"Sorry," Gideon breathed. I liked that he didn't try to move away from me. In fact, it seemed like he'd stepped into me, making it easier for me to caress his face.
"Don't be sorry," I offered and then I did something that felt like the most natural thing in the world. I pulled his face down and brushed my lips over his temple. It was my way of telling him that no matter what happened, he would be okay. We would both be okay.
"Just talk to me, Gideon."
Gideon let out a harsh breath. "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing."
"It's understandable," I said. "If this is your first time with another guy—"
"That's not what I mean. But yeah, it is." I was surprised when Gideon's fingers came up and sifted through my hair. "God, it is as soft as I imagined."
I smiled and said, "You imagined touching my hair?"
Since my hands were on Gideon's cheeks, I could feel when they moved. So I knew he was smiling when he said, "From the very first day."
"So even though I was a rude asshole, you still wanted to touch my hair?" I asked.
"You weren’t rude—" he began, but I cut him off by drawing him down and brushing my mouth over his.
"Yes, I was," I said firmly. "Now tell me why you don't think you know what you're doing."
He let out another sigh and then his hands trailed down my sides until they were resting on my waist. "Lex, we just… we just…"
"Yeah," I said with small smile. "We did just…"
Gideon chuckled and I felt it in my bones. "In my kitchen," Gideon continued. "I'm not exactly sure what the protocol is for after something like that happens."
"Me neither," I admitted. "Maybe there doesn't need to be a protocol. Maybe we just do and say what feels right."
Gideon nodded, which I knew because I still had my hands on his cheeks. Then suddenly, his mouth was on mine in a sweet, searing kiss that had my toes curling. When he broke the kiss, I felt completely off balance. I was glad Gideon was holding on to me or I surely would've fallen over. The man really did know how to kiss.
"That's what I should've done five minutes ago," Gideon murmured and then he kissed me softly again. A mere brush of lips over lips, but it was just as moving. "It was incredible, Lex."
"It was," I agreed.
There was a little bit of awkward tension between us, but it wasn't anything like what had happened after we'd had our encounter. Gideon ran his hands up and down my arms before saying, "Go sit while I get dinner going. Do you want something to drink?"
"Water would be great," I said. I liked that Gideon didn't guide me to the kitchen table. I felt a little awkward fumbling to find it myself, but it was yet another one of those small victories when I actually managed it.
Gideon set the water down on the table in front of me. As I was reaching for it, I felt his fingers trail along the back of my neck for just a second or two. The contact was brief, but it weighed heavily on me. Moments like these were exactly what I'd been looking for my entire life.
I wanted the domestic scenes.
I wanted to wake up next to the same man every morning for the rest of my days.
I wanted those seemingly insignificant moments where we’d just be sitting and reading or watching TV or whatever and holding hands or be connected in some other way. I'd started to believe it was a pipe dream, but Gideon was making it seem more and more like a possibility.
I tried to warn myself not to let my thoughts drift like this because it would only come back to bite me in the ass, but admittedly, it was difficult not to start dreaming of a happily ever after with Gideon.
Gideon didn't really say anything as he cooked, but that was okay because I used the time to practice listening to my surroundings. He didn't make a lot of noise when he cooked, so I figured that made him efficient. I wanted to ask him how long he’d been cooking for himself but figured that was part of a personal zone that we hadn't quite reached yet. Despite our earlier intimacy, I knew we weren't at a place where we could all of a sudden just tell each other anything and everything. I certainly wasn't about to tell him what my brothers and I did when we weren’t doing our respective jobs. I couldn't imagine ever telling him any of that. And there was shit from my childhood I most certainly wouldn’t ever tell him…
When Gideon set a plate of food in front of me fifteen minutes later, I was ravenous. I also didn't care about the prospect of embarrassing myself by struggling with eating the spaghetti. I figured at this point that Gideon had seen me at my weakest on multiple occasions and he was still here.
It wasn't until my plate was empty just a couple of minutes later that I realized how quickly I'd inhaled the food.
"You want some more?" Gideon asked.
Normally, I wasn't a big eater and I rarely splurged on heavy meals with lots of carbs, but I quickly nodded and said, "I guess I'll have to find a way to burn off the extra calories tonight." It wasn't until several seconds later that I replayed the words in my own head and quickly sputtered, "I mean, with exercise. Like the kind you do in a gym, not in a be—"
I caught myself before I said the word bed, but it didn't matter because I could hear Gideon chuckling as he loaded my plate up with more pasta. I had no clue what possessed me to do it, but I grabbed a noodle off the plate and threw it in his direction. The noodle hadn’t had any sauce on it yet, so I figured it wouldn't cause much damage, stain-wise.
The chuckling stopped abruptly. Not five seconds later, something hit me in the chest with a splat. I knew even without touching it that it was spaghetti with sauce. "Oh my God," I said in disbelief. "You're so going to pay for that."
I grabbed a handful of noodles, but before I could even throw them at Gideon, there was another splat. This time, the spaghetti hit me in the neck. "You were saying?" Gideon said.
I launched myself in his direction, doing my best not to hit the table in the process. I somehow ended up in Gideon's lap, though I figured he had a hand in it because I doubted I would've been able to accomplish that particular position on my own. I went to shove the noodles in his face, but then his mouth was on mine. The kiss was soul stealing and I completely lost myself in it. It wasn't until Gideon broke the kiss that I said, "You don't play fair." Then I mashed the noodles in his face.
Gideon laughed heartily, and then he pulled my mouth down to his. I kissed him again, though I had to push a stray noodle out of my way to get complete possession of his mouth. All the humor from our impromptu food fight disappeared as the kiss went on and on. Gideon's hands were on my ass as he held me on his lap while mine were wrapped around his neck and threaded through his hair. I knew what a scene we must've made, the two of us covered in spaghetti, but I didn't care. The hunger I had for Gideon was like nothing I'd ever known before. Its intensity frightened me, but there was no stopping it either. The best I could do was live in the moment and not think about the consequences.
As the need between us spiraled out of control, I once again found myself reaching for the button on Gideon's jeans. I expected him to stop me, but to my surprise, he responded by doing the same thing to my pants. We had each other's cocks free within a matter of seconds. I pumped my hand up and down Gideon’s shaft as I ate at his mouth. He did the same to me, the only difference being that with my pants loose, his big hand was free to plunge down the back of my waistband to explore. Between his pointer finger teasing my crease and his other hand gripping my dick, I knew I wasn't going to last. "Gideon," I breathed between kisses. I gripped his hair hard so he wouldn't try to escape my hold.
But he did no such thing. Instead, he used his hand down my pants to pull me forward so my cock was riding his. I cried out when he swatted my hand away and wrapped his thick fingers around both of us at the same time. With him controlling our lower bodies and me taking over his mouth and using it any and every way I wanted, we chased our orgasms like our very lives depended on it.
I cried out into his mouth when I came. It was hard and fast and painfully gorgeous. My whole body shook as I sh
ot one load after another. "Fuck," I groaned as I ground my hips against Gideon's. His hand continued to work me as he worked himself, so when he came, my own body jerked with a violent aftershock. The sensation of Gideon's release dripping over my crown had me crashing my mouth back down on Gideon's. I kissed him for all I was worth because I knew at that point, I couldn't have come up with the right words to explain what I was feeling anyway.
By the time both of us had calmed, each reveling in our releases, we were softly kissing and touching each other. Between the cooling semen and the wet spaghetti sauce, I felt like an absolute mess, but I had no desire to leave the cage of his arms as they held me pressed against his chest. But I knew we couldn't stay like that forever.
"So dinner was good?" Gideon asked. The humor in his voice had me smiling against his mouth.
"It was adequate," I said.
"I guess I'll just need to keep working on it."
I murmured my agreement and kissed him softly before attempting to climb off his lap. But to my surprise, Gideon tightened his grip on me. "You have somewhere else you need to be?" he asked.
"I was just going to go to your bathroom and clean up."
"Well, since I only have the one bathroom, I guess we'll just need to figure out a way to share." Before I could respond, Gideon suddenly stood up, taking me with him. I let out a little cry of surprise, but my ass didn't hit the floor like I was expecting. When I realized Gideon wasn't going to put me down, I wrapped my legs around him.
"I can walk," I reminded him even as I lowered my head and brushed my mouth over his.
Gideon let out a curse, but I wasn't sure if it was because of my kiss or because he bumped into something, probably one of the chairs around the table.
"Uh-huh," Gideon agreed, but he didn't put me down. I kept right on kissing him.
"What about the mess?" I asked.
Gideon stopped his forward movement, then turned and went a different direction. "Reach down and open the door," he said. I didn't question him. I just did what he said. As soon as the door was open, Gideon yelled, "Brewer!" About ten seconds later there was the obvious sound of nails on linoleum. Then I heard the door shut. "Problem solved," Gideon said and then his mouth was seeking mine out again.
It took a long time to get to the bathroom, but I most certainly wasn't complaining. I honestly didn't know how the man could carry me that far. When Gideon put me down, I wasn't one hundred percent sure which room we were in until Gideon turned the shower on. He’d said we would share, but now that we were here, I couldn't help but be nervous. I wondered if he was too. If anything, this would be stranger for him than for me.
"Are you okay with this?" I asked.
"Lex, I don't think I can even come up with the words to tell you how very okay I am with this."
And then he was reaching for the hem of my shirt.
Chapter Sixteen
Gideon
Three ridiculously hot sexual encounters in the span of less than an hour.
While I was admittedly still dealing with the fact that those encounters had been with a man, the most stunning part was that I'd actually been able to get it up that many times. Granted, the final time in the shower had included a considerably longer period of foreplay, but when I'd pressed Lex against the shower wall so his back had been aligned with the smooth tile and proceeded to rub our stiff dicks together as I'd made love to his mouth, I'd come equally as hard as I had the first two times.
Even now as I got dressed, my legs felt like noodles. I had no idea what to expect next or what the proper etiquette was. I just hadn't had enough experience dating when I'd been younger to have the answers to all the questions that were in my head.
Was I supposed to ask him to stay? If I took him home, would it be outside the bounds of whatever we had going on here for me to ask if I could stay with him? I knew I wasn't ready for more than what we’d done so far, but I also wasn't ready to let him go. But with so much stuff running through my head, I wasn't sure he'd want to be around me.
I ended up sitting down on my bed for a moment as I tried to collect my thoughts. Lex was still in the bathroom. After we’d stumbled out of the shower, I'd left him there so I could get the clothes of his that I'd been hanging on to since the day I’d brought him to my house after he'd injected too much insulin. I’d then mumbled an excuse about going to my own room to change.
I knew he and I needed to talk, but I was afraid if I got close to him again, all I’d do was pull him into my arms and have another go at him. He’d become like a drug to me and I didn't know if I wanted to be a very happy addict or if I should be trying to kick him to the curb before he got too deep into my blood.
I didn’t allow myself to sit there long because I knew Lex would be finishing up in the bathroom soon enough. I’d already pulled on a clean pair of jeans and T-shirt, so I grabbed a pair of socks from my dresser and headed to the bathroom. Only, I found Lex sitting on the living room couch instead. Brewer was leaning against him getting a head rub. This time, I wasn't jealous of my dog because who could blame him? Lex's touch was an amazing thing.
"Gideon?" Lex asked.
"Yeah, I'm here," I said as I stepped farther into the room. The clothes Lex had worn to my house, the ones I'd stripped off him in the bathroom piece by piece as I’d taken in his gorgeous body, were sitting neatly folded on the couch next to him. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to offer to wash them or not.
Lex was rubbing his hands together, but he had his eyes aimed in my general direction. "Will you come sit down?" he asked.
His voice had a certain level of tension to it. The same amount of tension I was feeling myself. "Yeah," I responded and then I went and sat on the coffee table in front of him. I knew I probably could've selected the couch next to him or one of the side chairs, but I knew it would be easier for Lex to find me if I was directly in his line of sight. He wouldn't be able to see me, of course, except for maybe my outline, but it would most certainly be easier for him to tell where my voice was coming from.
"I'm not sure what to do next," Lex admitted.
"Me neither."
"I have questions, Gideon. You don't have to answer them—"
"I'll try. I have questions too."
Lex nodded and said, "You first."
"After we went to the store, you shut down. What happened?" I asked. "Because I'll be honest, Lex. My ex would do the same thing and then she’d turn on me out of nowhere and no matter what happens between you and me, I just can't go through that again."
Lex nodded and said, "I was jealous. I can't pretend I was anything else. When Kenny told me aisle seven was where the condoms were and Merv said he’d heard you were looking at them, all I could think about was you buying those condoms and using them with someone…"
Lex paused for a really long time before continuing with, "Someone who wasn't me. I'm sorry for the way I treated you. I just couldn't stand the idea of someone like Delia—"
"I've never been with Delia. I've never wanted to. I married my wife when I was a sophomore in college, and I hadn’t really dated before that. And after…"
My words fell off as a searing pain ripped through my abdomen. I actually put my hand against my belly as if there really was something inside of me clawing to get out. But what was in there was permanent. It would never leave me no matter how many years I spent trying to forget its existence. "There wasn't anyone after we split, either," I hedged.
"So no men then," Lex murmured. He'd said it as a statement, but the question was clear enough.
I sighed and said, "I know this sounds crazy, but I had no idea I might be bisexual until I met you. I've been thinking about it a lot in the past week and I realize that there were signs that I just either refused to acknowledge or that I completely missed. I'm honestly not really sure. But Lex, I need you to know that today wasn't me just trying to figure stuff out. I mean, I'm still confused as hell that this is happening, but that has nothing to do with you."
"
I get it, Gideon. I do. So you weren't really looking at the condoms in the store? You were looking at the lube?"
I was sure I would go up in flames right then and there. But I’d promised I'd answer his questions and while this particular one was embarrassing as hell, it wasn't touching on a forbidden topic. "Yeah, so after I started having these thoughts about you, I went online and began entering some words into the search engine. By the way, there are some seriously fucked-up things on there."
Lex chuckled and said, "Yeah, I've seen some things I wish I hadn't."
The moment of levity helped a little bit. "I was at Merv's to buy a bottle of booze to drown out all these crazy thoughts in my head about you," I admitted. "But before that, I went to aisle seven and looked at the lube and wondered what it would be like…" My courage gave out at that point, so I finished with, "This whole thing has been a lot to take in."
Lex let out a long breath and said, "It has."
My insides felt heavy as I added, "I'm not looking for anything, Lex. I know I should've said that from the get-go—"
Lex interrupted me by saying, "We don't make sense together." I wanted to believe there was a hint of disappointment in his voice, though I knew how contradictory that was.
"I don't make sense with anyone. I loved my wife, but it wasn't a good marriage. Maybe if I’d done things differently…" I paused and looked at my hands. They were doing the same thing as Lex's. Winding around each other… as if one hand holding the other would make it feel like we were less alone. Lex must have heard or sensed what I was doing because he stopped the movement with his own hands and placed them over mine.
"Tell me what you need, Gideon," he said softly. I wanted to tell him that I needed to go back to before he’d arrived. When it was easy not to feel or want.
"I want to go back to being numb," I admitted. My eyes stayed on Lex's fingers as he rubbed them back and forth over mine. "I don't miss them as much that way," I heard myself whisper. I didn't even know where the words had come from. I'd intended to leave them locked behind a wall within my heart forever.
Foreseen: Lex (The Four Book 2) Page 16
