“Shh,” he chides as the next number starts, eyes not leaving the TV. “I’m trying to listen.”
The familiar twisty blend of satisfaction and annoyance tangles inside my ribs. I grab a pillow and hug it to my chest. It’s that or slug Gavin in the head.
12
GAVIN
Playlist: “Animal,” Neon Trees
Pain is as familiar to me as pulling air into my lungs, as opening my eyes when the sun breaks the horizon. What’s far from familiar, what’s been absent from my life for so long that I’ve forgotten its shape, its texture, teasing my senses, is pleasure.
For the first time in too long, pleasure is a glove wrapped around the bare-knuckle fist of my pain. It’s in my hands, settled against warm, smooth skin. In my face, buried in sunlight softness, the scent of a sea breeze kissing my skin. In every inch of me, hard, hot, aching where I’m nestled against a firm, tight home.
God, it’s been so long. So long since I felt anything but hurt. Gnawing in my joints, screaming in my muscles, a never-ending reverberation in my bones. My eyes prick with tears, as pleasure floods every corner of me, a deluge of hot sunlight that thaws the icy edge of my pain, softens the raw-nerve throb that scrapes my senses each day until I collapse from exhaustion at night.
Now, it’s all pleasure. My hands, tangled tight with warm strength. My mouth, brushing velvet hot softness. My cock, nestled in snug. Oh, God. I’m going to come. It builds, deep inside me, tightens my body, makes it move. My breath sticks in my throat until it bursts free in a hoarse groan.
And then I hear it echoed back to me, softer, rasped. A moan that tugs at my awareness, draws me closer to the surface of wakefulness.
Not yet. Not when it feels so good. Not when I’m so close.
I pant, helpless, desperate. But I’m not alone in those sounds. It’s a symphony, a wave of crashing breaths, rushing gasps, and it drags me toward consciousness, cresting to a brilliant view as I open my eyes.
Sunlight floods the room. Sheets tangled with long limbs that are tangled with mine, golden hairs, suntanned skin, flexing muscles—
Fuck!
I snap upright. Well, I try to, but my back burns in protest, wrenching me down to the mattress along with the white sheet twisted snugly around my torso.
Oliver is asleep, head nestled on my forearm, golden hair spilled on the pillow like a halo. I stare down at us in horror. Thank fuck our underwear are still on, not that it’s helping much. Oliver’s boxer-brief-covered ass is nestled against my hip. His hand rests on his stomach, which is, I realize, where my hand was until a moment ago.
“Jesus,” I whisper. A prayer. A plea. I have to extract myself, leave him unaware. I can’t stay tangled up here a moment longer.
And of course, because I’ve just made this resolution, Oliver takes that opportunity to sigh in his sleep and turn toward me. He slips his long leg over mine; his hand glides over my stomach, then lower, grazing my boxer briefs’ waistband. Which just barely holds back the tip of my painfully hard erection.
My stomach jerks beneath his touch. My brain is short-circuiting, refusing to tell my cock to stand down, to stop responding to the nudge of his thigh, the whisper of his breath across my skin, the glide of his hand along my happy trail.
“O-Oliver.” It comes out so hoarse, I barely hear it. There’s no way he has. I shut my eyes against the sweet agony of his touch, knowing how wrong this is, how desperately I need to make it stop.
“Hmm,” he mutters sleepily, his mouth brushing my skin.
Oh, fuck. Fuck.
I grit my teeth and try to sit up again, to slip out of this Gordian knot of sheets that there’s no hope of untwisting.
But in doing so, I smack my head against the headboard. Hard.
“Fuck me,” I growl.
Oliver’s eyes snap open, then widen in horror. Slowly, his gaze slides up my torso, before his eyes meet mine. “Ah!” he yells, thrashing violently back.
We’re so tangled in the sheets, it brings me with him, wrenching my back painfully, then my knee. “Fuck!”
“Shit,” he says hoarsely, wiggling frantically. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Bergman, stop.” He doesn’t stop. He’s thrashing, tugging, spinning, and it’s hell. It’s agony, because the tighter he tugs, the closer we get, our hips, groins, thighs. “Wait. Just—Fuck!”
We tumble off the bed. I land on him, but catch myself with my hands. It does nothing to keep us apart except to keep us from bashing faces. The sheet is knotted around us so tightly now, I feel him, every inch of him, hard and long, wedged right beside me, the material between us horribly inadequate.
Air saws out of Oliver’s lungs, hands over his head, his hair splayed out on the dark carpet, like a comet streaking across the night sky. His eyes are wide, a sweet, unfairly beautiful blush on his cheeks. “Jesus,” he whispers, shutting his eyes.
I’m speechless. I’m afraid to move. One single rub of my hips or his and I am in serious danger of spilling my load. My cock pulses, my balls are tight and heavy. Oliver exhales roughly, moving his hips enough for me to slam a hand down on his wrist, to make his eyes snap open.
“Do. Not. Move.”
He stares up at me, frozen, mouth parted. Looking at him, I know that if God Himself laid a new body before me, the cosmic forces of time to bend and reverse at my will, and made me choose between that and one taste of this man’s lush mouth, I honestly cannot say that I would have the strength to make the sensible choice.
“Gavin,” Oliver whispers.
I stare down at him. My name. On his lips. It’s my undoing. “What?” My voice is hoarse. Breathless.
“We’re…really stuck,” he says quietly.
“I know. I just…” I shut my eyes. “Give me a minute.”
He’s silent for two pathetic seconds, before a smoky laugh bursts out of his chest.
My eyes fly open. “What the fuck are you laughing about?”
His nose wrinkles, and he clutches my shoulders, smiling so wide as he laughs, it fucking wrecks me.
I stare down at him, tears leaking out of his eyes as his hands, warm and strong, clutch me, the ripple of his throat as he throws his head back and laughs even harder, so hard it curls his legs up, pins our hips even tighter.
A growl of annoyance rumbles out of me as Oliver shakes with laughter.
“S-sorry,” he says between spasms of laughter. “God, you’re heavy. I—” He laughs even harder.
“You are fucking useless,” I grumble.
Oliver bursts out another laugh, but it cuts off abruptly as I brace myself on either side of his head, then wrench him with me, so that now I’m on my back, a movement that hurts like hell but is entirely worth it because now Oliver’s on top of me.
His laughter dies off. His eyes search mine.
I stare up at him, my hands slipping between us to the tightest knot of fabric stuck low between our hips. “Not so funny now?”
He laughs nervously. “It’s uh…” He swallows, tries to shift, which rubs our bodies together again. I hiss in a breath as his eyes snap shut. “Maybe not as funny as I originally thought.”
“Exactly,” I say through clenched teeth, attacking the knot between us. “Now be still.”
For once, Oliver does as I ask, quiet, hands braced on either side of my head, as my hands make slow progress on the sheets, my knuckles brushing his flat stomach, making it jerk. Our breaths echo in the room. I glance up and watch his throat work in a swallow, fresh sweat beading down his skin.
Peering back down, I keep my eyes on my task and scour my brain for something horrible to knock down my erection, but nothing—nothing—is working. If Oliver’s trying what I am, he’s just as unsuccessful.
We’re both as hard as when all this started, which I try very much not to think about.
Unfortunately it’s all I can think about.
Finally, the knot gives. And then Oliver Bergman moves faster than I have ever seen him, flying in a tangle of white sheets streaking behind him as he races toward the bathroom. “First dibs on the shower!” he yells.
The door slams.
I lie on the floor, willing my dick down, praying my body can forget what just happened.
It’s absolutely hopeless.
I’m dressed and ready when Oliver reemerges from the bathroom, a towel slung low on his hips, his cheeks flushed. I tell myself that’s from a hot shower, though the chances he took a hot shower when it’s still sweltering in our room and he had an iron-hard erection are virtually nil.
I turn away, giving him privacy while pretending I’m actually reading the emails that roll in on my phone.
And then a few minutes later, he’s there, close behind me, that familiar clean, warm scent wafting from his skin, chewing the last of a banana.
I turn back as we both say, “Sorry.”
Oliver shakes his head as he tosses the peel in the wastebasket. “It’s okay. It was an accident.”
I nod. “Right.”