Ex-Daredevil

by Zoe Lee

  Gavin clasped his hands at his throat with great exaggeration. “A prince among men.”

  His sarcasm prompted me to add, annoyed that I felt compelled to do it, “Regular men like me know when to bow out gracefully to men who catch twinks or fight fires.”

  “Philip already loved Ross,” Camdon said fatalistically. “You can’t compete with that.”

  “No, you can’t,” I said a little wistfully, finishing my glass of wine.

  I hadn’t been in love with Philip—how could I, after three dates and nothing more than a few kisses? But it had been so long since I got past that initial get to know you phase. I craved a comfort level with someone who knew me and whom I trusted.

  “So are you here for a date with our Eliott?” Quincy earnestly asked Gavin.

  I took back my thought that he always knew how to read the room and groaned in embarrassment, “Subtle, Quincy.”

  But Gavin laughed, sending a ghost of a once-over my way. “Can you imagine this suit-wearing man, who always has classical music on in his practical station wagon, dating someone anything less than classy and accomplished?” He shook his head and waved off the idea, while I tried to figure out if he was making fun of himself or me, or both of us all at once. “And I don’t believe that opposites attract. I mean, yeah, he’s tall and you’re short, but not… he doesn’t believe in recycling and you worked for Greenpeace for ten years.”

  “Speaking of recycling,” Camdon said, leaning in to launch into a rumor about our friend Sam’s ex, who had moved back to the city after four years working in Hong Kong.

  I observed Gavin as he listened to the story, calculating that it would take ten minutes before he’d run out of patience and walk out. But Camdon was good at holding people’s attention and making them feel included, so Gavin seemed riveted by it.

  I was discomfited by it, not because Gavin was unworthy but because he had been the epicenter, or the cause, of my only act of aberrant behavior; he was the first stranger I’d slept with since I was a stupid young man. It chafed, proof that all of the self-control, classical music, and practical cars in the world couldn’t cancel out pure animalistic lust.

  After Camdon finished the saga of Sam and his ex, Gavin said that it reminded him of a book series about con artists that he loved. I was preparing to roll my eyes again, but Quincy’s eyes lit up and they were off comparing authors, then Camdon jumped in when they shifted to television shows about con artists. I drank more wine and refused to believe the feeling that was sending the contents of my stomach sloshing around was jealousy that Gavin’s attention was captured by a topic I had nothing to contribute to.

  Eventually I slid a look over at Quincy, hoping for some sympathy, but he had passed out against Camdon’s shoulder. I cleared my throat and said quietly, “Quincy’s asleep.”

  “My sister’s going to kill me,” Camdon laughed good-naturedly.

  “I’ll get the tab,” I said.

  He elbowed Quincy like a barbarian to wake him up, then hauled him up. “Night, guys.”

  “Nice meeting you,” Gavin replied as he lifted his hand in a sort of aborted wave.

  Quincy gave me a sleepy, contemplative look, then they headed out.

  Abruptly I was alone with Gavin again, the space the other two had left behind tense. It had been a dumb idea to invite him to join us, to spend time with him casually and pretend like we were anything more than people who’d gotten each other off once.

  Without the others to provide a weak barrier between us, my willpower was at an all-time low. I felt like my tie was tightening incrementally, impeding my breathing. Gavin had left his jumpsuit, harness, and parachute in my car and I had thought of him every time I passed it, stashed on a workbench in my garage. I’d only gotten hard over it for a couple of weeks, but now I couldn’t help but wonder if he liked how we’d gotten off, too?

  I had to demand, “Why did you say yes to a drink? Was it just to get your stuff?”

  Chapter 6

  Eliott

  Gavin’s fingers, which had been shredding a paper napkin, stopped abruptly. His blazing purple eyes shot up to meet my hazy eyes, but I was too busy trying not to care about the answer to dissect his look. Finally he retorted, “Do you really want to know?”

  I gave in and tugged the knot in my tie apart, undid the top button of my shirt, and pushed my opened collar away from my throat to get some air on it. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know,” I responded firmly, too honestly.

  “Yeah, but you don’t really care, do you?” he shot back.

  The words were a harsh lash, but his eyes were fixed to my throat, what had to be a wedge of shadowed skin exposed now. I felt the last of the wine burn out of my mind and bloodstream in one white-hot lance of fire. As slowly as if it were a striptease, testing him, I began to roll my sleeves up my forearms, and his eyes followed my fingers.

  “Maybe caring isn’t exactly an accurate word to use,” I said thoughtfully in my quietest, most calming tone, “but I am curious—I don’t know very much about you.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” he stated, just daring me to contradict him.

  I scratched my cheek idly, not breaking eye contact, and dared him right back with the blunt truth. “I know what you taste like and what you smell like, and I know that you had your appendix out because I saw the scar when I was on my knees for you.”

  Gavin was frozen for a moment, his lips parted.

  But then he scowled. “What are you, a lawyer or something?”

  “I am, actually.” I couldn’t help but smirk a little when he goggled at me before catching himself and rolling his eyes as if to say, Of course you are. “Only stubborn people argue with me. Or sometimes people who think they’re cleverer than everyone else. Now you know I’m a lawyer, you know my father’s a philanderer, and you know I live in Chicago. That’s more than I know about you—even if what I know about you is more fun than what you know.”

  “I didn’t come looking for you,” he retorted. “I’m just planning my next jump and remembered I left my gear in your car and that I had your number, and took a chance.”

  Suddenly tired of the pretense I sensed from him, I shrugged, a study in nonchalance just as fabricated as his avoidance of my question. “How about I settle up at the bar and then you can come pick up your stuff at my house before you disappear again?”

  I shoved up from the table before he could even open his mouth.

  My heart was pounding with lust and confusion at what the hell I was thinking and doing. It only took a short time to pay, but I took another minute to breathe until my mind was clear enough to put this thing with Gavin into perspective. I was a good, responsible man and if I found him desirable and wanted to have sex with him once—or twice—then it wasn’t anything to get all twisted up over. And if I didn’t want to, that was just fine, too.

  Centered again, I went back to him, scooping up my tie and stuffing it into my pocket as I looked down at him and inquired politely, “Are you ready to go?”

  Gavin stood and hitched his pants up, then told me, “Come on, take me to your car. You’ve had a lot of wine, but I just had one drink, so I’ll drive us to your place.”

  We walked out of the bar and back towards my office building in silence, the cluster of after-work bars giving way to near-empty streets of skyscrapers occupied by corporations, banks, and the odd boutique. As we passed an expensive faux diner-style restaurant, a sense memory of Gavin coming with violent heat over my hand echoed through me.

  “So what really happened with the three-date guy?” he chose that moment to ask. It could have been coincidental to where we were, but his eyes were on the faux diner too.

  “Nothing,” I denied simply, refusing to rise to the bait.

  “I just can’t picture you tonguing someone named Philip’s balls,” he goaded.

  Whether it was that sense memory or the way his mouth shaped the crass word tonguing, it had me hauling him against me.
I growled, “I didn’t tongue his balls, or his cock. If you think I don’t care, then why do you care what happened with him anyway?”

  Gavin laughed at me, the whiskey he’d had burning over my lips and down my throat. He grabbed my neck, digging in with his short nails, and drove his mouth against mine, biting my bottom lip so hard he drew blood. I let him shove me into the recessed doorway of the bank right across the street from my office, gripping his tiny waist.

  “Jealous?” I gasped as he groped me through my suit pants.

  “I’m never jealous,” he tossed back, yanking down the tab of my fly and twisting his fingers through the tight opening, but I was too hard and too big for him to pull out.

  I dipped my head to lay bites along the sharp ridges of his collarbones and shoulders, unbuckling my own belt and popping the button helpfully. He made that feral purring noise I hadn’t been able to forget as he finally got his hand around me. I tossed my head back with a swallowed moan, my blank mind suddenly filling up with everything I could do to him—

  But then, the reality of where we were slammed into me.

  “Shit, Gavin—fuck, stop,” I managed through loud pants I couldn’t hide or control, dragging reluctant hands off his hips to stay his hand. “We’re in the middle of the city!”

  “The lightbulb in here is burned out,” he pointed out, his voice damnably even and unaffected, pointing up at the ceiling of the darkened alcove with his free hand.

  “That’s not the point and you know it,” I said vehemently, forcing my cock back into my briefs and doing up my pants as fast as my shaking hands would go. He sent me a look that called me a prudish coward. “This might be a fantastic fucking fantasy, but it’s illegal and I’m a lawyer,” I carried on, aware of how condescending I sounded, as he turned away. “My car is in the underground parking of that building right across the street.”

  “Stubborn,” he grumbled, striding towards it while my eyes skated over his ass.

  I caught up, gratified to see the way his jeans were distended around his cock too, and led him to my car, grateful my lust-crazed mind remembered where I’d parked.

  Suddenly I hated the idea of being caged in my car with him and this strained silence.

  So I caught his head in my hands and took his mouth again, luxuriating in his hungry, unhesitating response. Once he was making glorious, sexy ah, ah, ahs with every rut of our hips together, I tore free, nearly smiling at the narrow-eyed look on his face.

  Shoving my keys in his hand, I said, “I meant we can’t do it in public, not that we have to stop forever. Get in the car already.”

  Gavin drove too fast as he followed my directions to my affordable but upscale neighborhood, where I had a little condo with a garage as the first floor.

  We came to an abrupt stop a foot from my garage door, the car rocking.

  As soon as we’d unbuckled, Gavin was climbing into my lap. His body curved tightly over mine, his head touching the roof while his ass ground down on my lap roughly.

  My erection returned to full force in one painful pump of blood and I dug my hands into his hair, then cursed when they gripped his braid instead. I tore off the rubber band at the end and pulled the braid apart so that those cool, rumpled strands brushed my face and throat. I’d never had a thing for hair before, but fuck, I liked Gavin’s. I wanted to see him fling it in an arc up over his head and down his back as he rode me.

  But that couldn’t happen here, so I opened my door and hauled him out. Luckily he’s a tiny thing, I thought as he twined his legs around my waist, making a little noise of surprise.

  I was headed for the comfort of my bed fifty feet away, Gavin sucking on my earlobe, until he murmured huskily, “I like your free-standing porch swing. Touch of the country.”

  “It squeaks,” I answered inanely, nonetheless striding to it, my knees buckling so that I crashed onto it, the chains rattling. He laughed softly as he unwound his legs, stood, and pulled my hips forward so he could undo my belt and pants all over again.

  I stared up at him, everything dark around us on my quiet street, while he efficiently stripped, his heavy belt buckle thudding onto his shoes. Something new took root in me as I took in the sight of him, utterly naked and less skinny than I’d remembered, bold and hungry and wild. He climbed back into my lap, kissing me with unhurried sumptuousness as he undid the buttons on my oxford and ran his hands over my torso in soft appreciation.

  I’d never had sex outdoors. I shivered as I imagined the clouds shifting away from the moon so that I could see his snow-white skin gleaming in the distant moonlight.

  But then practicality won out again and I groaned in frustration as he tasted my neck. “I don’t have a condom or lube out here, if you—and this is still sex in public, damn it.”

  “No condoms in your wallet?” he replied without the acid I was used to from him. I swallowed and shook my head as he shifted, one of his thighs brushing against the tip of my cock. He sighed as he slid free, the noise somehow sweet.

  “Trying to avoid temptation, I bet,” he said, and while I thought he’d meant to be mocking, it didn’t have quite enough grit to pull it off properly. It sounded as though he liked me. “You’d better let me in your house then.”

  Chapter 7

  Eliott

  I rose slowly, catching my pants around my hips and trying to be as comfortable with my nudity as he was, and took my keys when he held them out. Stepping carefully around his discarded clothes, I unlocked my door and flipped on the light to the stairs.

  When he moved past me, sending me a sensuous, teasing glance over his shoulder, I was bound in place by the incredible tattoo that now spread across the snow-white back I’d just been imagining. It was a magical mass of vines and leaves—no buds or flowers though, of course—that had been laid in violet ink the color of his eyes into his shoulders, back, and the top swell of his ass cheeks. It was fascinating and I was unaccountably turned on by it.

  “That’s beautiful,” I told him quietly, before I thought it through.

  His come-hither look turned into an impatient thing and he rolled his eyes, pivoting to plant his hands on his hips, gloriously naked and perfectly well-lit. “It hurt like a son of a bitch,” he told me flatly. “Are you going to gawk all night or are we going to do it?”

  For some reason, his usage of the rather juvenile do it made me grin.

  He scowled at me, and it gave me back the tranquil confidence I usually wore like a second skin at work. I strolled past him, letting my pants slip so I flashed my own bare ass as I started to climb the stairs. I called mischievously as I went, “Are you coming, Gavin?”

  “Not yet,” I heard him mutter petulantly.

  It was I who laughed this time as he joined me in the bedroom, switching on a lamp so it glowed softly, and crooked an eyebrow slowly. I was thoroughly enjoying the way his lips were parted, betraying either heightening desire or a sudden onset of nerves.

  “We’ve lost the rhythm of things a couple times. Do you want to start over again?”

  Something raw and unreadable flashed over his face. “God, no!”

  I sat on my bed, propping pillows behind my back, and stretched out my legs. Even when I was a teenager new to sex, I had never lost my composure or been rough or selfish, respecting my partners. But my heart had never pounded with a demanding lust like this either, so suddenly I wondered if I’d unknowingly locked something valuable away.

  Just when I thought Gavin would change his mind and saunter off, he sat astride me once again, his hair hiding his slender torso. This time, he studied me as if he couldn’t decide what he wanted first, and it made me suck in a greedy, expectant breath.

  As if my noise were a starting gun, he squirmed so that his thighs cradled my calves and his hands curved around the lean muscles at my waist. Then he got right to it, sucking my cock into his mouth without any preliminary licks. Gavin knew exactly what the fuck he was doing, I thought before my mind switched off as if there was a power outage. Wh
ile I certainly wouldn’t judge him if he’d sucked off a million guys before this, my instinct was that this was more blissful talent, all his own instincts, more than a lot of practice.

  “Oh, Jesus,” I mumbled, my hands lashing out and getting lost in his magnificent hair again, gripping tight. The way he was sucking me was utterly unlike the diligent, repetitive work other men I’d slept with had put into oral sex. He was voracious, hot and tight, his tongue stroking and then darting and flicking, humming around me hungrily.

  I couldn’t remember the last time someone had enjoyed me. My thoughts began, then blew apart beneath the sheer desire, but my body knew just what to do, my hips bucking every few strokes. His fingers fanned out and tried to control the bucking, but all it did was remind me how far from my restraint I’d fallen. Holy hell, it was… wild, and exhilarating.

  “Gavin, I’m going to—” I warned.

  But it was too late. My orgasm simply exploded out of me, not just from my cock, but out of every cell in my entire body, and I yelled and gripped his hair at the roots to anchor myself. After an eternity, it faded, leaving me gasping like a fish out of water.

  I opened my eyes and saw him between my sprawled out legs, and his face was red, one hand over his throat, the other clutching his own thigh.

  Every ounce of desire and wildness was sucked into a vortex of guilt that I’d so much as loosened the reins of my own control. “Are you all right?” I asked a bit desperately.

  “What?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

  The ruined quality of his voice had me running my hands through my short hair. I was a thorough and conscientious man. I was not an animal who had needed to fuck my cock as far down his throat as it could go while I held him with my hands in his hair. I’d never been so rough before and didn’t know how to react now that my orgasm had drained all of the urgency and unprecedented wildness out of me. So I just asked again, “Are you okay?”