Chapter 11

11

I’ve never hurried back to my place with company in tow. All my past dates only ended with pond water splashing. Tonight I open the door and invite Reece in.

I’ve also never done this in my own hallway—I drop my coat on the floor like I’m as untidy as Patrick, then I get as bossy as Sebastian. He’s pushy when he can’t wait for his dinner in the same way Patrick has been extra pushy lately about me reading his daily affirmations. They will both be well on their way to Cornwall, but I still channel my absent housemates by kicking my coat out of the way before pushing Reece against the wall to kiss him again because omfg pls hurry i am starving .

So is Reece.

Not right away—his first reaction is surprise, like he didn’t expect me to be this fierce about him. All I can do is some affirming of my own that what Reece shared under streetlight angels means so fucking much to me.

I do it by kissing him like I mean it, all in with no hesitating, even in the confined space of this ink-dark hallway. Perhaps the lack of light should be a reminder of a darkroom I last left in a hurry. Tonight, I can only focus on Reece kissing me back like he’s drowning.

Reece even sinks as if he’s underwater, but that’s just him widening his stance and sliding down the wall a little so I don’t have to go up on my tiptoes right here between Patrick’s bike and an airer holding laundry. I’m pretty sure this location wouldn’t make it into a romantic movie either, but Reece proves me wrong. He rumbles, “Love the way you kiss,” and suddenly I’m swooning.

Swooning?

I’m also the idiot who says, “Had a lot of practice,” before my brain catches up. I admit this just as quickly. “With frogs. Threw them all back.”

He laughs, which I take as permission to get back to clutching hard at his shoulders, but he does some clutching of his own, so I guess we’re even.

That’s the difference.

Forget job titles or power imbalances. Forget the light level where we’re getting busy. Reece and I are even in wanting each other, and that’s a first I’m so on board with.

He cups my face with chilly fingers. They soon warm. So do I as our kiss deepens.

His tongue glides and slides like I once did across a townhouse hallway towards him. For him. Now he makes another request.

“Can we?”

He isn’t asking me to dance like he did in a starry courtyard at the start of the week, or earlier to music at a portrait gallery wedding. Tonight, I grit out a rushed, “Fuck, yes,” although I don’t sound anything like me. This gravel belongs to a stranger. “Yes, yes, Reece. Hurry.”

He doesn’t waste time by asking if I’m sure. Doesn’t bring up the subject of lines in professional sand or muddied working waters. I don’t have a single boundary right now for him, and he must feel it when our mouths meet again, and if he thought I’d gone all in before, he was mistaken.

This is the real deal.

It’s so good.

So is him sliding off my suit jacket and unfastening my shirt buttons, so I guess that’s an answer to his can I question—Reece is getting me naked, and it’s all I want for Christmas.

He tugs on thin cotton, and my shirt says goodbye to my trousers, then both of his hands span bare skin, and that’s a wicked combination of soft mixed with rough. It’s also a reminder that his work can be as physical as both of his brothers’. He’s easily as strong, and finding that out when he turns me so my back is against a wall means my breath hitches.

He breaks off to check in.

“All good?”

His hands go still, their slide stopping midway up my torso, which should tickle. Instead, a thumb brushes my nipple, and I had no idea that would light me up or leave me gasping.

He does it again, only slower, and I shiver.

“Too much?”

“No.” I prove it by doing some tugging of my own. It doesn’t take much to get his coat off, and I’ve never been more grateful that his shirt was half untucked already. It makes it so easy to slide my own palms under his clothes to find bare skin like I did once already. Last Friday seems a lifetime ago in Rex’s study, and it was interrupted by twin phone calls.

Tonight, I’m not stopping for anybody.

I kiss him again, and here he goes with all that strength he keeps hidden—I’m off-balance, and he’s the reason.

Reece sinks and takes me with him until I’m in his lap all over again, only on a nest of coats instead of a couch this time.

I’m on top, and I like it.

“Off.” I tussle with his sweatshirt until we’re both bare from the waist up, and this chest-to-chest contact is a reminder of glitter.

I see sparkles again as soon as he gets my belt and fly unfastened.

Reece finds my dick, and this time there’s no fabric between his hand and where I’m hard for him already. Everything turns bright like the best of London’s Christmas season. The whole world also shifts. No exaggeration—I tilt the same way now as when the Tube took a corner on the way here, and, like then, he’s got me.

He hoists me up to standing in a hurry, his hands on my arse lifting me even higher, and I let out the kind of cackle I never could in a building full of private bankers. It last rang out this loudly in a starry courtyard, and I spin again right now. Or, at least, he does by backing into the living room where red, gold, and green tree lights flicker, and my laughter only cuts off when he drops me onto cushions.

Reece helps me out of the last of my clothes so I’m naked. I’m also speckled with lights and so is he as he unfastens his belt in what feels like slow motion.

The rest of his clothes come off, and I don’t even know I’ve gripped the base of my dick until he mirrors the same action.

He wraps one of those big hands around himself, and the world had slowed a moment before. Now it speeds up, and he’s above me, big enough to block all the light out when he lowers himself, and we connect from chest to pelvis.

I still see sparkles. They fill my vision until I blink. Then they dot the ceiling. His mouth also dots kisses across my shoulders, dropping more there as he rocks and lights me up in a whole new way.

We kiss again, wet and deep, and I clutch his shoulders, the span of his back, his arse—which flexes before he leans up on a forearm to get a hand between us.

He holds my cock, but he’s the one who groans as though he feels each slide of his hand twisting my insides tighter, and I hadn’t known it would feel so intense from this angle.

I unclench my fingers, pretty sure I’ve already left some bruises on his backside. I’ll worry about that later. For now, I’m busy finding out what it’s like to pull the same sensations from him. He’s still braced above me, still shadowed. I don’t have any problem reading his expression once I get my hand around his dick.

This low groan and deep rumble both say yes like I did to him in the hallway.

I say the same again now, silently and all to myself.

Yes to curling my hand tighter around his hot thickness, and yes to repeating what he’s doing for me. We kiss, although this one is messier, both of us breathing harder. And when I bring my fingers to my mouth to wet them and get a taste of precome, I let out a low and new sound all my own.

His tongue is deep in my mouth when he gives up bracing above me, which means breathing comes second until he shifts some more. We’re side by side then, and that’s better, even if breathing had felt overrated. Now there’s space to touch him, which is even more important.

I lick my fingers again, making my hold slicker, so I can stroke him faster. The head of his cock catches between my thumb and finger, and I slow down, exploring as he bites off sounds I want to hear so much more of.

I want more of him, full stop, and when I let go to shove at those huge shoulders, I guess he wants more too—he rolls over so easily for me, so I kneel over him. His cock is in my hand, my mouth wet all over again at the sight of him spread out like this. For me . That wetness helps because I’ve kissed plenty of frogs, but never where I want to kiss Reece.

I flick my tongue across the tip of his dick first and get what I wanted—he lets out the deepest rumble yet.

Reece also tilts his hips like he can’t help it. Him filling my mouth is tough to deal with without choking. I pull back, tree lights blurring until I blink to see he’s still speckled with red, gold, and green. Still the best thing I got this Christmas. He’s also up on his elbows, watching, and that does something for me.

He’s intent.

So am I, on being the cause of more noises from him. Flicking my tongue across his slit does it. So does me mapping veins from top to bottom. I touch and trace them. Feel where he’s silky and where he’s solid. Kiss and lick all the way to the top, and his hips tilt again, stuttering to chase contact, like he can’t help it.

I know how that goes. I haven’t been able to help imagining this moment—did it over and over after going out with men who didn’t do it for me. How could they? None of them were Reece Trelawney.

His dick bumps my lips, so I open up, and maybe it’s the wrong angle, but I choke again before getting my hand around him as a buffer. That lets me focus better—I suck the head of his cock, and it’s wild how much I like it. Wilder still how much I like the soft crinkle of his pubes against my fist in contrast. I hum and suck and stroke all with my mouth full, and his belly tenses, so I do it again, only stopping when I need to inhale deeply. Even how he smells does it for me, all warm and musky, so I keep going, trying to take more of him.

I can’t, which isn’t what the internet ever promised. It didn’t warn me about dealing with a spurt of precome, either.

I pull off coughing, and he’s still watching, only now his head is tilted in a fleeting reminder of kids at school staring at me whirling across the playground after a forgetful moment.

I’m flustered into asking, “Am I doing it okay?”

“Okay?”

Not only the tree lights flicker.

Something complex does in his expression, and before I know it, I’m the one with him between my spread legs, only now I’m sitting upright and he kneels on the carpet.

He’s at eye level with me. “Anything you want to do is good for me, Jack. One question though…” His pause draws out before he asks this. “You said you had plenty of practice. Practice at what exactly?”

If anyone else asked that question, I’d lie.

Tonight, he’s been so honest I can’t be anything else with him.

“First dates. Didn’t meet anyone I wanted to…” I can’t help looking at his cock, and fuck my life, I just had it in my mouth, so why heat prickles my throat, I have no clue. I know what I’d hear as a chorus if anyone but him heard that confession, because who comes to a big city and doesn’t throw themselves into doing more with frogs than kissing?

I’m not sad about that now. I can’t be when he asks me something different, and for someone usually softly spoken, this growl gets all of my attention.

“So I’d be the first person to return the favour?”

I nod, and his head tilts again, studying me for so long that I should feel pinned under a lens, squirming as he watches. I don’t. He might as well have bought that off-cut of shimmering fabric. Something like it slides across me as he watches before clasping me where I’m so hard I ache, and that’s amazing. Then he lets go, which is tragic, until that free hand strokes a slow and somehow silky path up my torso.

His palm takes so long to cover the distance to the nape of my neck that I wonder what he thinks about my body and if he’s marking the same differences between us that I have. I’m slim where he’s a whole lot wider, and I’m smoother where he’s hairy. I stop analysing when he pulls me into a quick and hard kiss.

He whispers next, even though there’s no one here but me to listen.

“Good.”

Forget what I said about already getting all I want for Christmas. That word is the best gift yet, even if it doesn’t come with him touching where I throb. He leaves my hard-on alone, his lips brushing my ear instead. His breath there provokes a surprise shudder as soon as he whispers across the shell of my ear, “No one’s done this for you either?”

I’d say no if I wasn’t lost in what his warm breath does for me. I groan when he repeats, “Good,” which is followed by the tip of his tongue, and who the fuck knew wet heat in my ear followed by a nip to my earlobe would go straight to my balls?

I do squirm then, and almost sob when his mouth moves away to give my chest the same hot breath and sharp teeth treatment. He finds the point of a nipple, and all of a sudden I’m squirming harder. So much so that he rests a thick forearm across me, and I wouldn’t have written hold me down please or do that again right the fuck now on a list of sexual wishes. If I ever made that mental spreadsheet, it only ever had one name in a single column.

“Reece.”

He pauses, looking up from where he’s so close to my dick. His breath coasts there, and everything inside me seizes.

Fluttering wings in my chest go still, the world not slowing but stopping as I watch him explore every inch of me with careful fingers, then with his tongue, and I stop breathing.

His eyes meet with mine. He also smiles with his mouth full, but he doesn’t choke like I did. I’m the only one of us who does that when he winks.

I’m done for then. A goner, all the way up in heaven as he blows me, and nothing prepared me for that feeling, or for getting to see his eyes close and his cheeks hollow.

He gets serious about getting me off, and everything he does gets me closer.

Each gulp and swallow. Each twist of his fist around me. I’m holding on by the skin of my teeth when he slides a hand under my thigh and lifts it.

My leg is over his shoulder, and he looks up again, his mouth still full, watching me as he cups my balls before exploring some more, and the tip of a finger finds where every nerve in my body has relocated.

I didn’t truly seize up when his breath coasted across my dick.

I do now, so locked in on new sensations that I don’t even notice when he stops sucking me off, and my wet cock slaps my belly. I’m vaguely aware it glistens. I’m more aware of him pushing at the back of my knee.

So he can see more of me.

If there was ever a time to get hot, blotchy, and mottled, it should be now. Instead, it’s Reece whose chest stains with?—

A sex flush.

We’re having sex .

Or we’re about to—Reece rubs the pad of a finger over the head of my dick. It shines when he lifts it away, and so does the entire room when he presses that slickness where I haven’t ever opened for anybody.

He doesn’t push. Reece just circles there, and asks, “Is that good?”

I can’t find the words to answer. I can only nod, and he keeps going. My breath catches with each slow circle, with each slight push, and I give way to someone I thought had looked intently at me before.

This is a whole other level.

He’s captivated.

So am I by his forehead creasing and by his next quiet question. “And this?”

He’s inside me, slowly but surely showing me how something I only ever did to myself feels when someone else pays attention. That’s what he does to me— with me —for who knows how long with one finger and with the help of saliva that connects us in a glistening strand until it breaks. The next press of his finger is slicker, and Reece slides inside me deeper, searching and not stopping, until I suddenly choke out a warning.

I’m so close to shooting —need to —and he moves fast.

I’m covered, my leg still against his shoulder, his cock hard against mine, and we could be fucking.

He grinds, and I hope to fuck that Christmas doesn’t come as fast as I do.

I want this week to last forever.

I might even say so. I’m noisy and gasping when I can focus again on him.

He’s silent, his face a mask of what could be taken for pain if he didn’t grind hard and then add more wet heat between us.

He comes and shudders, shivering, and it isn’t cold in here but I still grab the throw from the back of the couch and tent him. Us. I hem in his deep grumble of satisfaction, and so what if it soon gets hot and stuffy. I’m kissing Reece all over again, and yes, there’s a big, bright city outside, but this feels too private to share with it.

So does his murmur against my throat. “Amazing.”

He is.

He’s also too honest to survive here no matter how detailed the instructions I’ll leave for him and my successor. Too sweet to extract cash from tightwad bankers without my help, which he proves by saying, “Thanks, Jack,” like I just gave him everything he ever wanted.

He lifts the throw, and fuck me, he’s a wreck, his hair sticking up every which way, his face flushed and speckled with tree-light colour, and…

I wouldn’t change a single thing about him.

More than that, I can’t let London.