35. Byrd

35

Byrd

W here is the line between penance and salvation ?

Somewhere in the middle of his ruthless thrusts, I crossed over into absolution, pain melting under the raw onslaught of desire. There's a freedom in being used for his pleasure that gives my own a sharper edge. I couldn't fight him even if I wanted to, and it drives my arousal higher in acute spikes, peaking in some kind of savage satisfaction beyond orgasm when he comes hard inside me for the first time.

But if this is atonement, surely my dick shouldn't be this hard.

Echo appraises me in the aftermath, righteous and effortlessly erotic. His shirt hangs open and his dress slacks are falling off his slim hips, rendering him debauched and decadently deviant, his impossible erection flushed and dripping with the evidence of his brutal claiming.

I'm too far gone to do anything but humble myself in worship. My knees hit the carpet, and I crawl to him until I can capture the firm slope of his calves in my hands and press my face into his groin .

A soft sigh escapes him when I brush my mouth over the head of his cock, my tongue flicking out to taste his triumph. And then his hands are in my hair, and I'm sucking him clean as murmured words of praise sing in my ears.

"Fuck, baby. You're killing me. How can I stay mad at you when you feel so fucking good?" And then, "Okay. Okay, Coen." He pulls free and tugs me to my feet. "It's your turn now. Come to bed with me."

He sits me down on the foot of the bed and strips out of his clothes, holding me hostage with his bright gaze. If he was demanding before, now he's nothing but seduction, feathering his fingers over his pebbled nipples and down the black script decorating his torso.

"Close your mouth. Unless you want me to fill it again."

It's hardly a threat, but I do as he commands, leaning back on my hands so he can measure my reaction to his naked body.

With flashing eyes and a cocky smirk, he straddles my hips, lacing his fingers behind my neck.

"Do you know how long I've been fantasizing about getting my cock inside you like that?" he asks, grinding his slick length against my own.

"Since I told you I'd never done it and jacked you off in the front seat of my car?"

"Mmm. That was fun. But no. Since before I even met you. There's this video on YouTube. The song was some slow piano thing, and you were…" He runs his tongue up the side of my throat and sinks his teeth into my earlobe. "You were so fucking beautiful. I was terrified of meeting you, of letting you see me broken, and I still couldn't stop myself from jerking off to that video every night. "

My hands find his hips as a shiver runs down my spine. "‘Glitter in the Air' by Pink. I remember that act. Pretty romantic for a horny twink."

"What about you?" He pulls back to study my face but doesn't stop the slow roll of his hips. "When did you first let yourself think about fucking my tight ass?"

It's a test, despite the filthy words and teasing tone, and I'm pretty sure there are no right answers. So in the continuing spirit of the night, I go with honesty.

"Since you leaned through my window, nicotine scented and rain soaked, looking nothing like your brother."

His eyes flash electric fire and his blunt nails dig into the back of my neck, but he doesn't retreat. Instead, he spits into his palm and uses it to coat my cock, smearing the saliva into our combined precum.

"I'm nothing like him," he declares, raising up on his knees and slotting my eager dick against his entrance. " Nothing ."

"You're not prepped," I protest, but he sinks himself down on my shaft, and his body opens for me like it always does. Like he was made for me as I was made for him.

"Ever heard of a flip-fuck?" he asks. "I know he never taught you." And then he squeezes around me, obscenely tight, and I struggle to form words.

"Slow," I warn as he begins to rock his hips. "Or I won't last."

"You'll last," he promises. Or maybe it's a threat. "You want to be good for me tonight, remember?"

"Fuck," I groan, torn between letting him take whatever he wants and flipping him over to fuck him hard into the sheets.

"No more talking," he whispers against my lips, and then he's kissing me deep, flooding my tongue with his smoky, sylvan taste as he carves away the last of my secrets .

It's me who snaps first, crazy with the need to come and desperate not to disappoint him, chasing his mouth when he arches away from me and cants his hips to give me access to that perfect spot inside him. I plant my feet to leverage my frantic thrusts, and only my fingers painting bruises on his hips and the velvet vise of his channel keep him from falling backward off my lap and spilling onto the rug.

When I'm about to lose it, when I start to swell inside him, he stops me with a hand wrapped around my throat.

"Enough." His other hand grips his leaking cock, staving off his own release. "My turn again," he says with a smile both wicked and angelic. My chest heaves, and I stare at him blankly until he pushes me down on my back and climbs off my cock to stand between my dangling legs. I lie panting, trying to claw the lust-drunk pieces of my brain back together while he coats himself with a fresh layer of lube. "Feet up."

My legs are jelly, but with his help, I comply, bringing my heels to the edge of the bed by my hips.

"Look at you," he marvels, dragging two fingers through the mess of lube and cum between my cheeks and pressing them into my hole. "Still all fucked out and open for me."

I shudder but don't deny it. It feels right, being vulnerable and exposed to him. He deserves so much more than the cautious, fearful version of myself I've been willing to share in the past.

This time, I get to watch his face while he enters me—the way his eyes reflect my own wonder and the lines of his throat go taut as his head falls back.

This time, he presses in slowly, letting me adjust to the strange and splendid fullness with none of the pain.

I almost miss it .

"Fuck," he hisses, mesmerized by the sight of himself disappearing inside me. "You know what you feel like?"

All the times I've taken him, captured his confidence and made it taste like my own, coalesce in this moment of vital union.

I know exactly what he's feeling.

"It feels like coming home."

At my words, he annihilates the last space between us, hooking his elbows under my knees and folding me in half to reach my mouth. I catch his face in my hands and surge to meet him, pillaging the sinful sounds he makes in his throat. His hips rock with each swirl of my tongue against his, and the hard heat of his stomach slides over my cock, making it weep.

A ravenous rumble rises from my chest, and he peels back, flushed and gasping.

"Gonna come if we keep that up."

I slide my hands from his neck and trail my fingers over the luxurious luster of his skin to tug on his nipples. "Isn't that the idea?"

"Mmm." He rolls his hips again, this time with a deliberate precision that has me arching off the bed with a hoarse cry. The corner of his mouth—deliciously swollen from our fevered kiss—quirks with satisfaction. "You first this time." Another devastating thrust, accompanied by a toss of his head. "Wait until you feel what it's like to come around a cock in your ass."

" Your cock in my ass. Only yours."

His nighttime neon eyes blow black, and the next surge buries him so deep that the threads holding me together begin to unravel. My hands scrabble at the sheets and my eyes flutter closed as he begins to move, building the euphoria in slow, shivering pulses .

"Watch me," he commands, and I do, tethered to his gaze as he strips me to the raw core of sensation.

If that first question was a test, this is a lesson .

This is give and take like the tide—Echo the incandescent moon, his inexorable gravity drawing rapture from my flesh like surf upon the shore.

He doesn't need to be cajoled into fucking without restraint, and he doesn't need to hold himself back to fuck with intimate delight.

He can take me hard and selfish.

He can take me slow and deep.

And all of it is love.

And him.

And us.

Somewhere in the spiral of desire, he's kissing me again, his thighs under my hips and his fingers tangled with mine above my head.

"Come with me now, baby," he whispers against my lips, slipping a hand between our bodies to stroke my aching cock with his exquisite grip. I'm already lit up everywhere, every nerve ending ignited, a writhing mess of love and lust and regret. I drink the words from his tongue like the holiest communion and spill into his fingers as the hot pulse of his release fills me up for the second time.

Penance.

Atonement.

Salvation .

He collapses on my chest, peppering my jaw with languid kisses, a breathless laugh rumbling in his throat.

"God, I could forgive you for anything if you let me do that, like, once a week. "

Instead of replying, I turn my head to capture his mouth, threading my fingers through his sweat-damp hair.

I could kiss him forever, and it would never be enough.

By the time he rolls off me, he's half-hard again, the little demon, but he lets me drag him into the glass-walled shower, and his hands are gentle when he pushes me under the hot spray and washes me clean.

"Are you sore?" His fingers graze my hole as he presses against my back, resting his chin on my shoulder.

"A little. But it's a good sore."

His chuckle tickles my ear. "I knew you'd like it. I'm glad I got to be your first."

"I am too." It would be so easy to stay like this, warm and drowsy in the half-space between sated and aroused. Echo pleased and playful, even if I know it's partly a mask. If I close my eyes, I can pretend Gabe never happened to either of us, and our futures aren't half a world apart. "I'm sorry I made you wait so long."

"Everything with you is always worth the wait." He sucks the water from my pulse and slips his arms around my chest.

"Even the truth about my relationship with Gabriel?"

He goes still, then pushes away and turns to grab the hotel-sized shampoo bottle from the shelf.

"I don't want to talk about that."

"We have to talk about it sometime. If not tonight—"

"Why? I don't make you listen to me talk about my exes. You want a list of all the guys I've fucked?"

"None of your exes are related to me. None of them tried to destroy my body and my career. We can't keep acting like it doesn't matter, just because this"—I wave a hand between the two of us—"feels good."

"Like you've been doing for months?" He runs angry hands through his sudsy hair, eyes narrowed and accusing.

"Exactly," I sigh. "Look where that got us."

"I didn't hear you complaining ten minutes ago when you were coming all over my cock."

"I'm not complaining , I—"

He shoves me out of the way and steps under the spray, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. Shutting me out.

"Echo," I try again. "Please talk to me."

"Fine." He shakes the water from his hair and reaches for the door. "But not here. I can't do this naked."

The words are clipped, but the raw admission chills the last of my lingering afterglow.

The man who's taunted me with his nakedness since the first week I met him.

But I think we might be out of weeks.