Page 26

Chapter 26

Nolan

It didn’t seem possible to feel anything but anxious, angry, and even scared on a day when I had to cross paths with Leann. Just being in the same place with her was enough to turn me into a ball of panic and bad memories.

But there I was, a couple of hours after she’d shown up at the tux shop, enjoying a chill ride around my old stomping grounds with Riley.

A shower had rinsed away that skin-crawling feeling, and then I’d taken him through Redmond, Woodinville, and Kirkland, where I’d done most of my growing up. I followed the Bothell-Everett Highway and Lake City Way around the north end of Lake Washington, laughing as I pointed out all the dispensaries that had not been there when I was a kid.

“Can you imagine?” he asked with a laugh. “Being able to get weed, like…” He gestured at a neon pot leaf as we passed yet another dispensary. “Man, that would’ve been so much easier than buying it off other kids.”

“Don’t you still have to be twenty-one?”

“Well, yeah, but there’s fake IDs, adults who can be paid to go in…” He half-shrugged. “No different than buying cigarettes or beer, you know?”

“I wouldn’t know.” I shook my head. “I didn’t smoke anything.”

“No? Never?”

“Are you kidding? My school had one of those policies where if they found out you were in the same time zone as a party where someone smoked weed, you’d be booted off all your sports teams.”

“Ugh. Yeah, we had those, too. But my pothead ass wasn’t exactly worried about getting cut from varsity football.”

“Really?” I glanced at him, grinning. “Did you do any sports?”

“I did cross country and track in junior high. By the time I got to high school, I was way more interested in smoking pot and sucking dick, so—”

I burst out laughing. “Seriously?”

“Well, okay, not like when I was a sophomore. Weed, yes, but the rest…” He waved a hand. “Let’s just say I still hung out with the track team, but I wasn’t running anymore.”

I put a hand to my chest and feigned shock. “And here I thought you were a straitlaced goody-two—”

Riley barked a laugh. “Ooh, no, no, no. I didn’t exactly enlist in the Navy because I had Ivy League universities and Pac 10 sports teams salivating at the prospect of me coming to their schools.”

Something cold zipped down my spine at the memory of why I’d enlisted, but I tamped it down. I was in a good mood, and I was going to enjoy this, damn it. “I’m having a hard time imagining you as a slutty pothead.”

“See, when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so bad. My guidance counselor said I was a”—he made air quotes—“slacker who was aggressively refusing to live up to his full potential.”

I chuckled. “Since when do potheads do anything aggressively?”

“Aww, man.” He let his hand fall to his thigh with a slap. “I wish I’d thought of that comeback in the moment.”

“Too much pot to think on your feet?”

“Don’t judge me.”

“I’m not judging. I was just asking.”

“Yeah, yeah. Fuck off.” He watched the scenery for a moment. “Good God. With all the weed and titty bars out here, I’m surprised there isn’t a Navy base.”

“There was one.”

“There was?”

“Mmhmm. Sand Point. It’s closed now, though.”

“There’s still a Navy base kinda close to here, though, isn’t there?”

I nodded. “Bremerton is across Puget Sound, and then there’s Subbase Bangor.” I glanced at him. “You don’t want to go to those, do you?”

“Fuck no,” he said with a wrinkled nose. “I’m on leave .”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Up ahead, traffic thickened, and I glanced at the clock. “Ugh. We’re probably going to hit some traffic. I was going to go into Seattle, but…” I shook my head. “I think we’ll head north instead.”

“Eh.” Riley shrugged. “You’re driving—it’s up to you.”

“Yeah, but as much as I want to give you the full Seattle experience, we can probably skip the bumper-to-bumper ride.”

“Do you get road rage in traffic?” He sounded oddly interested.

“Um. If people are being stupid.” I paused. “Which… they usually are.”

“Ooh, let’s get into traffic then!” He rubbed his hands together. “I want to watch you snarling at other drivers!”

I laughed, rolling my eyes. “You’re such a dick, you know that?”

“And? You’re acting like this is news.”

I just chuckled.

Rather than giving Riley the Seattle rush hour experience—or the satisfaction of seeing me turn into the poster child for road rage—I took some backroads and headed north. I showed him the old Northgate Mall, which had been converted into offices and a training center for the hockey team.

“I worked there one summer,” I said. “Which is why I’m not sorry to see it’s been turned into something else.”

“Oh yeah? Retail or food service?”

I groaned. “Retail. I should’ve known I was in for it when they actually paid a couple of bucks above minimum wage.”

“Ooh, because they couldn’t keep employees?”

“Mmhmm. They made it sound like they were just generous and took care of their workers. But two weeks in, they were already saying shit like ‘you’re getting paid more than you would elsewhere, so we expect more.’” I tsked and shook my head, then flipped the building the bird just for the hell of it. “I enjoyed boot camp more than I enjoyed working there.”

“Wow. That says a lot. Especially since they say Marine boot camp is a little bit worse than Navy boot camp.”

“A little bit worse?” I shot him a look. “Bruh.”

“What?” He spread his hands and grinned innocently. “I mean, you’re there for a couple of extra weeks, and they yell at you a bit more, but—”

“Motherfucker, I will make you swim back to Okinawa. Do not test me.”

He just snickered, and I elbowed him across the console.

We continued north toward Lynnwood, where I regaled him with another summer’s misery working in the food court.

“Oh, you did the food court thing too?” He made a disgusted sound. “God, I spent three months I will never get back in a burrito place.” He groaned, rolling his eyes. “Fucking hell.”

“Sandwich shop for me.” I flailed a hand at the mall as we drove by. “I’ll never understand how the fuck people manage to make a job like that so awful. I mean, it’s an easy job, you know? Make sandwiches. Ring up sales. Don’t be a dick to customers. It’s fucking easy. But between corporate and customers…”

“Right?” He shook his head. “I remembered my brother complaining about how miserable he was at a pizza joint, and I kept thinking, how can it be miserable? You’re just making pizzas and delivering them. So the fuck what?” He whistled. “Hoo, boy was I in for a shock at my first job.”

“Same. That was some bullshit.”

“Amen to that.” We fist-bumped over the console, and we both chuckled.

Traffic was getting nastier, since my dumb ass had somehow forgotten how much of a mess rush hour really was around here. Plus I was pretty sure it had actually gotten worse in the years I’d been gone.

We were also coming up on dinnertime, so that was as good an excuse as any to get out of the car for a while.

“Anything you’re in the mood for?” I asked.

Riley shot me a look. “Is that a baited question?”

I must not have been running on all eight cylinders, because it took me a second to catch up. Then I did, and I rolled my eyes. “To eat, Riley.” Beat. “Dinner. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“But why?” he cackled. “I’m with you—my mind is always in the gutter.”

“And you’re a Sailor. Don’t forget that.”

He huffed. “Okay. Fine. There’s that. But being a very gay Sailor riding around with an incredibly hot Marine…” He shrugged.

I squirmed in the driver seat, my pulse suddenly ticking up a notch.

He sobered a little. “I, uh… To be serious, if you’re not game after this morning…”

This morning? What was he—

Oh. Ooh. Right.

Amazingly, that brief run-in with Leann had slipped my mind. I’d been so focused on enjoying Riley’s company that it had all just… faded away. For once in my goddamned life, I’d been able to live in the present instead of feeling the past clawing me back.

I wanted more of that.

Fuck dinner. I wanted more of him.

My mouth had gone dry, but as I put on my signal and headed back toward the freeway, I said, “Maybe we should get back to the hotel.”

Riley didn’t say a word.

But the way he adjusted himself in the passenger seat said it all.

Not a moment too soon, Riley dragged me down onto his hotel bed. We’d made it as far as kicking off our shoes and peeling off our shirts, but we were still too damned dressed. My jeans were way too tight. His were in the way, keeping my hands off that amazing ass and thick, hard cock.

We shifted onto our sides, and we made a little headway. His belt was unbuckled. The top button of my fly was popped. But I was just too damn busy touching his hot skin and exploring his mouth, and he seemed preoccupied with kissing me and dragging his hands all over me. I wanted him naked, but more than that, I wanted him .

His hair was long enough now for me to grab a handful of it, and I did exactly that, pulling his head back and kissing his throat.

“Jesus fuck,” he rasped, grinding against me. “Tell me what you want, baby.” I loved how he sounded when he was pleading. “Anything. Tell me…”

I nipped the side of his neck as I slid my other hand down his bare back. What did I want? Him. That was all there was to it.

Except… no. I wanted more.

“Do you feel like bottoming?” My own words made my head spin with need and nerves.

Riley pulled back enough to meet my gaze, and his eyes were huge. “Do you feel like topping?”

For all the reasons I’d shied away from topping for so long, the answer came surprisingly quickly and easily: “I want to fuck you.”

He closed his eyes as a shiver went up his spine. “Oh, God, yeah…”

Exhilaration chased away the fear and nerves. “Yeah?”

He licked his lips, and when he opened his eyes again, they were on fire. “I wasn’t lying when I said I’ve fantasized about it.” He slid his hand down over my clothed cock, grinning when I rutted into his palm. “If the question is, do I want you to fuck me, the answer is pretty much always going to be hell yes .”

I somehow found my breath. “Good. Because that is definitely the question.”

He held my gaze, then moved in and kissed me hard and messy, still rubbing my hard-on through my pants. My lingering nerves faded away because holy shit, no one had ever made me feel this wanted. This craved .

And that was before he broke the kiss and whispered, “Fuck me, Nolan. Please?”

I slid my hand up his back, and I loved the way he whimpered when I grabbed another fistful of his hair. “That what you want? You want me to fuck you?”

“Please?” He moved his hand out of the way and thrust against me, letting me feel his erection through our partially undone clothes. ”God, baby, I want you.”

I couldn’t help the growl that emerged from my throat, and I kissed him hard enough to swallow those amazing little sounds he made. All my history and hurt be damned, I wanted to be inside him, and I wanted that now .

I gripped his hair tighter and purred, “We should get the lube.”

The response was somewhere between a whimper and “fuck yes.”

Somehow, we pried ourselves apart enough for him to grab the bottle off the nightstand. While we were at it, we took off the last of our clothes, and when we came back together—oh God, yeah. I loved the way our bodies fit together. I loved how his hard-on felt when it was trapped alongside mine between us.

“You sure about this?” he mumbled between kisses. “About fucking?”

“Uh-huh. Been… been thinking about it.”

He moaned and rutted harder against me. “Please, baby…”

Ooh , I loved the sound of him begging for me.

I had a flicker of temptation to ask him to get on top and ride me, but I shoved that thought away. Trying to get past my inhibitions about topping someone at the same time I pushed past the ones about someone on my lap—that sounded like a recipe for disaster. Instead, I went with, “Turn around?”

The heat in his eyes almost made me groan. Riley was so damn responsive when he was hot, and now I was going to have him facing away from me?

“On second thought,” I said, “get on your back.”

The low sound he made suggested he really liked that idea. So did the way he lay back and spread his legs, stroking himself as he watched me with smoldering eyes.

Oh, hell, he was sexy like that. Just the thought of pushing into him and pounding him until we both lost it—of him coming all over his stomach while I unloaded inside him—had me out of breath.

I grabbed the lube and positioned myself between those powerful thighs. Fingering him open was sexier than it had any right to be, but what could I say? I loved watching him arch and squirm.

“Jesus, Nolan,” he whined. “Would you just…” He squeezed his eyes shut and rocked his hips, trying to encourage me to finger him faster.

I grinned down at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Just… Just fuck me, dammit.”

I licked my lips and pretended not to notice the familiar prickle of discomfort going up my spine.

I want this. I want him. This had nothing to do with what happened to me.

I withdrew my fingers and grabbed the lube bottle again, and I focused hard on watching him squirm with need while I lubed myself up.

Riley wants me. I want him. This is nothing like anything from the past.

I gave my dick a couple extra pulls, telling myself I was imagining the slight loss of firmness.

My dick works fine. I’m just going to overthink myself into going soft.

I raked my eyes over Riley, watching him play with himself while he gazed at me and bit his lip. The hunger in his eyes was unmistakable, and no one else on the planet had ever made it clearer that my consent and my limits mattered.

Riley wants me. I’m safe with him.

Come on. Don’t fail me now.

Not this again. Come on!

I guided myself to his hole, loving the way he swore and writhed in anticipation. My erection was still flagging a little, but as I teased Riley’s hole, that would bring me back to attention.

Right?

I stroked myself again and pressed a little harder against him.

“God, yeah,” Riley purred. “Fuck me, baby.” He grabbed handfuls of the sheets as he swore under his breath.

I grinned down at him. So damn sexy. So damn needy.

So damn ready to be fucked by a hard cock.

You hear that, body? A hard cock? Hard? Please?

What the fuck? Today had been so great. I was still turned on as all hell. But now that I was trying to slide into him…

I teased him with my fingers just to make him think this was all a means of turning him on. With my other hand, I stroked some more. Added a twist. Everything I’d do when I was trying to get myself off.

And in my fist, my dick went a little softer.

Come on, what the hell? Again? Really? Fucking really? Come on!

But…

This wasn’t going to work, was it? Just like it hadn’t the first time we’d tried it.

I couldn’t stay hard. I couldn’t even stay in the moment. At least if I went soft when I bottomed, no one noticed, but when I topped—which was when my demons were the loudest in my ear—it was tough to hide.

Tough to hide from the man who wanted to get fucked and was about to be sorely disappointed.

With a defeated sigh, I sat back on my heels. “Goddammit.”

Riley tensed. “What’s wrong?”

“I…” I put up my hands and shook my head as heat rose in my cheeks. Great—I could get the blood running into my face, but apparently it didn’t want to go near my cock. For fuck’s sake.

He sat up and touched my arm. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Liar . “I, um…” I met his gaze as shame turned my stomach. “I don’t think this is going to work. Again.”

He stared at me for a second as if he needed a moment to comprehend what I’d said. I nodded downward. He glanced down, and… yeah, he figured it out. It was pretty fucking obvious at that point.

“It’s not going to work,” I said again, mostly to head off any reassurances that we could salvage the situation. We couldn’t. It wasn’t happening. Not tonight.

Dammit. Today had been going so good .

“Okay,” he said softly. “Then let’s not push it. There’s still plenty we can do.”

There was that. He was still hard, and I could at least get him off. Might as well do that before he realized what a turnoff it was for—

“Nolan.” He touched my face. “You still with me?”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t look at him. “Just… didn’t think this would…” The embarrassment was borderline unbearable. I should’ve known this wouldn’t work—that last time hadn’t been a fluke—but I’d been too turned on to think, and now… goddammit. “I didn’t think it would happen again .”

“Hey. Look at me.” He touched my face and made me look in his eyes. “You’ve been carrying what happened for years. We’ve got time to get you past it.”

“Doesn’t seem like much of a turn-on, though. Trying to get fucked by a dick that won’t stay hard.” Ugh, I hated this so much.

“I’m sure it’s rough for you,” he whispered. “That’s the part I’m more concerned about. And I mean it—we’ve got time. You’re not going to get past all your trauma overnight.”

“But none of that trauma is because of you.”

“No, it isn’t. And I don’t want to make more trauma for you by turning this into something that’s stressing you out.” He tipped up my chin and kissed me softly. “We have time , Nolan. I’m not going anywhere.”

Those words had me suddenly choked up. I’d been running away from everything—my past, the people who’d never understand—and the few people who got close to me never stayed that way for long. As soon as the cracks started to show, they’d leave.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, because I didn’t know what else to say.

“You’re not the one who should be sorry for anything.” He carded his fingers through my hair. “You haven’t done anything wrong. And it’s going to take time for the side of you that’s traumatized to trust that I won’t do anything wrong.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “I know you won’t. I’ve never thought you would.”

“But someone else did. You know it’s not me, but some parts of your mind don’t. I can wait while they catch up.”

I touched my forehead to his and exhaled. After all this time, I’d found someone who not only got it, he was willing to stick around while I worked through it?

He touched my face and looked in my eyes. “Do you want to stop?”

“No!” I winced. “No, I don’t. I want to get you off, and I’m… I swear, I’m horny.” I gestured at my useless dick. “I really am.”

He didn’t bat an eye. “I know you are. And I know what you’re up against right now.” He drew me in and kissed me so softly, I thought I might cry. “We can still make each other feel good. Just like we always do.”

“We’re starting from scratch,” I muttered. “Since I killed the damn mood.”

Riley was already shaking his head. “No, you didn’t.”

I eyed him skeptically.

He grinned and slid his hands up my chest. “Do you still want to make me come?”

“Yes,” I breathed, because holy fuck, how was that a question?

“Okay. Well.” He leaned in close. “I still want to make you come too.” His lips grazed mine. “I’m still in the mood to make you feel good, and you’re still in the mood to make me feel good.” He half-shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like anybody’s killed the mood to me.”

It wasn’t that simple and we both knew it, but I appreciated the effort.

And it turned out that kissing him was a lot more fun than talking about why my equipment had failed. My mind tried like hell to stay snagged on the past, but the present—especially Riley’s body and his touch—was way more interesting. We fell back into what we’d done the first night we’d stripped off all our clothes—making out and running our hands all over each other, exploring as if this really was the first time all over again.

To my surprise, my dick got onboard again, too. As I started to get hard, Riley rubbed against me, groaning softly between kisses, and I couldn’t help pushing back, rutting against his thigh. He was steel-hard, and before long—holy fuck, I got there, too. The friction made my head spin, and my body responded as if it had never taken a timeout at the worst possible time. In that moment, I was tempted to grab the lube, tell him to turn over, and get inside him before all my hangups had a chance to remind me why that wasn’t happening.

I didn’t, though. I felt too good, and so did he, judging by his moans and those hitches of his breath. I didn’t want to ruin this.

It was Riley who murmured, “Hand me the lube?”

I froze. “The—”

“Don’t worry. I just want some lube so I can start jerking you off.”

The words drove a soft whimper from my lips, and I couldn’t help grinding harder against him, desperate for that friction.

“God, yeah,” he growled. “Get… Baby, get the lube.”

This time, I didn’t hesitate. And as long as he was putting some on, why not do the same?

We ended up on our sides, and oh, fuck, I loved watching him respond to my slick strokes. And his hand was absolutely magic on my dick, gripping me tight and pumping hard, but not fast. We fell into a rhythm together, slow and lazy and perfect, and about the time I noticed he was fucking into my fist, I realized I’d started doing the same.

“That’s so good,” I panted. “Jesus…”

“Yeah, it is.” He licked his lips and met my gaze, his pupils blown and his eyes on fire. “Can you come like this?”

“I think… I think so.” Though I was afraid to commit to anything after earlier, my orgasm felt inevitable at that point. Not ready to go off this second, but like something that was going to happen if Riley kept going what he was doing.

“I want you to come,” he breathed. “I’m gonna come too. God, baby…” He thrust harder into my hand. “Love what you do to me.”

Even through the haze of arousal, I still couldn’t believe I was doing this to him. That I had him this turned on when I’d been such an utter failure earlier. Maybe he was right after all—I hadn’t killed the mood. And despite my hard-on abandoning us at an inopportune time, Riley still wanted me.

“We’re gonna fuck,” I assured him, slurring a little. “Don’t know when, but—Jesus. I want to fuck your ass.”

“I know you will,” he murmured, and he pumped me even harder. “We’re gonna get there. And when we do, I know you’re gonna feel so fucking good, you’ll make me scream.”

I bit my lip, thrusting into his hand as I kept jacking him.

“We’ll get there.” He sounded out of breath now. “We’re not gonna rush. We’re not gonna push you. When… When we get there, you’re going to be so ready for it, you won’t be able to think about anything except fucking my ass.”

A whimper escaped my throat. “I want that. So bad.”

“I know you do. I want it too.” He kissed me, and he let it linger until he had to come up for air. Panting hard, he said, “However long it takes us to get there is gonna be so, so damn worth it.”

I closed my eyes as cool relief flashed through me like the release of an orgasm, even though I was still building up to that.

“It’ll be worth it,” he breathed again, letting our lips brush. “And I’m in for as long as it takes to get there.”

I shuddered, and I couldn’t help thrusting into his hand. “Riley…”

“This feel good?” he asked. “What we’re doing right now?”

“Uh-huh. So good.”

“Perfect.” He kissed me once more, and he fucked into my hand just like I was doing into his. “We’ll work up to everything else. We’ve got all the damn time in the world.” He gasped as a shiver ran through him. “But this right now is so… fucking… good. ”

I moaned softly, and somehow I managed to murmur, “It so is.” I tightened my grip, reveling in the choked sound he made and the way his rhythm faltered.

He whispered a few curses, and then his words came out almost like a sob, “Jesus, Nolan, everything you do is so…” He trailed off into another strangled, helpless sound, and some precum slicked my strokes, which only sent me higher.

“You close?” I rasped.

“Y-yeah.” He threw his head back. “Right there. I’m… God, yeah…”

Somewhere in the maelstrom that was my head, I was aware that I’d been embarrassed and an emotional mess just a few minutes ago. That didn’t feel important, though. Not when I was hauling Riley closer and closer to the edge, and not when every sound he made and every tremor that went through him took me higher and higher too. The things we couldn’t do now were irrelevant in the light of all the ways I could make him shake and cry out now, and I heard myself begging him to come as if I were begging for my own orgasm.

“Come, Riley,” I whispered. “I want your cum all over me. I want—”

His throaty cry swallowed anything else that tumbled off my tongue, and then his cum shot across my stomach and even onto my chest. My strokes were suddenly slick and hot, and he shuddered violently as he fucked hard into my fist a few more erratic times.

The man I loved came unraveled right there in my arms, and with a shout of mind-blowing release, I was there with him, coming and shaking and falling to pieces.

We were a mess. Cum everywhere. Both of us shaking. Both of us trying to catch our breath. My world was still fucked up, and God knew my head was too, but in that moment, I just didn’t care.

In Riley’s trembling arms, I felt incredible.