24. 24

24

Robbie McGuire

Ant looks like someone else. Someone different. Someone I don’t know but want to know badly. His eyes are black, pupils completely blown out, brows drawn down low. There’s a looseness to his joints and an easy smile as he moves toward me that isn’t usually there.

“Open up, Princess,” he says, placing a hand on each of my knees and spreading them roughly.

The crudeness of the action takes me by surprise and does something strange to my mind. I’m already on fire, a hot mass of exposed nerve endings. I’ve been like this for hours. Since we first got to the restaurant, and Ant let me put my foot between his. I could tell that he felt it too, the spark, the heat between us when we touched. I could practically see the cogs of his mind spinning. He thought he should stop me. Part of him wanted to, but he couldn’t make himself do it. And that turned me on about as much as anything ever has. The kiss made it worse, and having his cock rammed down my throat escalated my arousal to well beyond crisis point.

I’m as hot and bothered as I’ve ever been, but now I’ve gone runny too. Syrupy and liquid, as a thin stream of precum dribbles out of me. His voice spills over me, changing as it does. Going from something that exists outside of me to something that rattles each individual strand of my DNA.

He lubes his fingers as I watch. He pours a ton of clear liquid all over three fingers—pointer, middle, and ring. Then he hooks his free hand under my left knee and bends it back until it’s almost at my ear.

He looks between my legs and smiles. “Aw, look at that little pussy. So pink and pretty. So tight. I’m going to have to stretch it out real nice just to get my head in, aren’t I?”

“Mm,” I gurgle, spluttering and nodding and trying to open my legs wider.

I’m leaning back, shoulders, head, and neck pressed against the wall, while the rest of me is curled into a pretzel. My cock is stretched out on my belly, so hard it hurts, twitching and bobbing in the air every time Decker so much as breathes near it.

“Please,” I moan, raising my hips, hoping he’ll notice and take pity on me .

He doesn’t. Or he does.

He strokes me, but he doesn’t touch my dick. He strokes my hole. He uses all three lubed fingers. He’s a little rough, but not very. Just rough enough to confuse my senses. He rubs my ring in a slow, torturous circle, firm and sustained. When I’m about to give in and start begging in earnest, he dips a single finger in. Just the tip. Just the first knuckle. Just enough to tease me and activate every nerve in that part of my body. When the rest of me has ceased to exist, he eases his finger in deeper. I’m folded in half, curled in on myself, so I have no choice but to look down and watch what he’s doing to me. His finger is at my entrance one minute, and then it disappears, neatly burrowed away, hidden from view by my balls. The feel of it starts to take me over. The intrusion is welcome, but it’s an intrusion nonetheless.

Just the tip turns to more. A lot more.

He fingers a few times like that. Long, perfunctory strokes meant to prepare me for use more than anything else. He pulls out and adds a second finger. I feel it intensely. The quick shock as my body adjusts. The swift give that makes me feel like I’m out of my body. I groan as I watch my ass being plundered.

This time it’s different. The expression on his face is different. He’s focused, studying my face, looking for what? I don’t know. He moves his fingers inside me again, shallower than before, pressing upward. And like that, I know. I know exactly what he’s looking for, and let’s just say he finds it. He finds it and then some. The sensation is nuclear. Absent one second and then there. Everywhere. Nerve endings light up and I kick my legs without meaning to, trying to straighten them, to lessen the pressure, or to increase it, I’m not sure which.

I can’t move though. His grip on my leg is like a vise, pinning me down securely. In fact, just before I moved, I noticed the muscle in his jaw tense. He braced before he hit my gland, so maybe he was expecting my reaction.

“Uh-uh,” he warns, “I’m not going to go so easy on you this time, Princess. Last time I was gentle because your pussy was brand new. This time, I’m going to give it to you until you can’t walk straight. Till you can’t think of anything else for days. Maybe weeks.”

He’s sure as hell not going to hear any complaints from me about that. Quite the opposite, in fact. I scoot my ass so it’s hanging off the table a little and I’ve bought some more space to lie back on. I let my right leg fall onto my chest and close my eyes. I don’t just accept my fate. I surrender to it. I welcome it.

He fingers me deep, then shallow. Stretching me and scintillating me. Massaging my prostate with a light pressure that slowly increases. Long, leisurely strokes become shorter. He grits his teeth, forearm flexing, as he taps a clear, urgent message into the fiber of my being.

The message is simple: something inside me needs to get out. Badly. More than badly, sanity-and-life-depends-on-it badly.

“Need to come,” I wheeze.

He shakes his head. His lips twist up, and a slow smile spreads up his face, casting light where there’s usually darkness. His eyes are so soft and indulgent that I can’t remember them any other way. “You’re not even close, Babygirl."

“I am,” I insist, urgency contorting the timbre of my voice and cranking it up by an octave or two. “I am close! Touch my dick…do it. Touch it, and I’ll come all over myself, I swear.”

I try to reach for myself in desperation, but my bent knees and calves block my way.

“Don’t even think about coming yet.” He slaps my hand away and leans in and kisses me sweetly on the lips. “I’ve barely even gotten started.”

My mouth opens, tongue peeking out, chasing his as he moves out of reach. I squirm and groan loudly, clamping my fingers around the edge of the table in a desperate effort to stave off my release .

He leans in again, and this time, he kisses my neck. He does it softly, with lots of lips and tongue and just the right amount of suction. He alternates between kissing my neck and torturing my nipples with a series of quick, wicked flicks of his tongue. It feels so good I almost can’t take it.

The entire time he’s kissing me, his fingers move inside me.

I go somewhere else. Somewhere far away and unfamiliar. A place where it feels like I’m weightless and floating and about to rupture at the same time.

Any intention to play it cool leaves me. It’s not that I ask for more or even beg. I plead. There’s no other way of putting it. A torrent of expletives pours from my lips, all punctuated with a single pained word: “ Please!”

I say it so much and with such meaning that I’m only dimly aware of Decker giving me a third finger. It hurts, but only a little. So little that my brain scrambles the signal and reads it as pleasure.

It’s too much.

I’m too close.

“Ant! I’m gonna—”

He stops moving immediately, going so still I can tell he isn’t breathing.

My nervous system revolts from the sudden halt in stimuli. My balls ache, and my lower belly too. My brain nearly explodes from the shock, the wrongness, the injustice of being so close and stopping.

I roar and thrash, fighting for more, but I’m unable to find it.

When I’m back from the edge, or not back from it so much as clawing wildly at it and managing to find a shred of purchase, Decker pulls his fingers out of me. He does it slowly, carefully, making a concerted effort not to touch the hot spot inside me.

The roar from before turns into a wail as the loss of him leaves my hole clenching on nothing.

He pulls me to my feet. I sway but manage to remain upright.

“Bedroom,” he growls.

I take the first three of four stairs with an unnaturally stiff gait, all too aware that I’m naked and there’s a man at my back. I feel his presence like an open flame. Sparks crackle and flicker up my legs and down my back.

I don’t move as fast as he’d like. I know that because he feels it necessary to hurry me along. He does so by wrapping an arm around my chest, holding me securely under my arms, and using two fingers to prod me as I walk. He finds his target easily. Expertly. Slick, thick digits penetrate me and fill me so deeply that I take the next three or four stairs on my toes. My knees start to buckle, but he holds me up, thrusting into me each time I raise my foot to climb a step.

My legs fail me before I get to the landing. I collapse to my knees, my fall ungraceful and broken only by the thick digits wedged up my ass. I don’t stop or slow. I keep moving. I need to get to my bedroom, even if it kills me. I crawl up the stairs, grunting like an animal each time Decker spurs me along.

I pull myself up on the banister when I reach the top.

“Which way?” he asks. I raise a limp arm and point to my bedroom door. “I swear to God, Princess, there better be a bed in there.”

Thank fuck there is. I rented my New York apartment to a friend when I moved to Seattle, so I left most of my furniture for them, but I brought my bed, the art, and a few sentimental pieces with me.

My bed is neatly made and there isn't so much as a sock or errant pair of shoes on the floor. The curtains are drawn and the bedside light is on. I’ll neither confirm nor deny that I spent a considerable amount of time planning the seduction of an infamous Vipers player before leaving home this afternoon .

But you best believe my room wouldn’t look anything like this if I hadn’t.

“On your hands and knees,” he says, giving me a little shove toward the bed.

I wobble over to it on unsteady legs and drop onto all fours. I feel the weight of my body in my wrists and lower back. I’m on my hands and knees, legs open, balls heavy. My ass is fully exposed. I clench and relax to remind Decker what I’m here for. He sees and likes it. I can tell by the way he’s breathing at me. Hot, uneven blasts of air I feel on the back of my legs.

It makes me tingle.

It makes me needy. A burning, desperate mess that needs to be fucked more than I need water or air.

“Do it,” I garble, “just do it. I need it.”

The mattress dips behind me. Swaying me to the left and then the right. There’s a big hand on my back, a slow, steady sweep of his skin against mine, and then pressure on the back of my neck. He pushes me down, face-first into the mattress. My chest and arms are cushioned by my bedlinen. My ass is high in the air.

If I was still capable of feeling anything but rampant arousal, I’d probably be embarrassed by the position I’m in. Maybe even ashamed. It’s different this time. Last time, the lights were out, and the dark provided a cloak, a screen, something to shield me and keep some part of me for myself. That cloak is gone, stripped away by an afternoon of hushed tones and holding hands. Long, lazy hours spent looking into his eyes and seeing things he doesn’t show other people.

His hand moves down my back, following the line of my spine all the way down to my balls. He curls his fingers around them, gently running blunt nails over feverish skin.

My speech slurs and words run into each other. “Please. Need it. Want it.”

His hand moves down farther, not quite touching, but nearly. His hand is so close to the head of my cock I can feel the disturbance of air when he moves.

There are no words now. They’re gone. They don’t exist anymore. They’ve been replaced by the kind of sounds animals make.

“You know,” he says thoughtfully, “if you weren’t so close to busting, I’d pull your dick back like this”—he curls a hand around the base of my shaft, making it jump, and pulls it back between my legs. It feels strange. I’m not completely sure I knew my dick could bend back like this when it’s so hard. It’s almost good enough. Almost what I need. It’s the stimulation I crave, but not nearly enough of it—“and I’d blow you. ”

The thought of Decker’s mouth anywhere near my dick makes me moan and try in vain to say things. I try to say more and please , but my tongue is malfunctioning.

“Yeah, that’s what I’d do. I’d take this pretty cock into my throat and suck it until you come undone… You know what I’d do then?”

“Gguuck,” I say.

It’s not a word, but Decker correctly interprets it as no and takes it upon himself to expand. “I’d swallow it all. I’d swallow every drop you made ’cause you made it for me. ’Cause it’s mine .”

I howl and struggle, bunching the sheets in my hands and arching my back, frantic, wanton with need.

“You want this, huh?” He slaps his dick lightly against my hole and my eyes roll back so far I see stars.

“ Nnng .”

I didn’t hear him lubing himself up, but he must have because his dick is slick, a thick wet thing that splatters against me. If I could talk, I’d say something like, “Put it in me, you asshole. Now. I want it in my guts. I want it so deep inside me I’ll be able to taste it tomorrow.”

Not want. Need.

I need it.

I fucking need it.

I need it so much I start panicking, hyperventilating, and reaching behind me, trying to drag him inside by force if need be. Thank fuck he gets it, he must, because he takes mercy on me.

His head is against my opening, pushing in. Thank fuck. There’s a deep pressure that evaporates as my body gives way. A burn that enters me, stretches my sphincter, and travels up my rectum. Up my spine. Into my brain.

Right from the start, I’m gone. Everywhere and nowhere. Turned inside out. All I know is pleasure. All I know is Decker. His body and mine. He fills me completely. I’m so full I feel him all over. Not just in my ass. I feel him in my hips, in my belly. In my joints. In my face.

He has both hands on my hips, and even in my altered state, I’m dimly aware that he was right. He was gentle with me last time. I was gentle with me last time too. I felt passive lying on my side. I felt like I couldn’t move, like all I could do was take what he gave me.

It’s different now. I’m anything but passive. As soon as I’ve adjusted to his girth, I push myself up, hands balled into fists that fight with the mattress, and I fuck myself on him like there’s no tomorrow. I rock my hips back in time with his thrusts. His cock plunges into me hard and unapologetic, and I take it. I take it and love it. I take everything he has to give me, and I want more. We’re as close as two men can be, and I want more. More dick. More skin. More Decker.

I don’t just want his body. I want him. I want the sound of his voice. The smell of his neck. I want the way he looked at me in the restaurant and in the car. I want the way he clenches his jaw when he’s pissed at me, and I want the way he smiles at me when he doesn’t know I’m watching him.

I want all that, but in the meantime, I’ll take the deep strokes he’s giving me and the soft, tacky slap of two bodies slamming together.

We keep going until I’m blind, a mindless fuck toy that bucks its hips wildly, anesthetized to anything that isn’t the staggering force of the orgasm gaining on me.

I wait for as long as I can. Until Decker is grunting behind me and his fingers are digging into my hips. Until his thrusts falter and he starts losing his rhythm. Only then do I take my dick in my hand and start jerking.

It’s ecstasy.

Elation.

Instantaneous euphoria I feel in every cell in my body. Pleasure darts from the base of my spine and rips through my cock and balls, erupting out of me with a force that wracks me. Wrecks me. Breaks me. My jaw drops, but no sound comes out. It’s silent, an open-mouth scream. Then it’s not. Then it’s me and Decker and everything we’ve just made collapsing in on us. A chorus of male voices. A repetitive, aggressive refrain.

My voice then his.

His, then mine.

When I find my way back to my body, I’m stretched out flat on my belly. My legs are splayed out and my face is turned, one side pressed into the mattress. There’s a weight on my back. A heavy mass holding me down. Big hands are in my hair, sweeping it out of my face with a gentleness that makes it hard for me to get air. He’s breathing on me, light puffs of hot air on my neck. He strokes my hair again, the same way as before. My lungs fill with air as the weight of him is removed. Before I have time to protest or complain, he leans down and stamps a sweet, soft kiss on my cheek.

And another one.

And another.

“Where are you going?” he asks .

I’ve been to the bathroom to clean up and down a glass of water, but Ant’s still flat on his back on the bed where I left him. I jiggle the keys I have in my hand, metal tinkling against metal, and say, “I’m going to move your car, silly.”

That gets his attention all right. It snaps him right out of his stupor. He sits bolt upright, eyes flashing in consternation. “A-are those my car keys?”

“Yep.” I bob my head amiably. “Can’t very well leave an Aston Martin with a personalized Totally Pucked license plate on the street outside my house, can we? That car is synonymous with you, bud.”

He’s off the bed and on his feet like a flash, looking around on the floor. “Where the hell are my pants?”

“Don’t you worry about your pants, baby. You won’t be needing them till tomorrow.” He does a clear double-take, mouth and eyes stretching into incensed circles, but before he has time to give me hell, I say, “There are fresh towels in the bathroom. Feel free to have a shower and make yourself at home. I’m ordering in—Greek food okay?” He doesn’t nod to agree, but he also doesn’t shake his head, so I take it as a yes. “We can lay out a picnic blanket over here”—I motion to the space on the floor at the end of my bed—“and I’ll bring up some cheese and wine for us to have while we wait for dinner to arrive.”

He opens his mouth, but I take my leave before he has time to speak.

“This isn’t a date!” he booms when I get to the bottom of the stairs.

He’s living in the land of Delulu, poor thing, but he’s had a big day, so I let it go. Still, to fuck with him for having the nerve to say it again, I bring the candles my mom gave me as a housewarming present up with me once I’ve moved his car and ordered our food.

I shake out the picnic blanket and smooth it out on the floor while he looks on in something that looks like disbelief. Either that or horror.

I light the candles and turn off the bedside light, then I uncork the wine and pour him a glass. When he doesn’t move to take it as fast as I’d like, I offer to hand-feed him the cracker I’ve just topped with a thick slice of cheese. That snaps him out of it. He eases himself onto the blanket, taking care to sit as far away from me as possible. Fortunately for me, that’s not very far. The blanket is meant for two people at most. Two average-sized people. He has his back to the bed and is sitting cross-legged. He’s wearing my robe. He must have found it in the bathroom when he was in there. He has it wound tightly around him with a big double bow tied in his middle. It’s almost enough to offer him modesty, but not quite, given the position he’s sitting in. He looks uncomfortable and shamefaced. And fucking adorable.

“What do you think of the wine?” I ask. “Think it’s supposed to be pretty decent.”

The bottle of wine in question is a 2016 Chateau Angelus Hommage a Elisabeth Bouchet. It’s way more than decent, it’s an exceptional bottle of wine and very, very expensive.

He’s the one who brought it to my housewarming party. I saw him put it on my kitchen counter and slink away, hoping no one had seen him.

“It’s okay,” he manages once he’s swallowed a mouthful of cracker that didn’t look like it went down all that easily. I try not to laugh. I love fucking with him because it’s so easy to do. He glances around, looking for some way to change the subject. “Why are we eating on the floor anyway?”

“Well,” I explain, “the thing is…I don’t have a table. Or chairs.” I give him a knowing look.

He interprets it correctly.

“Oh Jesus.” He slumps back against the bed. “We’re going shopping again, aren’t we? ”

“I mean, I guess I could call Alessia. She gave me her number and said I should call if I need anyth…”

“No, don’t call her,” he says quickly. He looks shocked that he said it, kind of breathless and confused.

I was wrong before. He’s not adorable. He’s more than adorable. Way more.

I move around to his side of the blanket and sit beside him, stretching my legs out in front of me and slinging an arm around his shoulders. The candles flicker in front of us, a slow dance between fire and air that sprinkles magic all over the room. Outside, the rain beats down on the windows, rattling the panes as the rest of the world drifts further and further away.

“Why not? Are you jealous?” I tease, running my nose along his earlobe as I say it. I’m hit by a heady waft of his scent. Musky and spicy. Strong, like him. It makes me space out.

“No! Uh, it’s just that you said you don’t like when things look designer-y, and, and Alessia’s a designer. All the sales assistants at places like that are. It’s pretty much a given. It’s like a job requirement…or something.”

“Or something, huh?” I wrap my arms around him and kiss his neck. His entire body stiffens and then relaxes, and he lets himself soften in my arms, hiding his face by burrowing it against the side of my neck .

“I’m not jealous,” he hisses. I can tell he’s trying to convince himself more than me, and he’s not doing a great job of either. “ I’m not . But, but, don’t call her, okay?”

I take his face in my hands, bracketing it between my palms. He looks down at first, unable or unwilling to make eye contact. He parts his lips and closes them again before conceding defeat and looking at me. He looks different now. The mask he usually wears to conceal who he is has dropped. It’s slipped just enough to expose something softer. Something chocolatey and inviting. Something warm and safe. Something I want to fall into.

I kiss him lightly, brushing my lips against his and dipping my tongue into his mouth just enough to taste the wine on his lips. “Ant, I’m not seeing other people. I’m not sleeping with anyone but you. I’m not even talking to anyone else because I’m not interested in anyone but you. I deleted my profile on all the apps I was on after the first time you called me pretty.”

He turns his face again and sucks in a ragged breath, letting it out in a warm gust that spills down the side of my neck. His lips turn up in a slow smile and his beard grazes my cheek.

He reaches down and worries the waistband of my pants, finding the tie and tugging on it gently. “Thought you didn’t own pajama pants,” he says, pushing my pants down enough to free my cock.

“I didn’t say I don’t own any. I said I don’t sleep in them.”

By the time we’re done with dinner, the wine, and each other, I’m drunk, and I’m almost one hundred percent sure it’s not from the wine. We stagger to the bathroom. “Toothbrushes are in there,” I say, pointing to the drawer where I keep a stack of disposable hotel-issue toothbrushes.

“Ugh. Can’t stand these toothbrushes,” he grumbles as he unwraps one. “They’re so square, and their bristles are so hard.”

“Say no more, baby. I’ll buy you your own toothbrush to keep here tomorrow. Diamond-shaped head, soft bristle.”

He drops his head in his hands and groans. “That’s not what I mea— You know what, forget it. I know there’s not a goddamn thing I can do to change your mind when you look at me like that.”

“I love that you get that about me. ”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head but doesn’t speak. I spread some toothpaste on his brush and we stand side-by-side at the sink and brush our teeth. The entire time, I watch him in the vanity mirror. Much as he’d love to deny it, he watches me too. Our eyes meet in the mirror, and when they do, I smile broadly around my brush and he rolls his eyes. Each time it happens, his eye roll grows weaker until all that’s left is a sheepish dip of his head that does nothing to hide the fact that he’s smiling too.

I blow out the candles and the room dissolves into darkness. It’s been a big day. A watershed day for us. We’re both exhausted by the time we roll into bed. He takes the right side, I take the left. He lies on his back, and I lie on my side facing him. I can’t make out the shape of him exactly, but I know he’s there because the heat of his body fills the whole room.

I bunch up my pillow and move it closer to his, kicking the sheets on my side loose so my legs don’t feel trapped and I can put my foot out if I get too hot during the night.

The sound of his breathing saws in and out. It’s a steady, predictable sound that’s speeding up instead of slowing. It sounds less like that of a man winding down for the day and more like one amping himself up to say something.

I know it’s not easy for him to let himself be close to other people, so I don’t push or prompt him.

After a while, he sighs and says, “I’m not fucking anyone else either, McGuire.” I reach for his hand and take it in mine, squeezing it to let him know I hear him. Not just his words. I hear what it means to him. And what it costs him to say it. “I’m negative and on PrEP. I should’ve told you before I came in you, but I was…”

He searches for a word but can’t find it.

“Distracted?” I suggest.

He huffs out a breath in the affirmative. “Something like that.”

“I’m negative too,” I say.

To set him at ease and distract him from the fact he just initiated a meaningful conversation with me, I swing an arm and leg over him and tell him about some of my plans for the house. I tell him about my ideas for the guest bedrooms, the study, and the porch I want to build out back in the summer. I talk quietly, keeping my voice low. I talk until the time between the air entering his lungs and leaving it lengthens. For good measure, I talk a bit more .

“I thought cuddling was supposed to be a quiet activity,” he says eventually.

“Definitely not. Cuddling is when people tell each other their secrets.”

He lets out a breath that sounds faintly like someone saying, “Oh fuck,” but he doesn’t move or try to get away.

“Want to know one of my secrets?” I ask.

“If I say no, will it stop you from telling me?”

“No.”

“Then sure, go ahead.”

I move closer to him, so close I can’t get any closer. My chest is pressed against his side and I’ve molded my arm and leg into him. Despite how strongly I feel it and how I’m generally okay with wearing my heart on my sleeve, I’m a little nervous. An uncomfortable flutter between my ribs and my heart makes me think it’s a good thing I’m lying down.

“I like you, Ant.”

It’s embarrassing to admit. It’s embarrassing to hear myself say it aloud. It sounds juvenile. Almost silly.

But it’s true.

I like Ant Decker. I like him like crazy. I like him in a big, scary way that I know in my bones is a big deal. A big thing. The next big thing in my life .

He may not feel it yet. Hell, he may not even know what we are yet, but I do. I know things. I know feelings. And this thing between us is as real as anything I’ve ever felt.

He doesn’t say it back, but he doesn’t need to.

He doesn’t have to reply because my arm is still draped over his chest, my hand resting on the swell of his left pec. When I speak, his heart hears me. It reacts instantly. The slow, steady beat changes. It speeds up, doubling its pace and beating so hard and fast I feel the wild, hopeful clatter of it against the palm of my hand.

He doesn’t speak, but his heart hears the question and answers for him.