Page 34 of Gideon (Finding Home #3)

“You heard,” he says firmly. “Mum’s love is suffocating, and Dad’s so busy at work he lets her get away with it.

But the problem with her love is that she doesn’t see me apart from an extension of herself.

You, however, have always seen me. You might have been impatient and cross and you might have behaved badly.

But at the end you corrected yourself, and you made me see what was in front of me that I might have lost otherwise, because I was too in my head to see Niall clearly.

Whether it started off with good intentions or not, the result was the same.

I got Niall, and you let me have him.” He stares at me curiously. “Would you behave the same way again?”

I bite my lip. “In the interest of complete honesty, I probably would. I was a shithead then.”

Milo laughs, and I stare at him. “Gideon, you might have been a shithead then, but you’re a brutally honest one now.” He lifts my fingers and drops a kiss on them. “At the end of the day, I took someone from you. Probably the only person you really had who you could be you with, and you were hurt.”

“Please,” I scoff. “Niall and I were fucking on and off for years. It wasn’t Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler.”

“What a disturbing image,” he says faintly, and then we gasp as a rough voice still hoarse from sleep speaks from the door.

“You were sleeping with Niall? Niall , your brother’s boyfriend?” Eli says incredulously.

“Oh lovely,” I sigh. “Well, at least I can cross off telling Eli from my itinerary today.”

Milo mumbles a greeting and scarpers away quicker than a nun in a brothel, leaving me standing in an uneasy silence on the patio.

I shift from one foot to the other, wishing I had shoes on and a T-shirt, and maybe a suit of armour. Eli is dressed only in a pair of loose tobacco-brown shorts that hang from the sharp bones of his hips, but he looks as composed as if he were in a dinner suit.

He stares at me, his eyes narrowed, his gaze flitting from the faint marks of his fingers on my hips to the dark mark on my neck. He can’t help the gleam of satisfaction, and I feel a surge of hope.

“Did you sleep well?” I ask brightly.

“You were sleeping with your brother’s boyfriend?”

“Not at the same time,” I say indignantly. “That would have been tacky.”

“ Tacky ? Out of every word in the dictionary, that’s the one you come up with?”

“I don’t think you should lecture me with your constant mangling of the English language,” I say primly.

He laughs but then scrubs his hand down his face. “ This is what you were hiding. I knew there was something.” He shakes his head. “It’s like an episode of fucking Dynasty .”

“Well, as long as you and Niall aren’t wrestling in the fountain, we should all be fine.”

“I could totally take him,” he says meditatively.

“That should not be as hot as it is, Eli.” I walk towards him, loving the way his hands come up to bracket my hips, the way his fingers twitch as if he’s stopping himself from grabbing me. “It was off and on, and it meant nothing . Just an itch to be scratched.”

He shakes his head. “Why, when you want something so bad, is it always so fucking complicated?”

“Is that me? You want me badly?”

“ Cariad , of course it’s you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Sweetheart.” I blush with pleasure and his eyes sharpen. “Oh, you liked that,” he says softly, his voice almost purring. “Look at your face. You like endearments.”

I try to shrug. It’s the worst acting job I’ve ever done. “Eh, it’s okay.”

“Oh really, let’s see. How about enaid which means soul, or annwyl which is beloved?” He draws me close. “Or how about calon bach which means little heart ? ”

That low, hoarse voice whispering endearments against my skin makes me flush hot all over. I slide my arms around him, feeling him grab me tight and the thrust of his cock against mine.

“Eli,” I whisper, and he takes my mouth, forcing his tongue in and twining it with mine.

All my thoughts fly away, and I open my mouth wider, groaning under my breath and letting him push me against the wall because his cock can rub against mine perfectly in that position.

He kisses me for a long time, pulling back only to whisper heated words that would make me red-cheeked if he said them in normal conversation.

But out here as the sky darkens ominously and the first few promised drops of rain start to fall, it feels right.

Like we’re animals and wild and free. No cares, no obligations.

Just me and him and his bloody stupid fucking soft words.

He pulls back and I stare at him. At that freckled nose, the clear olive eyes dark as seaweed now, the full lips swollen from my kisses. “God, you’re gorgeous,” I whisper, and his face twists.

“No, that’s you, Gid. What you see in me is beyond me, but I’m not complaining.”

I open my mouth to dispute this. Doesn’t he know what he is to me? I still inside. What is he to me? But before I can complete the thought, he reaches out and pushes my shorts down, leaving me stark naked on a small cottage patio.

“What are you doing?” I whisper furiously.

“Ssh,” he says, smiling at me wickedly. “There’s no one around, and the hedge is hiding us.”

I cast a glance around, and he’s right. When I look back, he’s smiling. “There’s my Gid,” he says deeply. Then he pushes me into the chair I’d been sitting on.

“What are you doing?”

“Ah now, it must be fairly obvious.”

“Out here?” My voice is slightly squeaky, and he smiles.

“Where else?” Then he leans in and nuzzles my balls, and all my thoughts fly away.

I should be scoping the area for press, the way I look for them before I do anything.

Frankie would shoot me for sure if he knew about this risk.

But all I can feel are the drops of rain starting to patter onto my skin, the coldness of the drops almost stinging against the heat of my flesh.

I cry out as he licks and sucks gently on my balls, his hands rubbing soothingly up and down my thighs, a juxtaposition to the fierceness with which he pulls back and sucks bites into my inner thighs. I spread them and he murmurs approvingly.

He mouths up the crease of my thigh, stopping to inhale deeply.

When he looks up, his eyes are dark as gooseberries and his eyelashes spangled with rain.

“Smells so lush here, love, eh?” he says deeply, bending to nibble at the thin skin of my hipbones and ignoring my cock as it jerks and thumps against my stomach.

“Eli, please,” I groan.

“What, love?”

“I need you.”

“Where?”

Unable to articulate my need, I grab his head and push him towards my cock.

Instead of laughing, he gives a low groan and takes me into his mouth, the heat inside shocking after the cool air.

Pulling back, he licks the veins, pausing at the root where he nudges his nose in, inhaling again.

I groan and shove my hips forward. He holds my cock firmly and I can feel the raindrops on it, the cold startling after the heat of his mouth, like tiny stinging pinches.

“Oh fuck,” I choke out, and he bends to take it in his mouth again, licking off the rain before taking me to the back of his throat and swallowing around me. “Oh, Eli,” I whisper. “Fuck, that feels good.”

He pulls off. “Pinch your nipples, Gid. Go on and do it.” Then he bends back to suckling, and I reach up and twist my nipples, crying out at the arc of pleasure that runs from the nubs to my cock.

My hips move and push against him, and I can feel his nose in my pubes as he swallows again before pulling back and sucking the head while jacking the base.

“You too,” I say, staring at the image of him, hair and chest wet in the dim light. “Get naked, Eli.”

I grab the base of my cock with a protesting moan as he levers up and strips his shorts off, kicking them to one side.

I eye him appreciatively. His wide shoulders, the sleek chest narrowing down to slim hips and long legs, and the ruddy length of his cock standing up proudly between his legs from a thatch of blond curls.

He’s uncut and the head is a dark angry purple colour where the hood has pulled back.

He lowers himself to his knees between my spread legs, and I stay him. “You too,” I say hoarsely. “Touch yourself while you suck me off.”

He groans and, lifting my cock to his mouth, he deep-throats me effortlessly while lowering his hand to his cock and starting to masturbate fiercely.

“Oh yes,” I croon. “It feels so fucking good, Eli.”

I spread my legs and when he pushes his hand at my face, I take his fingers into my mouth and fellate them furiously, making them messy with lots of spit. Then I lean back and groan as he rubs one wet fingertip across my puckered rim. “Yes,” I hiss. “Fuck me with it.”

Then I cry out as he inserts the finger slowly, the rough calluses catching my sensitive rim.

“Oh God, it feels amazing,” I say through gritted teeth as I look down at him, at the erotic image of the length of my cock between those full lips, the absorption on his face as he fingers me, and suddenly lightning fizzes in my groin.

“Going to come,” I grunt, and he dips his head, and I shout out into the evening sky as I pour come down his throat in thick spurts.

For a second I stay there panting, his finger still in my arse, his mouth constricting around me as he swallows my come, incredibly wringing out another spurt of fluid.

Then he leaps to his feet, holding his cock.

“Yes,” I say throatily, looking at him. “Come on me, Eli. Mark me with it. Come on my fucking face.”

The slippery thwacking echoes around the still garden, and then he gives a deep groan. His cock jerks and I close my eyes as hot come lands on my face mingling with the rain, its acrid, sharp smell a counterpoint to the sweetness of the flowers nearby.