Ex-Daredevil

by Zoe Lee

  He handed me a glass then knocked his into it gently, murmuring, “À votre santé.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked after my first sip of the strong drink.

  “To your health,” he answered. “It’s what the French say instead of cheers.” I tipped my head in curiosity and he obliged the movement. “My paternal grandparents are French, from near Bordeaux. They put aside most of their traditions when they came here, wanting to assimilate and become American, you know. But they kept a few superstitions and traditions—mostly having to do with food, of course—and I like to keep them going.”

  “The cookies,” I remembered, thinking of a picture of a dessert he’d sent me a photo of early on in our texting. He nodded, sending me a little smile.

  “It wasn’t like that where I grew up; everyone is big on Irish pride. Although maybe not the food part,” I laughed, “the Irish aren’t particularly known for their cooking, or so my relatives tell me.”

  He relaxed against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other.

  The ache was still strong and present, but I had felt so special having deep conversations with him recently. I didn’t want to spoil this moment by cutting it off in favor of jumping him. So I indulged, letting the conversation about our families flow, and felt this strange flutter in my stomach when we learned there were important similarities between ours. The strongest was how they supported us in our sexuality, which was something extraordinary and precious, even though it made me angry and upset on behalf of everyone whose families weren’t. But the mood wasn’t somber, it was richer than that, a powerful desire to share and be heard and really learn about Eliott, to put it all together.

  I got the sense he was feeling the same thing, because as soon as we’d finished our scotches, he put the glasses in the sink very deliberately before he turned back.

  His eyes were warm, his body as at ease as I’d seen it, and he stepped into me, not going in for the kill with a hot, wet kiss or cupping my half-hard dick. Instead he slid his nose up my throat and over my cheek, exhaling a little unsteadily as his hands slid gently under my shirt to trace over my stomach and lower back. I let out a quiet moan.

  Then we kissed, soft, careful, deep kisses, exchanging who had the lead graciously, without any of the hot challenge we had had at other times, and it made my head swim.

  “Come to bed,” he murmured eventually.

  The walk wasn’t long, Eliott nonchalantly taking off his jacket, shirt, tie, and belt and leaving them in the best trail of candy. With every item, desire pulsed out from my chest, and the ache came back to the forefront of my mind, along with unprecedented nerves.

  But he didn’t seem to be in any rush, despite his rigid cock distorting the perfect line of his suit pants, as he slid his arms around me once we were beside his bed. He stroked his hands back up under my shirt, all the way up to the base of my throat and my shoulders, detouring to rub his thumbs lightly over my nipples, all the while kissing me.

  I tended to prefer bottoming and plenty of people, including some of the partners I had bottomed for, thought it was the same as being more submissive or passive, but it wasn’t true. I liked to lead the dance, tending towards bossiness if not aggressiveness. But tonight, the revelation I’d had earlier that I wished I could say be my boyfriend to Eliott was guiding me. The fear that it was a weakness, that Eliott would reject the idea and me, made me unable to take the lead away from him, despite knowing he liked that too.

  So I stood, my arms over his shoulders and my fingers wound tight through each other behind his neck, and let him kiss me, let him stroke over me. I took off my shoes when he murmured to do it, let him slide my clothes off my body, and then let him lay me down in the middle of his delightful bed. I curled my legs up around his hips when he laid on top of me after he took off the rest of his own clothes, cradling his body with mine, welcoming the weight and the hot, powerful cock rubbing against my own. I was too deep in my pool of desire and fear and emotionality to do more than keep moaning softly.

  All the possibilities for what to do tonight that I’d considered earlier floated away.

  So when Eliott’s mouth left mine and began to slowly map out what felt like every inch of the front of my body, all I could do was let my hands drop to the pillow above my head and gasp softly, over and over. There was nothing sharp or urgent about it, but I felt his desire and intentionality loud and clear all the same. When he finally took the head of my cock into his mouth, I had to bite back sobs of relief and gratitude as he lapped my precome and the notch under the head. He took me deeper in increments, pulling up to taste my precome again without any discernible rhythm so all I could think was that he was just doing what he wanted, exploring and enjoying me, undoing me in the process.

  My hips curled up higher and higher every time he rose up, and so when I felt his fingers ghost over my hole, I shouted out desperately before I knew I even needed to.

  “Yeah?” Eliott breathed out.

  My whimper cracked apart the silence even more than my shout just had.

  His fingers spread over my hips with such deliberation that I shuddered and dug my head back into my pillow, knowing if I so much as glanced down, I’d lose it immediately.

  Then his tongue flicked my perineum and I began to come undone anyway, shuddering and writhing beneath his beautiful, inexorable hold as his tongue drifted down to my hole. It was the exact opposite of the way he’d rimmed me the first time, which had been frenzied and sexy as fuck, and it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

  This was… this was worship, I couldn’t help but feel somewhere deep in my soul.

  Not the way I’d ever thought of or heard anyone else describe this act, but it was.

  One of his fingers eased into me, his mouth drifting back a bit higher, then another finger or maybe two, fluttering so carefully inside me over my prostate. And then he made a completely sophisticated and genteel purr of satisfaction against my balls.

  And that was it.

  Pulse after pulse of ecstasy moved through me, and I wasn’t even aware that his other hand had come up to lightly stroke my cock to help cause it until I was totally spent.

  I was having trouble catching my breath and little pulses kept going off throughout my body, and I didn’t think I could move unless my life depended on it. It was nearly impossible to even open my eyes, but I had to, to see what Eliott looked like. I needed to see what expression was on his face, to try to figure out what on God’s green earth that had been.

  His chin was on my spread open thigh, his other hand smoothing up and down my other thigh, and I could just see the shape of his ass over one of his shoulders. His light green eyes were barely visible beneath heavy-lidded, drowsy lids, his mouth bruised and red and glistening with spit. There were scattered beads of sweat at his temples. I still couldn’t read his expression, whether it was worship or like or lust or something else entirely that hadn’t even crossed my mind, but I didn’t want to disrupt this moment.

  Eliott’s mouth quirked, appealing and younger somehow than he usually looked. “I thought we would get back here and dive right into spanking or something,” he rasped.

  “We should probably start with our vanilla do’s and don’ts,” I said, my voice as ruined as his from all the noises I’d held back and all the ones that had gotten free.

  “I feel confident saying that we like giving and receiving handjobs and blowjobs,” he said, letting his head turn so his cheek was on my thigh, looking loose-limbed like a cat who has sprawled out in a patch of sunlight streaming in through a window. “Also yes to mutual handjobs, frottage, and kissing. Yes to me rimming you. Yes to assplay for you.”

  It took my mind a minute to process Eliott using the word assplay as though it were just another everyday word you’d find in the dictionary, before I agreed, “All true.”

  “I like it too,” he murmured, “and being rimmed.”

  I curled up so I could prop myself up on my elbows and ran my eyes
down his body, his body supine and his long, his soft cock nestled in the crease of his hip.

  “It would be a shame if you don’t like anal,” I blabbed indelicately. “Also I love riding cocks and yours seems like it would hit my spot just right. It’s not a dealbreaker, but I—”

  Eliott burst out laughing, burying his face in my groin, which felt really strange but also really intimate in a new way.

  Once he’d gotten it all out, he lifted his head again, a little flushed from that. “Good thing I’m not a power top,” he said, his eyebrow crooking before he let out one last laugh. “Or a total bottom. Usually I have this discussion six months before the kinks discussion, but everything is all out of order with you as always, Gavin.”

  I pursed my lips and then had to know, “Is that a good or bad thing?”

  His gaze dropped and followed his hand as it feathered over my hip bone, and he sighed as if it were a grave confession, “It turns out, I think it’s a good thing.”

  He looked uncomfortable, and I still didn’t feel brave enough to push, so I made myself reply as light-heartedly as possible, “So you’ll let me fuck you sometimes, too?”

  His eyes flashed up to mine immediately, his fingers freezing on my hip bone as he sucked in a ragged breath. “I haven’t let anyone in a long time, but you can earn it.”

  “Earn it?” I repeated, my heart pounding even though my body was too well fucking satisfied from earlier to react in any other way. But that was okay, because it meant we were both focused on the conversation and not distracted by a round two. “How?”

  “Show me how much you trust me, and you’ll earn my trust back,” he explained.

  Sitting up gracefully, he sprawled out with his head on my chest this time, an arm and a leg thrown with such casual elegance over my body. I toyed with the short, baby soft hair at the nape of his neck and said finally, “I’ll do my very best, Eliott.”

  Before he answered, he used one foot to hook the blankets from where he’d pushed them to the end of the bed before we started and pulled them over us. He resettled, snuggling me, grip tightening, and arched his neck to push his head into my touch more.

  “I know you will,” he agreed drowsily, finally answering, so sure and serious.

  Chapter 21

  Eliott

  Monday morning was a relentless shitshow with one of my other cases, and so I didn’t have time to be excited or nervous about that afternoon’s meeting with Gavin until about ten minutes before he was due to arrive. Barley’s case was moving along smoothly, which I was both pleased about in the way that it meant things would be fair and still serve Barley’s interests, but also meant it wasn’t a challenge. If it weren’t for getting to see Gavin even more often because of the case, I would have been annoyed about its smoothness.

  So when I suddenly had those ten minutes to prepare, I sat at my desk and concentrated on keeping my body under my control. I did it, but it was difficult. Our date over the weekend had been… more than I’d ever imagined one could be with him. I hadn’t gone out with anyone in a long time, too focused on work and feeling content enough between that and spending time with my friends. But Gavin was irresistible, sexy and smarter than I’d first gauged him to be. He had layers and little contradictions. There were pockets that seemed like shyness or like he wasn’t sure what was and wasn’t allowed, ones I assumed stemmed from his inexperience with real dating, versus casual hookups.

  The idea shouldn’t have appealed as much as it did; while I believed that first experiences are powerful and formative, I didn’t have any fantasies or kinks about being someone’s first anything. With Gavin, it was more like his willingness to tiptoe into new territory for him made me proud that somehow I’d been the one to inspire him to do so.

  The quick knock and the sound of my office door opening had me standing up fast.

  “Hi, Gavin,” I said, coming around the desk.

  But an impish smile or a teasing comment on my suit didn’t come.

  He slid his messenger bag off his shoulders, holding it over his torso like a shield.

  Unprepared, I stepped back awkwardly and ran one hand through my hair, covering it by asking like he was any other guest, “Would you like something to drink? Soda, coffee?”

  “No thank you,” he said.

  His tone was almost stiff and my brows knit as I got myself a bottle of water and wrenched off the lid, drinking half of it in an attempt to cure my suddenly dry mouth.

  “How are you?” I tried.

  “I’m actually really busy today,” he said. “I’m hoping we can get everything wrapped up in thirty minutes today, I have a million things left to do after this, so…”

  Now I was hurt, so my response was a curt, “If that’s what you need, certainly.”

  I sat down in my chair, woke up my computer, and brusquely began to go through the list of items we needed to discuss. If I was brusque, he treated me as though I were simply his boss’s lawyer, every answer concise and helpful, but there was no teasing, and he barely looked up at me so I couldn’t read what was in his stunning purple eyes at all.

  When we were done, in only twenty-five minutes, he began to pack up.

  Confused, but now also supremely irritated, I stood up and paced towards him.

  He looked over at me, those eyes finally directly aimed at me.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded bluntly.

  “What do you mean?” he hedged, slinging his messenger bag over his head and across his body, then pulling his braid out from beneath it.

  “I—” I hated this feeling, suddenly feeling young and like I’d been slapped by his distance. “I had such a good time over the weekend, after the ballet…” My throat closed and I felt like an idiot when he didn’t leap to reassure me. I stumbled on, “Did you not…”

  His face twisted up and he swallowed hard, his fingers twitching where they strangled his bag strap over his ribs. I was watching him so closely, looking at every flicker of his eyes, but I couldn’t figure out what was happening, my heart sinking. “Look, it’s just that, I—”

  “Never mind.” I exhaled harshly and whirled away, pacing back to my desk. I stood behind it, laid my hands on its cool surface deliberately and leaned into them. “I suppose you don’t owe me anything but common courtesy, even after… So if you don’t want to be here, don’t want to be honest or answer a simple fucking question, then just go already.”

  This room, this tense, indecipherable moment, was the last place I wanted to be.

  But I forced myself to hold eye contact with him. His expression fractured, his purple eyes dimming so they looked like an ordinary brown, and his slim shoulders slumped.

  “Eliott.”

  My name cracked on his lips.

  “I’m a grown man, if I did something wrong and you don’t want to see me again—”

  “No!” he shouted, startling me so badly that I bit my tongue, the faint taste of iron coating the inside of my mouth. “No,” he repeated just as vehemently, but much quieter.

  His lips folded into his mouth, disappearing into a faint line of darker pink, then he walked determinately to the other side of my desk. His thighs pressed into the edge of it. His hands loosened their grip before he put them on my desk, his pose mirroring mine.

  “If you think I didn’t love every second of this weekend, then you’re a fucking idiot,” he declared, his eyes flaring back to life. The disparaging tone and the fire behind it came as a scalding relief, sounding like the Gavin I knew. His face sharpened into mulish lines. “I just—I just walked in here and you look so sophisticated and perfect, and I was feeling all nervous like some stupid teenager, which is dumb after the weekend. Or maybe I’m so nervous because of this weekend, I’ve never really… felt like this before. So I thought, like, instead of just talking to you, I’ll play it cool and be as sophisticated as you, and then—”

  “You’re the fucking idiot,” I hissed. “It’s taken all of my focus not to gush about how much I lov
ed our weekend, being with you. I’m sorry if my focusing face looks… aloof.”

  “‘Aloof.’ You and your fancy words. You mean bitchy.”

  A laugh barked out of me at that and I shook my head, one of my hands sliding to reach for his braid and twine it around my hand and wrist, for once not worried that someone outside my office might see us.

  “I’m nervous too, you know,” I murmured as we both watched his purple-streaked hair coil around me like a snake. “It’s been a long time since I dated someone, and I don’t even know if you think this is dating, let alone…”

  “I want it to be,” he rushed out. “The weekend was great, but then after I left, I just thought, I have no idea what I’m doing, I have no idea what you’re thinking, and then you—”

  I cupped his jaw and flicked my tongue over his lips before I dipped into his mouth to flirt with his tongue, regaining my balance.

  “I do, too, Gavin,” I promised, so relieved, because this weekend had been wonderful and intense and had my heart thumping. “I want this to be serious, and I’ve been tiptoeing around it because I was worried you weren’t there yet, if you’d ever be. I should’ve been clearer about how much I want this, with you.”

  “I don’t even know what seriously dating means.”

  If he hadn’t sounded so frustrated, I would have been a little offended by that. “We’ve been dating since the night you met me at the bar, in my opinion,” I said steadily. “I’m not seeing anyone else, not talking or texting anyone else. You’re the only one I’m interested in.”

  “Okay,” he said with a little hitch. “Me, too. I mean, I’m not seeing anyone else either.”

  “That’s good, because I’m monogamous,” I told him, “just to be perfectly clear.”

  “I, uh, I went on a date, before I met you at the bar that night,” he admitted with a wince. “But I was just thinking about you, so I cut it short and called you. And…”

  He tapped his thumb on my desk, so I nudged it with mine. “And?”