“So let me make myself clear,” he says, closing the distance between us, so close I feel warmth pouring off him, smell the intoxicating scent of his skin. “I do not care that you’re thirty-four. I care that you’re a massive dick most of the time—and don’t make a gloating size joke right now, I’m trying to be sincere. I care that while you’re usually a growly, cynical grump, you’re also sometimes a giant softie for the people you care about, even if those lucky people aren’t many in number.
“I care that you showed me that care. On our flight. Before the game.” His eyes drift to my mouth. “I care that you kissed me last night like you’d wanted to kiss me. Granted, probably not as long as I’ve wanted to kiss you, but—”
I yank him by the shirt and cup his cheek, my mouth whispering over his. “One last time,” I tell him.
He smiles against the first brush of our lips. “Such a good song.”
“Shut up. Kiss me back,” I grumble, slipping my hands around his waist, pulling him against me. “Focus on this instead of Hamilton for one fucking minute.”
“Aha!” he says against my mouth, before I silence him with a deep, hard kiss. Warm and soft and wet. A groan rumbles in my throat as I suck his tongue. “I knew you liked it,” he says, sinking his hands into my hair, cupping my neck.
“It’s a frustratingly catchy soundtrack,” I admit.
He groans. “Don’t do this.”
I kiss his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth. “Do what?”
“Make me want you even more. Hamilton’s my weakness.”
“Lin-Manuel Miranda is your weakness,” I growl against his neck, biting it, then soothing it with my tongue. “You hummed Encanto during our entire warm-up before the game. You called him Shakespeare and Sondheim in one person. And I don’t appreciate being jealous of a musical theater dork who is, by the way, actually much too old for you.”
He drops back his head, setting his hands on my hips, slipping them around my waist and kneading my ass. I groan into his neck. “First,” he says, “forty-two isn’t that old. Second—shit.” He gasps as I tug his earlobe between my teeth. “Humming happy music helps me stay calm when I’m nervous. So don’t make fun of me for it.”
I slip my hand beneath his shirt and rub his back gently, savoring those lean muscles, his warm, firm skin. “I would never.”
He snorts a laugh that becomes a rough exhale when my hand wanders lower, along the waistband of his shorts, I tease beneath the elastic, knowing I’m going somewhere I shouldn’t. I slip my hand along the hard firm curve of his backside and glide my finger lower, teasing him. “The things I want to do to you,” I whisper against the shell of his ear.
“Hayes,” he groans, gripping me tight, until I feel him, hard and thick, wedged right against every throbbing, rock-hard inch of me. I grit my teeth and breathe through the longing that barrels through my body. It’s that or moan helplessly as he works himself against me, his cock rubbing mine with each grind of his hips. “I want you,” he whispers.
“I want you, too,” I admit, hating how breathless I sound, needy and desperate. “But we shouldn’t.”
“I know,” he says quietly, sliding his hands up my back, kneading the web of stiff, sore muscles. “Doesn’t mean I want it any less.”
I set my hands back at his hips, holding him against me, as I kiss him, slow and soft. I shouldn’t say it, shouldn’t want it. But I’m weak beneath his touch, so fucking gone. I need him so badly, all sense flies right out of my head. “Unless…”
He leans in, kissing me back, chasing me for more. “Unless what?”
“We just…scratch the itch once. Get it out of our systems.”
He hesitates for a moment, pulling back and holding my eyes. A rough swallow works along this throat. “When?”
“Tonight.” I cup his jaw, slide my thumb along his mouth, tracing it. “Now.”
He lowers his head, taking my thumb into his mouth and sucking it.
“Fuck.” I squeeze his waist tight and hold him closer, crushing our chests together.
Oliver lets my thumb out with a pop, eyes holding mine. “Where?”
Sweet, heady relief rushes through me. “Anywhere. Whatever you want.”
He smiles, smug and satisfied.
“Shut up,” I growl at him, kissing him hard, pinning him against the sink.
“I didn’t say anything!” he mutters against my mouth.
I thrust against him, hard and deliberate, sliding every inch of myself along every inch of him. His eyes flutter shut. “You were thinking it.”
He grins as he cups my ass and squeezes. “Thinking what?”
“That I’m so fucking desperate to taste you and touch you and make you come so many ways and times until you can’t even walk straight that I would get you off on the roof of an In-N-Out if you asked me.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” he says as I tug out his tiny ponytail and sink my fingers into his hair, “I’m just as desperate.”
“Nothing makes me feel better,” I tell him hoarsely, taking his hand and guiding it over my erection. He pants as I work his hand along me. “Nothing makes this better when you’re around. You’re a fucking nuisance. A maddening, infuriating temptation.”
“Gav,” he whispers, and it’s my undoing. “Please.”
“Anything,” I tell him, slipping my hand along his stomach, beneath his shirt, grazing my knuckles over taut, warm skin. “Let me touch you.”
“Yes,” he pants. “Hell yes.”
I slip my hand beneath his shorts, his boxer briefs, and feel him, silken smooth, hot, and throbbing hard. Fuck, he’s beautiful. He’s perfect.
“Oh, God,” he groans.
“No God here,” I tell him. “Tell me who’s giving you pleasure.”
“You are,” he whispers, cupping my neck, pulling me in for a kiss as I slip my thumb along the sensitive underside of his cock, over the slit that’s wet, leaking for me.
“Say my name,” I tell him.
“Gavin,” he says, then louder when my hand wanders lower, stroking, teasing, making him plead against my neck.
“That’s it,” I tell him, kissing his temple, breathing him in. “Fuck yeah. C’mon. Come for me.”
“I’m so close,” he groans. “Shit, I’m so close. I swear it’s not usually this fast, I just—”
“Oliver,” I mutter against his cheek, then kiss his mouth again and again. “I’m about to blow my fucking load, only from getting you off. You don’t need to explain yourself.”
“I want it to last,” he says faintly, slipping his hands beneath my clothes and cupping my bare ass. “I don’t want this to be it.”
“It won’t be,” I promise him, tenderness flooding me as I touch him, as he clutches me and works himself against my hand, chasing release. “We have all night.”
He sucks my earlobe, and my weak knee nearly gives out. “I want every minute.”
I’m about to promise him the fucking world if he wants it, when suddenly Oliver’s back porch flood light bursts to life, pouring like high beams through my kitchen window.
We’re both startled for only a moment before we crash back down on each other, kisses deepening, bodies moving, until the sound of a woman’s voice shouting an expletive makes Oliver freeze, then whip around, facing his house.
I stand there, stunned.
He shields his eyes, squinting. “Oh, shit!” He straightens his shorts, pats his pockets frantically. “I don’t have my phone. Shit, I don’t have my phone, and she’s—”
He spins around, wide-eyed, breathing heavily. “I’m so sorry. I really have to go see if she’s okay. I—” He clasps my face and kisses me one more time, hard and deep. I wrench away just as he lets go, as he slams his feet into his muddy sneakers and bolts out the back door toward his house.
I stand, foolishly watching him long enough to observe him wrap his arms around a woman nearly as tall as him, a waterfall of flame-colored hair spilling down her back as he tugs her tight and sways her. Comforts her. Kisses the crown of her head.
According to my doctors, I have a dangerously high pain threshold, but even this is too much for me. I can’t watch a moment more.
So I turn away and lock the door behind me. Then I walk through my house, flicking off one light switch after the other, until, once again, everything is dark.
17
OLIVER
Playlist: “Slide to the Side,” Beaty Heart
Pretty much the only thing potent enough to relieve me of the erection of my lifetime is the sight of my little sister in tears. “Ziggy,” I whisper, swaying her tight. “I’m sorry. I left my phone…” I glance out in the yard where my water bottle and phone lay abandoned near the pile of weeds I was pulling before Mitchell ambushed me. “I left it outside. I didn’t mean to ignore you.”