“Now,” he gasped, sounding as wrecked as I felt. “Please tell me you have condoms. Lube.”
I rolled over and tried to fumble in the nightstand, and Alec pinned me down again, his mouth on the small of my back, tongue tracing the curve of the top of my ass. I squirmed until I managed to get what we needed, tossed it over my shoulder at him, and fell onto my stomach, squeezing my eyes shut and pressing my burning face into the cool of the sheet, letting him do whatever he wanted with me.
Slick fingers pressed inside, and I spread my legs, arching up with my ass shamelessly in the air. That left my cock without any friction, but he slid a hand between my legs and fixed that, stroking me ruthlessly until I couldn’t help fucking his hand, fucking myself back on his other hand, caught between too much pleasure and almost enough and barely able to breathe.
And then his hands left my skin. I’d opened my mouth to complain, but the crinkle of a condom wrapper shut me up.
I braced my knees on the bed and pushed back, ready for him. So fucking ready.
Alec leaned down over my back, brushing his lips over the nape of my neck. The head of his cock pressed against my slick hole, and he pushed inside me, long and slow, not stopping until his hips rested against my ass.
I’d probably been fucked as hard and as deep as Alec fucked me, but I couldn’t remember it. Maybe because I’d been tipsy or a little high most times I’d had sex for the last couple of years. Or maybe because the actual act of being fucked didn’t matter as much as whether the man doing it cared about my enjoyment of it.
That epiphany slipped away in the effort to hold on, clutching the sheets in my sweaty grasp, as he pounded me into oblivion. Almost every stroke hit my prostate. The ones that didn’t went so deep he punched the air out of my lungs.
Alec’s hand curled around my hip. His fingers could’ve crushed me in his grip, but he held me gently, careful not to bruise, even as he slammed so deep inside me I knew I’d never forget the shape of him.
With a choked-off moan, I came untouched all over the bed. Alec groaned, thrust again, and stilled, shuddering, his forehead dropping down against my shoulder.
I collapsed under his weight, right into the wet spot.
I couldn’t have cared less. I couldn’t even lift my eyelids, let alone the rest of my body. My own raspy breathing echoed in my ears, with Alec’s a fast, panting counterpoint against my neck. That hand still rested on my hip, the fingers stroking my skin, tracing little patterns into the delicate flesh of my abdomen just inside the hollow of my hipbone. Our legs lay tangled together. I could hardly tell whose were whose.
And I didn’t want to untangle. I wanted to stay just like that, with Alec over me and around me and inside me. Warm and heavy and safe. Content. I hadn’t felt that way in so long.
Alec pressed a kiss to my shoulder blade and levered himself up, letting go of my hip and carefully maneuvering his cock out of my body.
I hadn’t realized what a number he’d done on me until he pulled out, the friction of his withdrawal making me hiss in discomfort.
He opened me with his thumbs, pulling my cheeks apart. “Alec?” I squirmed, but he held me firm.
“You look okay,” he said. I tried to pull away again, but he leaned down and kissed the top of my crease, flicking out his tongue. “More than okay. Fucking perfect.” His tongue slid a little lower.
“Oh, God,” I choked, helplessly. “Alec.”
“Gabe,” he whispered.
Right against my ass.
He traced the curves of it, soft kisses and little swipes of his tongue, not quite rimming me but coming really, really close. His mouth found the crease between my ass and thigh, pressing kisses along one side and then moving to the other. My fingers clenched and released in the sheets, my heartbeat ratcheting right back up again. My cock twitched, even though I’d just come hard enough to melt my brain.
“Hold that thought,” Alec murmured against my skin. His weight lifted off me, and the bed dipped as he got up and left, heading for the bathroom, probably.
“Bastard,” I said, and his laughter filtered back as he left the room.
I closed my eyes, smiled to myself, and held that thought. I had nowhere else to be and didn’t want to.
Alec
With the bathroom door safely shut, I let myself lean against the sink for a minute, closing my eyes and letting my guard down.
I’d grabbed my phone on my way. I felt like a heel, surreptitiously emailing in Gabe’s bathroom. More of one. Fucking him already put me firmly in asshole territory, but sneaking off to email the field office from his bathroom, while he waited for me spread out on his bed, made it infinitely worse somehow.
But I didn’t have a choice. I’d already made a plan. The only way I could get through this deception and come out the other side with the slightest chance of convincing him I hadn’t been with him only to use him would be getting the case wrapped up as quickly as possible.
And that had to happen, for his sake as well as mine. Yes, my selfish benefit would be served by getting him to forgive me once this was over. But how would I feel if I found out someone I’d been sleeping with, dating, learning to trust, had wanted me just for an ulterior purpose? I’d be furious, and hurt, and it’d take me a long time to recover from it.
But it’d be worse for Gabe than it hypothetically would be for me. He’d be shattered. He already thought so little of himself, personally and professionally. He’d started taking steps to get back into his doctoral program, to do something that gave him joy and pride in himself.
It felt too presumptuous to think that Gabe’s feeling of being used and betrayed would set him back in that endeavor, like I was assigning myself way more importance in his life than I had or deserved.
But I couldn’t shake the sinking suspicion it might work like that anyway.
I had to get this right.
Refocusing on work took more effort than usual. Not surprising. Little flashes of how it’d felt to thrust inside Gabe’s heat, the lines of his back arching in pleasure, the sounds he made…I could hardly focus on disposing of the condom.
But I managed, firing off a few lines marked urgent to the people on the team responsible for looking into background and financial info, requesting as much as they could get me on Dave Middleton and Adam Whipley.
Cleaning up only took a minute, and finding a hand towel to dampen to take back to clean him up another minute.
Stepping back into Gabe’s bedroom, I froze on the threshold, hardly able to believe how fucking lucky I’d gotten. He hadn’t moved, still lying sprawled across the rumpled sheets, his long legs spread. Closed eyes, a contented little smile. Totally relaxed. As if he trusted me so much he didn’t even need to think about how he looked or what I might be doing elsewhere in his apartment.
I set my phone down on top of my trousers, where they’d landed at the foot of the bed, and sat down next to him. His eyes cracked open lazily, showing me a glimpse of gray-blue.
He stretched like a sleepy cat, his shoulder muscles bunching and his ass wiggling back and forth. The lamplight gilded his pale skin and made the fine hair on his legs and arms gleam, like he’d been transformed into a living Italian painting.
Christ, I’d gotten luckier than I deserved. I ran a hand down the length of his spine, drawing out a little moan of pleasure.
“Clean up?” I asked, holding up the cloth.
“It can wait,” Gabe said, his voice as slow and lazy as his movements. “Fuck me again first. Then shower. And new sheets. And something to eat.”
I tossed the cloth on the nightstand. I could get on board with that order of events. “Demanding,” I said, shoving at his shoulder to roll him over and then crawling on top, while he flailed and pushed at me and laughed.
I ended up on top of him, one thigh pressed between his and my elbows braced on either side of him. Kissing him felt like a natural extension of breathing, the obvious answer to having his red lips so close. Gabe’s arms aroun
d my back held me safely anchored, in the only place I could imagine wanting to be.
Almost the only place. Very close to the place I wanted even more.
“I told you to hold that thought,” I whispered against his jaw, kissing my way down to his throat. I needed my mouth on that nipple piercing again, nearly as much as I wanted to finally get his cock all the way down my throat. Which was, in turn, nearly as much as I wanted to push his thighs open and drape his legs over my shoulders and taste his pretty hole. “I always try to keep my promises.”
Gabe moaned, arching up to make himself as available as possible for my lips and tongue, and I tried to show him how much I meant that, pressing my sincerity into his flesh with every motion. I worshipped him slowly, all the way down, swirling my tongue in his navel and nibbling at his hipbones, licking and sucking the head of his cock before I pulled him in all the way and made him shout his pleasure to the ceiling.
I wouldn’t do this if I’d only wanted to use him, right? I’d fuck him, maybe, but not kiss down the tender skin of his inner thigh, nuzzle and lick his balls and the base of his cock, open him up for me so I could go lower still. Tease my tongue inside his body while he shook and whimpered, his head thrown back and his long fingers clenching in my hair.
My own cock throbbed, but I ignored it until I had him thrashing, begging, calling out my name over and over again. Christ, he needed to understand that he meant something to me, something he’d never believe in retrospect if I only used words. He needed to remember this when I told him the truth, when he doubted everything I’d ever said or done.
I had to make sure he couldn’t doubt this.
When I finally pushed inside him again, I went as slowly as I could, making sure I paid attention to everything he told me with his body and with his eyes.
I left my own open when I came inside of him, his bitten lips and tousled purple hair and the glint of golden stubble on his jaw and the open, vulnerable, look in his eyes doing nearly as much to push me over the edge as the tight, perfect clench of his body around me.
My head dropped down, my shoulders heaving. Aftershocks shuddered through every limb.
I rested my forehead on the pillow next to his head and closed my eyes. Shower, food, real life. It could all wait. Gabe’s hand stroked down my back, and he whispered something that sounded like my name.
It could wait.
13
Gabe
I half-woke at dawn to Alec’s body curled around mine, his hand stroking my belly, his voice whispering softly in my ear.
For such a big man, he could be so incredibly gentle. The way he spoke. The way he touched me.
Except when I didn’t want him to be gentle. Mmm. No complaints there either.
“I need to go, Gabe. Call me when you wake up. All right?”
That knocked me into full consciousness, making his suggestion moot. I rolled over onto my back, turning my head on the pillow to peer into his face. He had that rumpled, washed-out look everyone got when they’d been up all night alternating eating pizza and having incredible sex.
And of course he still looked like sex on legs, with his broad bare chest and rough stubble, because some guys had all the good genes.
But some tension had crept in around the edges. This wasn’t the teasing lover of the night before.
“Where do you need to be at—what the hell time is it, anyway?” My voice rasped, rough from sleep and from the blowjob I’d given him in the shower around midnight. “It’s Saturday.”
Alec hesitated, his mouth a hard line. “Just a couple of errands.” He leaned in and kissed me, closed-mouthed but lingering. “I’ll bring you lunch when you call me. Just—go back to sleep, baby.”
I didn’t usually like endearments all that much, but no-nonsense Alec calling me baby in that low, gruff voice hit a button I hadn’t known I’d had. Sort of like those photos of firefighters holding kittens. Incongruous, but perfect.
What did he have to do at dawn on a Saturday that could possibly be better than morning sex, though?
I didn’t get the chance to push it, because he’d already rolled out of bed, gathered up his clothes, and gone into the bathroom.
My eyelids started to droop, no matter how determined I was to keep them open. It wouldn’t hurt to roll over onto my stomach and wait for him to come out while getting a little more comfortable.
I fell right back asleep.
By the time I woke up again, noon had come and gone, and my condo had that empty, quiet feeling a place gets when no one’s been moving around for hours.
I squinted at my phone for a while, bringing myself to consciousness via scrolling Facebook. As always, nothing more interesting than a few moderately entertaining memes.
God, I needed to get back into school. I’d kept up on advances in my field, more or less, and I read a lot of popular science. But I hadn’t truly exercised my brain in months, and it felt like a muscle that’d been left to atrophy. An ache somewhere I couldn’t quite pinpoint, but cast a shadow over everything else I did.
I tossed the phone aside and stretched long and luxuriously, letting that very pinpointable ache in my ass remind me of all the fun I’d had the night before.
Nearly twelve-thirty. High time to get up, call Alec, and have him bring me lunch like he’d promised. My stomach rumbled.
But shower first. We’d shared one the night before, but we hadn’t exactly stopped fucking afterwards.
The light on my phone blinked at me as I stepped out of the bathroom, towel around my hips and a spring in my step. Alec. God, would I always smile like this, just thinking his name in my head? How pathetic was I, especially when he’d high-tailed it out of there this morning?
No, I had to derail that train of thought before it could get going. He’d been more than generous the night before, with his touch and his kisses and the way he’d given me more than he’d taken, in every way. So maybe he didn’t have much of a facility for telling people how he felt. I could live with that, as long as he showed me the way he had the night before.
I grabbed the phone, ready to punch the call button, and saw it wasn’t Alec who’d called me—it was Dave.
Oh, what the fuck now? Hadn’t he done enough, badmouthing me to Alec the night before? I’d be perfectly happy never talking to him again, let alone letting him spoil the first morning I’d woken up happy in a long fucking time.
Another call came in as I stood there glaring at my missed call log. Dave again. Not giving up, the asshole.
Fine. If he wanted to have it out, I’d have it out. No more knuckling under the second he got bitchy. I’d tell him to fuck off, and then I’d block his number.
“What the fuck do you want, Dave?”
“I need you to come down to the factory,” he said without preamble, his voice tight and strained.
What? Water dribbled down from my hair, getting in my eyes, and I shook my head to clear it. “Gabe?” Dave demanded. “Are you there? Did you hear me?”
“What’s going on? Are you okay? And are you on speaker? You sound all echoey.”
A short pause. I thought I heard something else in the background, but even though I strained my ear, I couldn’t tell what it was. “Yeah, I’m on speaker. Wanted my hands free so I could do some stuff in my office. I’m fine. But I need you to come out here. Bring Alec, you know, your date from last night? I need a hand—” He broke off again, and there was another little burst of background noise. I thought I heard a voice, maybe. “I need a hand moving some furniture. He’s a big guy. I’m sure he can move furniture, right?”
Okaaay.
My brother didn’t have a significant other and lived alone, or I’d have hung up on him and called them up to see if they’d noticed any empty, alien-looking pods out back that morning.
Dave didn’t have a drug habit, right? He couldn’t. Didn’t drugs make addicts nicer at least part of the time? Or was that just weed?
He obviously didn’t smoke weed, by that criterio
n.
And—since when did Dave move furniture? He hired people for that. Actually, I was pretty sure his secretary delegated the task of hiring furniture movers to someone even farther down the company food chain, that’s how important Dave thought he was.
“Dave, I’m seriously—did you just call me in the middle of Saturday to ask me to come out there and move furniture? With the guy you met and totally didn’t like last night? After you told him how I got kicked out of school? Seriously?”
“I didn’t tell him you got kicked out of school!” He sounded honestly baffled, and even more stressed. What the fuck was going on here?
“Of course you did! How the hell else would he have known? And he told me you told him!”
“I don’t know how he knows what happened with that bullshit degree you were getting—”
“Excuse you! ‘Bullshit degree’?” My voice had gone up a really unattractive octave, and I knew I’d be screeching in a second. “Because it’s not a fucking, what, an executive MBA or whatever that was that mostly involved you taking trips to Martha’s Vineyard with Dad’s old Princeton buddies—”
He cut me off mid-screech. “Forget my fucking MBA, Gabe!” That stunned me into silence, because I could count on one hand the number of times I’d ever heard Dave use a word stronger than damn. He said it was vulgar. “Fuck, how hard is it for you to just do me a favor, all right? Get Alec, and come out to the factory. Quickly. I need your help.”
Okay, and that had been a note of genuine desperation. Goosebumps rose all down my arms, and even though I hadn’t dried off all the way, it wasn’t a chill.
“Look, if something’s wrong, just tell me. I’ll help. But since when do you move furniture? Are you fighting with Dad? Did something go wrong with the business?” I didn’t know a goddamn thing about the business, but—fuck, in the end, family was family. And I hadn’t heard Dave sound this weird and freaked-out since he thought he’d gotten his girlfriend pregnant in their freshman year of college.
“Yeah, it’s—look, are you going to come, yeah, you and Alec—” I frowned, pressing the phone closer to my ear. Had I heard someone else interrupting him? What the ever-loving fuck was going on? Dave went on with, “Both of you, okay? Come out here. I need your help. I’m hanging up now. Show up, Gabe.”
Undercover (Vino and Veritas) Page 13
