by Eden Finley
With Ash hovering above me, his cock deep inside my ass, I can’t stop myself from cupping his cheek and giving him what he’s wanted since he was a kid.
“I want this. You and me.”
Ash comes, shuddering inside me. His eyes widen in wonder. He stares down between us where we’re still joined and then back up to my face. “Well, that’s new.”
I can’t help laughing. “Coming is new?”
“Coming that early is new.”
“Eh. It happens when you’re with someone as hot as me. My ass has talents you’ve never dreamed of.”
It’s Ash’s turn to laugh. “If you say so, but I think we might have to do this again. And again and again and again until I’m desensitized to the amazingness that is your ass. And no spouting shit about giving me everything I’ve ever wanted. I’m pretty sure that’s what tipped me over the edge.”
“I’m totally okay with that, but first, do you think maybe …” I glance at my still-hard cock.
“I’m on it.” Ash pulls out of me, and I wince, but a second later, he moves down my body and engulfs my cock into his hot, wet mouth and the pain in my ass is forgotten.
“Fuck, yeah. Just like that.” I will myself not to come just yet and enjoy this moment, but one look at Ash’s wide grin, eyes blinking innocently up at me while his mouth does ungodly things to my cock, and I know I won’t be able to hold back.
If he thinks he came early, it’s nothing compared to how quickly it takes me to come down his throat.
Moaning and panting, I continue to unload into his mouth while he licks me clean.
When my cock is finally done and it falls from his lips, my grip on him loosens. Ash makes his way back up, leaving small, tender kisses along the way.
“I agree,” he whispers, staring down at me. “I want this too.”
I wake up to the smell of coffee and cooking bacon and can’t help thinking, Ash is back. Bacon and eggs for breakfast has always been Ash’s way of taking care of me.
When I broke up with Laura—bacon and eggs every morning.
When we first started getting busier at the shop—bacon and eggs every morning. He’d come in early just to make sure I was eating because he knows me, and he knew that if I had stuff to do, I was most likely going to forget to eat.
Ash is fucking back, and not only as my roommate and provider of sustenance, but he’s in my bed. With me.
I finally have my Ash.
I untangle myself from the sheets and find some sweatpants to throw on, go to the bathroom, and then head out to the kitchen.
Ash is wearing one of my shirts which is so long on him I can’t even tell if he’s wearing anything underneath. He doesn’t hear me approach and jumps when my hands run up the side of his thighs to find he’s not wearing anything else.
I groan into the back of his neck as I plaster my front against him.
“Mm, good morning to you too.” Ash relaxes against me.
“Tell me the last two days have really happened,” I whisper against him. “I keep expecting to wake up and realize you’re still with …” I clear my throat. It’s still going to be weird mentioning my brother. It probably will be for a while.
“I would’ve thought the seven-hour drive to New York and exhaustion from all the orgasms would’ve tipped you off that it’s really happening.”
“Hmm, nah, it’s the ache in my ass this morning that sealed it.” I reach for the burner on the stove and switch it off.
“It’s not cooked yet …”
My arms wrap around him tighter, my hard cock pushing against his ass. “We’ll come back to it.”
Ash spins, and I grip him under his legs. The bedroom’s too far, so I lay him down on the kitchen counter.
I stand between his thighs, pushing them apart. Lifting his shirt—no, my shirt—up his chest, I kiss my way down his slim torso.
Never did I ever think I could have this. That this would happen. I want to dive in and take my time. I want to explore every inch of skin I’ve explored the last two nights all over again, because it wasn’t enough. It might never be enough when it comes to Ash.
I move lower. Ash tries to sit up, but I push him back down.
Ash’s cock, long and thin, stands tall and hard.
He’s already writhing beneath me, moaning small curses as I take it slow and agonizing. Not just for him, but for both of us. I’m loving the way he responds to me but am eager to jump right in.
I tease him, licking the skin below his belly button, over to his hip, down his thigh.
He grunts and whines.
I lift my head. “Stop being impatient.”
Instead of being offended, he laughs and mock solutes me. But that doesn’t stop him from making impatient sounds or lifting his hips and trying to get his cock near my mouth when I go back to teasing him.
My phone starts ringing in my sweatpants, and normally I wouldn’t answer it, but it’s so much fun dragging this out. The look on Ash’s face when I pull out my phone is priceless.
But then mine probably matches when I see Ma’s name flashing across my screen. “Shit. It’s the parentals. And it’s a video call.”
“You can’t answer it.” Ash shoves my shirt back down so it covers his junk.
“I have to. You know her. If I don’t, she’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
He goes to sit up, but I push him back down.
“I’ll be quick. I promise.” I hit Answer and hold the phone in front of my face. “Hi, Ma. What’s up?” My voice comes out squeaky like it does when I lie or when guilty of something and trying to act calm.
“Oh my Lord, thank the heavens!”
“You don’t believe in the Lord or Heaven, Ma.”
“Not funny. Are you okay? Is Ollie okay? Where are you?”
“Calm down. I’m fine. Ollie’s fine. And I’m at home. Where else am I supposed to be?”
“Leo told me this morning … he told me that you went to talk to your brother two nights ago, and I hadn’t heard from either of you yesterday. Where was my phone call? At least you didn’t kill each other.”
“Dramatic much? You told me to talk to him if anything was ever going to happen with Ash, and I did that. We talked. That’s all.” I lift my neck and move my face from side to side. “See, no bruises.”
“No swings were taken?”
“Thanks to Clark.”
“I always did like that boy.”
I glance at Ash and grimace. You kinda don’t want to hear your ex-boyfriend’s Ma prefers the new guy, but I know she doesn’t mean it that way. She loves Ash the same as she does me and any of my brothers, but Ash might not see it like that.
“Max?” Ma asks.
My gaze quickly snaps back to the phone. “Huh?” Did she ask something?
“How did the talk with Ollie go?”
“Really well. Umm … actually …” I glance at Ash again, and he nods. “Ash is here with me.”
He sits up and puts his arm around my shoulder. “Hi, Mrs. Strömberg.”
Her eyes widen in shock, but she recovers well. She especially breaks out into joy when I turn and kiss the side of Ash’s head. “Really? You two are …”
We nod.
“We are,” I say. “Ollie’s not entirely cool with it, but he gave us his blessing.” More or less.
Ma’s entire face lights up. “We have to have a family gathering. Oh, wait right there, I need to run next door so you can tell your parents too, and eeeeee, this is so exciting!”
So much for getting off the phone fast.
Ma’s way too overenthusiastic about this. The picture on the screen wobbles. We get flashes of the floor and then blinding white light. There’s the porch. The front lawn.
I shake my head. “She’s insane.”
“Heard that,” she sings through the phone.
She gets to Ash’s parents’ place and doesn’t even bother knocking. “Judith! Where are you?”
A small, tinny voice sounds in the di
stance. “Kitchen.”
“Our sons have news.”
“Oh geez,” I mumble.
Ash just laughs at the whole thing.
When Ash’s mom appears, she stares at us with a confused expression until it clicks. “No. No way!”
“Yes way,” Ash says.
“When’s the wedding?”
Both of us stiffen.
“Uh, haven’t even had an official date yet.” My cheeks flame.
“Yeah, but it’s not like you two are only dating,” Ma says. “You can’t. You’ve been friends forever. This is like starting out in the middle of a relationship.”
I swallow hard. “Uh-huh.”
Logically I know this, but marriage? My throat closes up at the idea.
There’s no rational reason for it. It just does.
But I also know marriage is something Ash has craved for as long as I can remember. He’s a romantic. I’m a … realist.
I guess standing in front of a bunch of people and vowing to love and obey just seems archaic. Why promise something you don’t know for sure you can carry out? People change, people grow, and people drift apart. I would never ever think that could happen between Ash and me, but when he and Ollie broke up, I thought there was a possibility I’d lose Ash completely.
I was worried about needing to take sides or Ash being awkward and uncomfortable around me.
That didn’t happen, but it would’ve been easy to.
“No wedding,” Ash says. “After Taylor, I kind of have no desire to get married anytime soon. If at all.”
My shoulders relax a little at that, relief filling me.
“Exactly,” I agree. “So no shoving us down the aisle, okay? We might realize we’re better off as friends, or we might not have any chemistry. I love the guy, but maybe we’re too close, you know? We need to figure it out without family input.”
I’m probably wasting my breath. It’s our moms. They’re nosy apart and twice as bad when they’re together.
“We’ll behave,” Ash’s mom says.
Ma nods in her direction. “She will. I’ll try.”
It’s probably the most I can ask for.
“Thank you. Now we have to go because Ash is cooking me breakfast, and I’m starving.” Just not for bacon.
Ma opens her mouth to say something, but I cut her off.
“We love you both, byyyeeee.”
I hit End Call, and Ash bursts out laughing.
It’s the sound I love the most.
He rests his head on my shoulder, and I can’t get over how amazing it is to run my hands over him.
“It wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been,” he says.
“You’re right. One of us could’ve had an embolism or something. That would’ve been worse.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Except they’re already planning a fucking wedding.”
“Well, yeah, but they were like that with me and Oll—” His mouth slams shut.
There goes the mention of my brother again.
“You can talk about Ollie,” I say.
“It’s not … weird?”
“Yeah, it is, but I mean, it’s bound to happen. And in this context, it’s not anything I didn’t already know. If you were to talk about sex stuff, I’ll probably get a little wigged-out. But it’s not as if we can pretend you two never happened.”
Ash nods. “Okay, yeah. Well, you know how our moms were with us. I think it put more pressure on us than needed.”
“You want marriage though. I know that.”
He shakes his head. “With Ollie, I did, but even then … I wonder if I wanted that because he couldn’t claim me publicly. Like being married would make our relationship more real when so much of it was hidden. With Taylor, I think I wanted to prove something—that Ollie not wanting to take that step with me didn’t mean no one would. I was in it for the wrong reasons. This …” Warm hands take my own and hold them between us. “What we have … or … what I want us to have, is exactly what we’ve already got. What we’ve had for years. You’re my best friend. You stick up for me. You would go out with me, even to gay bars though you were straight.”
“Well, I’ve never really been straight. Oblivious, maybe. In denial, sure. Never straight.”
“My point is you would go outside your comfort zone for me. You once told me that you don’t understand marriage, and that you don’t think you could ever live up to the perfect couple that is your parents, and I meant what I said on the phone to our moms. After Taylor, I don’t know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want. I don’t want a marriage for the sake of being married. I don’t want to settle for someone because I think it needs to happen. I want it for the right reasons.”
I try to bring him closer, but he stops me by kissing my neck. My cheek.
“I want what you and I have. Whatever it grows into. Right now, I just want to keep exploring this.” His hands run down my bare chest.
“Mm, you can explore me all you like.”
My skin tingles as his hands move lower, his fingers trailing softly and sending shivers through me. And when his green orbs look up into my eyes, warmth I’ve never felt fills my gut.
His hand stops at the waistband of my sweats. “I want to suck you.”
I push him back down so he’s lying flat on the kitchen counter again. “I thought that’s what I was doing.”
I don’t let him fight it. Just lean over him and go back to what I was doing before the stupid cock-blocking phone call. Having Ash under me, in my arms, near me, I can feel his body tremble. I can sense his need. His want.
I want to give it all to him.
I run my tongue down his hard shaft and then tease his balls, licking and tasting him. My experience with guys might be limited, but I don’t even care with Ash. I will experiment for as long as it takes to learn his tics, his desires, and everything that turns him on.
My mouth moves back to the head of his cock and sucks gently, just on the tip.
“Fuck, I knew you were a tease, but I didn’t realize that meant in the bedroom too.”
I pull off him. “Haven’t you worked it out yet? It’s my life’s goal to torture you any which way I can. I’m pretty sure it’s the only reason the gods sent me to earth. Operation Be Friends With Ash For Twenty Years Just To Tease Him For One Blowjob is almost complete.”
He moans. “No more talking. Please.”
“Well, seeing as you asked so nicely.”
I quit with the teasing because even though it’s fun, it’s also teasing me. My cock wants some action, and I don’t know if I’ll make it until it’s my turn. I reach into my sweatpants and squeeze my dick.
Ash, as if sensing something, lifts his head and looks down at me. “You better not be touching yourself. That’s mine when we’re done here.”
“Then come already.”
“Use your hand and work the base in time with your mouth.”
Mm, bossy Ash I could get used to.
I do as he says, and everything changes. Ash goes from moaning pleasantly to unable to breathe, letting out needy sounds that only grow with each stroke. Each suck.
A desperate hand grips my hair. “You gonna swallow?”
I nod.
Ash thrusts his hips up once, then twice, and just like that, he crumbles, falling to pieces and calling out my name.
The taste is … weirdly unsurprising, but I can’t say if it’s good or bad.
When he’s done convulsing and I’ve swallowed everything he’s got to give, I kiss my way up his stomach and chest, pulling my shirt all the way back up him again.
He keeps saying my name over and over again like he needs reassurance that I’m actually there. It might take a while for both of us to believe it, but I’m willing to do this for as long as it takes for us to know, without a shred of uncertainty, that we’ve found our forever person.
“I’m here, Ash,” I whisper. “Always here.”
“Kiss me?” he asks,
and his voice cracks.
“Forever and ever.”
8
Ash
SIX MONTHS LATER
“I can’t believe we’ve managed to avoid this for so long.” I nervously stare out at the Strömberg yard from my parents’ back porch.
My boyfriend’s hands land on my shoulders and run down to my elbows and back up again. The warmth of him against my back helps relax the anxiety growing in my stomach, but it might not be enough.
“You don’t have to come if it makes you too uncomfortable,” Max says.
“No, I already bailed on going to his hockey game when his team was here. This was bound to happen sooner or later. Maybe we just need to rip off the Band-Aid.”
“Or, better idea. We could fake food poisoning and tell them we’ll catch them next time they’re in Boston.”
It’s the first time Max, me, Ollie, and Lennon are going to be in the same space together since Max and I got together. Max has seen them on his own, but it’s Max’s dad’s birthday, and his Ma has already ordered we be there.
All of us.
Together.
With the rest of the Strömbergs and my parents.
Fun times.
“Don’t tempt me, but you know that excuse won’t fly tonight. I suspect everyone thinks you can’t cook and that’s why I’ve been mysteriously sick a lot lately.”
Like, whenever Ollie happens to be in Boston.
“It probably is time we get it out of the way.” Max takes my hand and leads me to the front of the house.
When we were kids, we’d jump the fence between our yards, but we’re trying not to draw attention to ourselves. Plus, we’re supposed to be adults and stuff now.
We use front doors, my mother’s voice says in my head.
Before we can make our way next door, we’re stopped by Ollie and Lennon pulling up in a car. Their Uber pulls into our driveway for some reason.
They get out and make their way over to us, each step they take filling the gap between us with tension.
It’s like the first time the four of us were in the same space all over again.
It’s a four-way standoff.
