21. Byrd

21

Byrd

I 'm fucking nervous.

Despite a couple of short-lived hookups during my touring days, the last guy I did this with was Gabriel, and the last thing I can handle right now is his goddamn ghost in my head, taunting me with all the ways I fucked it up.

It helps that Echo is bouncing on his toes like a kid at Disney World and humming something I think is supposed to be "Hot for Teacher" under his breath while I fumble with the old-fashioned key to our tiny rented cottage. Gabriel was mocking, teasing—he could even be playful as long as he made the rules—but he was never uninhibited the way Echo is . Never so uncomplicated in his eagerness for me.

Giving up on the lock, I trap the man in front of me against the door and kiss him until I'm no longer haunted, drowning myself in the new texture of his shorter hair, the familiar glide of his tongue exploring all the corners of my mouth, and the hard immediacy of his rigid cock grinding rough against mine through two layers of denim .

Echo . More real for a few short months than Gabriel was for a year and a half.

"I'm down to go against the door for the first round," he teases, lips barely leaving mine, "but we are in the middle of town. It would suck to get arrested before we get off."

"I think I dropped the key," I admit, peeling reluctantly away from the eclipse of his body to scan the flower-lined stoop at our feet.

Echo retrieves it from the shadowed sill and lets us into the room. The queen bed, with its dark wood frame and white antique-looking quilt, takes up most of the space, and a couple of high windows look out into the dark garden courtyard.

"We're gonna tear this place apart," he says, grinning as he takes in the small, delicate nightstands and matching rocker.

He strips off his clothes and throws himself onto the bed, bouncing a few times and rocking it experimentally against the wall. I shake my head, wondering how drunk he is.

Drunk enough to kiss Josha and think it was a good idea.

But even though the image of his long fingers curled around Josha's neck stirs the primal, possessive part of me, I mostly feel sorry for the kid. I'm pretty sure awakening my inner caveman was only an added perk for my little brat. Gemiah was the real target. Manipulation with the best intentions, but still…

I toss our small overnight bag onto one of the nightstands but stay standing a few feet from the bed as my creeping demons claw at their flimsy chains. Echo finally goes still, sensing my shifting mood.

He's kneeling naked in the center of the mattress like an offering from my wildest dreams—ink and parchment and watercolor blue—his erection exquisitely flushed, curved against the cut of his abs. Something fragile flickers in his eyes .

"Am I okay?" he asks, and my heart staggers at the choice of pronoun.

"I don't want to hurt you," I blurt, and his taut features melt into a faint smile.

"With your massive cock? I promise I can take it."

I don't correct him, even though he's only touched on part of my fear. In the lingering silence, he crawls toward me and reaches out to hook his fingers in my jeans. He tugs me gently forward until my thighs hit the edge of the bed and starts undoing the buttons of my fly.

"You won't hurt me," he promises, and I want to believe him.

He slides my jeans and underwear down my thighs, and my cock springs free, obviously immune to my internal struggle. His warm fingers wrap around my base, firm and familiar. "I won't hurt you either," he says, then takes me in his mouth.

It's one of his indolent blow jobs, working me with his spit-slick hand and his ruthless, ravishing tongue without ever settling into a steady rhythm. The build is so slow and delirious that when he finally takes me to the back of his throat, slick muscle constricting around my crown, my orgasm catches me off guard, and my knees buckle, only his strong arms locked around my thighs keeping me afloat.

"Shit."

He pulls off with a soft pop and rests his chin in the short curls at the base of my softening cock, looking up at me with a lazy, self-satisfied smile.

"I have faith in your ability to rally."

My reaction to the sex-smeared look on his face is already proving him right.

I peel off my shirt and step out of my jeans, retrieving the condom from my pocket before crawling up to join him on the bed. I set it on the nightstand next to the bottle of lube Echo has liberated from the bag.

He's sprawled on his stomach, watching me over his shoulder with his head pillowed on his arms. Every contour of muscle and flesh is a path carved of desire. The athletic swell of his traps bleeding into the vulnerable shadow of his neck. The long grooves along his spine dipping to the decadent arc of his ass. The valleys behind his knees and the soft down on his inner thighs.

With lips and tongue and light, trailing fingertips, I draw a map of sighs and whimpers, of quivers and sweat and arching moans. A catalog of Echo burned into my soul.

For the rest of my life, I'll remember him like this, stripped to the raw bones of his arousal, unraveled by my touch.

By the time I spread his cheeks and flatten my tongue over his hole, he's cursing incoherently and I'm hard as a rock.

I've barely breached his entrance before he's rocking back, fucking himself on my tongue with his fists clawing at the quilt.

"Byrd," he begs, almost a sob. " Please. "

"Roll over." I sit back on my thighs, and he instantly obeys. His whole body is flushed, pupils blown to limitless black, his cock swollen and leaking on his belly.

He's ethereal, obscene, and achingly vulnerable, and I'm so far past the point of no return with him, I can feel the edges of my heart flying away.

"Condom," I say before my brain can follow. He fumbles the packet off the table, holding it out to me. "You do it," I tell him. "It's been a while."

He comes back to himself a little at that, smiling like a cat and tearing through the foil with his teeth and a practiced jerk that's so sexy, I have to squeeze the base of my cock so I don't lose it the second he touches me. Then he rolls the cool latex over my head and down my shaft, and I can't tear my gaze away from his dexterous fingers. It's new and nostalgic all at once, but even through my fatal fascination, I can't help wondering what it would feel like to take him bare.

Then he starts coating my cock with lube, and all my thoughts condense to the one vivid realization that this is now , and it's happening—here, with him.

I hold out my hand for the bottle, to coat my fingers and stretch him ready, but he tosses it away.

"No more," he says, a line drawn in a man's voice. "You've been prepping me for weeks . I want your cock inside me now. I'm done with teasing."

And I'd give him everything, anything he asked, so I hook an elbow under his thigh and line my trembling cock up with his waiting hole.

The first thrust is almost enough to destroy me—my cockhead trapped by the tight ring of muscle as he arches off the bed with a cry.

Fuck. Instinctively, I try to draw back, although I might die if we stop now.

His free leg comes around me, trapping my hips and obliterating my retreat.

"You said I wouldn't hurt you." I force the words through gritted teeth, fingers digging into his thigh and my other arm braced on the mattress, fighting the need to fall into him.

"I lied." But he bears down, drawing me deeper, and his hand comes up to tangle in my hair. "Not every pain is hurtful, Byrd. This pain—it's always part of it. It makes it real. Makes it matter when you let someone into your body." He tugs my head down until we're close enough to kiss. "Someday, I'll show you," he promises, "but right now, I need you to keep going. Please. Trust me."

I work my way in with short, careful thrusts, watching his face and soaking up his little moans. His eyes never leave mine, brimming with trust and lust in an intoxicating cocktail as he opens his body to my invasion.

When I'm fully seated, I rest my forehead on his shoulder, buried in his heat like a fever dream and clinging to the frayed wisps of my self-control.

It's so far beyond what I remember, so fucking tight along my entire length.

And so cripplingly, devastatingly intimate that I can't tell if I'm about to come or start crying.

"Byrd." His voice is low and breathless against my ear. " Coen . Look at me. You gotta move now, or I'm gonna go crazy." His hands stroke over my hair, my shoulders, and down my back to grip my ass. I'm supposed to be taking care of him, and here he is, asking me to let myself go.

I draw out, slowly, and rock back in with a smooth glide.

"More," he says, canting his hips to draw me deeper. "I need you to fuck me like you're breaking all the rules."

And I understand. Because Echo isn't the only one who's been living in a cage. And it's not only wild things that deserve to be free.

I push up off his chest, hooking his other knee and dragging him against me. This time when he arches off the bed, there's only pleasure in his cry, and I know I've found the right angle. The next stroke is a slow grind, and then my body takes over. With each thrust, I draw back almost to the tip and slide home a little bit harder, rolling my hips when I bottom out to drag my swollen head along the spot that makes him come apart.

His hand flies to his cock, but I snatch it away, leaning in to pin his wrist against the pillow .

"That's mine," I tell him. "I'm the one making you come tonight."

" OhgodyesfuckinghellByrdplease ." He writhes beneath me.

"Hold on, baby. I've got you."

His knees are trapped against his ribs, and his hole is slick and spasms around me every time I peg his prostate. His curses dissolve into gasping whimpers, mixing with my own grunts, and I want it to go on forever—him, like this, under me and surrounding me.

But I'm taking him hard now, and I'm starting to lose the thread of our cadence. My release coils at the base of my spine, and I take his cock in my hand and jerk it without finesse, with nothing but the need to watch him spill hot over my fingers and feel him lock tight around my cock.

And even though I'm chasing it, demanding it, it still annihilates me when it happens. He detonates around me with a hoarse shout, fighting my grip, the fingers of his free hand clawing at my shoulder and his head thrown back into the pillows. With one last thrust, so far inside him that I might never find my way back, the world goes bright and liquid, and I belong only to Echo.