JesusChrist, myheart. My body that was resisting this with all its might acts without any thought behind it, tilting his direction, layering my other leg on top of his, and hugging him to me. Because yes. Itiswhat I want to hear. If I’m being honest, I’ve been waiting years to hear it.
Holding him feels…
Sofucking good.
He sighs. Hot breath on my neck that smells like cinnamon. He did something about the cheese and onions, too, I realize, and that shouldn’t make me harder, but it does.
“You don’t have to touch my dick to tell me you miss me,” I say once I wrap my mind around the fact that this is happening. We’re making up.
“That was different. I just wanted to be sure I wouldn’t freak out on you again.”
“I hate to tell you this, but I think you are freaking out. You might even be losing it. This isn’t you, Mal.”
“You don’tactuallyknow everything, Ryan. Not about me.”
My fingertips flex into his back at the ideas those words put in my chest. “Maybe I don’t.”
“Don’t you hate that?” he asks. “I hate that.”
“Yeah,” I admit. I don’t know what’s making me speak so freely, other than the fact that I can’t see his face. It could be that his grip on me is so strong. Like he doesn’t want me going anywhere.
“Yeah,” he agrees and melts softly in my arms, like every muscle in him relaxes at once.
I try to do the same, but I have to go one limb at a time. First, I let the full weight of my leg settle onto his. Then I relax my back, my shoulder dropping, which causes him to nuzzle in more. Finally, I loosen my neck, and my head rests heavily against his. My erection is pressed to his hip, and I think I feel his on my thigh, but there’s a lot going on—a ton of contact I’m only barely processing. “You all right?” I ask him after another few minutes of quiet.
He doesn’t answer right away, and I think he might be sleeping. But then he says, “Honestly…I could be better.”
12
MALCOLM
Ryan feels so fucking good, I barely remember why we ever stopped doing this. Unfortunately, Idoremember, and I can’t believe I would givethisup because he basically told me he liked it too. That he loved it. That he lovedme.
Just the fact that he’s allowing this—that he never once turned me away no matter how messy or random I can be. This is him—accepting me any way I come at him.
Like what the hell could be better than that?
My cock seems to think it knows one thing that would.
I’m so hard, I’machingin my shorts. It’s the one part of me that keeps getting more worked up while the rest of me is finally settling the fuck down.
“Better how?” he asks.
I’m so nervous, my mouth is dry despite the cinnamon gum I’m holding in my cheek. But I don’t want to think too hard about anything. I just want to feel. I want my body to tell me what it wants, and right now it wants one thing in particular. “Can I kiss your neck?”
He groans. Not like a lustful, fuck yeah kind of groan, but more like a put upon, I can’t believe he’s asking me this kind ofgroan. I expect another why or what the fuck, but he says, “Sure. I guess.”
I was serious about not wanting to freak out on him. I’m ninety-nine percent positive I want this, but the other one percent is still there with big doubts. Yeah, I get that it was weird and a little uncool to put my hand on his dick, but I needed to know I could handle it, so to speak.
It was fine. More than fine.
I already know I like holding him. I was reminded of that very powerfully Saturday. Kissing a man on the mouth, though, feels like a line—like if I do itandI like it as much as I think I will, it’ll mean something about me that I’ve spent a lot of years adamantly denying. But his neck is smooth, and it smells good, and it’s warm, and I very much want to taste it.
So, I do. My slightly parted lips meet his fever hot flesh, and I sigh heavily as I close my mouth around the spot I found beneath his ear. His breath shudders in and out.
After everything I’ve done and said to him, by all rights, his feelings for me should be long gone, and if he’s really decided he’s straight, then he’s being very fucking nice to me right now in a way I know I don’t deserve, but appreciate so, so much. So fucking much, I kiss him again, and again with only my lips, but all over the side of his neck I have access to.
When I feel his hand in my hair, gripping the roots, I brace to be forcibly removed, but Ryan just breathes and adjusts his grip, lightly pulling and releasing the strands, letting me explore. I run my hand down his well-defined arm, surprised by how smooth it is—that the tattoos, which look so three dimensional, have no texture. I kiss him as I squeeze his biceps, his shoulder. I kiss the side of his throat as I trace the hairline behind his ear and finally, I run my fingertips along the side of his jaw until I’m cradling it in the palm of my hand.