Page 44 of Love Set Free

“Now, I don’t know about you,” he says, “but I’m actually kind of tired. Surprising, what with how much we napped on the plane. But there you have it. Did you want to stay up longer? I’m sure Mom and Dad wouldn’t mind if you make yourself at home, explore more of the house or just hang around downstairs. Or we have a games room or a billiards room if you’re in the mood for something like that.” Had he read on my face how little those options appealed to me? Perhaps he had, because next he offers, “Otherwise, you could just stay up here with me. If you don’t feel like going to sleep right away, you can watch something on my TV.” He points toward the large flat-screen TV discreetly mounted on the wall opposite the large bed. “Or else...” Phoenix turns in a slow circle, surveying the bedroom as if it might be hiding some stash of entertainment options he’d never noticed before. “Looks like someone left a few books in here at some point. Not sure what they’re about or if they’d be any good,” he mutters to himself. “Or you could soak for a while in the tub. It’s a Jacuzzi.”

There’s something rather adorable about this man, who has more money than almost everyone else on the planet, who is definitely more well-educated than I am, who is immeasurably more well-traveled and cultured than I am, being so very clueless and floundering in figuring out something he can offer me that will make me happy.

Fuck. I just about want to eat him up and absorb everything that is him down into the very marrows of my bones.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I tell him. “For later. Right now…”

Now that it’s just the two of us alone, I let everything that isn’t him and me fade away into nothingness. I turn my brain off—it never does me many favors, anyway—and I make myself forget about the private jet. I blank out the entire rest of this house, everything beyond the closed door of this bedroom. A bedroom with a gigantic, comfortable-looking bed and an adorably flustered Phoenix in it. I blot out the presence of the whole goddamn Atlantic Ocean a stone’s throw away from the closed window over the bed. I let my focus be on just him and me. The two of us. And on how I’m not going to waste time worrying about the otherwise worrisome differences between us, when I could be rejoicing in the fact that Phoenix doesn’t seem to want me going anywhere either.

“That bed looks comfortable. I think I’ll join you.”

Phoenix’s eyes go slightly wide and a touch of pink tints his cheeks, but otherwise, he gives a carefree shrug as he says, “Okay. Well, pajamas should be in the closet with the rest of the spare clothes. Like I said, it’s just through the bathroom.”

“Pajamas? Why would we start botherin’ with pajamas when we haven’t yet?”

My teasing gets more of a reaction, a gulping swallow that has Phoenix’s Adam’s apple bobbing alluringly in his slender neck.

“Hmm. Alright then.”

I watch avidly as Phoenix pulls his shirt over his head. While we slept next to each other in the same bed last night, both of us stripped down to our undies, I hadn’t paid much attention to what Phoenix looked like mostly naked. I’d gotten undressed while Phoenix took a shower and was in bed, under the covers, when he came out. He’d hurriedly slipped out of the hotel-provided bathrobe he wore and had slithered under the covers without letting me get a good look at him. But this, right now…this is a show.

Phoenix’s skin is pale and luscious as fresh milk, stretched over elegantly thin bones and lean muscles. The gentle curves of his pecs are topped with small, dusky nipples, almost as dark a brown as his hair and eyes. His body is a symphony of liquid cream and melted chocolate—a living hot fudge sundae for me to devour.

Those slender muscles are deceiving. I’ve already run my fingers over the ridges of his defined stomach, which are hard to see unless you look really closely. Or you give them a feel the way I did. His shoulders are wide with softly rounded muscles, and his biceps bulge, a decently swelled curve, while the sinewy strength in his forearms flex as he fiddles with unfastening his pants.

I’m practically flat as a board, top to bottom, front to back, and I haven’t gone around making it a practice to study the physicality of other guys. So, I’ve not much firsthand knowledge to be able to compare the way Phoenix looks with what is considered traditionally attractive. But I do know that my eyes are eagerly gobbling up every line, every curve, every groove and dip in the way he’s formed, and I like it. I like the way he looks.

The ridged diagonal, framing a path from his hips down to his, uh, bits, seems to hold a particular fascination for me. I want to trace along that crest, and the echoing shadowed valley below it, with my fingers. With my mouth.

I wonder if he’d let me.

And speaking of those, um, bits… It feels wrong for me to be looking at the bulge contained in Phoenix’s teal blue briefs, revealed after he shoves his pants to the floor and steps out of them. A lifetime of being taught not to look at that part of another guy…that’s a hard habit to shake off. To distract myself from that sense of awkward weirdness, I turn my attention to getting my own self naked, or near enough to.

Knowing I’d be spending the largest portion of my day on an airplane, and that I’d be stepping off the plane to frigid winter temperatures, I’d pulled on a comfortable pair of lounge pants—not quite sweatpants, but probably as close to that as any of the Wildings would consent to purchase—and a soft, cotton t-shirt. When we landed in Providence, one of the flight crew handed me a hoodie to pull over my t-shirt, labelled with The Wilding Corporation name and logo, and a thick coat.

The coat I’d already shed when we all came inside, and it takes me but a moment to pull my other bits of clothing off now.

When I’m down to my own undies—a rather plain set of briefs in a conservative navy blue—Phoenix sucks in a garbled gasp that I’m able to hear clear across the room. “Right. Yes. Bed,” he chokes out between a few clearings of his throat.

The large bed is just as comfortable as it looks. But it might as well be lined with rocks for as much as I care, I’m more interested in the other person climbing into the bed with me. As soon as he’s settled in on his side of the bed, I instantly scoot myself over to Phoenix and practically fling my limbs around him like an octopus.

“You gonna let me touch you this time or are you gonna keep denying me all the fun?” I ask, nuzzling my nose close one of his nipples, which is actually the target I want, but haven’t quite scrounged up the guts to go for yet.

“You want…you want…”

“Oh, I definitely want,” I tell him, answering the question Phoenix can’t get out.

“But you… Last night, you didn’t even… You weren’t hard, babe. Not even a little,” Phoenix reminds me.

“Yeah, so? Straight guys don’t normally get hard for other dudes.” Before Phoenix can continue to argue that my lack of a response means we shouldn’t fool around, I take my own turn to remind him of something. “But I want to touch you. I wanted totouch you last night; I offered, and you turned me down. Are you gonna tell me no again tonight?” I lightly trail my fingers along the shallow canyon running up the center of Phoenix’s chest. “Please don’t tell me no, Phee,” I beg. “Not again.”

His groan of surrender sounds ripped from his soul, and the next thing I know, I’ve got a hungry Phoenix on top of me, pressing my body down into the mattress, his lips feasting on mine, with his delving tongue searching for and tasting the flavor of my mouth.

I thrill at the way he’s ravaging me; the command he’s using to take what he wants. But I don’t want tonight to be all taking. I want to give him pleasure. I need to give it to him.

Wrapping a leg around one of Phoenix’s, I throw my weight against him and roll us onto our sides. Phoenix mumbles something against my lips, but he hasn’t pulled back far enough for it to be understandable. It’s just a rumbled vibration tickling my mouth, which I lick away with a pass of my tongue, swiping a slick stripe along Phoenix’s plush lower lip at the same time.

He groans and doubles down on consuming me with kisses, his tongue chasing after mine and following it back inside the interior of my mouth. His hands don’t remain idle while he’s kissing me; his wounded left carefully cradles my head and strokes the shaggy, overgrown strands of my hair. And his right hand sneakily drifts down to curve around the meager swell of my butt.

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