by Evie Drae
If Ellis thought for one moment that doing any of those things justified the use of a word like work, then he was thoroughly mistaken. Still, Cinder wasn’t about to snub the idea of having Ellis’s hands and lips all over his body. “What’s mine is yours, and that includes my body.” He winked and splayed his arms wide. “Do what you will with me, Mr. Tremaine.”
And Ellis did exactly that. He took his time undressing Cinder, pressing kisses over each inch of newly visible flesh until Cinder lay fully exposed and trembling. Then, he’d begun the slow, sensuous process of cataloguing Cinder’s body with his lips and touch. Just as he’d said he wanted to do.
By the time Ellis finally seemed satisfied, Cinder was a writhing mess of needs and wants unlike anything he’d known before. “See?” he croaked, his fists clutching at the sheets as sweat beaded at his brow. “Another first for us both, because I’ve never, ever been worshiped like that.”
“Oh, I’m not done.” Ellis’s husky voice washed over Cinder, drawing a shiver at the promise it held.
And then… “Ohmygod.” Cinder’s head snapped up at the first touch of a soft, warm tongue against the weeping head of his cock. He watched in mesmerized shock as Ellis traced and teased and touched his dick before finally—finally—taking him fully inside the wet heat of his mouth.
Pushing his head back into the mattress, he arched into the feel of his bare cock somewhere it had never been before—inside the mouth of a lover, one who had stayed around long enough for them both to get tested. Granted, they hadn’t gone to a clinic yet for the full gamut of tests, but they’d popped by a drug store on the way to Kumiko and Lizbeth’s. According to the FDA, the over-the-counter test they’d purchased was about as accurate as a quick results test done by a professional.
Therefore, during the car ride post-surviving Kumiko’s drunken debauchery, they’d checked their results and held a brief but decisive discussion. Seeing as how Cinder was on PrEP and hadn’t had sex with anyone except Ellis since his last negative test, and Ellis hadn’t had sex in years—a far longer stretch of abstinence since his own last negative—their results boded well.
Still, Cinder hadn’t been sure how soon they’d actually take the condomless plunge.
It was yet another first for them both.
“Fuck, baby. That feels so good.” Cinder’s voice came out hoarse and high-pitched, but he didn’t even care. He’d never felt something quite so divine as the tight heat of Ellis’s wet mouth suckling at his most sensitive flesh. “If you don’t stop, I’m gonna blow.”
For a moment, Ellis’s ministrations became more focused, as if he aimed to make exactly that happen. But then he faltered, paused, and finally released Cinder from the heavenly grip of his mouth. When nothing else happened, and Ellis didn’t say anything, Cinder forced his eyes open and angled his gaze to meet Ellis’s. He grunted, adding a questioning lilt at the end that made him sound so much like Tim the Toolman Taylor that he broke into a brief, frenzied laughter.
Ellis popped a brow and looked at Cinder like he’d lost his damn mind, which only made the incongruous laughter return tenfold.
“Ah, okay then.” Ellis chuckled and gave Cinder’s thighs a squeeze, followed by offering a lighthearted wink. “Another first. I’ve never been laughed at while sucking a guy off.”
Shaking his head, Cinder pulled Ellis over him until their lips met. Against them, and between soft, butterfly kisses, he murmured, “Not laughing at you. Need you. So bad. You’ve driven me mad with how bad I want right now.” Then, he crushed their mouths together, drinking ravenously from the man who had managed to make him feel in ways he never thought possible. Both physically and emotionally.
When Ellis, still fully clothed, gathered Cinder against him and buried his face in the crook of Cinder’s neck, his muffled words sent Cinder’s heart racing. “I wanted to finish you like that, and I will. A million times, if you’ll let me. But I… I’m selfish. I also want to feel you inside me. Bare. Just… just us.”
Cinder clung to Ellis’s shoulders, his sweaty palms clutching at the fabric of Ellis’s short-sleeved button-down. How had he gotten so lucky to find a man like Ellis Tremaine?
He never wanted to lose him. He couldn’t stand the thought.
“Haven’t I made it clear yet?” Cinder threaded his fingers with Ellis’s and squeezed. “Anything you want from me is yours. Including me.”
Chapter Nineteen
Ellis had sworn to himself that tonight would be all about Henry. From the destination he’d selected for their date, to offering Henry a glimmer of an inkling about how Ellis always felt under Henry’s caring, devoted touch.
Instead, Ellis was spread out and naked on the bed in the same position Henry should’ve remained until he found his release at Ellis’s hand. Or, more preferably, his mouth.
Still, it was hard to question the rightness of their current situation when Henry draped his warm, delectable body over Ellis’s and pressed their lips together. He moved his hips, slow and languid, causing just enough friction as their cocks rubbed together to make them both moan around their kiss.
When their kiss broke, Henry panted against Ellis’s neck, his words coming out in broken, fragmented sentences as his continued movements drove them both to the brink. “I know you have… some misguided belief… that you owe me… an ‘all about me’… orgasm… but you don’t.” He groaned and halted the motion of his hips, ropes of muscle showing in his neck as his jaw clenched and he obviously fought the urge to keep moving.
Sucking in several long, slow, calming breaths, Henry opened his eyes and met Ellis’s gaze. “All I want is you. And us. While I’ll certainly take a BJ anytime you feel the urge to give one”—he winked and popped his brows a few times—“it means more than I can say that you were willing to ask for what you want. And, honestly, babe… Do you think it’s a hardship to sink my dick into this beautiful ass?”
When Henry squeezed Ellis’s butt to emphasize his point, Ellis laughed and shook his head. “No, I guess not.”
“Good, because if you thought for even one single second that making love to you was anything but the best thing ever, then we’d have to have words. And right now, I’d really rather chase more physical pursuits.”
Again, that playful wink followed Henry’s words, and Ellis turned to putty in his hands. Especially when his short-circuiting brain circled back around and repeated said words, getting caught on a single phrase and playing it on loop through his lust-addled, love-starved mind.
No one had ever referred to any sexual act with Ellis as making love, including Ellis himself. But with Henry, it felt… right. Ellis groaned and turned his face into Henry’s arm, trying to hide the inevitable flush of embarrassed delight heating his cheeks.
“Hey, hey. None of that.” Henry drew Ellis’s face free of its hiding place until their gazes locked. “Talk to me. Don’t bury your feelings. I need to know where your heart is. Did I do something wrong? Say something to make you upset?”
“No, I…” Ellis bit his lip. How was he supposed to tell Henry that his casual use of a common turn of phrase had all but flayed Ellis’s heart open? And not in a bad way, but because it made him realize how much he wanted those words to be true. Worse? It made him realize how far he’d already fallen in that direction himself.
Henry remained patient, his warm body still draped comfortably over Ellis despite their focus shifting elsewhere for the moment. Ellis drew strength from his closeness and circled his arms around Henry’s waist to keep him from moving. “I’m not good at this stuff. You know, talking about my feelings.”
Chuckling, Henry placed a calloused palm against Ellis’s cheek and peered into Ellis’s eyes with understanding and care warming his hazel depths. “You don’t have to be good at it. Just be honest. I don’t care if you speak caveman or Gollum or whatever the hell works, as long as you get things off your chest.”
“Caveman? Gollum?” Ellis’s face cracked into a smile. “What the hell are
you on about?”
Henry scrunched his nose—one of Ellis’s favorite facial expressions of his because it highlighted his adorable freckles—then grunted a few times and spoke in a deep, purposefully garbled voice, “Me Henry, you Ellis.” His face softened into a smile, his voice settling back to his normal timbre. “See? Caveman.”
“Isn’t that more Tarzan than caveman?” Ellis laughed and shook his head, mentally moving on. “And Gollum?”
Clearing his throat, Henry widened his eyes and darted them back and forth, his lips curling into a maniacal grin. “We hates when Ellises isn’t happy. Don’t we hates when Ellises isn’t happy, my precious? We does, we does hates when Ellises isn’t happy!”
“Oh my god.” Ellis snorted so loud it hurt his sinuses, but that didn’t stop him from busting into ab-cramping laughter as well. “Stop. I can’t. No more.”
Henry shrugged and replaced the ludicrous Gollum-esque smile with his own cocky grin. “What? You asked, I answered.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ellis swiped at his eyes, wiping away tears of mirth before they could slide down his temples. “How did we go from ‘about to bang any second’ to ‘fits of crying laughter’ in less time than it takes to toast bread?”
Switching to a ponderous expression, Henry tapped his chin with a finger as he looked into the distance. “Now, that could be accurate, or it could be a complete falsehood. Depends on if we’re talking pasty-as-my-ass white toast that barely gets kissed by the heating element or that dark brown shit my gran used to make me. There was no amount of ‘scraping off the burnt bits’ that could save that toast. It faced down the fires of Hades before it hit my plate, ya feel me?”
It took Ellis a solid two minutes to compose himself after that, and Henry beamed at him the entire time. Clearly pleased with himself.
“Are you about finished?” Ellis blinked tears from his eyes, no longer bothering to halt their progress as they streaked down his temples.
Henry pursed his lips into a thoughtful pout. “Depends. Are you ready to talk? ’Cause if not, I can go all night—”
“Nope. No. Uh-uh.” Ellis rolled his eyes and bucked his hips, surprised to find Henry’s dick still rock-hard against his thigh despite their recent rounds of hysterics. Well, to be more precise, Ellis’s hysterics. Maybe it was easier to maintain a hard-on when you were just watching someone lose their ever-lovin’ mind rather than experiencing the delirious amusement yourself. “Fine. Okay, I’ll talk.”
A self-satisfied smirk raised the corner of Henry’s lips. “Fantastic.”
Despite his chest feeling significantly lighter and less terrified by his own thoughts thanks to Henry’s oh-so-perfectly timed comedy routine, Ellis still wasn’t sure how to put his reaction to Henry’s use of the phrase making love into words. That is, until an idea struck, and he grinned. “Well, to put it into the words of a famously talented poet and musician, ‘My brain shuts down when you’re a heartbeat away, especially when you speak the words I long to hear. Every night, and every day.’”
Henry’s lips twitched as he angled his chin to the side. “‘Heartbeat Away’ lyrics?”
Shrugging, Ellis endured the tingling heat at his cheeks, knowing full well Henry wouldn’t let him hide. “It’s my favorite song of yours. When it comes up in your set, I always stop everything I’m doing and watch from the catwalk. Even before I knew you were, well, you, that song has always…” He shrugged again, his face singeing with endless embarrassment. “It hits me somewhere really deep, you know?”
Henry nodded almost imperceptibly, then dropped his lips to steal a kiss. “Thank you, baby. Thank you for sharing that with me.”
Ellis was about to brush it off until he caught the glimmer of tears in Henry’s eyes. Instead of downplaying the emotion behind the truth he’d spoken, he pulled Henry back in for another brush of lips. Slowly, languidly, their soft kisses turned heated once more. Their hands sought the feel of skin, and their bodies writhed, seeking friction and gratification after the unexpected break in their search for satiation.
When the moment finally arrived, after Henry had painstakingly prepped Ellis and they were both lubed up and ready to go, Henry rolled onto his back and guided Ellis on top. He encouraged him to take control. To drive them both to the threshold of pleasure and beyond.
And when Ellis did—when their bodies connected in that most intimate of ways, without latex as a barrier—a joint moan filled the room as they grabbed for each other, latching on and refusing to let go.
Even after they found their separate peaks and tumbled off the edge, only a hairsbreadth apart, their hands refused to let go. They held on and rode out their shared pleasure until Ellis’s head and heart swirled with the certainty that this was it for him. His heart was owned, inside and out, and he would never love another as fiercely or as fully as he loved Henry.
After they took a lazy shower together, where their hands continued to seek and search and discover and demand, Henry tucked Ellis into bed with a kiss to his forehead. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
Nodding, Ellis snuggled into the warmth of the bed and tried to ignore the achy longing in his heart. Even though he knew Henry wouldn’t go far, Ellis felt raw and needier than usual. He didn’t want to be alone, even for a moment.
But when Henry returned, barely a minute later, Ellis pushed to an elbow and cocked his head in confusion. Henry padded across the bedroom floor with his crooked grin in place, an acoustic guitar clutched in one hand, and a glass jar candle in his other. “Alexa, turn off the bedroom lights.”
The room plunged into darkness except for the single soft point of light dancing from the candle Henry placed on his nightstand before crawling into bed. After brushing a hand through Ellis’s hair and skimming another kiss over his temple, Henry settled against the headboard with a pillow behind his back and the guitar resting on his lap. “This is Betsy. She’s seen me through quite a few different stages of my life and career. We found each other when I was barely a tween, and she’s the only acoustic I’ll play.” He winked. “Wouldn’t want to cheat on my best gal, after all.”
Ellis lay back against his pillow and smiled as Henry stroked Betsy’s sleek wooden neck with the tenderness and devotion of a committed lover. When Henry strummed a few chords and used his ear to tune it to his desired specs, Ellis’s heart flooded with emotion.
He wasn’t a musician himself, but he understood how intimate a tuning session was. Especially with a cherished instrument like Betsy. Ellis was honored to be allowed to share this sacred moment between an artist and his treasured tool.
Once Henry seemed satisfied with the pitch of his strings, he drummed his fingers over Betsy’s face. “I know it’s late, but will you let me play you a song?”
It’s not like the question came out of nowhere. Henry had brought his guitar into bed, after all. Yet, for some reason, Ellis’s heart bloomed at the thought that Henry wanted to play him a song. He hadn’t brought it into the room as some after-sex wind-down ritual or to ease himself to sleep. No, he sat there with Betsy in his lap because he wanted to play Ellis a song.
“I… Yes.” His voice was raspy and breathless, but he didn’t bother to put more force behind it when he said, “Of course.”
“Good. Then this is for you, Ellis Tremaine.” Henry smiled, then closed his eyes as he played the first notes, their crisp splendor filling the room and arrowing straight into Ellis’s very being.
They were the first notes of “Heartbeat Away.”
Sure enough, Henry’s rich tenor joined the ringing warmth of Betsy’s strings and carried Ellis’s heart well beyond his reach. It was gone forever now. Lost to the beauty of the man seated at his side, strumming an acoustic guitar and singing just for him.
For the briefest of moments, Ellis allowed himself to wonder how Henry’s mass of screaming fans would react to a private candlelit rendition of a love ballad sang by none other than the Prince of Pop himself. They’d probably keel over dead, and if they managed
to survive the shock, it would be a story they’d tell the world. Every chance they got.
But as Henry opened his eyes and aimed those heavily lashed hazel pools right into Ellis’s soul, all other thoughts fled. He allowed the love-laced words to carry him away as Henry’s voice wrapped around him like a thick, comforting blanket.
When the song finally came to an end—after more than a few extra repetitions of the chorus that the Colosseum’s audience had never been graced with—Ellis floated back to himself slowly. He hadn’t even realized Henry had set Betsy aside or blown out the candle until he slid under the covers and used his strong arms to pull Ellis against his chest.
Then, speaking into the darkness, his voice barely above a whisper, Henry murmured, “No matter what happens, I’ll never be more than a heartbeat away. For you. Forever.”
Chapter Twenty
As Cinder belted out the final note of his first-ever number one hit—a fan favorite he continued to play at every concert as an homage to his roots—the crowd’s exuberant shrieks and cheers overtook the theater’s audio system, drowning out his delighted laughter. Even after fifteen-plus years of standing on the stage, engulfed by the sights and sounds of fame and good fortune, that rush of pure joy when his fans connected with his music never faded.
The 3D Ballyhoo stage lighting that accompanied the super poppy single still working up the audience came to an abrupt halt, casting the stage into pitch-blackness. If possible, the roar of the crowd grew louder as anticipation heightened the mood.
Cinder used the glow-in-the-dark tape markers to jog offstage without running into any equipment. His band played an instrumental intermission from his latest album while he hustled through a well-choreographed costume change. Two assistants toweled off as much sweat as possible before he tugged a ribbed tank over his head and paused for his makeup artist to reapply eyeliner and powder while his hair stylist lathered on more hairspray and artfully retousled his locks.
