Page 22 of Handy

I shake my head, my chest heaving embarrassingly hard and my thoughts spinning from the ghost of his tongue in my mouth, hot and wet, tangling with mine. A needy moan tightens my throat, and I tilt my mouth towards his again in a silent plea for more. And Ledger isn’t stingy. Of course he’s not. I hardly know him, but I can’t imagine him holding something back that he thought someone else needed or wanted from him. I wonder how often that’s blown up in his face. The whimper is replaced by a broken growl and the urge to crush anyone who’s taken advantage of him or hurt him in his life.

He lets me pry his lips open with my tongue again and lick greedily into his mouth. He lets me lap at his tongue and test the softness of his mouth against mine, murmuring low wordsI can’t quite hear in that sweet, patient tone of his in between kisses.

Okay, so he wasn’t trying to figure out how to blow me off, but hewasthinking about something a minute ago. I dig my fingers into his hips and savor one more slow, exploratory kiss before I manage to gather the willpower to break it.

“What did you want to say?” I ask, my voice full of gravel and my whole body humming with the taste of his mouth and the feeling of his cock dragging against mine.

He blinks in a daze and a smile spreads slowly over his damp lips.

“I was thinking about how sweaty we got and that I can still feel the itchy little hairs all down my back from my haircut…” He bites his lip again, resting his forehead against mine and meeting my eyes. It’s too much up close like this, like he’s going to find some way to look right into my soul and see all the pathetic, embarrassing shit I don’t need anyone to see. I close my eyes and breathe in slowly, and he keeps talking and gently scratching my scalp like it doesn’t bother him at all. “And I was wondering how weird it would be to ask if you wanted to hop in the shower with me.”

My heart jumps and my eyes fly open.

“Sure,” I say hoarsely, my hips twitching involuntarily to nudge my cock against his again. His erection twitches and he lets out a breathy sound that tightens around my balls and stokes the heat building inside me.

“Oh good.” He smiles again like I just made his night. “If you were hesitant, I had this whole plan to pitch it as a ploy to get you to renovate my bathroom after you fix my living room.”

I frown. “You want me to renovate your bathroom?”

Ledger chuckles. “No, that’s what I was going to tell you to lure you into the shower with me.”

“I… don’t get it.”

He leads me down the hallway to the bathroom right next to the main bedroom, the same one he cut my hair in earlier. He flips on the light and then gives me a cheeky smile.

“That’s the beauty of my plan. You would have been so busy trying to figure out what inviting you into the shower had to do with renovating my bathroom and whether I was being serious or just fucking with you, that you would have forgotten to feel weird about it and thenbam, there we are, all wet and soapy together.”

I rasp out a laugh and Ledger grins even wider, like that was his plan all along. He releases his hold on my wrist finally and reaches to turn on the water. I glance around the small bathroom, taking in the chipped tiles and the fixtures stained with years of hard water buildup and rust. It wouldn’t bethat muchextra work to fix it up after I finish his living room.

He’s already naked by the time I’m done with my quick assessment of the room. I rake my eyes over him, taking in his tan lines and the freckles on the back of his shoulders, the dark hair on his thighs and chest, the firmness of his muscles—from labor rather than hours at the gym. He reaches to push my shirt up and a sigh slips past my lips, an audible release of the tension in my shoulders and the relief of having his hands on me again.

I let him tug my shirt over my head, raising my arms to make it easy for him. Then, I reach for the button on my jeans. He’s been so damn sweet to me, but I doubt he’s getting a lot out of having to lead me around and do all the work here. He bats my hand away before I can get my pants open though.

“Hey now, you don’t go to someone else’s birthday party and unwrap their presents, do you?” he asks, bumping his nose against mine and smirking as he tugs my zipper down slowly, making me feel the vibration of each tooth releasing over my cock.

“If I’m your present, you might want to keep the receipt,” I joke with a rumble of a self-deprecating laugh.

Ledger nips at my lip, and I hiss.

“You’re not allowed to undermine my compliments either.” He soothes the stinging spot with his tongue.

“You have a lot of rules all of a sudden.”

Not that I’m complaining. If he told me I had to stand on my head and say the alphabet backward to keep his hands on me, I’d do it happily. I know he can see how starved I am for attention, I just hope he thinks it’s charming and not as pathetic as it feels. He just chuckles, hooking his fingers around my jeans and briefs at the same time and shoving them down.

With my dirty clothes in a pile on the floor right next to Ledger’s, we stumble into the shower together. A groan slips out as soon as the hot water starts to beat against my sore muscles. He reaches for a bottle of bodywash that has an extremely phallic palm tree and coconuts logo on it and pours it into his hand. My nose twitches and I grunt in surprise.

“Wow, that smells exactly like being at the beach.” I sniff again as he rubs his hands together to create a lather. “Not just the overpowering smell of coconuts like most beach scents, but it actually smells like…” I shake my head because I can’t quite describe it.

Ledger smiles.

“Like sunshine and sand and palm trees,” he says with a happy sigh. “It’s like taking a vacation without having to leave the house.” Ledger chuckles and then closes the small amount of space between us.

I gasp at the hot, slippery feeling of his bare skin against mine, his cock finding its way to mine again like they’re magnetized, his chest pressed to my chest. Then he brings his soapy hands to my shoulders and starts to work the suds into my skin. I moan and sag against him, probably trusting him morethan I should with my weight on a slippery surface, but I can’t help it. The feeling of him digging into my sore muscles turns me to jelly instantly, and all I can do is get closer to him.

“Aw, there he is. That’s what my big bear needs, isn’t it?” he coos, his cock twitching against mine as he runs his slicked hands up and down my back, digging into my muscles as I press my face into the crook of his neck.

All I can do is whimper in response. Idoneed it. Fuck, it’s humiliating and sad and I’ll do any-fucking-thing I can to keep him from stopping.

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