Chapter 15

15

RAE

Hayden ignores the bag of clothes Marc left for us, only dragging on a pair of runners like I do before he takes off sprinting into the dusk. The man has legs for miles, and I don’t know if footy or farm work built his stamina, but he has plenty. So much that he doesn’t show any sign of slowing, not even when the school padre calls out from the chapel doorway.

“Lovely evening for a jog, boys!”

I can’t keep in a cackle. There’s no way to keep that happy sound in when part of me is still tumbling downriver, still slipping and sliding, carried away by rapids and by the need to catch him. And when I do?

I’m gonna bang his brains out.

Or he can bang mine.

I don’t care which.

I just want him.

That’s what rings in my ears now, and not only because I want to get between those endless legs of his. After everything he’s shown and told me today, I’ve got enough ideas to fill a whole sketchbook. More than that, I finally have direction, and that relief at finally knowing where I’m headed means I’m still riding a wave of gratitude.

For him.

It’s the second time he’s unlocked my inspiration, slicing straight through whatever blocked it, and hasn’t needed a bramble cutter to do it. Today he’s done it by being honest.

I wish I could go back. I can’t. But I can remember.

Those long, strong legs carry him through the woods way faster than I can hope to keep up with, but here’s the thing about growing up with a parent who owed cash to every local dealer—I know how to look for gaps to dart through.

If I sketched this sprint from the river to the stables, I’d slash bright zigzags behind me and add a speech bubble to contain Hayden’s laughter at me crashing ahead of him. I’d also draw the flush that rises when we pass a group of boarding students. We both slow to a walk, then stop to field their why are you wearing wetsuits questions, but I can see that he’s vibrating—all of him, not only his hands. Tense, until the kids head off for their supper.

Then we’re off again, running side by side this time, and fuck it, I’d sketch wings on our heels if it got us back to the stables any faster.

My chest is heaving when we finally get there, and he slams the door closed behind us. He locks it, then stands in evening shadows, that broad chest of his heaving as well. His hair is a wreck, complete with strands of weed from the river, and he’s both wild and magic like this.

That’s how I’ll draw him—as a king of the dryads this time, rising from a pool of silver water.

I can picture that pool with him in it. And I can still see those chimneys in the background. They belong to a school that shares its name with a much bigger project than mine. Glynn Harber means something like safe harbour in Cornish, and that’s what Hayden is when his arms open for me.

We crash together, and I’m not the only one with mouth-to-mouth skills. His kiss is a reminder of being pummelled by a current that wouldn’t stop tumbling downhill. Ours tumbles us down a hallway. Against a wall. Into a tiled shower room where his voice echoes. “You’re cold.”

I am fucking not.

I’m on fire with how much I want him.

I can’t verbalise that while his mouth is on my throat, sharp teeth scraping, new beard raising goose bumps until I’m hot and cold all at the same time. I also laugh when he pulls back to wipe a strand of river weed away from his mouth that must have clung to me too.

“Off.” He tugs at my wetsuit zipper, yanking it down and peeling neoprene from me until my wetsuit drops to the floor in a wet puddle.

His gaze drops too, tracking my chest, my stomach, all the rest of me after I kick out of my boxers. Then his hand is on my cock, his tongue back in my mouth as water runs and steam starts to cloud the air.

The mirror reflects us—shows me naked while he isn’t—so I fix that. Our next skin-to-skin view mists and then is gone as soon as he backs me under running water.

This shower wasn’t designed for two men to share. It’s tight, but we slot together.

Haven’t we done that since that headland wedding? He held out a hand to me then. We’re as close again now, and it’s ironic that, after hurling ourselves downhill along with cubic tonnes of water, this is where I’m going to drown, but I have to get my mouth on him.

I sink to my knees. Rub my face against his hard and hot cock. Get the head of it into my mouth, and choke, but I’ve always been greedy once I get inspired—have to go all in and not stop until something else captures my attention.

Tonight?

I’ve never been more focussed. Never wanted to stay in one place like this. Now I can’t imagine taking a different path without him at the end of it.

He fills my mouth, my throat, and a space in my chest that has been hollow for so long I didn’t know it was empty. He’s so deep inside me, and who knows if his hips shifting is the cause or if it’s due to the water cascading over both of us. Either way, I have to pull off, my saliva connecting us for a glistening moment, and I never resented needing to breathe more. All I care about is taking him even deeper. I want him so much my hands shake like I’m the one who uses a chainsaw to make my living.

I steady mine by digging them into the meat of his bare arse, his cock in my mouth again, and a loud groan echoes.

Hayden lets out another, this groan quieter, a low, deep rumble I feel and hear at the same time, and soon I’ll show my students what drugs did to me and Mia on my own roll of paper, but that sound right there? It’s a high of my own, one I can’t help chasing.

It’s addictive.

Compulsive.

I need more, and I get it by clasping his arse even tighter. My head bobs, the head of his cock at the back of my throat, my tears washed away like the rest of the world is by a feedback loop of groans and motion.

And when I touch where he opens?

Hayden crumples.

Only for a split second. He recovers, one hand braced against tile, the other on my jaw to stop my movement. He looks down as I look up, and all I see is a repeat of what else I’ve drawn lately, what I can’t stop my stylus from recreating. He’s etched with care. With pleasure too, and that combination?

It’s explosive.

I want that. Need this quiet man to get so much louder. Make him lose a battle I’ve seen him fight with himself over and over ever since I met him.

All those times he could have been the centre of attention? When he could have shouted from the treetops about how much he has to offer?

He’s taken a step back. Stayed silent instead of bragging. Shown me a tough past while cradling each memory like those big hands of his might turn them to dust if he grips them too tightly.

Even now, I see his face after finding out those old goalposts were still where his dad once sunk them into concrete. I get a whole new goal of my own then. It coalesces right here in a shower too small for us, but which can’t contain this need to show him how I see him. And to stop holding back on this wild ride with me, only not down a helter-skelter river.

Water thunders. So does my heart, thundering with a beat I need to follow, and he’s a big guy who shouldn’t be easy for me to manhandle, but here we are, out of the shower and dripping, with him exactly where I need him, bent over the bathroom basin.

My cock presses the crease of his fucking gorgeous arse, and it’s my turn to let out a low rumble.

“Yeah?” I kiss one scarred shoulder, and he shivers. “You want it?”

The mirror over the basin reflects his steamy outline. His nod of agreement. His trembling point towards a cabinet where I find what I need for us.

Perhaps he doesn’t expect me to drop to my knees after getting myself ready.

Maybe it’s the surprise of me spreading his cheeks and my lips brushing where I want in that prompts more shaking. Or it could be the light flicks of my tongue setting off these whole-body shudders. He arches away like it’s too much, but he’s forgotten I’ve seen his default setting, and there’s no way I’m letting him keep acting like he doesn’t deserve to feel good.

Right now, he’s getting all o f my attention. I’m hyper-focussed. Getting him off is my one and only project, and the sole reason I rim him for what feels like forever. And yeah, me knocking his knees further apart and getting my mouth on his balls works too. He stops even trying to stifle groans against his folded forearms.

He’s loud, and I fucking love to hear it.

Those groans cut off the moment I ease in a finger, then they pick up again as soon as I rub where it matters for him, and this next clench and rumble are go signals if I ever felt or heard one.

I rub inside him again, pressing slow and intimate circles while wishing I had more hands to hold him open so I could tongue him at the same time. He does that for me in another clear-as-day signal that he’s on this journey with me from start to finish.

His, “Yeah, Rae,” is guttural, his own fingers digging into an arse cheek to give me more access, and I can’t even care that the shower still runs behind us. That splashing only means I can close my eyes and be back in those river rapids with him where he took the lead.

Me doing the same now by taking this slow is torture. I want my dick in him again so badly, only this time not to celebrate someone else’s happy ending, like at that wedding.

This one’s for him, and I have to grip my cock tight after he almost buckles. Then I switch my grip to his hips after getting up to stand behind him, and it was absolutely worth this wait to sink the head of my cock just inside him because he shouts. Shudders. Verbalises what he needs, and I’m here for that too.

“More,” he begs after I give him another slow inch. He glances over his shoulder, wrecked and flushed, and there’s my wild man. My giant. I’m wrecked too as soon as he pushes back, greedy for my cock inside him, his heat an intense temptation to fuck him as hard and fast as I can.

He’s as hot as hell, and I’m not only talking about being inside his body. That hand he had on his arse grabs at my hip, and for all the times I’ve seen him shaky, he’s the opposite now. He pulls me closer until I’m fully buried.

It’s so much more than good, and this is so much more than fucking when I see his reflection, and to hell with going hard and fast until we get off.

I can’t move a muscle.

Not when he’s a steam-misted vision—a smudged portrait of pleasure that I tell myself to lock down on paper.

That will have to wait until later.

For now, I’m busy trying to hold back. To keep my pace slow and steady. To soak up each and every sound while I’m their reason, their source, all his, for as long as I can make this last for him.

Sweat beads.

Drips.

My hands skid.

His must do as well—he lurches, and who the fuck knows how, but that gets me inside him even deeper. The register of my voice drops to give a gravelly warning I wouldn’t believe could come from me until I hear myself warn, “Hold on, Hayden.” We’re on a whole other helter-skelter ride now. “Hold the fuck on.”

He does, knuckles whitening around the taps on the bathroom basin. He locks on there. Anchors himself. And thank fuck for that because I can’t hold back any longer.

I fuck him good and hard, wishing this could last forever, and Hayden looks back.

His gaze is so much darker now. It’s almost entirely inky pupil, and I see every star from the first evening we spent together. Every constellation. Each planet dancing just above the horizon, and I can’t believe I fucked him under canvas instead of underneath them. Now I add doing that soon to a mental bank of works in progress already crammed with Hayden Novac moments.

Him, with burrs in the beard that hid him when I first got here.

Him, with bird shit and the whole fucking world on these scarred shoulders.

Him, every single time a child learns to love nature, like Hayden’s father taught him.

He’s so more than good-looking to me, or a way to sweat away my attention-deficit problems and guilt for leaving behind sand dunes.

“Close,” he grunts out. “Fuck, fuck, I’m so close.” His whole body tightens. He makes as if to let go of one of those taps he’s tethered himself to until I reach around him, my hand on his wrist in a silent not yet order.

Hayden complies—sobs—grasps the tap even harder as I slam into him, and he doesn’t shudder now. He fucking quakes with how much he needs to get off.

I do too with how much I want to be his reason.

I let go of his wrist. Find his cock with a now free hand, and it’s so wet with precome I instantly feel a winner—a striker running for an unmanned goal and scoring for a team roaring for me. Only it’s Hayden who shoots, his spunk streaking the basin and counter.

I see it spatter. Most of all, I see what relief looks like on him, and that’s a finger on a final trigger. I shoot to the hammering beat of my heart, which only slows after he shows me to his room, and we’re in bed together.

Hayden looks across his pillow at me. He’s tired again. I can see it. So am I.

I fight sleep, doing my best to soak up everything I’ll need to draw before my time here is up.

At some point in the river, he must have crashed into one of those boulders. Most likely while stopping me from braining myself to death. A bruise darkens just below his clavicle.

It could be a shadow.

I go up on one elbow to check, touching it lightly, and he mistakes the reason. His own hand rises to his collarbone where, now I’m paying more attention, I see his fingertips trace an uneven pathway.

He touches a lump. “Fractured this side twice.”

“How.”

“Trying to make the first team.” He closes his eyes. “Stupid enough of me to do it once. Twice should have been a sign I was pushing too hard. So was me dislocating these more than once.” He touches each shoulder where those scars have had years to lighten from raw to faded. “My reactions were too slow, my balance off.” His hand next drifts to his forehead. “Blame it on the concussions.”

“Concussions, plural?”

He shrugs. “Occupational hazard.”

So that’s why he didn’t get to play in his big game. Failing a concussion test had to suck hard, especially after I’ve seen how much the game meant to him. I saw his reaction to those old goalposts. Now I get to see another reaction.

To me.

His eyes are the softest I’ve ever seen them. So is his voice.

“Worth playing through the pain.”

“Yeah?” I don’t see how it can be. Not after catching a glimpse of a family home and hearing how everyone he cares for could still live there if he hadn’t been scouted. How the fuck can any of that pain be worth it? “Really?”

I must sound disbelieving.

He nods more firmly.

“To end up here? Definitely.”

I almost ask, “At Glynn Harber?”

Hayden’s eyes drift closed again. This time they don’t open. He still finds my hand without looking and threads his fingers through mine in a silent and devastating answer.

My heart doesn’t only thunder all over again. It swells, close to exploding, as I guess his real reason to be grateful.

Because he ended up right here with me.