By the Book

by Scarlett Parrish

  I gasped, but by the time I exhaled my surprise, he’d broken contact.

  “Reece?”

  I still gripped the edges of the sink, shoulders hunched and my head hanging like a guilty person scrutinized.

  Which was exactly what I was.

  “Is something wrong? Stupid question. Forget I asked. Reece, Reece, Reece,” he singsonged under his breath.

  I gulped and turned my head away as if not looking at him would quiet the thudding in my chest. He was in the same room, and that was enough. “Daniel?”

  “Don’t.” Then his hand was on my back again, and he dropped a light kiss on my shoulder. “Don’t try to convince yourself this is wrong.”

  The gentlest flicker of his tongue on my skin made my spine ripple.

  “But—”

  “I know,” he whispered, and as he spoke, he let his stubble brush against my skin, not rough at all. Just a reminder of who this was. “But I want you. You know I want you. You don’t have to justify why you’re here, but…” He dropped another kiss on my shoulder and his thumb circled gently in the hollow at the small of my back and Jesus, I’d never known what a turn-on that could be. “Well. That’s just it.”

  I looked at him, and he lifted his head. The fact he looked straight at me made up for the fact that his lips were no longer on my skin. Barely. And I waited for him to explain.

  “You’re here.”

  Some of the tension left my body. Only some. But enough for my shoulders to drop, and when they did, Daniel slid his hand round to my abs, not pulling me back but stepping closer himself.

  “You could be anywhere else tonight, but you came back here.” His breath warmed the skin just behind my ear, and when he kissed me there, I shuddered. “Hmm. You like that?” His hand slid lower, resting just above my waistband, and I gripped the countertop, gaining no purchase. “Reece. I know this is difficult for you, but you have to understand, it’s just as difficult for me to see you in my home and not touch you.”

  It’s just as difficult for me not to be touched.

  “I just feel that…” I cleared my throat and turned, intending to state my case firmly, but any chance of remaining assertive disappeared when my cock brushed against his.

  “What?” His hands resting on my hips, he held me steady, and somehow, with him in front of me and the kitchen counter behind, I managed to stay upright. “What do you feel?”

  “That I should be a bit more… I mean, this seems like it’s happening all too soon.”

  “Is it?” Daniel dipped his head, either to force me to look at him or to nudge me with his jaw as he kissed me. “You’re a free agent now.”

  “I know, but it’s…” My chest heaved with repressed emotion and unsaid words. “Like I’m jumping into something else before my relationship with her is even cold.”

  “Reece.” He smoothed back my hair with one hand, the other remaining at my waist. “Maybe it was already cold, and that’s why you jumped.”

  “No, it…” Too much protesting, Hutton. There was always a chance he was right. There had to be a reason I was here with him now, even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself or articulate it. It was easier just to give in. I was in Daniel’s house, and his hands were on me.

  He must have felt the fight go out of me, the denial. Because when he kissed my neck, it was the confident, self-assured kiss of a man who knew I’d not bother to say no again. Neither of us would believe I meant it.

  Daniel nudged me a little, trailed kisses down to my shoulder, but I edged away, and he broke off. I’d wanted to see his face, as well as I could in this half-light.

  I lifted my hands to his neck, held him still, running my thumbs over his jaw, asking myself if I truly wanted this, and when he wet his lips with the tip of his tongue, I knew yes. I pulled him in and for the first time kissed him. I was the aggressor now.

  He flinched but stayed with me. His lips parted first, and I kissed him more deeply; it wasn’t as if we hadn’t done this before, but I’d never been so forceful, as if I dared myself onward. I felt guilty about being here, but I was and there was little point regretting it now.

  And the way Daniel kissed, he could make me forget everything I’d ever regretted in my life.

  “Jesus.” He broke the kiss, panted against my neck, resting his forehead against my shoulder for just a second, and that second was long enough for me to feel how cold his hair was, misted with perspiration.

  I bit my lip, wondering how far Daniel would want to take it. He didn’t seem the type to try to persuade me into something with which I was uncomfortable. He was too comfortable in his own skin to do anything other than let what happened, happen. Whatever he did was to be enjoyed. By both parties. Sometimes all three.

  There were so many reasons I shouldn’t have been here, and all of them sounded like Georgia, but the way his hair felt under my fingers, the way his mouth tasted, the way his hard cock pressed against my thigh all whispered Daniel.

  I pulled him closer, thought holding on to him would steady me.

  “I thought about this all evening,” he murmured. “It was a fucking nightmare in that cinema.” He licked his lips before trailing kisses along my jaw, down the side of my neck. “Honestly, Reece, I go to the cinema on my own a lot. Sometimes with other people. But I have never had as hard a time concentrating as when you were so close to me and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”

  I bit my lip, wanted to say something, but knew whatever I did say would come out wrong or not be as articulate as I wanted. Daniel was the writer. We both worked with words, but I organized other people’s stories; he created his own. He had the air of someone comfortable with his own sexuality, at home in his own skin, and able to express himself in ways to which I could only aspire.

  “And I kept thinking about touching you. I thought about the way you’d sound when you came.”

  Skin moved over skin and sensory overload made me screw my eyes shut, but doing so had the opposite effect to what I’d expected. Not being able to see the way his shoulder moved as he stroked made my cock even more sensitive to his touch. When he leaned in to whisper something in my ear, I caught the smell of his…soap? Cologne? Whatever it was, it was unmistakably him.

  “I thought about how hard you’d get if I touched you here.” His voice sounded feral. Somewhere between a growl and a moan. Not like a wounded animal, but something hungry.

  “God. I…” My voice moved, in two words, from monosyllabic to staccato to breathless.

  “Reece?” I could have sworn he gulped, his voice as on edge as mine. And I waited for him to speak, almost certain of what he’d say before he said it. He took a deep breath and asked a single-word question. “Bedroom?”

  * * *

  This is what you wanted, Hutton, I told myself as we stepped across the bedroom threshold, me trembling with nerves and Daniel with…something. You wanted this, even if it scares you.

  “Reece. I don’t want us to be strangers to each other in the morning.” His lips moved against mine, his jaw under my hand. “Which is why I want to sleep in here tonight.” He pulled away and clambered over to the other side of the bed, throwing himself down onto the pillows.

  Looking over my shoulder, I said nothing.

  “Well? You gonna stay sitting up all night? Beds are made for lying in.”

  “Yeah.” I rolled my shoulders in a rippling kind of shrug, able to follow his logic despite the bizarreness of the conversation. And this. Us. Our situation. “I guess they are.” As I lay down, he shifted his weight and stretched out an arm for me to fall onto. I turned my head toward him, and he curved the arm around, combing his fingers through the hair at the back of my head.

  I kept expecting him to say something, but he never said a word, just kept his head turned in my direction, his hand on the back of mine. After half a minute or so, he brushed his other hand across my face, settling it in the curve of my neck as he moved toward me. The breath he whispered across my face just befo
re kissing me was half a sigh, an exhalation forced out by a low, low moan from the back of his throat.

  “Reece, you…” His entire body molded itself against me as his tongue slipped into my mouth, dipping slowly, tasting before he pulled away again. Always leaving me wanting more.

  There was something inherently sensual in the way Daniel kissed, as if it wasn’t just about lips and tongue. Truly sensual in that he engaged touch and taste and sound as well, by running his fingers through my hair, taking his time to brush my lips with his own, moaning into the kiss and whispering my name when it was over.

  I’d had sex with women that didn’t get me half as hooked as one kiss from Daniel. Maybe it was because it was all so new. Maybe it was the excitement. The illicit thrill.

  Maybe I just needed to shut the fuck up and enjoy what he did to me, for however long it lasted, despite the waves of conscience lapping at the back of my mind. It’s only been a few weeks, Reece. Only a few weeks since…

  And every stroke of his fingertips on my jaw was a way of holding back the tide.

  Touching his forehead to mine, he breathed against my lips, let me catch my breath, and kept up the steady, slow rhythm of his hand on my face. Then he shifted, moved onto his side again, no doubt to ease the pressure against his hard cock, but it did me no good to feel it against my thigh. I wanted…I wanted…

  Christ. I didn’t know what I wanted.

  Daniel lifted his hand away from my face and inched it down my body. For those long seconds, I thought he was going to touch me. Again. Wanted him to. And I waited. Held my breath.

  Exhaled when his hand broke contact with my skin.

  His low groan, the way the silhouette of his arm moved, the hiss of skin on skin told me what he was doing, and I had never, ever wanted anything as much.

  “Oh God,” he murmured, and I wasn’t sure if he was lost in the moment or if his words were a response to my hand traveling down his arm from elbow to wrist. Following the glacier-slow down-up of his hand stroking himself. “Christ. I can’t—I want…” He gasped against my face and stopped. “Reece. I’m fucking aching here. I need to come.”

  I slipped my hand past the waistband of his shorts, brushed the head of his cock and—

  He jumped back. Enough to break contact.

  “What?” I’d been uncertain all this time—not whether or not I wanted this, but whether or not I should touch him.

  “Just getting these damn things off.” Raising his hips off the bed, in seconds he was naked, boxers discarded. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Mind?” I echoed just before he pulled me into a deep kiss. “I thought…” Breath caught, jarred, eventually made it through my body. “I thought I’d done something wrong.”

  “Whatever you do to me is never wrong.” He kissed the corner of my mouth, whimpering as I made contact again.

  “Is that…” Just as breathless as him, but from nerves as well as desire, I faltered, unable to keep up that perfect rhythm. “Is that…” Jesus, Reece. You’re a grown man. Say it. “You like that?”

  “Fuck. Oh fuck. Yes.” Daniel tangled his fingers in my hair, holding us both steady for a moment while he sighed and slowly, slowly moved back and forth.

  All I had to do was hold him, wrapping my fingers round his cock, feeling each ridge and contour as his hips did all the work.

  “Oh. My. God,” he moaned in my ear. “Fuck, that feels good. I knew it; I fucking knew it’d feel… Jesus, Reece, you have no idea.” He drew my earlobe into his mouth, gently at first, and when I felt teeth, sensed the danger of a bite, I tightened my hand as he fucked it, knew he’d gasp, the need to breathe greater than the desire to cause pain. Barely able to speak, his rapid breaths warmed my neck. His shoulders tensed and released, tensed and released with every stroke I gave—or every thrust he took. “Reece, don’t… Just…whatever you’re doing…” he moaned, falling onto his back.

  Hands flung above him gripped the headboard as I moved onto my side. When I wrapped my fingers round his cock one by one, sliding my hand from the head all the way down, he growled from the back of his throat, quietly, almost purring.

  “God, yes. Do it slowly. Wait. Tighter. Jesus.”

  Eventually he lost all ability to speak, reduced to moaning on the upstroke, gasping when I moved my hand down. Occasionally he said one word, a monosyllable, under his breath, and I moved over him, leaned in for a kiss.

  A moment before my lips brushed his, I heard him say it again.

  “Reece.”

  The intensity of the manner in which he spoke gave me pause, until Daniel’s hand snaked round the back of my head, held me close, his fingers tightening against my scalp as mine tightened around his cock. “Reece, I’m gonna come.” He sucked in a breath as I sped up. “I need… I want you to—” His hips rose off the bed, forcing his cock through my grasp. If the light was on, I could have seen him. Known whether his eyes were open or closed. Maybe he frowned.

  All I knew was his lips parted beneath mine as he gasped for air, and when I kissed from the corners of his mouth along his jaw, he moaned softly.

  “Daniel?”

  “I want more.”

  My strokes slowed, half to give him a chance to breathe, half to give myself the same privilege.

  “Reece?” Slowly, from the hips, he pushed himself against me, moaning when I tightened my hold. “I want…”

  More confident now, I stroked him faster, wondering how I could ever have been wary of this. Him. “What do you want?”

  “I want…” He grabbed my wrist. “I want you to fuck me.”

  Electricity shot through me; his hand on my arm caused pins and needles.

  “Reece?” My name on his lips was nothing more than a whisper. “Say something.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” I bit my lip, and my hand, yet on him, stilled.

  “You’re still here.” He moved over me, his cock pressing against my thigh.

  I let out a slow breath from between pursed lips. “Daniel.” What was I supposed to say? This, what he was asking—I didn’t know if I could. I wanted to, but aroused and unsure, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

  His lips against mine, he murmured as his fingertips traced the line of my jaw, “It’ll feel amazing.” His lower lip trembled as he drew in a shuddering breath. “Like nothing on Earth. Honestly, I’ve never… God. I just want to feel your cock inside me,” Daniel whispered. “It’s all I’ve been able to think about.”

  “Are you…?”

  He kissed me. Lightly. And fast. To still make the contact, but without rendering either of us unable to speak. “Sure?” His lips curved into a smile against my own. “Never more so.”

  “No, I meant are you serious?”

  “Reece.” He took a deep breath. “Definitely. I want you”—he kissed me—“to fuck me. Now.”

  Jesus, I don’t know what I’m doing. Help me out here, Daniel.

  He reached across me and pulled open the bedside cabinet drawer, rummaged around and laughed under his breath. “Thank God.”

  “What?”

  “Condoms.” He tossed a foil packet in my direction; it landed on my chest. “It’s always when you’re really, really fucking desperate to get laid that you run out.” He fished something else out of the drawer as well, left it on top of the bedside cabinet.

  My head turned toward the light thud it made as he set it down. I saw nothing but the vague outline of a bottle.

  “Lube.”

  Oh fuck, we’re really gonna do this.

  “Don’t worry.” Daniel lay next to me on his side, propped up on one elbow, head resting against his palm. “You’ll be fine. You’ll be better than fine if I’m any good at reading people. Mind your eyes; I’m going to put the light on. You’ll see why in a minute.” He chuckled, and when he flipped the switch on the bedside lamp, I blinked my eyesight back into focus.

  “I’m glad one of us has got faith in me,” I said, ripping the packet open with tremblin
g hands.

  “I’ll talk you through it.” A huff of laughter warmed my neck a split second before he kissed my jaw. “I’ve been told I’m very talkative when I’m…you know.”

  “I should only start to worry if you’re silent?”

  “No chance of that happening.”

  “You’re the expert.”

  “Why, Reece, are you suggesting I’m a bisexual pervert who’s more than happy to let someone like you fuck the hell out of me?”

  As I reached for the lube bottle with hands slightly less shaky now, Daniel’s weight shifted and he ran a hand down my thigh. I shuddered. “You’re…” I gulped. “You’re gonna have to help me out here.”

  “Need a hand?”

  “Could say that.”

  He took the bottle from me, flipped it open, and squeezed some lube onto one hand before tossing the bottle aside. “There.”

  I craned my neck as he stroked the lube onto my cock; there was something so intense about the way he touched me, the silent acknowledgment of what we were about to do, that I couldn’t even face him, unseeing.

  “God, I want this so much I can’t…” Daniel lifted his hand to my neck, pulled me in to a kiss more desperate than any I could remember, making it impossible for me to recall a time when I hadn’t touched or kissed him. “You have to get inside me. Now.”

  His words turned my spine to jelly, and thank God I was lying down; nothing would have kept me upright after hearing such lust in his voice.

  “Just.” He sighed. “Reece.” He kept his hand to my face as he shifted his weight. “You have to.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “Get behind me.” Daniel got on his hands and knees, and unthinking, hypnotized, I followed, put one hand on his hip and—