Page 84 of Catcher's Lock

“Bring it.”

So he does, sliding a second digit in along the first. This time, there’s a stretch and a burn, and I hiss between my teeth. He stills at my back, stroking his thumb along my jaw and bringing his lips to the pounding pulse below my ear.

“I wanna watch you come for me,” he murmurs, pumping his fingers in and out of my ass with slow, deliberate strokes. “I want you to play with your pretty cock while I fuck you like this, and I want you to remember how good it feels the next time you think about sneaking out on me in the middle of the night.”

And how the fuck am I supposed to say no to that?

It takes all of fifteen seconds. I can’t even muster the grace to be embarrassed, sagging in his grip as my ass flutters around his fingers and my cock jerks and splashes cum onto the porch and down the front of my wetsuit.

I’m dimly aware of him pulling out, leaving me empty and strangely bereft, and then of the soft rustle of cotton on skin behind me.

“You feel this?” He rubs his bare cock through the crease of my ass, precum slicking over my tender hole. “You feel how hard I am for you?Youdo this to me. Only you.” His chin comes to rest on my shoulder as he slots himself between my thighs. “I haven’t been able to really get it up for a guy since…that night.” A slow roll of his hips drives the head of his cock along my taint. “I thought it was about fear of rejection.” Another thrust. “But then I saw you on stage in that jockstrap, shaking this gorgeous ass and backsliding down the pole to throw this”—his hand slips around to cup my dick—“in my face, and it made me so hard I thought I was going to explode right there on the barstool.” Stroke. Thrust. “I’ve been struggling to hold myself in check ever since. I want you all the fucking time. Iachefor you.”

He’s going to fuck me with more than his fingers someday.

And I’m going to love it.

And even though I already came, even though my flagging cock is oversensitive and my legs are boneless and my heart is fucking wrecked, I pulse another spurt of cum over his knuckles at the naked urgency in his words. His teeth sink into my shoulder, and his chest rumbles against my back as hot liquid explodes against my taint, coating my balls and trickling down the inside of my thighs.

“No one else, Quill.Only you.”

28

Promise

Josha

Age 24 (Now)

I’m crashing.

I push back from Gem’s body, the high from my orgasm already leaking from my pores as my dick twitches out the last of my release and starts to go slack. He slumps against the railing, panting soft, giddy chuckles into his crossed arms, and I want to cling to him, to the memory of how his hole went soft and pliant under my tongue and how eagerly it swallowed my fingers. How a lifetime of fantasies didn’t prepare me for how scorching hot he’d beinside.

It scares me how easy it is to lose myself in him. To let instinct and desire take control. I could spend hours,years, exploring his body and all the intricate ways to make it come alive. In a few short days, it’s become painfully obvious that I’ll forgive him anything, and I don’t know how to protect myself from what he’ll leave behind if I lose him again.

Because even like this—half naked and sated and sticky with cum—he’s not really mine. Not when the better pieces of him still belong to the drugs and the booze and the bitterness between him and Shilo.

“You owe me a new wetsuit,” he says, turning to gift me a rakish smile, before shimmying out of the cum-stained suit. “Or next time, I’m stealing yours.”

“Next time…” I sag against the trailer, tucking my dick back into my sweats and fighting the urge to sink to the ground and drag him into my lap. “Next time, you’re not going surfing by yourself.”

The vodka on an empty stomach has left me vaguely nauseous, with a headache forming behind my eyes. “You know better than to hit the water alone,” I add.One more way for him to disappear. The fact that he came back, that he’s sober, that we just had mind-blowing sex—again—should be making me feel better, but it only serves to highlight how deep my fears run.

I nudge the half-empty vodka bottle with my foot, and we both watch it roll to the edge of the porch before catching on the bottom rail.

“That bad, huh?” he asks softly, a self-deprecating twist to his lips. “Guess I fucked up again.”

It would be so easy to blame him.

He’s always assumed my aversion to drinking is because of my dad, which is partly true, but he also once told me he thought I didn’t like the lack of control, which is not. Withhim, I loved riding that edge—chasing the sweet spot when his armor came off, leaving him flirty and affectionate before the dark turn to destruction.

Anyone who grows up with an alcoholic learns the wordenabler, but having the vocabulary isn’t always enough to change the behavior.

I never used booze to escape until after he left, though. That was the first time I understood the call to obliteration. Ironic that I discovered empathy for my father just in time to lose him, but the skidding, sickening grief was probably what saved me in the end.

If I poke at why I reached for the bottle today, it only confirms what I already know—that it’s too late to hold Gem at arm’s length. To pretend I’m not as deep in this thing with him now as I was before.

Deeper, now that he’s let me into his body.