Page 54 of Center of Gravity
“I have an idea that’s a dangerous game to play with you.”
“It is.”
“Then, no.”
“I didn’t say we had to put money on it,” he teased, giving me one of those devilish winks as he slid off the bed to clear our dishes.
“I know.” I tried to ignore the electricity that wink had sent barreling through my extremities.
My pain meds had all but worn off and I thought my back was on the mend enough to stick with Tylenol and Motrin from then on. I was in a nice place of drowsy relaxation when Alex returned from cleaning up and crawled back to his spot on the bed. I flipped through a book of crosswords that I had no intention of tackling.
“You were going to kiss me,” he said out of nowhere, breaking the silence. “After you fell. I kept going back and forth doing the was-he-or-wasn’t-he thing. But you were.”
I inhaled, exhaled, and stared hard at the crossword until it blurred into nonsense. “Yeah, well, fate intervened.”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
“No?” I found this rather surprising of him, more so if he wasn’t a blazing distraction suddenly kneeling beside me. His fingers landed in a light caress along my jaw as he angled my face into his. When he spoke, it was in a low, silky drawl, his lips hovering tantalizingly close to mine.
“I’ve figured you out. A while ago, really, but now you’re a captive audience and I don’t know if you ever will be again.” I could feel his breath on my lips. A shiver ran over my shoulders, my chest rising and falling faster beneath his hand as it dropped from my jaw and splayed over my pecs. “It’s control. Self-control.”
I groaned as his tongue flicked against my lower lip, slow and soft and wet. As soon as I leaned in for more, he retreated, backing off the bed to stand at the end and peel off his T-shirt under the directness of my hungry gaze. Still golden bronze with the touches of silver at his nipples, still the lean line of abdominals, the shadowy cut of inguinals that traced down his sides and disappeared behind his shorts. The devil was in the details, and I was lost to the minutiae that made up Alex. The sincere, green-amber blaze of his eyes, the ropey knots of muscle on his thighs and calves as he slipped off his shorts. The barest hint of stubble dusting his jaw like flecks of gold, and the perfect cupid-bow mouth fish-hooking up in a puckish smile.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, even though it was obvious.
“Taking control. Or testing your limits, depending on your perspective.”
I could move. Not quickly, but I could in theory get up and walk away.
We both knew I wasn’t going to.
Alex hitched his thumbs beneath the elastic of his boxers and I watched, rapt, as he shoved them down and kicked them off, thick cock bobbing as he moved. He grasped the base, squeezed until he gasped and a drop of moisture pearled the crown of his cock. My breath hitched and I tried not to become a panting cliché, but it was hard. In so many, many ways.
Alex slid his hand along his shaft, teasing his arousal, drifting his fingers over his nipples until they went hard and goosebumps feathered across his stomach, stirring the coarse hair below his navel.
“You like this.”
It wasn’t a question and it didn’t require verbal confirmation when heat blazed across my own cheeks, my cock painfully hard and obvious.
He put one knee on the bed and looked down at himself, giving his attention to the stroke of his hand and his cock as it strained forward into his grip. Strands of blond hair sliced sickle-sharp across his cheekbones with every soft, short inhale he took as his pace quickened and eased up again, rhythm rising and falling like the amplitude of a wave. It was mesmerizing.Hewas mesmerizing. He glanced up at me from beneath his lashes.
“I like being watched, and I especially like being watched by you. You don’t have to participate, but you’ll be gone in a couple of days, so what does it matter if you do?”
Desire saturated me. I swear I felt it oozing from every pore, sizzling against the backs of my eyelids when I closed them and took in a deep breath. Even my goddamn back could tell the difference in the fires that ran through me. One quelled the other. I could hardly breathe.
“Keep going,” I whispered.
His strokes slowed, became languid and sensual. I got an illicit thrill from watching him, as if I were on the other side of a window pane, a surreptitious voyeur as he concentrated on building his own pleasure. I was fixated by the way he worked himself over, how his grip tightened at the root, loosened at the head, circled over his crown and rubbed at the piercing there. He gave it a slight tug and made a quiet rumble of sound that I echoed as if it were me he had touched. I thought I might come at that moment and inhaled a sharp, shuddering breath.
Alex put his other knee on the bed, straddling my calves, the tight strain of his thighs rounding his muscles, cock close enough that I could have touched it had I reached while he stroked himself. He was right. I thrived on the illusion of self-control. Pleasure and ache coursed through my body, mounting with each denial and I knew in this case, if I could hang on long enough, the reward would be worth it.
Alex leaned forward on one carefully placed hand, conscious of my back. His words fell close enough to my lips that they might as well have been a kiss. Heat simmered from my toes all the way to the top of my head.
“Tell me to stop and I will.” His teeth grazed my lower lip and tugged, and when I pushed forward into him, he pulled back just out of range, earning a frustrated growl from me.
I seized the top of his thigh in one hand, cuffed the back of his neck with the other and dragged him back. “Stop right now and I’ll sacrifice what’s left of my back to kill you,” I ground out.
His laughter spilled into my open mouth.