by Aly Martinez
No. I couldn’t do that.
Thrust after thrust, his fingers bit into my ass cheeks, forcing me closer and closer to the release.
But what about him? There was no way he was getting off on this. Enjoying it, no doubt. But an orgasm was not about to rip from his body, leaving him limp and sated in its wake.
Unless…
Sucking in a breath, I decided bending wasn’t breaking. I wasn’t taking him inside me, offering pieces I no longer had to give. I was simply being a decent…. Friend? Fuck buddy? Groupie? Employee?
I groaned at my ludicrous—but accurate—thoughts. Labels had no place in this. I was about to explode in his mouth for the second time; the least I could do is take him with me.
Folding over, I balanced on a fist at his hip. “I’m not going to last much longer,” I grunted. “I need you to be fast, Henry.”
I heard his sharp intake of breath as I wrapped my palm around the base of his shaft. He was so long, more than half still showed from the top of my fist. My mouth fell open as I glided him through my fingers. I could have come from that alone. But, when his abs tensed, magnifying the sexy V that indented at his hips as he lifted from the bed, seeking more attention, I realized I wanted to watch him lose himself under my touch more than I ever wanted to come.
“Stop,” I ordered. “Let me do this.”
His only response was to take my cock in a relentless rhythm.
“Shit. Fuck. Oh my…” I repeated for the third time since he had shown up at my door. “Slow down.”
Henry hummed his refusal and worked me even harder. I pumped him voraciously, unwilling to come without him but unable to hold on much longer.
He stopped sucking more than once, unable to concentrate when the sensations overwhelmed him. Other times, I was the one frozen, trying to fight release back.
Eventually, his mouth won out and I emptied myself down his throat on a deep groan. The tremors were still working through me when he found his, white streams painting his stomach. The last spurt didn’t clear his cock, and it trickled down his plump, pink crown.
There was absolutely no way to explain why I did it.
None.
Temporary insanity, maybe?
Orgasm-induced intoxication, perhaps?
Or maybe it was due to the sheer magnetism of the man lying beneath me.
But, regardless of the reason, I leaned forward and, with one swipe, licked him clean. The musky flavor exploded on my taste buds. Henry.
Closing my eyes, I allowed the familiar yet completely unique taste to wash over me. We’d only been together twice, but the ground was shaking and my decade-old walls were starting to crumble. I could lose myself trying to rebuild them while the super storm known as Henry Alexander ominously hovered over me. Or I could sit back, relax, and enjoy the thunder. Even the strongest hurricanes had to die out eventually. Maybe Henry was mine.
Or, more likely, he’d be the earthquake that was going to break me down before swallowing me whole.
Either way, I wasn’t going to be left standing. I just had to decide how long I wanted to fight.
FOR AS AMAZING as it had felt when Evan’s tongue had sneakily laved my tip, what had come after that was even better. As soon as we’d both cleaned up, he’d collapsed beside me in the bed and we’d spent the next two hours bullshitting and laughing. We weren’t exactly cuddling or really even touching, but I could live with that because there wasn’t a spiral down anywhere in sight.
He was incredible.
Once I’d broken through his stoic exterior, he was actually really funny. My cheeks hurt from laughing. We didn’t get deep or talk about the greater meaning of the universe. We mainly just swapped stories about our friends. I told him about Levee and Sam. And he told me about his buddy Scott. I told him how my days usually went when I was on tour, and he told me how he’d been struggling to find a job after he’d gotten out of the Air Force. I did my best not to stare at him in awe as he spoke. I had a feeling I was failing miserably though, because every time his gaze met mine, his lip twitched in my favorite way.
When it was finally time to leave, he walked me to the door. I’d been playing it safe, giving him his space, but I wasn’t sure when or if I was going to see him again. So, just before he pulled the door open, I planted a deep and lingering kiss on his lips. He snaked an arm around my hips, bringing me closer, before reverently filling his lungs.
I was in foreign territory with Evan. I knew how to pursue straight men. The game was simple. I’d gently push them to their limits, coaxing and convincing them that they wanted me. And then, when they finally broke and gave in to the tiniest urge, I’d take over and push it ten steps further to give them what they really wanted. However, if I had to go ten steps past the feelings Evan was pressing against my lips, I wasn’t sure I’d ever leave. And, with the way my lungs burned as I held him to my mouth, staying with him was an idea I could get used to.
I was so high on this man I wasn’t sure I’d ever come back down. And, in order to protect myself from the fall, I had to play this one safer than ever before. Evan seemed to be an open and willing participant, but his retreat was always lingering around us. When the novelty of being with me wore off, he’d be gone and I’d be faced with the hardest withdrawal of my life.
“Call me, okay?” I whispered against his mouth.
“I will.” He tossed me a heart-stopping smile, and it made my bones physically ache.
In that second, that smile belonged to me. But, as soon as the door closed behind me, I would have no claim over it whatsoever. Evan was gorgeous. Surely a woman was waiting in the wings to make her move. A woman I couldn’t complete with, especially not from thousands of miles away.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, clearly reading my somber mood.
Please don’t fall in love with a woman while I’m gone.
“Nothing.” I returned his smile, but if the pinch of his eyebrows was any indication, he wasn’t buying it any more than I was feeling it.
“Henry?” he said as I quickly stepped out of his embrace.
Forcing a smile, I patted his chest. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
He opened his mouth, but before I had a chance to cancel my next show or, at the very least, beg him to come with me, I walked away.
Two weeks later…
“I’m in love!” I told Levee over the phone.
She groaned. “Oh, God. Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Okay, maybe love is a bit of an overstatement. But I really like him, and if you saw him naked, you’d totally get it. I’m considering purchasing the gym he goes to and installing security cameras so I can watch him work out.” I smiled, pulling the curtain on my tour bus back and watching the trees of whatever state we were traveling through rush past.
“Illegal and creepy. Sounds about right for you.”
I laughed and reclined back on the leather couch. “There is a fine line between creepy and romantic.”
“Word to the wise: Secret security cameras always fall under creepy. But I take it things are going well with your pilot?”
“Fantastic. I mean…I haven’t seen him in a few weeks, but he’s returned nearly all of my texts and even called me four times.” I lifted four fingers in the air as if she had been sitting next to me and not hundreds of miles away. “And twice he’s admitted to trying to forget me.” I smiled proudly.
“Uhhhh, you’ve spoken to him four times in two weeks and he’s trying to forget you? Should I start shopping for my bridesmaid dress now?”
“It couldn’t hurt to have one on standby just in case. And no, smartass. Trying to forget me means he was jerking off to me.”
“Henry!” she yelled accusingly.
I glanced around as if the empty bus could explain her reaction. Levee and I talked about everything—usually in great detail. A little wanking shouldn’t have fazed her.
“What?” I yelled back.
“Please tell me you did not send him naked p
ictures to jerk off to. You know they will be leaked, and you know they will end up all over the Internet, and then my daughter will have to grow up in a world where her Uncle Henry’s penis is just one accidental click away.”
My heart swelled. It didn’t matter that she was talking about my dick. It was the way she had called me Uncle Henry that had filled my soul. She’d called me that before, but the reminders that we were a family never got old.
“Please don’t call it a penis. You know he prefers his formal title.”
“Yes. Sorry. I forgot. Please relay my apologies to Prince Everhard. And then tell me you did not send any pictures to Evan.”
“You know the prince is camera shy,” I said with mock annoyance. However, my smile couldn’t have gotten any wider.
“Thank you, Lord.”
I switched my phone to the other ear and rolled to my side. “I mean, I guess there is always the possibility that he could have snapped a screenshot during one of our dirty video chats though.”
“My poor daughter!” she cried.
Unfortunately, I was only kidding. Evan and I hadn’t engaged in any late-night naked video chats. I’d thought about it a lot—dreamed about it, really. But, even though it was killing me, I didn’t want to push him too hard too fast. I hadn’t been joking when I’d said that I liked him.
As far as I could tell, he wasn’t spending his evenings shacked up with a new girlfriend, so I’d decided to stick to the original plan and allow him to take the lead in our little relationship of sorts. I’d texted him just enough to make sure he knew I was interested and dropped everything the minute he called so he knew I wanted to talk to him. But, besides that, I let him make all the moves.
He’d yet to ask when I’d be back in town. As much as I would have loved to know he wanted to see me again, I didn’t need the temptation. I wasn’t going to be back in San Francisco for at least another few weeks. It sucked, but I was just happy that he wasn’t avoiding me anymore.
The first time he called, he tried to play it off as a business question. By the second call, we’d exchanged enough texts that he’d loosened up a bit. We chatted for over an hour about absolutely nothing. I did the majority of the talking, but he still listened and interjected with the occasional question. He was engaging, and that was more than I ever could have hoped for weeks ago.
Evan was funny, tossing out dry one-liners that had me rolling. He also laughed at my jokes, and that throaty chuckle of his gave me chills down my spine every time I heard it. I thought about him more often than not. And I secretly allowed myself to wonder what it would be like for him to call me every day. For him to go to award shows with me. For me to hide in his house for weeks on end where no one could find us. Those were the thoughts that disturbed me most. My entire life was in front of the crowds. Not hidden behind locked doors. But with Evan…
“What if she searches ‘celebrity peen’ and you pop up?” Levee exclaimed.
“Then you have bigger problems than her seeing my junk. Levee, your daughter will be fine. Styles will have shown his dick at least a hundred times by the time she’s of age. He should dominate the search engine results.”
“Oh, good,” she retorted sarcastically. “Wait…are there nudes of him now?”
“I don’t know. I’ll search as soon as we hang up and forward any I find to Sam.”
She giggled. “Stop sending my husband naked men.”
“Then tell him to stop sending me women. I swear he’s taken this game too far. I opened a text the other day and there was a half-naked woman wrapped in nothing but a sheet and she appeared to have a massive tumor growing in her abdomen.”
“Those were the proofs of my maternity pictures, you ass.”
I choked on a laugh. “Truly beautiful, by the way.”
“Hilarious,” she deadpanned. “But let’s get back to your pilot.”
I jokingly breathed his name on a dreamy sigh. “Evan.”
“Yes, him… Spill it.”
“I don’t have a whole lot to say. I wish I did though. I’m trying to play this one cool and give him plenty of time to fall for my coy charm.”
She barked a laugh. “Coy. Right. Okay, so you like the guy. I take it you aren’t just trying to fuck him.”
My teeth sawed over my bottom lip. I absolutely wanted to fuck Evan. I also wanted him to stay when it was all said and done though.
“I want what you and Sam have,” I admitted.
“I want that for you too. But, honey, I’m not sure you’re ever going to find that if you keep chasing straight guys. Even if they hang around for a while, you can’t expect a man to go against everything he knows just to be with you. It’s just not realistic.”
But I needed that.
I needed it desperately.
When I was three hours old, my father signed his rights away and my mother lost hers later that day when I tested positive for cocaine in the nursery. No grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins stepped forward to take care of the innocent baby who hadn’t asked to be born. They didn’t even give me a name. From what I’d heard over the years, the little old lady who volunteered to rock the crying babies named me after her son who was killed in Vietnam.
Really, my life was a rags-to-riches story that could rival most Lifetime movies.
I was seven when my mother, who I’d never met, finally lost her rights permanently. And let’s be honest: The market to adopt a troubled boy with more attitude than sense wasn’t exactly booming. Over my eighteen years in the system, I spent time in six different foster homes. Some were better than others. We were always poor, but they were all relatively decent people. Not great. But I survived.
Let’s face it: Growing up “the gay kid” was difficult no matter what the circumstances. Even if I’d had two biological parents who adored me, the struggle with society would have still been overwhelming. But toss in religious bigots as foster parents, relentless kids who believed different equaled wrong, and a confused boy who had never felt even an ounce of love…
It was the recipe for disaster.
But it had produced me.
I had several sexual experiences with gay guys when I was in high school. But it wasn’t until I was with my first straight guy that I really came alive in my sexuality. The worthiness I felt in knowing they were going against their own DNA just to be with me was unrivaled. Those brief encounters were the ones that made me feel something I’d never experienced before—special. No one could or ever would have them like I did. And, after I’d felt a high like that, I’d never gone back to gay men. I couldn’t, not with knowing what else was out there.
I understood why Levee worried about me. She loved me and hated the idea of me being hurt. But I didn’t have any other choice. I’d been irrelevant, inconsequential, and extraneous my entire life. But, when it came to men, I refused to accept that role. I needed to be the only exception—the one person capable of bending the laws of nature.
It was the only way my heart absorbed love.
“Henry? You still there?” Levee asked over the phone.
I rolled off the couch and made my way to my bedroom at the back of the bus. “I’m good, Levee. You know me. I’m just out for a good time.”
She breathed a sad sigh. “I hate it when you lie to me.”
I hated it too. But I didn’t want another lecture on something she couldn’t possibly understand.
She started to reply, but she was cut off by the beep of an incoming call.
I pulled the phone away from my ear and saw Evan’s name flashing on the screen. My heart squeezed and my breath hitched at just the sight. My whole body began to thrum with excitement. Shit, I was in so much trouble.
“Hey, Evan’s calling. I gotta go.”
“Okay, go, but this conversation isn’t over.”
“Sure, sure. Whatever. I love you, babe.” I didn’t wait for her reply before I switched calls. “Well, hello, sexy,” I purred.
He chuckled. “I guess that’s a step u
p from Maverick. What’s going on, Henry?”
“Oh, not much. The usual. Lighting the world on fire one mile at a time from the inside of a tour bus in Bumfuck, Egypt.”
“I don’t know how you do it. I’d lose my mind being on the road that much.”
“It’s not that bad. But I do get bored being alone so much.”
“Are you telling me megastar Henry Alexander doesn’t have an entourage?” His voice smiled, and I longed to see it.
Closing my lids, I tried to picture him. Those lips hiking at the corners as he stared down at me, warmth brewing in his eyes as he curled into my side, unable to go another minute without the contact. It would probably never happen, but the fantasy alone soothed my soul.
“Hardly. The band is on a different bus. Carter rides with me sometimes, but as you can imagine, he isn’t the best company. He just scowls at me a lot.”
I sucked in a sharp breath as he laughed freely, reminding me of how sexy he was when he momentarily let down his guard long enough to enjoy himself. It was something of beauty, and I missed it more than words could translate.
“Yeah, he did some scowling at me when I picked him up yesterday.”
I sat bolt upright. “I’m sorry—what? You picked him up yesterday?”
“You didn’t know?” He sounded thoroughly perplexed.
I was just thoroughly pissed.
It wasn’t a big deal that Carter had taken my plane back to do whatever urgent task he’d needed to take care of back in San Francisco. He’d told me that he’d meet back up with me at my next stop. And I was happy someone was using Evan’s services. However, I was nearly livid that that someone wasn’t me.
