Page 37 of Center of Gravity
“Maybe not invite. Maybeletwould be the better word.” Inviting would have been awesome, though.
Rob stared at me without blinking for a long, inscrutable time that gave me plenty of opportunity to feel even more like an idiot. Then he shook his head. “It’s fine. You can stay in the guest room.”
He tipped his head up, staring at the ceiling as he took a swallow of scotch, long neck exposed, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. I wanted to lick a stripe up the side of the little tendons that bulged, nip at them until he gasped. Scrubbing my face with my hand, I tried to wipe away the thought, because hadn’t we already covered this well enough?
“Thanks.”
I finished off my water and was starting to get up when he said, “Did you have a good birthday?”
“Yeah.” A smile spread over my mouth as I thought about it. “It was all right. Got a free meal out of it, a cake. Some dancing, a few drinks, a messy midnight make out session. What more could a guy want?”
It was so quick, that little flinch in his expression when I mentioned the kiss that it almost wasn’t there. Still, I’d caught it. It was mine now to review and try to unravel the meaning of, because Rob never seemed cut and dry.
“How was work?”
His laughter sounded cold and dangerous. It wasn’t a good sound for him. Smoothing a hand over the hair of his chest, he stood. “I hope you were safe.” He knocked back the rest of his scotch and reached for my glass, taking them both to the sink afterward.
“Last I checked, condoms aren’t required for a little kissing, though the imagery is interesting.”
Rob snorted, bending over the sink as he rinsed his glass and refilled mine with water. Then he just stood there with his back to me, one hand extended over the counter, loosely circling the glass.
Cat-quiet, I approached. When I laid my hand over his, he jumped, grabbing at the glass before it could fall over.
“Christ!” He let out an exhale before reaching for a rag to mop up the small spill. I withdrew my hand and God, it felt like about twenty pounds of awkward hanging at my side, as if I’d been reprimanded for sticking my hand too close to a kitchen burner or something.
“Sorry. It was a long day for me.” He dragged the cloth over the counter and tossed it into the sink. “Look, just make yourself comfortable, you know where it is. Sheets are fresh. Fresh enough.”
He pushed the glass of water against my chest and I seriously considered just continuing out of the front door rather than heading up the stairs. But I was tired and now I was deflated and I just wanted to go to sleep so I could fade out of existence for a few hours. And even still, the sad thing was that I hoped he would follow, hoped he’d rush out and catch me by the arm and drag me to his chest and give me a proper kiss for my birthday. But he didn’t.
The guest room was bare, but neat. For staging, we’d left the queen-sized bed made up, and two nightstands on either side with two little lamps made of seashells that were so hideous they were stylish again.
I turned on one of the lamps, stripped off my clothes, and slid between the sheets. Rob’s footfalls sounded on the stairs a few minutes later. The light coming in through the bottom of the door went dark and the house settled into quiet again. I was rock hard and aching, though. Feathering a light touch over my cock made me shiver while I tried to convince myself it was rude to get myself off in the guy’s dead parents’ house. Sighing, I rolled onto my back, watching the pattern of shadows on the ceiling as air from the vent stirred the curtains.
My hand was still on my cock, straddling indecision, when Rob shoved the door open. I wasn’t full on in the act, but he still stopped a foot from the bed, recognition dawning.
He’d come in with an expression of mild apology, at least what I could see of his face. The light was on in his bedroom across the hall, watered down and thin where it splashed across the side of his cheek and the slope of his neck, shading muscles in his shoulder and pooling shadows between his pecs. But now there was a shift. A flinch of irritation and something else too—that dark, hungry glimmer I’d caught on occasion.
“Sure, go ahead and jack off in my guest room, don’t mind me.” It didn’t seem like he was chiding me, though.
I lifted my hands up, splaying my fingers in a gesture of innocence. “Just adjusting.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything, just took a few steps closer, brushing his fingertips across a framed motivational quote on the bedside table that should have been packed up or tossed. I almost laughed at the disjointed thought process that had me making a mental note to tell him to get rid of it before putting the house on the market at the same time my body was tensing with anticipation.
“I meant to tell you happy birthday,” he said, not seeming happy about it at all. His eyes roved over me again, and he pressed his lips together tightly.
“Thank you.” I stretched my arms behind my head. Then I watched him watch the sheet as the movement exposed my stomach, my hip, the band of my boxers, and the tent of my fading erection. A small thrill shot through me at having his undivided attention.
“Goddammit.” How he managed to pack so much resignation and frustration into three syllables was amazing.
Rob had been standing beside the bed and then without warning he was on it, a cocoon of limbs around me. There was so much of him to contend with: the slide of his biceps against my arms, the wide chest curling over mine, and the rock-hard plateaus of his thighs where fabric stretched thin over them. I shuddered, reaching for the back of his neck to tangle my fingers in his hair and pull his mouth to mine, but he ducked me and fastened his lips to my nipple, tugging the barbell between his teeth until I arched off the bed and we both groaned.
His hands ranged over my body, firm and not tentative, mapping my skin, exploring muscle and bone while his mouth dragged down my chest and up again to close over the other nipple. Little chuffs of air escaped my lips as I fumbled and found strands of his hair and then tugged until he grunted.
He wrapped one hand loosely around my throat, his thumb sweeping into the hollow beneath my collarbone. His other hand joined forces with his lips and teeth to drive me fucking crazy as he pinched and sucked and licked at me. I arched into him again and again, pulled his hair. A pulsating need built and coursed through my body in hot, shivery waves that drove me against him.
He plied my nipples until I was muttering nothing but nonsense, then he made his way lower, kissing and sucking the soft trail of hair down my abdomen.
My dick poked through my boxers, half crushed between us and shamelessly leaking. Rob wrenched my waistband and shoved them all the way to my ankles, kneeling over me with his hands on my hips pinning me in place.