Page 98 of His Surrender
Emery stuck out a hand to him, and he accepted it. “I know we’ve seen each other at the bar, but it’s nice to finally introduce myself.”
“Likewise.” Remi beamed. “Jay has told me a lot about you.”
“All bad, I’m guessing?” Emery’s blue eyes moved to me suspiciously.
“You’re my best friend,” I said with a scoff. “If I don’t talk shit about you, there’s something wrong.”
I returned to the stove and shut off the burner for the hamburger meat. The noodles still had a few minutes to boil, so I grabbed the block of parmesan cheese from the fridge and grated it.
“You grate your own cheese?” Cason asked, popping up beside me. Then he took on a French accent. “Vell, vell, Monsieur Foley. You are… how do you say… a magnifique chef.” He made a kissing sound as he put his fingers to his lips and pushed them away again.
“You’re lucky you’re cute,” I said, unimpressed.
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”
Emery laughed and pulled Cason into his arms, playfully biting his cheek. Cason grinned and bit him back. Next month would be a year since they’d started seeing each other. So much had changed within that time. I looked at Remi. Then again, sometimes it didn’t even take a year. Sometimes… love found you unexpectedly, changing everything in the blink of an eye.
Sometimes all it took was a simple meeting of gazes from across a dimly lit bar.
Later that evening, once Emery and Cason left, Remi and I sat in the living room cuddling on the couch. The TV was turned to the Syfy channel, but neither of us were paying much attention.
“I like them,” he said with a warm smile. “Cason cracks me up. He reminds me of some of my students. He’s smart too. It was nice hearing him talk about his college classes with so much passion in his eyes, even if my knowledge of the criminal justice system is limited to watching reruns ofLaw and Order: SVU.”
“Are you going to leave me for a nineteen-year-old now?”
Remi slapped my chest. “You couldn’t get rid of me even if you wanted to.”
“Good. Because I don’t want to.”
He peered up at me from his spot on my shoulder, and I admired the spot of brown in his left iris. It wasn’t just his eyes that made him unique. It was everything about him. Mostly, how he made me feel. For the first time in my life, I was with a man whose needs came above my own. I wanted to please him in every way possible.
“Uh-oh,” Remi said as his beautiful lips began to curve. “You have that look on your face.”
“What look?”
“The one you give me right before you—” His words were cut off as I slammed my mouth against his, moving my hand to cup the back of his head. We kissed for seconds, minutes, and then he pulled away with a breathy gasp. “Before you do that.”
“There’s more where that came from.”
“Yeah? Prove it.”
“Is that a challenge, Mr. Barnett?”
“Most definitely.”
I’d never been good at turning down a challenge, especially when the reward was so damn sweet. Standing from the couch with his hand in mine, I led him down the hall toward my room, closing the door once we were inside. Nothing ruined the moment more than being in the midst of a great fuck just to look over and see two narrowed eyes sunken into a furry face watching you.
Remi tugged off my shirt, and I unbuttoned his vest and took it off him. We made fast work of getting each other naked, and then I was on top of him on the bed, kissing his lips, down his neck, and sucking on his collarbone. Each gasp from him pushed me forward.
After retrieving the lube from the drawer, I worked Remi with my fingers—and my tongue. He begged me to go deeper, to stretch him wider. I obeyed, adding a third finger as I kissed his inner thigh.
“Get back up here,” he said, grazing a finger down my face and tracing my bottom lip.
I kissed him once I moved back up. He gripped my hip and tugged me forward, causing our cocks to slide together. When he reached between us and stroked my shaft, I hung my head on his chest and gently bit his nipple. I grabbed a condom and slicked it before positioning myself between his legs.
“I want us to get tested,” I said, staring down at him, my tip at his opening but not entering just yet. “I want to feel you skin to skin. I’m tired of this damn barrier between us.”
I was regularly tested and my results had come back negative, and Remi had been the only person I’d been with since January. I knew fucking bareback involved a lot of trust, though. You had to trust that the other person was staying exclusive to you and not fucking around with other people.
