Page 38 of High Notes & Hail Marys

The unexpected sweetness of that burns through your chest like Everclear. Ninety-five percent proof.

“I guess we clean up nice,” you say.

“We do. But, honestly, I think I like us like this better. No clothes involved.”

It’s kind of a line, and you want to laugh, but you also don’t want to disturb anyone on the other side of the plane.

“Am I about to join the Mile High Club?” you ask.

Sterling turns off his notifications and locks hisphone. “You know the best thing about being thirty thousand feet above ground? There’re no paparazzi anywhere.”

“I was going to say that I was looking at the best thing,” you retort. That one’sdefinitelya line, but it makes Sterling smile.

“Come here, Kai,” he says. So you lean in, and meet his lips halfway. Bright heat ladders your spine when you kiss. You’re tired and buzzing a little, but that almost makes it better. You want to melt into Sterling. Melt into this bed, into this moment, with this man.

He urges you under the sheets, up against his body. The feeling of skin-on-skin is electric. You’re almost falling off the mattress, your feet hanging over the edge, so you just crowd him close against the wall. You two pick up where you left off in the limo, tongues entwining hotly. Hands everywhere. You catalog his shape under the sheets with your fingers, tracing his slender but strong shoulders, the lean muscles in his arms, the dip of his waist. You grab his ass and hold tight, pulling his hips tight against yours. Your dick rubs against his, making you groan.

Eventually, the thought breaks through your muzzy brain—coherent thought processes slowed down to soup—to pull him astride you. Gives you more room on the bed, and, even better, theview.The sheets slip off Sterling, and he is sitting onyour thighs, naked as his birthday. You don’t think much ever about the contrast between your skin and his, but it’s fuckingpretty, his pale on your dark, his knees bracketing your hips and his pink prick jutting up against the concavity of his belly and pelvis. A few loose strands of hair fall over his cheeks from where it’s tied back. His lips are kiss-pink and swollen.

You envelop both your cocks in your big hand and jerk them, together and up-and-down. Just loosely. Sterling huffs and thrusts into your fingers, the hot curve of his dick rutting against yours. Teasingly, you cover both your tips with your palm and rub them, making Sterling whine.

“You got lube?” you ask, a little breathless.

There’s a hidden storage compartment in the console that runs alongside the bed against the wall, from which he magics some lube. He tosses the bottle on the bed, and holds up a box of condoms.

“I want to fuck you,” he says without an ounce of shame. “How do you feel about that?”

You would snort if you weren’t painfully turned on. Sterling wants to top you. You would turn yourself inside out for him.

“It’s been a while,” you say, swallowing your devotion. “But I’m down.”

His smile is crooked and insanely hot. “I’ll get you ready. No worries.”

It’s on the tip of your tongue to tell him that the only thing you’re worried about is coming as soon as he touches you, but you restrain yourself.

Sterling latches onto your neck and starts sucking, his teeth scraping your skin. You don’t mark up easily, but you imagine your teammates seeing hickies on your collarbones in the locker room, knowing who gave them to you. The thought makes you groan and shift, thrusting up against Sterling’s stomach. He pets your arms where they are bracketed by his hands and squeezes to still you.

“Patience is a virtue,” he whispers, his voice just barely louder than the white noise of the jet’s engines.

You can’t handle the sight of his head moving down your body without a risk of bucking him off you like a rodeo bull, so you turn your head and watch, glassy-eyed, as the night sky passes outside the windows. Every sense feels heightened. Beneath you, the silky sheets slip against your overheated skin. In your peripheral vision, Sterling mouths your chest, licking your nipples and dipping his tongue into the indent of your navel. He’s very close to your dick now. It’s smacking him in the chest and neck, buthe pretends like it’s not there, sucking at your hipbones and digging his fingertips into the bulk of your chest. You didn’t take Sterling for a tease in bed. When he licks a long stripe up the crease between your pelvis and thigh, right alongside your balls, you revise your estimation. No, he’s not a tease—he’s goddamndeliberate, unrushed and methodical. He’s decided to drive you crazy, so that’s what he’s going to do.

Your legs spread further as he settles between them, belly on the mattress. The bed is really too small for all this, and his legs are hanging off the end as well, but he’s not complaining. He’s sucking toothy kisses onto your inner thighs, little vampire bites. It’s taking everything you have to lie there, as he clearly wants you to do. Your cock is straining

“Roll over and let me eat you out?” he says, casually as anything. You are pretty sure you are going to die. It is an act of coordination to get on your belly without knocking both you and Sterling to the floor, but you manage it, him climbing over you. He nips and kisses your lower back, running his hands over the mounds of your ass. You make your best effort not to rut against the bedclothes, but it happens a little bit anyway. His tongue darts into your crack, licking a trail between the cleft of your cheeks.

When his mouth closes around your hole, younearly come up off the bed. Sterling chuckles a little, the vibration of it tickling your sensitive and flushed skin. He tongues the perimeter of you as his hands knead your inner thighs. His tongue is a brand, and it’s outlining you, spreading heat and wet where it goes. Sterling mouths open-mouthed kisses against your hole, burying his face deep against your ass with an enthusiasm that you might not have predicted. He licks down your perineum, nuzzling the underside of your balls.

“Want a finger?” He lifts his head momentarily to make himself heard, and you arch into the air, missing his mouth.

“Please.”

One finger—the index one—slides alongside his tongue, providing a duality of sensation as he continues his ministrations. It circles you, the pad dipping over your hole without sliding inside. You are wet enough to drip with Sterling’s spit. Against the sheets, your cock is leaking, too. The need to getfuckedis mounting within you, a restless burning that’s almost enough to distract you from the exquisite strokes of his tongue and fingertip. Just when you are worked up enough to make a comment about it, he curls his finger inside you up to the second knuckle. It slips in easily, making Sterling hum in appreciation. He keeps licking you, tracing the base of his own finger where it’s inside you. Not moving at first, then slowly,carefully, sliding in and out.

“You can skip to two. Fuck it—three,” you say, turning your head from where you are drooling onto the bedding.

You feel, rather than see, Sterling’s smile. With his free hand, he’s tracing the crease where your ass meets your leg, following the curve of muscle.

“Ahh. Sothisis what it takes to make you lose your manners,” he observes. He doesn’t withdraw his finger, but sits up. You miss the humidity of his mouth instantly, but pant like a trained dog at the uncapping of the lube and the soft squish of Sterling dribbling it down over your crack, over his hand. “Think you can jump to three?”

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