“I need you.”
As soon as I uttered the words, the man let go. His tongue drove deep, fucking deep, his groan vibrating through my body like the crackle of a forest fire before he turned his focus to my clit.
He laved and lapped.
Everything burned.
He clutched one ass cheek tight in one hand as he shifted up higher on his knees, and with the other hand, he sank two fingers inside my body.
I moaned through a gasp, my walls clutching at his fingers as he plunged them deep. He picked up this devastating pace with his tongue and his fingers.
And that energy.
It spun and spun as he lifted me higher, pleasure gathering fast. Ecstasy tightened in my belly and threatened at my clit. I panted and gasped while Zee propelled me to this place where air was gone. Where my only breath was him.
This man.
This man.
Everything split.
Shattered.
A blinding bliss that scattered like stars.
Burning as they fell and poured and shone.
My legs gripped his head just as tight as my fingers gripped his hair, and I swore my entire body floated six inches from the couch.
I cried his name.
Wanting to reach him and never feeling as close to someone as I did right then.
And he was whispering things I couldn’t hear, kissing the inside of my thighs as I gasped toward that hidden, starry sky.
Where I slowly fell.
Zee was right there to catch me, his big hands holding me, massaging and coaxing and saying all the things he thought he shouldn’t say.
I struggled for a breath, trying to still my heart that battered and raced and drummed.
I felt dazed. Stunned. Like I would never be the same.
He inched back. “You are fucking stunning when you come.”
Heat crept to my cheeks as I edged forward and set my hands on his chest. I didn’t understand how he could make me feel both brave and so incredibly shy. As if he looked at me differently than any man ever had. As if he saw things only he could see.
I nudged him back, and he slanted me some kind of grin that curved with lust and swam with adoration. My palm smoothed over the ink that lined his collarbone.
Relentless.
I kissed across the skin. “And just who are you fighting for?” I whispered against it.
He groaned and fisted a handful of my hair, twisting it tight as I kissed down the overwhelming strength of him, my tongue darting out to taste—to trace the defined lines of his abdomen like I’d been imagining.
He jerked beneath it, tightening his hold in my hair. “Fuck…Lex. I can’t.”
I climbed to my knees, peeking up at him as I worked free the button of his jeans. “Yes you can. I want to feel you. Touch you.”
“Shit…baby.”
And I could feel his restraint, the resistance fighting for some kind of control. Just as sure as I could feel it slipping away when I licked down the trail beneath his belly button.
Leaning his weight against it, he pushed back the coffee table to make more room, using it as support as he lifted his hips and let me drag down his jeans and his underwear.
His cock sprang free, bobbing against his belly. The sight of it twisted my stomach with some kind of delirious greed.
My voice was a whisper. A prayer. “You’re…beautiful, Zee. Every inch of you.”
My hand trembled as I caressed the velvety soft flesh covering his massive dick that was so utterly hard, the head throbbing, dripping with his need.
“I can’t believe I get to touch you this way.”
He tugged at my hair, winding it close to my head. “It’s me who can’t believe you’re touching me this way. That I get to have this with you. This moment, Alexis. I won’t ever forget it.”
An ache threatened to bind itself to that secret place within me that he’d touched, that place I knew would recognize him when he came.
This courageous, bold boy who was somehow broken.
I wanted to find the pieces, hold them until he found a way to put them back together.
Instead, I shifted to straddle him at the knees, and Zee kicked his clothing the rest of the way free as I took him in both hands, stroking him long and hard.
Zee jerked in my hands. “Fuck…it’s been…too long, Lex. Too long.”
Then I wasn’t wasting any time.
I kissed him just at the tip, my tongue snaking out to lick, to taste. I edged up higher while my head sank lower, my body curled over him as I took him deep into my mouth, my tongue flattening at the back of his shaft.
Both his hands were in my hair, fingers in my neck, my name on his breath.
He hissed a slew of curses as his hips jerked from the floor.
Maybe I should have been concerned that it was me who saw stars when he came.
Maybe I should have been concerned that I felt elevated in that moment.
Removed.
That was one second before I was falling.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Zee ~ Eighteen Years Old
Zachary was coming to realize it was the simple moments that often meant the most. The moments when next to nothing happened that made the greatest impact.
Who would have thought it could be a comfortable silence that spoke louder than words?
Sitting out in the backyard under the drape of the darkened sky during the deepest hour of the night, Zee knew this was one of those moments.
Relaxed back on a patio chair, Mark took a long drag of his cigarette and exhaled it toward the heavens. Smoke curled and twisted above his head. It climbed toward the infinite canvas strewn above them before it dispersed and disappeared, becoming one with the vast nothingness.
“How many of those stars do you think are still holding on to our dreams?” Mark’s voice was quiet and full of contemplation when he finally broke the hushed stillness that bound them.
On a low chuckle, Zee sank deeper into the lounger. He wasn’t surprised when his tone filled with some of that awestruck wonder he’d carried when he was a boy. “Does it count if I was always wishing for the same things?”
Mark smiled and scratched at his throat before he shifted to look over at Zee. “It was always all about that piano, wasn’t it?”
It was almost a tease, all mixed up with the kind of sheer affection that would be impossible for Zee to miss.
Zee almost felt self-conscious when he answered, “Guess it mostly was. Sitting at the throne of those ivory keys started to feel like the most important thing in my world.”
“It is important,” Mark told him.
With a nod, Zee sat up and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Yeah. Doesn’t mean I don’t miss hanging out with you. Hate that I hardly get to see you anymore.”
Mark lifted a shoulder. Not in carelessness. But in encouragement. “Things that are important take dedication and sacrifice, Zee. I get that. My world’s a million miles away from yours. You want to make it happen? Then you need to do what you need to do. Just like what me and the guys have had to do for Sunder. Doesn’t make you and me anything less to each other. You’ll always be the most important person in my life.”
Guilt ate his insides.