and I laid my forearm across his waist and held them down so that he had to take exactly what I gave him and nothing past it.
That was the part that undid me, honest to God, more than my own dick aching in my jeans.
It was watching the most careful man I’d ever met come apart because I’d decided to take him there.
“Luke,” he got out, his voice cracked clean down the middle. “Luke, I’m close, I’m gonna, I’m…”
I pulled off him.
He shouted, actually shouted, his hips jerking up into empty air, his cock flushed dark and wet and twitching where I’d left it, right at the edge and no further.
“Not yet,” I said, licking my lips.
“You son of a bitch.” He was panting, his head thrown back, his throat working. “You absolute…”
“You don’t come until I say.” I pressed a kiss to the crease of his hip, soft, at odds with all the rest of it. “You’ve had hold of everything for a month. Tonight I’ve got it. When you come, it’s because I let you. You understand me.”
“I hate you!”
“No, you don’t.” I took him back in my mouth.
I brought him up the second time slower still, mean with it, learning exactly where his edge sat and walking him right to it. Sweat had come up all over him, and the whole room had gone thick with the smell of him, sweat and skin and want.
“Luke, please.” It was barely words now, torn out of him between ragged breaths. “Please, I can’t, I need to, let me, I’ll do anything you want, just let me come…”
I let him get right to the brink, felt him start to go, and pulled off him a second time and left him hanging there, shaking.
There was only so long I could kneel with him on my tongue and my own cock throbbing in my jeans and give him nothing, and holding the line was costing me every bit as much as it cost him. But not yet.
His free hand found my jaw and tried to drag me up off him, and it wasn’t for himself this time. Even out of his mind he couldn’t stand to only be given to. He needed to hand something back.
“I want,” he managed. “Let me, I want my mouth on you, I want to touch you, I need to do something…”