Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-Four

Alex

HENRY SAID THE door would be open, but I knock anyway before turning the knob. I find Henry bustling toward me as I open the door to let myself in. I have only a second to drop my laptop bag on the ground.

Is he that excited to see me?

Shit, I'm that excited to see him, especially when I spot that easy smile of his. All of the stress from work and my family vanishes like a puff of smoke blown away by the wind.

I didn't have a plan when I asked if I could come over here. My thought process was simple: Away. Away from work. Away from my family. Away from all of it. But seeing Henry, seeing him in his slim jeans and casual T-shirt, smiling at me, blue eyes bright with eagerness, changes my plan on the spot.

I bundle him into my arms the moment he reaches me and kiss him hard.

Henry murmurs in surprise before his arms slide around my neck. I hug his body against me and tilt my head to kiss him more deeply. The taste of his lips has become a familiar balm in the weeks I've spent in Tripp Lake. I melt against him, tension draining out of me as the warmth of his mouth eases my worries. Merely touching him makes all the nonsense drift away. It's like I'm rising in a hot air balloon, my worries becoming smaller and smaller as I float away.

Eventually, I need air, but I don't let Henry out of my arms.

"It's good to see you," I say.

His smile widens, joy crinkling the corners of his eyes. My chest tightens with the knowledge that it's me pressing that happiness into his face. Maybe twenty years from now those little lines will be permanent, and I'll have had a hand in placing them there.

"I'm so glad you asked to come over," Henry says. "I was kind of surprised by your text."

A dart of guilt strikes my chest. "I'm sorry. It's just work and stuff. It's been so stressful that I… I should have reached out, but I didn't."

Henry cups my face to stroke his thumbs against the stubble on my cheeks. "It's okay. I know you don't even want to be here and that things are hard. You don't need to apologize."

"I do. You deserve a text. That's a low bar, Henry. Don't let anyone tell you you don't deserve something that basic."

He deserves far, far more than what I've given him, far more than I can give him. The fact that I'm going back to San Francisco soon hangs heavy between us. Neither of us seem to want to say it, but the threat lingers like a fly buzzing around our heads. I'm probably going to hurt him when I leave, and we both know it, but for today, we're both trying not to think about that.

I kiss him before the conversation can veer into gloomier topics. He lets me change the subject to something more fun, something more physical. There's no need to talk when Henry eases away so he can take my hand and start pulling me toward his bedroom. I follow without a word, eager for whatever he has to show me tonight. I was scared and intimidated the other times, but that voice is rapidly shrinking as excitement replaces it. It doesn't matter that I'm new to this. It doesn't matter that I only sort of know what I'm doing. All that matters is that we want to make each other feel good, and we will.

Henry seems to have ideas about how to do that. The moment we get into his room, he pushes me toward the bed. I outweigh him, but I go easily, letting him shove me onto his bed.

The moment I fall to the mattress, he climbs over me, kissing me down into his pillows. His mouth moves swiftly toward my neck. When he reaches my shirt, he grumbles with frustration and pauses to pull it off over my head.

"Wait," I say before he can go lower. "You too."

A smile glances across his lips at my request. Henry pulls off his shirt without fanfare, but I watch with rapt attention as he exposes his slim torso to me.

I don't get to look for long. Henry bends back down to his work, eager to kiss his way lower. Even so, he takes the long route, returning to my collar, wandering to my chest. He nuzzles through the scratchy hair there, then works lower, and God, his mouth can do a lot, even when he's doing nothing more elaborate than kissing chest and ab and muscle. Goosebumps break out over my skin. Heat flushes through my body. I can hear my own breathing. And none of it compares to the desire coiling up within me as Henry takes his time toying with me.

He finally reaches my pants, but for some reason he pauses, and I actually groan with impatience.

"Henry, you're dangerous."

He chuckles, looking as innocent as an angel come down to Earth. "I want to try something," he says. "Will you let me?"

Nerves kick at me. Now that I've had him in my mouth, I figured that would be an easy direction for this to go. I like it. He likes it. Why complicate things with more new stuff that I don't know if I'm ready for?

But even as the worries scratch at my brain, Henry kneels between my legs smiling at me, patient, trusting, and any fear recedes.

"Yeah," I say. "Sure. If you want to."

He rubs a hand up my body, following it until he's bending over me, a breath away from my mouth. His words tickle my lips.

"Don't worry," he says. "If I do it right you're really, really going to like it. And I'm pretty damn good at doing it right."

I quiver with eagerness, clueless as to what he could mean but suddenly absolutely burning for it.

He must see the way I swallow because his smile curls impishly. He makes his way back down me, but with greater urgency this time around. He fumbles with my belt, undoing my jeans as quickly as he can. I help him get everything off me, infected by his enthusiasm. Thankfully, he undresses himself next, putting on a bit of a show for me as he kneels on the bed to get his jeans off.

With both of us naked, I expect, well, something to happen, but instead Henry leans away, reaching for a drawer in the nightstand. I remember that drawer, but this time Henry comes back with more than lube.

Oh.

Oh.

Putting the pieces together is like walking through molasses, but my brain gets there eventually, especially when Henry's lubed up fingers disappear behind him and he starts rocking his hips.

"Do you… Should I help?" I say.

The moment I start to sit up, Henry uses his free hand to shove me back down.

"You should stay exactly where you are," he says.

A tingle zings through me, my cock straining toward my belly. I have no problem taking charge, but there's something about Henry wanting me so bad that he's willing to throw me onto the bed and snatch what he wants that has my blood so hot it could be boiling.

He gets me ready, and that's when I realize this is really happening. He's not joking, and I'm certainly not running. What Henry wants is extremely clear, and I desperately hope I can give it to him.

Or at least follow along.

"Have you ever done this?" he asks breathlessly as he shifts to kneel over me.

"N-no, no, I haven't."

"Not even with that one girlfriend?"

"She wasn't into this. Just the, um, the other part."

Henry chuckles. "I'm glad I get to be your first."

"My…"

That phrase is still hitting my brain when Henry starts lowering onto me. I feel him around my head, tight and hot. I expect him to pause, but he doesn't; he simply keeps working himself down me with an ease that is both impressive and surprising. Pressure encases me, and my cock tries to get even harder as warmth wraps around me. Henry's body draws me in until he's everywhere. He's in every breath. He's pressing into my chest. He's beating beside every thump of my heart.

He works himself downward, then sets his hands on my chest. For a moment, we both merely breathe, gaping at each other in dazed awe. I reach for his hips, not to move him, but simply to touch him, and he shivers. The tight clutch of his body is everywhere, not just on my cock. I have no parallel for this sensation, this closeness. It's somehow … more . Not in a literal way so much as because Henry took me himself, wanted me this badly, acted on his blunt desire. Even when someone else has wanted me in the past, they've never taken me like this, snatching me up like they mean to keep me.

He starts moving, my hands riding the motion through his hips. It's little rolling movements at first, like tiny ripples building up into waves. Even that much twists my body into knots, igniting every nerve until I'm hyper-sensitive to Henry's slightest motion. The smallest shift of his hips sends shockwaves through me, changing the precise angle of my cock inside him so a fresh barrage of pleasure can batter at my senses. I feel like I'm losing control, carried away in the torrential current of desire rushing through us, but I don't put up a fight.

I'm his.

He gains steam, pushing harder on my chest to throw himself up and down my cock. I keep clinging to his hips, finally helping him work up and down. Henry groans from the pressure of my fingers digging into his skin and the bluntness of my cock driving into him harder and harder with every thrust.

"You feel good," he gasps. "Alex, you're…"

Whatever he meant to say fizzles into a moan. I match him with a groan of my own as the clench of his body threatens to break me. He's so hot, so tight, so close. His nails bite at my chest as he rocks himself harder, seeking even more.

I struggle to follow, eyes snapping shut as pleasure swells inside me. The bed groans. My toes curl. My hips jerk up at Henry as he rides me mercilessly.

"Touch me," Henry says in a burst of hot breath. "Hurry and touch me."

I fly to obey his cry, reaching for his cock blindly. I stroke him while he keeps slamming himself onto me. A moan punctuates his every breath, and I'm not doing much better myself, groaning and grinding my teeth and trying not to squeeze him too hard as tension grips every muscle in my body.

"Close," Henry cries. "Oh God, so close."

Me too, but I can't manage to say it; all I can do is keep clumsily stroking him while he spears himself on me. My balls pull up tight, ready to explode, and I move my hand faster, hoping I can get him there before it's too late.

I make it just in time.

Henry bursts over my hand, his release splattering across my chest as he cries out at the ceiling of his bedroom. I jerk my hips up at him a couple more times before following with a low, throaty groan that rumbles through my chest. My eyes are still closed, but color pops behind the lids as I let go inside him, coming so hard I can hardly manage to breathe through the pleasure.

It leaves us both shattered and limp. Henry sinks onto my chest, not caring about his own mess smearing between our naked, heaving chests as we struggle to catch our breath. Our hearts pound at each other so hard it feels like they could touch through our skin if we shifted a bit. My head swims with warmth, with pleasure, with a satiation I can't compare to anything I've felt in my entire life. Henry does something to me I don't have words for, and I'm not sure if it's exhilarating or terrifying.

Henry sighs as his breathing calms. He shifts around to get me out of him, but that's as far as we get before we're panting atop each other again. We'll contend with the mess when our bones feel solid again.

"I wish you were staying."

Henry speaks softly, absent-mindedly, like the words slipped out of him before he could stop them. But I know what I heard, and it has every muscle instantly tensing all over again. This tension is very different from the kind that Henry just worked out of my body. This tension is loaded with expectation.

Henry freezes atop me, and I know he can feel how much his words scared me.