Page 79 of How I Met Your Murderer

Beside me on the couch, Eric groaned long and low, and I found myself a little jealous of a jar of peanut butter. I also couldn’t stop smiling at the dreamy look on his face, the way his lovely hazel eyes rolled back in his head and he kicked his feet like this was the best night of his afterlife, the spoon sticking out from between his lips.

“Oh my god, I can actually taste it,” he murmured thickly around a mouthful.

Then, glancing between me and the jar, a spark of an idea blazed in his eyes. He set the spoon aside, dipped a finger in, and held it to my lips.

As I started sucking it off, using my tongue more than was necessary, Eric started undoing the buttons of his rugby polo.

“It’s hot in here, right?” he asked me curiously. But before I had a chance to answer with my mouth still busy around his finger, he concluded: “It’s really hot in here. I think we should get a little more comfortable, don’t you?”

I drew back to watch him tug his shirt off and toss it to land on the back of an armchair, like the peanut butter had given him a boost of energy. He smiled as he met my eyes, the gentleness I loved now mixing with a new hunger.

Apparently, he had all kinds of appetites tonight.

“Eric,” I warned, even though my racing pulse and all the blood rushing to my bits was screaming to just let go and enjoy what was being offered. “I’m not sober.”

He ran his fingers over the tattoo on his ribs and then leaned in to kiss me. “So?”

“So as much as I want to be your first and only right now—”

He cut me off with another searing kiss, his fingers sneaking up under my shirt to pinch my nipples like he’d been doing earlier. They still remembered, and his touch had me shifting on the cushions. I was in trouble.

It took every ounce of self-control to try again when he let me have some air. “Eric.” This time I held up a hand, and he did at least listen, although he was playing with his own nipples the whole time. “I, uh. Damn, but you’re a sight right now. I . . .” My total incoherence was exactly why we couldn’t cross another item off his list tonight. That, and— “I think we should wait on number ten,” I said quickly. “Because I want to have a clear head and make it the best ever, like you deserve. And because . . . I’ve not really touched you there yet. I’d rather we work up to it, let me finger you first, and—” I swallowed, because he was taking off his jeans now, too, but I had to get this out. “And because we’re nearly through with your list, so if we wait until Halloween—we’ll be sure to get more time together, right?”

That last one was selfish, I know. But we only had a few days left to spend with each other, not the rest of our lives, or at least months or years like some people got.

“You’re right,” Eric agreed, his voice breathy as he cupped his straining erection. He’d gotten plenty hard when we’d barely started kissing, which was definitely . . . different.

Stupid Guinness brain. Something was nagging at me that I couldn’t quite remember.

“We should wait until Halloween,” he continued. “Not because I’m not ready now, but because I want every second I can get with you.”

Now that sounded like the Eric I knew and loved.

God help me, I loved him so much, whether he was rambling about astronomy or doing mental math I couldn’t follow for a battle in D&D or feeling low and resting his head on my shoulder in the stillness of a late night. I loved him like this, too, taking control and showing me all the different sides of him that reminded me how well we fit together.

“But Raff . . .” He leaned in, one hand wrapped around his cock, stroking himself as he put his lips to my ear. “I still need you tonight. If you want me. If you need me, too. I’ve never needed anything so bad in my life, I . . .” He was leaking onto his fingers already. We looked down at the same time, studying the evidence of his desperation. And I could feel myself twitching, still trapped in my overalls. Almost like that hand on his cock was tugging on mine at the same time.

“Okay, then how about this,” I said as I started unfastening my overalls and shucking them off. “I’ll prep you like I’m planning to fuck you—and trust me, you’ll enjoy that plenty without the finish—and then you prep me. And fuck me instead.”

Discarding my black tee, I quickly looked back at Eric, because it was odd that he’d gone silent. It was unlike him, when I was offering something I never had before.

His hand was working his cock furiously as he watched me, and he was . . . drooling. A little bit of spit clung to the corner of his mouth, slowly leaking out, and he didn’t seem to notice. How could he, when other parts of him had such a pressing need right now?

“Yes,” Eric said, his voice a scrape of its usual sound. “Yeah, let’s—do all of that. Anything. I need you, Raff.”

When I had him splayed out on the couch, his arse in the air, spreading himself for me with his hands while I knelt on the rug for better access, it hit me: rule #128. The reason we weren’t supposed to feed a ghost peanut butter—and maybe other nut butters, it wasn’t like I read the damned handbook cover to cover—was because it made them insatiably horny.

“Eric . . . the peanut butter,” I panted, hesitating behind him. “It’s like a ghost aphrodisiac. It’s why you’re, well, like this. We don’t have to—”

“Oh yes we do,” Eric groaned, turning to glance over his shoulder and meet my eyes. “This is me, Eric James Crawford, being of sound mind and giving you, Rafferty Finnegan O’Meara, full consent to eat me out.”

Well, that was settled, then, because I wanted the same thing.

He was so warm when I licked into him. He smelled sweet and clean from the shower we took before we started our little Guinness adventure, and I had to work to get to the saltiness beneath by pushing my tongue in deep. And it was a good thing Caoimhe had left, because Eric was failing miserably at trying to muffle his every moan and cry with the couch pillows. I swatted his hand away from his cock and took over stroking him while I ate him like the snack we’d forgotten.

“I’ve got you,” I reassured him when I came up for air, even though he was clearly past the need for words. Worked up as he was, I still wanted him to remember how I’d cared for him in the moment. “I’m going to put a finger in now, all right?”

His answer was a more insistent moan.