Page 74 of Harvest Moon

He snorted. “I guess you better had, yeah. Walls are thick, so you two enjoy yourselves.”

Yeah, so, I was going to go ahead and die on the spot.

At least I would’ve if the idea that Lex needed me weren’t sitting there in my head, waiting for me to get down to business. He’d asked me to be with him, so my spontaneous expiration was going to have to wait.

At the end of the hall, I knocked on the door and waited. Here, it smelled more like Alexis, but sharp and needy, like he sometimes smelled after gym class, that way that’d made my mouth water. When I heard a muffled sound, I stuck my head in.

Alexis was there on his bed, his arms around his legs, wearing nothing more than boxer shorts and a tank top. His face was flushed, and there were little pink spots along his collarbone and at the tops of his shoulders. It was dark, almost like that’d keep the room cooler, but his skin still had a thin layer of sweat.

From his bed and the messy blankets shifted all around his bare legs, he stared up at me, his pupils were so wide his eyes looked black.

“You’re here,” he rasped, a soft, worried note in his voice that pierced right through my heart.

Whether I meant to or not, I’d made him feel like that—like he couldn’t always count on me to be there when he needed me. And right now, when all his hormones were rushing around and all his instincts firing off in wolf-brain and not human-brain, I couldn’t blame him for the swell of insecurity.

All I could do was try and fix it.

“Yeah, Lex. Wasn’t going to leave you here alone when you asked me to come.” I said it gently, but he still ducked his head and turned away, a small frown curling his lips.

“I know you wouldn’t,” he mumbled.

I touched his cheek with my free hand, and he whined, rubbing his face into the pulse point on my wrist where the skin was thinnest.

“Nah, we’ve never done this before, so we’re both still figuring it out. But now that I’m here—” My breath caught as his pink tongue darted out. He turned and nipped the skin with his teeth, just a little, a challenge glinting in his eyes while I stared.

My mouth was dry all of a sudden, I held up the glass of water and took a sip. Then, I offered it to him.

“Can I get you to take a couple sips for me?”

I expected he’d be annoyed at the delay, but the glass was cool and sweating, and Alexis licked his parched lips. He took a couple big gulps, then set the glass aside and reached for me.

It was too tempting to lean down and kiss him, lose myself in his incredible scent and the heat of his skin and hisneed. God, it was dizzying when his tongue swept past my lips and he moaned.

With a sharp inhale, I put my hands on his shoulders and straightened. For one more minute, I needed to keep my head clear, even though Alexis whined and squirmed to the edge of the bed, already reaching for my belt buckle.

I gathered his hands up in mine and kissed his fingertips. “One more second and we’ll get to that. Promise.”

He frowned up at me, so pretty I couldn’t help kissing him again, even if it was a little one.

“I just want to make sure—” Ugh, the words caught in my throat. I wasn’t any good at these awkward, open conversations. But if I couldn’t have them with Alexis, I couldn’t have them with anybody. “Last time we—I, um, I almost knotted. And before—I just want to make sure... is that okay?”

“Your knot?” Alexis echoed. His teeth pressed into his bottom lip, dimpling it with a rosy flush. “I want your knot.”

He went in for my belt then, and I wasn’t of a mind to stop him. Him saying that scattered all my thoughts to the wind, and he’d already opened my jeans and was tugging them down by the time I had half a chance to catch up.

“Want you,” he whispered again, his dark lashes fluttering against his cheeks as he pushed my boxers out of the way and buried his nose in the curly hair at my groin. “Ridge—”

“I know.” I cupped his chin, ran my thumb across his bottom lip. “Me too.”

I wasn’t even lying. Sure, I didn’t walk around with a boner most of the time, but this room was cozy. It smelled like Alexis and mate and all things warm and good. Last time we’d made love, that rush of pleasure had whited out everything else, but in the aftermath, tangled up in him—I’d never felt closer to anybody.

All day long, I’d thought Alexis’s heat would mean me taking care of him and making sure he had what he needed, but it was more than that. We’d take care of each other, because I’d never needed anything more than I needed him.

That’d never been clearer than when his hot, wet tongue darted across my dick. He moaned hungrily against my skin, and I threaded my fingers in his hair.

Tonight was going to blow me apart, and I didn’t even care. In the days that followed, Lex would be there to pull me back together—pull us back together. When it came right down to it, that was all that mattered.

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