Chapter 14

FOURTEEN

The car ride to Sutton’s apartment takes surprisingly little time, which is a blessing, since the air in the car is so thick with dirty promises that I’m beginning to think spending too much time in such close confines without being able to do anything about the desire isn’t healthy at all.

Somehow, the tension gets even thicker once we’re inside his apartment. He throws his suit jacket over the armrest of the couch and pulls off his tie. My eyes get stuck on the hollow of his throat when he opens the two buttons at the collar of his shirt. I swallow hard. Can’t say I’ve ever considered necks particularly sexy, but here we are.

Our eyes meet across the room.

And hold.

He moves across the floor with single-minded determination, barrels right into me, so I hit the wall with an “Oomph” that he swallows as he swiftly slams his mouth down on mine.

It almost feels as if he’s been hungry for me, which makes very little sense and is probably only true in my head. His body is plastered against mine, pressing me against the wall, and I do my best to give as good as I get.

He walks me backward into his bedroom, mouth fused to mine the whole time. The backs of my knees hit the bed at the same time as his tongue enters my mouth. My fingers sink into his hair and his hands are gripping my waist.

It’s hot as fuck.

His mouth is moving over mine, warm and sure and in charge. His tongue dives into my mouth over and over again, and all it manages to do is heighten the tension that’s already boiling over between the two of us until it’s almost unbearable.

I twist my fingers in his hair. The silky strands tickle my palms.

Everything is new and foreign and exciting in a way it’s never been before, and I’m so turned on already that it’s starting to feel like I’m running the risk of coming just from Sutton’s tongue fucking my mouth and his fingers digging into my back, forcing our bodies even more firmly together.

My breathing turns ragged from lust, and my body arches toward Sutton.

He stops kissing me, his breathing just as harsh as mine.

I drop onto the bed and tilt my head back until my gaze locks with his. The air is thick with lust. It crackles between us, audible in every heaved in breath and groan.

But a part of me is still hesitant. The part of my brain that’s prone to sabotage keeps telling me our last encounter might’ve been a fluke, that maybe he’s changed his mind, even if all evidence points to the contrary.

It’s a quiet voice, though. Drowned out by lust.

So fuck that.

I reach out and pull Sutton lower. Tug and pull and wrestle until he’s on top of me. Until we’re so close we’re breathing the same air. Breathing into each other’s mouths. I don’t even know who reaches for the other first, but we’re kissing again, tongues brushing, teeth clashing.

I fumble with the buttons of Sutton’s crisp dress shirt until I have it open, then I slide my hands up his chest, feeling the hard muscle underneath my palms. Years’ worth of suppressed lust is boiling under the surface, so potent that it seems impossible to even feel something this intense.

Sutton’s tongue brushes over mine again and again, and the tension ratchets up even more.

Panting and moans blend together, fueled by the same need.

I push my hips upward, blindly and boldly rubbing myself against Sutton, only one goal in mind.

Release.

My dick is painfully hard, balls tight. I feel half-insane with the need for relief.

Something.

Anything.

There’s too much fabric between us.

It’s desperation like I’ve never felt before, and it’s there because I feel completely safe with Sutton above me, in control and willing to give me everything I need.

I can’t explain what makes me so sure of it.

I just know.

Whatever I want out of this, he’s going to make sure I get it.

His hand on the side of my neck is both gentle and rough. Exciting.

He lines his lower body up with mine, and we both groan at the first brush of our cocks. My heartbeat thunders in my ears, and I want him so badly that my whole body arches toward him.

Sutton pushes himself up above me and yanks his shirt off. He tosses it to the side carelessly, then grabs the hem of my shirt and wrestles it over my head. He gets off the bed, and I push myself up on my elbows to watch.

He meets my gaze, fingers working on the button of his suit pants.

“Like what you see?” His voice is husky with need.

I take a deliberately slow look before I nod.

“A lot.”

The pants are off in seconds.

I smile.

“What an efficient striptease.”

He raises a brow at me.

“Did you want me to go slower?”

“God, no,” I say empathically, and he laughs.

There’s another flash of hesitation that manages to float to the surface through the thick haze of lust at the sight of him. Still perfect. Tanned, sharply defined muscles and smooth skin.

It’s not even just his looks. He’s sophisticated and worldly and experienced, and I’m the antithesis of all of that.

I don’t have time to think, though.

Sutton hooks his fingers into the waistband of my sweats and pulls them down with a swift, practiced movement, and then he’s straddling me again.

He looks down, eyes moving up and down my body. I curl my hands into fists with the effort not to hide. Not to cover myself up.

My heartbeat turns even more frantic, mostly from anxiousness and nerves by now, but there’s unmistakable heat in Sutton’s gaze as he looks at me.

The nerves start to ease again.

Because it’s hard not to feel wanted when somebody looks at you the way Sutton looks at me. Heat dances in the depths of his amber eyes as he takes me in. He slides his palm up my side and chest and doesn’t look at all bothered by the strange texture of my skin.

“We’ll do something fun today,” he says, then casually flicks my nipple before he starts rolling it between his fingers and thumb.

My stomach clenches at the feeling.

I don’t know what he means by fun. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all been fun. But whatever it is, I’m willing to go along with anything he has to offer.

This is how people get in trouble.

And I don’t give a fuck.

“Yeah?” I ask breathlessly.

He simply waggles his brows at me and toys with my nipple some more until my breathing has been reduced to harsh pants again. My cock strains against my stomach, but my hips are trapped underneath Sutton’s weight, so I can’t move.

He lowers himself so that his lips brush over my lips, and his cock slides against mine. It’s all very brief, and the lack of any kind of real pressure is pure torture.

He sits up again. His dick juts up from the neatly trimmed patch of dark blond hair. My mouth goes dry and my chest jolts as I watch him lazily stroke his long, hard cock. All the while, his gaze stays on me, intense and heated, until it starts to feel like he’s jerking off at the sight of me. My own cock jumps at the thought.

Sutton quirks his brow at me.

“What were you thinking about just now?” he asks, eyes going heavy-lidded with lust.

“You.”

He hums, satisfaction evident on every feature of his face, and he keeps stroking himself, teasing and slow. I try to take my own dick in my hand, but he bats my hand away.

“Mine.” He gives me a heated look.

“Didn’t anybody ever teach you to share?” I pant.

“It never stuck.”

With those words, he moves forward and rests all his weight on his left hand. His cock is against mine, bare, silky, and hot. I suck in a breath and try not to come on the spot. A two-year dry spell does absolutely nothing for stamina. That’s conclusively proven now.

Sutton sends me a wolfish grin, spits into his palm, and takes both our cocks in his hand.

I gasp and scramble up on my elbows again, no embarrassment, just a fervent need to watch .

Our cocks are pushed together in his fist, intimately fitting against each other, tight and warm.

He starts to stroke us both.

“Oh, shit,” I say emphatically. The sensation is intense and new, and he has long fingers and a strong grip. His hand moves up and down in a steady rhythm, and everything is overly sensitive by this point.

Sutton leans down on his elbow. He nips at my neck before his teeth scrape over the skin. He sucks, and I turn my head to the side to give him better access.

All the while, he keeps jacking us off, his hand sliding up and down my cock. He starts moving his hips, thrusting his dick into his fist, and the feeling changes. The pressure changes.

My lips fall open on a moan. Sutton bites down on my earlobe.

Jesus Christ.

The moment I start to get used to whatever he’s doing to me is also the moment he changes things.

The urge to come ramps up.

“Good?” he asks.

I give a strained snort because what the fuck kind of question is that? I’d tease him about it, but I find that I only have a single nod in me and no words.

He’s arched above me, and when I look down, I can see our cocks lined up against one another. A drop of precum glistens at the tip of Sutton’s dick. I swipe over it with the pad of my thumb, mesmerized by the sight and the feel.

When I look up, I find Sutton’s eyes on me.

I lift the thumb to my mouth and flick over it with my tongue.

“Fuck.” His voice sounds strained.

He tumbles down on top of me, and my back hits the bed, his arms bracketing me on either side of my head, legs entwined with mine. He bites down on the spot where my neck and shoulder meet for a moment, sending sparks of pleasure coursing through my body before he starts to grind down on me, thrusting his hips, his body plastered against mine, creating the kind of pressure that makes the ache and need inside me double in volume.

His whole body moves against mine. My fingers dig into his back and move lower until I can grip his ass cheeks and pull him even closer. I widen my legs and bend my knees. Sutton’s hips slam into mine, and we both let out long, desperate moans.

I’m not the only one on the edge here.

I dig my heels into the mattress and meet his thrusts. Our bodies rub together everywhere. Bare skin against bare skin, slick with sweat, somehow still not close enough.

“Next time, I’m going to taste you.” Sutton breathes the words into my ear. He nips my neck with his teeth. “Suck you down my throat,” he murmurs. “As deep as you can go.”

My whole body is strung tight and aching. I’m getting off on his words. Dirty promises of all the things he wants to do to me. Words that make me arch beneath him.

“I want to fuck you. My cock in your ass. Stretching you. Owning you. Making you hungry and desperate.”

It’s the gravel in his voice. The strain. The words. And his body rubbing against mine.

“So needy,” he says, and he sounds wrecked.

I come in a white-hot flash of pleasure, head thrown back, black spots appearing in front of my eyes, my dick pulsing and shooting between us.

I’ve never come this hard.

My limbs feel like jelly, and all I can do is watch Sutton above me. He wraps his hand around his cock, his fist flies over his dick until his abs tighten, and he shoots all over my stomach. Sticky, warm liquid pools in my belly button and drips down my sides.

He stares down at me for a long moment. At my heaving chest and his cum on my belly.

“Fuck.” He says it with feeling and with the kind of dazed expression on his face that would be funny if I weren’t so wrecked from the orgasm myself.

“Good?” I manage to ask.

He starts to laugh.

“Yeah, not too bad.”

For some reason, this feels extremely funny. My laughter bubbles to the surface to join his, loud and uninhibited.

“Not too bad,” I echo, then laugh some more.

He drops onto the bed next to me, one leg still thrown over mine. He turns to look at me, lips curled into a smile.

I’m so relaxed and filled with endorphins and the echoes of an adrenaline rush and all that other good stuff that I feel like I’m boneless. I turn my head toward Sutton and meet his gaze.

“Thank you,” I say.

He snorts.

“Anytime. Feel free to take that literally.”

He rolls himself off the bed and goes to the bathroom. A moment later, he appears with a wet washcloth. Instead of handing it to me though, he starts cleaning me up himself, wiping over my stomach and chest, efficient yet gentle, and it’s stupid, but I get a stirring of something weirdly affectionate inside my chest. It’s a bit of a change from the usual, where it’s more of a mix of exasperation and uncertainty.

Once he deems me clean, he drops the washcloth in the hamper before he climbs back into bed.

The room is dim and quiet, the only light coming in through the crack in the bedroom door. I have to get going soon, but the idea isn’t too appealing, so I procrastinate just a little longer.

“Can I ask you something?” Sutton’s voice is low.

I turn my head and send him a curious look.

“I’m not sure. What do you want to know that warrants you asking for permission first?”

“It’s about the scars,” he says.

“Oh. Yeah. Sure. Ask away,” I say, keeping my tone as light as I possibly can. The last thing I need is to be pathetic, so he’ll feel sorry for me. And anyway, it’s not that I mind. It’s just that I’m not used to anybody wanting to ask.

“Your scars have a pattern in some places,” he says.

I wait for something more before I figure out that that statement was a question in itself.

“They’re skin grafts.” My fingers automatically run over the side of my forearm as if confirming said pattern is still in place there. I clear my throat. “Umm… burns are classified by their severity. From first degree to third degree. When you have a first-degree burn, it’s pretty much guaranteed to heal on its own. Deeper second-degree and third-degree burns… It’s too much damage. So then you have skin grafts.”

He doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking at me, so after a little bit, I continue talking.

“If it’s a smaller area, they use just a piece of skin from some other part of your body.” I point to the lower left side of my face and neck. The scar there isn’t really that noticeable. I mean, it’s there, but it’s less in-your-face. “But that only works for smaller wounds, and burn wounds tend to cover large areas of the body, so they use something called meshed skin grafts. Basically they take skin from another part of the body, and then they run it through a machine that makes slits in it. It creates a mesh, so it can cover larger wounds, and then the skin grows back in. It’s actually pretty neat. You don’t really appreciate all the crazy advancements of medical science until a doctor puts you back together.”

He still doesn’t say anything, but there’s a soft click before the room is bathed in low light from the lamp on his bedside table, and he rolls himself on his stomach.

“Can I?” he asks.

I have no idea what he’s asking, but I nod anyway.

He takes my hand and examines the scar. Trails his fingers over it. Then looks up at me.

The funny thing is, he doesn’t have a look of sympathy—or worse, pity—on his face, he just seems curious.

“Does it have feeling like regular skin?” he asks.

“More or less. In some parts the nerve damage from the fire is too extensive, so then it’s just sort of numb. Some of the scars are really sensitive. Some are only sensitive occasionally. With some parts of my skin, I don’t feel anything at all.”

“So it evens out?” he asks with a small smile. His fingers are still tracing the scars on my forearm.

I don’t mind.

I thought I would.

But I don’t.

“Tell me how it happened?” he says next.

I don’t mind.

I thought I would.

But I don’t.

“Electrical fire,” I say. “It was an old apartment building, and we’d lived there my whole life. I was alone, asleep, and for some reason, I woke up. There was this weird whoosh sound and then suddenly the whole ceiling was on fire. I thought I was dreaming it at first. A terrifying dream, sure, but still just that. A dream. Only… I didn’t wake up.”

I take a deep breath.

“The rest is a bit fuzzy in places. Fires are… Fires are incredibly fast once they get going. I never knew just how fast before I saw it with my own eyes. And then my clothes caught fire, and since I was in my crappy school uniform when I fell asleep, it didn’t burn, it melted.”

His thumb is making circles on the inside of my wrist now.

“How did you survive?” he asks.

My eyes stay locked on the thumb like he’s hypnotizing me.

“I jumped out the window.”

The thumb stills for a moment before he continues sliding it over my skin.

“What floor?”

“Third. It was that or burn to death. One prospect was more appealing than the other,” I say lightly. I’ve had years to come to terms with what happened, so the multiple cycles of grief and horror have battered the memory into something manageable. I can talk about it with the detachment of a news reporter by now. “I didn’t even break anything. Somehow. Just twisted my ankle pretty brutally. And then I basically crawled away from the building.” I shrug one shoulder. “After that there’s a huge chunk missing. I was in a coma for a week, so I don’t have any firsthand accounts of what happened during that time.”

“That’s…” He spends a while seemingly looking for words to describe the that before he settles on “Fucking hell.”

He’s not asking, but somehow I just keep talking.

“I was in intensive care for two months. They kept telling my mom and my sister and her boyfriend to prepare for the worst. That I might not make it. And there are moments there when you start to wish you wouldn’t.”

His gaze is locked on mine, and I want to stop, but my mouth just keeps moving.

“It’s a bit like torture. For a good cause. But still torture to the point where you’re not so sure if the ends are worth the means. The damaged skin is cut away, and doctors create skin grafts from unburned skin. They slice open the limbs because of all the swelling. It’s the kind of pain where painkillers don’t really feel like they’re working at all. You have to move around, otherwise your joints will seize up and the scars that’ll form will cement you into a solid block. Healing hurts, and it itches like a motherfucker, and you aren’t allowed to scratch, and every time somebody you love steps into the room, they start to cry, and it starts to feel like you’re in hell. This is the rest of your life and nothing will ever get better, and you’d rather die.”

I stare at the ceiling with an unseeing gaze for a moment before I turn my head and find Sutton’s eyes again.

“But then you do start to get better. So slowly you don’t even register at first, but you heal. And you come out on the other side, profoundly grateful that you’re still alive.”

We’re both silent after that, but he keeps touching me, and the area that touch covers gets larger as the minutes tick by. I have a weird relationship with being touched. With extensive burns, at first, all touch is torture. Then there comes a point where you’re so touch starved you’d give anything for a hug, but your immune system is compromised because of the loss of skin, so no one has hugged you for ages, and if they did you’d be screaming in pain anyway. And then even when you’re better, people are wary of touching you. You force yourself to get used to it, and then you’re the one who becomes wary of touch because you’ve put in the effort and gone through withdrawal, so why put yourself in that position again at all?

But now Sutton’s hands are all over me, and somehow I find myself leaning into the touches. In some carefully choreographed dance neither of us acknowledges, we end up lying side by side, bodies lined up, one of his arms underneath my neck with the other hand absently tracing patterns on my chest.

I’m tense at first, because this feels scary in a whole new way. Somehow this feels much riskier than sex does. Sex is easy to compartmentalize. This? This feels dangerously intimate.

This feels dangerously good.

Neither of us is here for that. I have just enough common sense left to recognize and remember that. This is not what we’re about, and it would be smart as fuck if I didn’t put myself in a position where those lines start to blur. I don’t want any extra complications. This thing between me and Sutton, this arrangement, has to stay in its designated slot.

I roll myself off the bed.

He blinks and a startled look crosses his face before he wipes it off.

“I have to get going.” I sort through the clothes that litter the floor everywhere. I already feel more in control, and the weird moment from earlier feels like a fluke.

Sutton gets up as well and stalks toward me.

He’s so close, and then he’s touching me again, which is a bit counterproductive for those boundaries I’m supposed to be keeping firmly in my sights. He’s standing right behind me, his hands on my hips, and he starts to kiss the nape of my neck.

I should move.

But I stay put.

And I suppress a smile when he grabs my ass while I try to pull on my pants. I try to take my shirt and can’t find it anymore.

Eventually I have to laugh.

“What are you doing?” I ask when he’s in the middle of rubbing his semi against me and getting my dick interested in the process pretty effectively.

“I’m making my case,” he murmurs into the sensitive skin where my shoulder and my neck meet before gently biting down. A shiver of need runs down my back.

“About?”

“Why we should go for round two.” He leans his chin on my shoulder and pushes his hand down the front of my sweats. His fingers wrap around my dick, and he starts stroking up and down.

I should move.

But I stay put.

“I’m listening,” I say, already breathless.

“It’s dark outside,” he says.

“It is. But I work nights, so I’m used to it.”

He swipes his thumb over the tip of my cock, and I bite back a groan.

“I like your dick,” he says.

A snort of laughter escapes, and I close my eyes and let my head drop back while he continues his ministrations.

“That seems more like an incentive for you than for me.”

“I promise to make you feel really good if you let me play with it.” He drags his palm up my shaft, and this time I do groan out loud. I can feel his lips quirk into a smile against the back of my neck. “Please, please, let me play with it.”

“I don’t know… Are you a nice boy? Because my momma told me I should only play with nice boys.”

“I’ll be very nice just for you,” he assures me.

His other hand goes to my chest, and he wraps his arm around me from behind. He drags my sweats back down, so they’re just below my ass. My dick is out now, and he continues slowly jacking me.

I’m already a goner anyway, but then he drops another soft kiss on my nape, and a shiver runs through me.

“You make an excellent argument,” I say, turning my head to glance at him over my shoulder.

His lips land on mine.

“Fuck yeah, I do.”