We worked each other, slow building to faster and desperate, the bottle of lube tipped over somewhere on the duvet leaking onto the cotton, neither of us cared. The barbells caught the amber light every time he breathed in. His thumb dragged across my hip bone in a circle that stopped being conscious.
He came first. He was trying to hold off, the way he held off on everything until he had permission, but my mouth was at his throat and I was murmuring his name and his hand had locked over mine on his cock and his whole body went rigid against me.
“Jett. I can’t. I’m.”
“Yeah, you are. Let me have it.”
He shook apart in my hand, quiet, his face buried in my neck, his breath broken open. Hot wet spilled over my fingers. He gasped against my collarbone and then laughed. A small wrecked thing. Embarrassmentand relief in the same exhale.
“God, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“It’s been…”
“Don’t apologize for that. Ever.”
He nodded into my shoulder. His hand was still on me, slack now, his palm warm and slow.
“Give me a second.” His voice cracked. “Then I’m finishing what I started.”
“Take your time.”
He took his time. Caught his breath. Found my mouth and kissed me as if he was thanking me. His hand tightened around me again, and he went back to work.
He’d learned in the last few minutes more than most guys learned in a year. The rhythm. The angle. The quiet, steady attention he brought to everything else now turned on me, and I’d underestimated how much that would matter. The pressure of his palm. The way he watched my face for adjustments. The way he kept pace when my hips lifted up off the mattress.
“Look at me.” His voice quiet, certain. “Stay here.”
I looked at him.
Hazel eyes gone gold in the amber light. Mouth pink and bitten. Hair a wreck. The careful Ellis from the restaurants and the gym was gone. The new one was someone I’d brought out in the last hour.
I came with his hand on me and his eyes on mine and his name in pieces in my mouth. The release rolled through me in a way I hadn’t expected, deeper than the choreography would have predicted, and a stupid thing happened in my chest I didn’t have a vocabulary for yet.
He pressed his forehead to mine while I caught my breath. Didn’t move his hand until I had to ease him off. He kissed me. Soft. The kiss of someone who had no plan to leave.
We lay there a while. Sticky and tangled and breathing hard. He grabbeda towel from the bathroom and used it to clean up, methodical the way he was methodical about everything, even this. He tossed it onto the floor on his side of the bed.
His side.
The phrase landed in my head before I could stop it.
He pulled the blanket over us. His arm draped across my stomach. His head found the hollow of my shoulder.
“Can I stay?”
The words that usually sent me reaching for an excuse. Early morning. Work stuff. Better if you don’t.
“I was hoping you would.”
He lifted his head to look at me. Checking if I meant it. I met his gaze and held it, letting him search for whatever he needed to find.
“Okay.” A slow smile. The careful one cracking wide. “Okay.”
He settled back against my chest. I reached for my phone to set an alarm, then changed my mind and put it face down on the nightstand.
Tomorrow could wait.
