Page 26

Chapter 26

Nat

By the time I drop Syd off at Brenda’s and make my way to the Holiday Inn, the hotel bar party is in full swing. Card and cup games have popped up on tables across the floor—several members of the staff have joined in—and the open space against the back wall hosts a dance party of players and staff.

Pulsing house music thuds through the soles of my Converse as I stride into the bar. A surprising number of women have found the dance floor corner, considering the team and most of the staff is male.

I locate Charlie and Devreaux with the flip-cuppers on a makeshift table comprising four rounds pressed together. I don’t see Olli anywhere, but that’s all right. I’ll start here.

“Yo, Grumpy!” Charlie curls an arm over my shoulders and smushes his face against mine. “Come play.”

So I do. “You’re going down, Holls.”

“Fuck that.” Charlie tries to shove me, nearly stumbles off his feet instead, and I laugh. Pick up a plastic red cup and drain the contents, then pour myself another.

“Who’s ready for this shit?” I ask, and the rest of the boys cheer.

We play.

I take Olli’s advice and let myself relax into the night. I can be all the things I’m supposed to be tomorrow, but for tonight, I’m going to be here and only here. With this team. This family .

I let myself drink, smile, laugh. Win and lose, cheer and boo and drink more. And when my eyes wander from the game, they land on someone at a card table, halfway across the room.

A boy. The one I can’t stop looking at.

The one I want to look at.

I let myself look.

And maybe it’s the booze softening my brain, or the laughter of the team, but I can’t help but think, goddamn.

Olli James is beautiful.

It’s a soft, fragile sort of beauty, like it might shatter if I look too long or too hard. But I notice. I notice all the time. I can’t help but be drawn to him—dark skin, buzzed curls, those bright, laughing eyes and soft mouth. Him.

I turn away. Before the beauty breaks.

“Shit, we need to do some shots.” Holls stares into his empty cup. “You with me, Nattie?”

“If I must.” I set my own empty down and follow him to the bar. He slides onto a stool to call to the bartender, and I lean my elbows onto the counter. Someone else presses in beside me.

I know without looking that it’s him. Maybe it’s his soft scent I’ve come to know so well. Or the feel of him, the long, lean body, the sense of calm that washes over me, or simply the sense of rightness, like this is where I belong.

“Fancy meeting you here, Mouse,” he says, and I must have shifted closer, or maybe he did, because his shoulder presses against mine, hard and warm, like the bare skin of his arm against mine.

I grin without restraint. “Nice to see you, Aspen.”

“Oh, we’re keeping that, are we?” he groans. “My mom’s nickname?”

“I thought I’d made it up.” I give him my most innocent arch of brows, even though I’m very much aware of the name’s origins.

He chuckles, and I catch a whiff of alcohol on his breath. “No such luck, Mouse. You ain’t that good. ”

I smile. I feel like I’ve been doing that a lot more lately—at least around him. “Oh, trust me. I’m very good.”

“Is that a euphemism?” Olli bumps my shoulder, wriggles his eyebrows suggestively. “Because, like, yes please. Or wait, no, were you actually talking about nicknames? Cause you didn’t make that up.”

His gaze tilts up to mine, and I fall into those fucking eyes. So many words rise to my tongue. Lines. Things I’d say if he were someone else—a girl I was trying to pick up.

But he’s not.

So I don’t.

“Good game tonight,” are the first words to tumble off my tongue instead, and I hold back a cringe. I sound like a bro looking for a fist bump over a shot of tequila, and the way his teeth pinch at his lower lip, he agrees—is trying not to laugh at me.

Shit, when did I become this unsuave, this awkward? Since I started talking to a beautiful boy with a shot like a sniper and eyes like the sun and a smile radiant enough to set the world afire.

I’m making a royal fucking mess of this.

“You want to dance?” His head tilts back towards the half-cramped dance floor at the back of the bar. “Show those losers how it’s done?”

“I am a little afraid of the dance floor,” I admit, watching Everton grind up on Skyler like they aren’t both heterosexual men in their early thirties.

“Me too.” Olli pushes back from the bar. “Let’s go face our fears.”

The open floor space is a press of hot bodies. I half wonder if we’re melting the snow around the building with all our heat and energy and movement, dancing away the ice age.

Maybe it’s just another way we’re going to break down all the frigid cold in this town.

The music throbs through my feet, through my head and maybe my blood. I’d never claim to listen to all music, because I have my definite preferences, but music always affects me, like it slinks under my skin and weaves into my flesh. Forces its way into my nerves, my brain cells .

Not unlike the man at my side.

My chin bobs to the beat as we sidle into the crowded space. We keep to the side, and my hand ghosts over his shoulderblade to guide him along the wall. In the corner, I stop, turn. I’m not drunk enough to give myself to the music in the violent, pulsing throb of those around us. Instead, I let my hips sway, grin at Olli.

He smiles back, clearly at that same intersection of awkward and drunk, but that’s the thing about dancing. To do it right, you’ve got to submit—utterly—to that beat, to the music, to the beast that wants to dig its claws in and take hold.

So I do. It’s like skating; my body simply understands. Instead of letting the awkwardness and uncertainty catch me, I let the beat guide me.

Olli’s grin widens, and I realize we’re standing two feet apart and a little diagonal—at another intersection—and he’s letting me decide which way to go. Do I make a move?

My heart races, completely separate from the pulsing beat, the booze, the lingering high of the game. I don’t know what I’m going to do until my hands are on his hips and I’m pulling him in. Close.

“Is this okay?” I ask, guiding him against me.

“You tell me.” His breath whispers against my cheek, and his mouth pulls into a soft smile, a little uncertain, but his body’s relaxed beneath my touch. He steps closer, so we’re almost touching.

Almost chest to chest, hip to hip.

My heart races, but my breath flows steady, like the music under my shoes. Except, we’re not dancing anymore. My hands and his hips have stopped moving. We’re both swaying with that pulse of people, but we’re separate, in a bubble all our own.

Everyone else outside, and us alone, here. Together.

I tilt my head.

And I whisper against the shell of his ear. “You want to get out of here? ”

“I got a room here for the night,” he whispers back, and it’s all the confirmation I need.

I find his hand, a little clammy from the heat of all the bodies, and twine my fingers through his; it feels right, my hand in his, entangled in our own little sphere, while the rest of the world goes on without us.

I lead the way through the press of bodies, keeping to the wall again, and he follows me back into the main bar area. It’s less crowded here, though the party’s definitely grown.

A guy I don’t recognize bends over a table in the corner, a rolled bill pressed to his nose, while the girl seated next to him taps a credit card against the polished tabletop. The bartender pretends not to notice as the man snorts the line of coke.

“Talk about no holds barred,” Olli mutters, and I opt not to mention that once, not so long ago, I might have joined them.

“Probably some of Everton’s friends.”

“Right.” He chuckles. “I don’t go to parties like this a lot, can you tell? I’m like some kind of pathetic rookie.”

“Honestly, it’s better.” I nudge through the door and into the hallway. It’s dark, cool, quiet, like a rush of stillness and solitude. “Trust me. It’s nice you’re not as jaded as the rest of us. Everybody else just wants to get fucked up. And then, you know, get fucked.”

He follows me down the hall. “Not you?”

“Me?” I laugh, tip my shoulder against the wall as we wait for the elevator. “I mean, in the old days, for sure. You?”

“Nah, never been my style.” He pauses, drawing me to a halt beside him. “So, is this something you would have done in the old days?”

I wince. Want to find someplace quieter ? And then we find an empty room.

I pull him towards me, gently, like I’m afraid he’ll break.

“I haven’t done this for a long time,” I admit, my hands ghosting over his cheeks. The lightest snag of stubble grates my fingertips, like it’s been a day since he shaved. “And this is . . . definitely different.”

“Why?” He murmurs the words .

I huff. “Honestly? ’Cause I’m kind of afraid you’re gonna run away.”

“Me?” He pulls back, so I get a clear view of the way his brows arch in disbelief. “I’m terrified you’re gonna blink and remember you’re way cooler than me.”

“Cooler?” My brows tug at my forehead in confusion. “I’m a thirty-five-year old Zamboni driver and single parent. What about me seems cool?”

He chuckles. “I was referring more to the bad-boi vibe and tattoos . . . but yeah, when you phrase it like that, I do feel better. Thanks.”

I laugh too, and lean close—but the elevator dings and the doors part.

He tugs me after him and I barely get inside before my lips brush his. Beautiful lips. Lips that deserve so much more than a whispered touch. My fingers slide over his hair. And then I pull him close and kiss .

My eyes flutter closed. I think I’ve never kissed anyone like him, and not just because of his gender or height or the hardness of his body. I want him in a way I’ve never wanted anybody. I want to break down his barriers, soften him, mold him against me.

I kiss the line of his jaw, revel in the sharp hiss of his breath. My teeth nip his ear. Lips move down along the column of his throat.

“Oh, you’re really good at that,” he says, breathless, and I grin against the hollow of his throat, then straighten to kiss him again. This time, I don’t hold back. My tongue caresses the seam of his mouth, begging for entrance, and the little groan that accompanies the parting of his lips sends heat through me in an unexpected wave so strong I gasp too. My fingers tighten in his hair, tangle through the curls, and I step forward into him—

The elevator doors swipe open, jarring me back to reality. We’re in an elevator. Looking out into a thankfully abandoned hallway of the hotel we could possibly—likely—be sharing with other Dingoes players and staff. I might be certain I want more from him, but that doesn’t mean I want to share it with the rest of the team—or presume he does.

“Let’s get to my room,” he says, still breathless, like he reads my thoughts. “Behind a door that locks. ”

“Right.” I weave my fingers through his again and let him lead me out of the elevator, down the hall. He fumbles in his pockets, like he’s trying to remember where he stashed the room key. Finally, his hand slams the scanner. The door clicks, and we push through.

Olli barely gets the room card into its slot on the wall to turn the lights on before I’m pulling him against me, using my shoulders to shove the door closed. Kissing him again. Tongues and teeth, opened mouths. Desperation, heat that surges through me, pools low in my gut. Want, need. His long, lean body curves to fit mine, so I feel him in all the right places, all the ways I’ve wanted to feel him since that first kiss.

So I feel the way his cock presses against the crease of my thigh.

“I’ve wanted this for so long,” I fumble the words against his mouth between kisses. A smile tugs my lips, real and rare. “You’re just so beautiful—”

“You think I’m beautiful?” His forehead tilts against mine, and it’s just him and me. Me. Him.

And yes, he is beautiful. I tried so hard not to notice, to look away, but now I can’t stop looking. Noticing. “So fucking beautiful.”

His mouth slams against mine, and we’re kissing again, pressing closer, closer, chest to chest, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. So he must notice my cock’s rock hard against him.

It’s not enough. I snake my arms around his waist, pull him even closer.

My fingers dance beneath the hem of his shirt, seeking bare skin. He moans as my hands slide up his back, fingers caressing the soft curves of his spine, the ink I know covers the bone.

I want to study it, with my fingers, my eyes. My tongue. Want to explore every inch of him with all my senses—touch him and taste him, breathe in his soft perfume, rock against him to feel the friction of his body.

My fingers crawl higher, lifting his shirt with them, lifting, lifting, a question more than a demand because I’m still surprised he’s letting me do this, has let it get this far .

I’m demi , his gentle voice reminds me, but his hardened cock presses into the crease of my leg, and he’s the one to grip the collar of his shirt and tug it the rest of the way up. It flutters to the floor in a billow of soft white cloth. And my eyes are on him. On that dark, bare skin I’ve wanted to study for so long.

Now, I study.

With my hands and eyes, I study him. I trail my fingers over the muscles of his stomach, chest, shoulders, arms. My eyes follow in their wake to drink in every curve and joint, to look as I haven’t allowed myself to look. My hands drop back to his hips to rock him against me as I press my lips against the curve of neck and trapezius. Along the crest of his shoulder.

He throws his head back to allow me unrestricted access. A strangled little moan precedes his next words. “My turn.”

His fingers slide over my waist, tangle in the bottom of my shirt, and he lifts. My shirt joins his on the floor, and then it’s him studying me.

His eyes skate down my bare skin, hot enough to be a physical caress as he examines me, as his fingers follow his eyes slowly back up my torso. They crawl up my stomach, sending heat flaring in their wake. My cock bulges my jeans, fully hard now, but he doesn’t touch, doesn’t look.

He leans back in to kiss me, and we’re half naked, pressed skin to skin, just like I’ve wanted from him for weeks now, since that first night at the bar, before I had any idea I wanted it.

“What now?” he whispers against my neck. He pins his hips to mine, pressing me into the wall. “What do you want?”

“You’re the expert here.” I nip at his ear. “You lead the way this time.”

“That’s a new one for me.” His mouth skims across my collarbone. “Me being the experienced one. At least you won’t know if I’m screwing up, right?”

I laugh, a breathy whisper of air as he presses a kiss to the hollow between my collarbones. “I highly doubt you could do anything I wouldn’t like. ”

“You have to tell me if I do, okay?” His lips drop. Lower. Lower. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want. You tell me, okay?”

“Deal.” My words are throaty, nearly lost to the desire and heat coursing through my body. “If I were just another guy, what would you do?”

“If you were just another guy? Nothing.” He laughs, right before his mouth closes over my nipple, and his tongue flicks over it. The moan that claws its way from my throat is nothing short of carnal, almost feral.

“You know what I mean,” I choke around my own labored breaths.

“If I could do anything right now,” his lips drift a little lower. “I’d blow you. While I jerk off.”

“Oh, God.” A physical ache of desire accompanies the thought: him on his knees, his mouth on me, his hand on himself.

His lips skim lower. Down my pec to the top of my stomach. My breath hitches, half moan, half growl, and my hips twitch slightly forward, seeking touch, seeking his body, his heat, seeking him.

“Do you want me to blow you, Nat?” Olli murmurs against my abdomen as he trails savage kisses between the lines of muscles.

“Yes,” I say, and I fucking mean it. Right now, there’s nothing I want more than that, than him. Him and me. “Yes, I want that.”

“Good.” He drops to his knees on the floor in front of me.

“Fuck.” My breaths are shallow, labored, my cock pressing so hard against my zipper it’s physically painful, and he lays a kiss against my stomach, right above the button of my jeans.

“You want me to turn off the light?” he asks. “Keep things a little more vague?”

“What? No.” I manage those words clearly. “Hell no. I want to watch.”

“Everything?” His fingers trail over the button of my jeans, and suddenly they’re open, and the zipper’s undone, and there’s just a thin layer of cloth between my bare skin and his waiting mouth. Those lips press just below the waistband of my underwear. “Even me?”

I can't breathe .

“Yes,” I groan. “Especially you.”

“Good,” he says. “Because I want you to watch.”

And then his fingers scoot beneath the elastic, and in one quick swoop, he pulls my underwear down.

Exposing my cock to his waiting mouth.

“Look at this beautiful cock,” he murmurs, and he licks down the length of it.

“Oh, fuck.” My head thumps against the door because the feel of him, the soft skate of his tongue down me, is like having my nerves lit on fire—an inferno of pleasure so strong it’s almost painful. My pulse thuds against my ears, my breaths ragged against my too-tight throat.

His tongue curls under the head, and his mouth closes over the top. Holy hell. It’s all I can do to keep breathing as he slides slowly over my length, because my body simultaneously wants to come and to never stop feeling this fucking bliss.

Watching Olli James bob on my cock might be the hottest thing I've ever seen. “Shit. Shit. More.”

He pulls back, just enough to put a hairsbreadth between my cock and his beautiful, beautiful fucking mouth. “Oh, there will be more.”

His hands slide from my upper thighs, drop down to the button of his jeans. And kneeling in front of me as I watch, Olli unbuttons.

Unzips.

Slides his underwear down his hips to expose his cock to my waiting gaze.

He’s bigger than me. Not that I’ve ever compared cock lengths, but I’m bigger than average, and he’s longer and thicker. But the thought—all thought—vanishes as he lifts his hand to spit into his palm, and his fingers close around the base of that thick length.

“Shit,” I murmur.

“You like that?” he asks, fingers sliding slowly up that fat cock, rendering me absolutely and utterly speechless. Which is hotter, watching him suck me or watching him stroke himself ?

When his mouth closes over the head of my cock again, I'm spared having to decide. That warm, wet mouth, the press of his tongue. The soft suction around me—shit. Hell. Fuck.

I don’t know where to fucking look—at his mouth on my skin, his head bobbing gently up and down, taking a little more of my length each time, or his fingers shuffling over the entirety of his massive cock. Both are beautiful, erotic, have me turned on to the point of bursting.

“Fuck, fuck,” I murmur, and I tangle my fingers into his hair, because I need to feel him under my hands even as I feel him along my cock, sending tingling needles of pleasure through my body. “Oh, fuck, that’s so good.”

Without warning, he takes me all the way down. So I hit the back of his throat, feel the squeeze of his swallow, and I lose control.

One moment, groaning, the next, coming. Just like that. My head hits the door behind me, my body seizing as the pleasure climbs through me in a roaring wave, a waterfall, a torrent of sensation. I don’t know if I cry out his name or simply moan, don’t even feel him swallowing down my release.

“Oh shit, oh my God,” I manage through heaved breaths. My fingers still tangle in his hair as he swallows and sucks, pulling every last drop of the orgasm from me with a brutal force that leaves me cleaned out, hollow.

Sated.

Suddenly, he jerks back, scrambling for his shirt. “Oh, fuck.”

His fist gives one final pump, and his head tilts backwards, mouth rounding into an O of bliss. His face shatters as he comes—and it’s that I’m watching, not him spilling into his discarded shirt. The way all his reservations, all his masks, vanish into the ether and I’m looking at the real Oliver James, Olli laid bare.

I think it’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.

I’d tell him so if I could breathe, move, think, find any kind of muscle response in any part of my boneless body .

“Holy hell.” Olli shifts from his knees to his ass, leans against the wall. His breaths escape in ragged pants. “I think . . . I need . . . a nap. Can you carry me to bed?”

“No way,” I finally manage, and I slide down against the door until my own ass hits the floor. My pants are still undone, underwear still down, half-limp cock hanging. My jeans-clad knee taps against his. “I’m dead. That was . . .”

“Don’t tell me if it was bad,” Olli lays his head against the wall, eyes fluttering closed, and I can’t look away from the splay of his lashes against his cheeks. “Let me pretend like it was as good for you as it was for me.”

I don’t realize I’m going to do it until I’m right beside him, my fingers against his cheek, turning his head. My mouth presses against his, soft and slow and sweet, and I tilt my forehead to his, just like he did to me. “It was fucking incredible. I can’t . . .”

I can’t find the words to explain what just happened. How it was the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced. The best fucking blow job I’ve ever had. How in some twenty years of fucking, this short exchange will live rent free in my head for the rest of my life, outshining all the rest.

“I’m for sure gonna think about it in the shower tomorrow morning,” I tell him instead. “And every shower for the rest of forever.”

He laughs, nudges my shoulder to push me off. “No way.”

“Um, yes way.” I settle back against the wall beside him, focus on tucking myself back together. “Do you have any fucking idea how hard it’s gonna be to not think about it in the locker room?”

He tilts his head towards me, one eye pinched open, the other closed. “Mmm, yes, considering I’ll be the one getting naked?”

That’s a somewhat sobering thought, isn’t it? The idea of having to watch him undress, leaving all that bare beautiful skin on display, taunting me, tantalizing me, and having to force myself to look away, to not notice, to not be fucking aroused by it. “Shit.”

“Nah, it’ll be fine.” He shrugs, so his bare shoulder rubs mine. “I’ve known I was gay for . . . I dunno, most of my life. Never had a problem. ”

Right.

But . . . what does this mean for us? For the soft friendship that’s blossomed between us—or maybe that friendship was always driven by an undercurrent of desire. I don’t have any idea, and I’m too tired and fucked-out to think about it right now.

What happened between us was incredible, and for tonight, that’s enough for me.

“Um. Do you mind if I crash here?” I ask, self-conscious. “I do not want to drive. I can sleep in the other bed . . .”

“I don’t mind. Either bed.” Olli winks, then hops to his feet to find the bathroom. I heave myself up off the floor and flop onto one of the untouched beds. My body’s exhausted, sated, begging for oblivion.

I feel like I’m losing pieces of myself. Diving headfirst into something new without bothering to first check the depth of the water, in a way I haven’t in a long, long time. I want to chase tonight, this feeling, this experience.

Damn the consequences.

I want to chase him, the little ghost who hovers at my shoulder, just out of reach. Untouchable—and yet, maybe not.

My mind savors the thought as darkness sweeps across me. Maybe I should embrace whatever this is, because it feels so right, in a way nothing has for a long, long time. And the things in life that feel right, so few and far between, those are the things you pursue, and when you catch them, you hold onto them. For as long as you can.

But that’s never been a person before.

I’ve never wanted anyone like this, the way I want Olli James.