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  He sat up, his feet tucked under his ass, and crossed his arms as he surveyed me and the rumpled bed. “Eliott,” he huffed, “are you apologizing for your orgasm right now?”

  I felt myself flush and felt like an even bigger fool. “No, I’m not apologizing for the orgasm,” I finally replied honestly. “That was a lot less… controlled than I usually am.”

  “Eliott.” He laughed almost helplessly, crawling up my body to kiss my bottom lip, which was hanging open in astonishment at his reaction. “I initiated that blow job, and I don’t know about the other men who’ve given you blow jobs, but me? I enjoy them, and I work hard to give my partners a fucking awesome, body-shaking orgasm.”

  Now I flushed again, hotter than a minute earlier. I envied his easy self-confidence and the way he’d restored my mood with only a few cheeky sentences, but I had to make sure he really was okay. “But you were… I mean, you were holding your throat like you…”

  “Never had an explicit chat about how it’s not nothing to deep throat a hung guy?” He cocked an eyebrow and grinned, then stroked his neck again. “If I do it right, it makes my throat sore. Way less sore than my balls were after we screwed around in the diner bathroom, by the way. And I definitely did it right. You practically had a seizure under me.”

  “Oh,” I sort of wheezed, shockingly lustful all over again from his smug matter-of-factness about the power of my orgasm.

  He touched my cheek, which was stubbly since my morning shave had been so long ago, and it was the sweetest, gentlest touch he had used yet. It seemed like an inappropriate time to show me his sweet, gentle side, but I leaned into it without a single thought, when I always overthought everything. The way he went exactly where and when he pleased, but was also so generous with his wits and touch, unwound something in me, eased me.

  Wanting to give something back, but not knowing how to explain what I was feeling, I trailed my fingertips along the knobs of his ankles, then skimmed up his shins. I was amused by the pucker of goosebumps that rose up. From where his hard little nipples peeked out from the heavy curtain of his hair up to his face was flushed. His stomach quivered, but he held his bones still, as if he were proving that my delicate touches weren’t going to make him orgasm so long and thoroughly that he practically seized too.

  My thumbs dipped into the creases where his knees were folded outside my hips, then circled one kneecap while my other hand picked up one of his hands, bringing it to my mouth. My tongue dabbed the meat at the base of his thumb and between his fingers, then the very tip followed the blue veins from his wrist to the bend of his elbow. I sucked there, then braced myself, raised high enough to run my nose up his bicep. I ran feather-light kisses around the ball of his shoulder, using my chin to brush his hair aside and skim my stubble down the little curl of his pec.

  There was a faint whistle to every breath that sawed in and out of him now.

  His sinuous torso snaked forward, the shoulder still damp from my kisses twitching back to articulate his ribs as he sucked in a hard breath and offered up his chest.

  “That’s it,” I breathed, then dragged my tongue in a rough pass over his nipple. I circled it and drew hard, the sudden change making him cry out and churn his hips over my lower abs. I sat up enough to circle his belly button and the tight, tiny panels of muscles around it. I brushed along the very top of his trimmed curls and felt his hips arch into the touch.

  Gently, I drew my hand up his ribs to spread over his back and press him more deeply into my mouth, then grabbed his ass. His nails sank into my scalp and the arch of his spine exaggerated, pushing into my hand so eagerly that my fingertips skimmed his hole.

  Desperation slowly refilled, so that I had to fight to concentrate on keeping this teasing pace. I was absolutely sure, based on every minute reaction of his body, that no one had taken their time with him before and he didn’t know what to do. I let go of his left nipple with a gasp and then bit the swell of his right pec before taking it into my mouth too.

  “Eliott,” Gavin wailed, as he tried to sneak his hole onto my fingers, “damn you.”

  Finally I couldn’t take it either, surging up to plunge my tongue between his lips, his tongue fucking against mine. I spread him wide open over my legs and slid my fingers around his hole, then pressed just inside, the tease making him yell out.

  With my other hand, I reached behind me for the lube under my guest pillow. I had a moment of feeling awkward about it, because it showed just how long it had been since I’d had anyone else in my bed. But he didn’t even notice, eyes screwed shut tight.

  But he heard the lube cap pop open, then shuddered when I gave him my fingers, delicately stretching him until he was bouncing greedily, taking control so that I rubbed the spot that made him jerk helplessly. When he clutched my jaw and kissed me so frantically that I tasted blood, I finally gave in to his silent demands. I thrusted my fingers hard and deep, deliberately keeping constant contact with his prostate.

  His moans piled up and spilled out, lost to his pleasure, making my ears ring.

  As his fingers twined through my hair, I ravaged his neck, wondering how I’d gone my whole life without using gentleness as a prelude to this unbridled drive to give my partner’s body exactly what it wanted. “God, Gavin,” I groaned as I licked the sweat off his neck.

  “Don’t you dare stop,” he gasped.

  “Not until you beg me to,” some insane barbarian inside me growled at him.

  And that was it: he let loose a scream as he spurted untouched, painting my rigid cock and thighs. He rode my fingers for another solid minute until everything was wrung out of him. He collapsed, not forwards into my chest, but backwards with marvelous flexibility.

  Everything was on display for me, and I carefully unfolded him. I cupped one hand over his still-hard cock, smug and awed when he thrust weakly in one last little aftershock.

  “That,” he gasped breathlessly, “is why I wanted my gear back.”

  Dragging my legs out from under his spent body, I fell onto my back next to him. I groaned when I wrapped a hand around myself and stroked. The remnants of lube on my fingers eased the drag as I fucked my own fist, head twisted so that I could look at him.

  Gavin’s eyes opened wide, intense as he reached out to stroke my chest and then moved down to squeeze my balls. “Are you going to come again?” He bit the cords on my neck that were popped up from the strain in my body as I worked myself over, nearly delirious with satisfaction at what I’d gotten out of him. “Who’s the dangerous one now, huh, Eliott Navarre?” he whispered.

  With a roar, I emptied into my own hand for the second time with him.

  Only this time, it was nothing but a burst of dazed pleasure, unhurried and potent, and when the buzzing cleared from my head, there was no frozen moment of guilt or confusion. There was only the bone-deep exhaustion of coming really hard twice in one day, and a suspicion that I’d miss this wild, challenging man after he inevitably left again.

  I slung an arm around him and pulled us both up to the pillows. I got hold of my blanket and tucked it around us both, and then I passed out without saying a thing.

  Chapter 8

  Gavin

  After work on Friday, I drove to my grandparent’s house in one of southwest Chicago’s Irish neighborhoods for one of their frequent family dinners, getting there after dinnertime. I went into their warm, shabby house, where a classic rock song that I half-remembered from my childhood greeted me. My grandpa, uncles, and half the cousins were in the living room, cigars clamped in their mouths while they played poker and talked shit.

  “Hey, Gav,” my grandpa said, shoving out of his seat with a grunt so he could hug me. He was retired now, but he’d run a local liquor store, tough and shrewd, and my mom always said I was just like him. I wasn’t sure about that, because I was happy to jump out of airplanes, but I’d never thrown a punch or threatened someone with bodily harm or had run-ins with Irish mobsters like him. “I know you were working, but you miss
ed dinner.”

  Quirking my mouth as I peeled off my winter gear, I said, “I hope there’s leftovers.”

  His laugh cracked into the air. “You know there’s a plate in the oven for you.”

  Nodding, I made a circuit around the poker table, saying hi and making jokes about everyone’s hands. “You’ll deal me into the game soon, right, fellas?”

  “Yeah, don’t want you to be stuck in the kitchen with the girls,” a cousin said.

  Definitely too distracted to deconstruct gender norms, I took the easy way out and just headed for the kitchen. As I passed by the basement door, I heard all the kids and a movie, punctuated by the thuds of roughhousing, which made me smile a little.

  In the kitchen, my grandma, mom, aunts, and more cousins were yakking away, drinks or snacks in hand. We all saw each other regularly, so they just waved or nodded at me, except for my mom, who was stretching and smoothing plastic wrap over casserole dishes.

  “Gavin!” she called out, a tiny pixie, five-foot-nothing and built the same as me, though she wore sweet dresses and high heels. “You look exhausted. Let me get you some food.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said dryly.

  My grandma popped up out of nowhere like a ninja and demanded, “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” I replied like always. My grandma and my mom were opposites, except they were both bloodhounds when it came to hunting down the details of my personal life. The rebellious part of me fought them tooth and nail just on principle. “What’s the new gossip?”

  “Oh, no you don’t. We already dragged out your cousins’ news. Took blackmail and pliers,” my grandma said wickedly, her eyes sparkling like mine did, “but we’re up to date. Now we want to know about you. All they’d say was that you’re still wild, and still single.”

  My body overheated like a flash bomb.

  I bounced my head off the hutch behind me. I was just like my exuberant, mischievous grandparents in temperament, but the traits had skipped my mom, leaving her sensible and sharp as a tack. When they combined forces, there was no way to outsmart them—

  Inspiration struck and I leaned my forearms on the island, my eyes sparkling back at my mom and grandma. “All right, you two. You caught me,” I confessed, in a tone that was equally sincere and insincere. “I’m late because I took a quick detour to see my boyfriend.”

  That was strike one of tempting fate.

  “Boyfriend,” my grandma repeated suspiciously.

  Now that I had said it aloud I regretted it, in a huge way. I was impulsive and didn’t like sharing my personal life—usually lack of a personal life—from them for opposite reasons. My mom had been burned and was overly protective, especially while I’d gone through my bears phase when I was barely legal. My grandparents, on the other hand, had met in a factory and married three months later, then had four kids in six years, financial hardships, and a gay grandson while being Irish Catholic, and none of that shook their love.

  I couldn’t just say I’d lied, because that would get them all upset. But I could hedge.

  The morning after our hookup at his place, we’d woken up and stared at each other in shock. Me because I’d slept over without an actual invitation, and him because… well, probably because he’d fallen asleep before he could politely ask the crazy skydiver to go.

  After I’d left, there was no denying I was interested in him. The sexual compatibility was obvious. While I’d had amazing sex before, being with Eliott felt like something more. It buzzed under my skin and made my mouth dry. It felt like a mountain I just had to climb. I wanted to explore it, see if I could figure out why I reacted like this to him. Even if the chemistry burned out or he said he couldn’t see anything real with a daredevil like me.

  I didn’t know how he felt yet either, but I already knew a less look before you leap approach would make him more comfortable. So I’d sent a text and we’d been chatting. Nothing really even flirtatious, which was a change of pace from our two encounters so far since they’d been so sexually charged, just nonsense pictures and gossip. Strangely, it made me even more hopeful than nonstop sexting would’ve, because I was getting to know him.

  So I stuck my hands in my pockets, puffed up my chest, and let that silly hope flare for a second and light up my face. “Well, he could be!” They glared at me and I babbled a little, “Fine, I said ‘boyfriend’ for dramatic effect. We haven’t gone on a date. It’s just sex so far!”

  A few of my aunts sent me dirty looks, but it barely registered because my grandma was snickering in pure amusement while my mom frowned in mild displeasure.

  “I’m just sick of everyone bugging me about being single. You think it’s not normal,” I shot at my mom, my embarrassment chucking all my caution about talking about my personal life and feelings out the window. “But plenty of people don’t date. We hang out, we go out, we see each other, we have some sex. It doesn’t have to be all… letter jackets and hand-holding and dressing up to go someplace fancy alone together!”

  “You can knock that stuff all you want,” my mom said quietly, “and sometimes, of course, it doesn’t mean anything deeper or better than sex, but it’s not stupid.”

  My mom had always been tight-lipped about her romantic life, especially when it came to my biological father, who had turned out to be a married sleaze, and guilt hit me hard.

  I protested desperately, hating the almost stricken look in my mom’s eyes, “I didn’t say it was stupid. It is not stupid, Mom. It’s just not my style.”

  At that, my grandma laughed, a sharp, disparaging sound. “Oh, Gavin. You think that tough girls and pretty boys and fierce men in women’s jobs aren’t the same at heart as women like your mama here? Don’t say I’m being old-fashioned, and definitely don’t say I have no idea what I’m talking about, because I’ve been a tough guy four times longer than you. Love comes in as many shapes and sizes as we do, grandbaby. No use fighting it.”

  “Like hell!” I refused hotly, because I might be interested, but I’d only seen him twice.

  “How’d you meet?” my grandma demanded.

  I knew it was a trap, but my mom still looked so upset that I practically blurted out, “I met him the day I went skydiving close to Wisconsin with the cousins. His name is Eliott and he’s a lawyer, I don’t even know what kind or where he works. He’s really… normal.”

  “You say that like it’s a dirty word,” my mom said in annoyance.

  “It is!” my grandma agreed vehemently. “Really, Gavin? A lawyer?”

  My back shot ramrod straight and my eyes narrowed, my temper flaring. “Look, I like him, okay? He’s got this thing going where he’s straightlaced—like, crazy, stuffy, annoying straightlaced—but then he has this wicked sense of humor, and the way he looks at me…”

  I stumbled to a halt, horrified at what had just poured out of my mouth in reaction.

  “And he’s hot,” I finished defiantly, wishing they weren’t staring like I was an alien.

  Feeling my mom and grandma’s eyes on me, I wished I had been able to get those leftovers out of the oven already, so that I could hide by shoveling food into my dumb mouth. I swallowed hard, my heart pounding and my head spinning. This wasn’t like me.

  “Gavin,” my mom began hesitantly, “that’s nice. And new.”

  “What do you mean, new? I may not be a serial monogamist, but I see people.”

  My grandma chuckled and smoothed my hair away from my temple. “She meant how you sound is new. But I would also argue that you don’t date.” Locking eyes with me, she said inexorably, “You sound confused and scared—that sounds like you’re falling for him.”

  Jerking back, my cheeks full of a gasp of denial like a chipmunk, I shook my head forcefully. Once I’d managed to half-choke, half-swallow, I cried, “Does not, Grandma.”

  Both women kept looking at me with this awful mixture of pity and compassion, and it was weird seeing the two of them look so alike, agreeing on anything.

  “I’m goi
ng to play poker,” I mumbled, finally getting my food and leaving them.

  I joined for a while, but I was tired from my long day at work and my mind was still whirling from what my grandma and mom had said to me in the kitchen.

  So I made the rounds to say goodbye, then went out to the front stoop where my grandpa was. I flung myself into one of the chairs next to him, making a whiny huffing noise like I was seventeen again, and reflexively checked my phone. Eliott had texted right after I’d gotten here, inviting me to a club named Local Beats where he was celebrating his birthday with Camdon and other friends I hadn’t met, but had heard about from his adorable gossipy texts. I knew of Local Beats, but had somehow never been there.

  “What’s this face you’re making?” my grandpa asked after a puff on the cigar he’d had clamped between his teeth inside, since he couldn’t smoke in there anymore.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled, but he gave me a sharp look and I spilled the story.

  He shrugged after I told him about Eliott and said, full of shit and knowing I was full of shit too, “Guess you have to ask him out and start dating him. Just to prove your grandma and mom wrong. Think of it as a new challenge. Can’t be worse than skydiving.”

  I laughed, even though the sound was strained. “Right.”

  “Don’t be mean to your mom again though, Gavin Franklin Sycamore,” he added, deadly serious.

  “No, sir,” I muttered.

  Now I was wide awake again, the text from Eliott burning a hole in my pocket.

  During the four-year-old’s birthday party, I’d read a fairy tale to the kids that described the princess as beguiling. I had never used the word in my life, but in my daredevil heart, I knew it was meant for Eliott. He was impeccable, with his sharp wits and his opaque green eyes that drove me fucking crazy wondering what he was really thinking.

  Men who were serious and had traditional jobs like Eliott didn't want androgynous, long haired men who were flashy dressers like me, they wanted an equal or a trade up.