Page 33 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

LUCA

The best part is how Noel lets me cuddle him afterwards.

No weeping or baring of teeth, no wariness or anger or despair; no inability to reconcile the dichotomy between sex and aftercare.

When I carry him to bed, he puts his arms around me.

When I bundle him into my arms, he snuggles in close.

All that usual fight’s gone right out of him like it never was and the resistant, bratty side of him has gone dormant for now. He is all mine.

I lay kisses along his face and neck and listen to him sigh, his head tilting back to expose the long, pale line of his throat.

My tongue finds his pulse there and I nibble, gently, where I seem to always be leaving bruises on him.

And he’s never complained about that either.

I think he likes it as much as I do, claimed in this primal and feral sort of way.

If there’s anything that can be said about the two of us—and there is a lot, I think, or at least a lot that I could say—it’s that we’re compatible in this way .

We just fit.

And I want him again. I can feel myself stirring as I mouth his neck and shoulders and listen the small sounds he makes in his throat. I press myself against his leg and he laughs softly. “Really?”

“Sorry,” I say, even though I’m not. “I just like you.”

Noel tilts his head at me. He is so lovely like this, in the aftermath of our intimacy.

All languid and flushed and freshly marked up, and it only makes me want him more.

But I was pretty damn rough with him, so I know better than to expect him to take me again so soon.

He’s still getting used to me and my size.

“I like you, too,” he says, smiling faintly.

I lean down and kiss him. And I pull him close so I can breathe in his scent.

Some heady combination of sweat, sex and him, mixed with rose and something spicy, the last vestiges of his perfume or cologne or whatever it is he wears.

His arms go around me once more as I rub my nose against the base of his throat and lap my tongue against the hollow.

It feels good when his fingers sink into my hair and dig slightly into my scalp.

“I can’t get enough of you,” I say to him. “I really can’t.”

“Hmm. I think you’ll get sick of me eventually.”

I raise my head. “Oh, no. Don’t you dare get all flippant on me.”

“It’s basic math,” he tells me. “Right now you’re just obsessed with me because I’m a cute guy in your bed after five billion years of having boring straight sex with your wife.”

“Straight sex isn’t boring ,” I object, almost on principle. “ I mean—it can be fun, I guess. It’s not the worst thing in the world.”

He raises an eyebrow at me. “Really, Luca? Then what are you doing here if it’s so fun ?”

I laugh. “Because obviously I like this a lot more,” I tell him. “Oh, come on, Noel. Don’t pout. There’s a reason I’m here with you while I’m getting a divorce from my wife.”

“Maybe it’s just Demi you don’t like,” he posits. “Maybe you haven’t met the right girl yet.”

This rhetoric is awfully familiar, and it’s almost comical hearing it from the thoroughly fucked boy in my bed. I have to smile. “I’ve met plenty of girls, Noel. Trust me, it’s not the same.”

“What’s it like, though?” he presses. “Sex with a girl. There must be something halfway decent about it, if you did it for so long. If it’s fun. ” Of course he’s caught up on that. I shouldn’t have even said anything.

“Well, our bedroom wasn’t exactly on fire, but—” I feel awkward all of a sudden. “Have you really never done it, Noel? Never had a phase where you thought you were straight? Or wanted to at least give it a shot?”

“No,” he says dryly. “Not once. The prospect of being gay was never that scary for me. It was just a known fact.”

Fucking hell. We really did grow up in different times.

I remember when the members of my high school’s Gay Straight Alliance were bullied and mocked relentlessly, when the outed kids had their lockers vandalized.

I remember, very distinctly, the terror that I would be targeted next, especially when rumors started swirling about my friend Killian’s sexuality—and then we graduated. One less thing to worry about.

Is that really all gone now? Or diminished, at least? I hope so.

“Alright, well,” I begin, still awkward. “It’s, I don’t know. It’s warm and wet and it’s feels pretty good.” I shrug. “Like, vaginas are purpose-made for that sort of thing. It’s really not a bad place at all to be, once you’re in.”

“But isn’t that the hard part? Getting there.” His lips quirk. “Uh, pun not intended.”

“Yes,” I confess. “It kind of is. It was easier if I was drunk or fucked up in some way. Made it easier to imagine that she was whatever I wanted her to be. But, you know, the imagination in general is pretty powerful. It’s good enough to jerk off to, and it’s definitely good enough to get inside a girl you’re not attracted to. ”

He’s quiet for a moment, absorbing this. “That’s awful ,” he says at last. “I mean, for her. She has no idea you’re pretending she’s anyone but who she is in that moment. It’s kinda sick, when you think about it.”

Until that moment I hadn’t thought about it, not in that way, and well, fuck. Another tally to my long list of sins against Demi and also very generally. I sit up and brush my hair out of my face. “You’re right. It is fucked up.”

“Hey.” Noel reaches for me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I was just thinking out loud.”

I take his hand. It’s cool against my warm skin, his fingers slender and tapered, nails filed and freshly painted the night before; I watched him do it at the kitchen table.

Without thinking I pull them until the knuckles crack, and I can tell he likes it from the little smile on his face.

“You didn’t,” I say. “It just made me realize something, that’s all. ”

He looks cutely at me, all Bambi eyes and disheveled hair that contrasts sharply with the white pillowcase beneath his head. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I still like you, you dog.”

I turn over his hand. His forearm and palm has some degree of rug burn. His knees probably do, too. Oops. “Well, at least someone does.”

And when he whines for me to come back, I do. I cuddle back up with him and pull the blankets over us. I can feel the goosebumps on his body when he huddles up against me and I hold him close, rubbing his back to warm him up faster.

It’s funny, the way he makes me think about things I never, ever would.

There is some part of him that is far more practiced at introspection than I.

True self-awareness, I think, is something that comes with age and experience—I just don’t think early twenty-somethings are capable of being wholly aware when their frontal lobes aren’t even done forming.

But for all of Noel’s antics and self-centeredness, there are aspects of him that are sort of wise beyond his years.

Like some part of his soul has aged prematurely.

“Actually,” Noel says, breaking into my thoughts before I can spiral too far into them, “I like you so much that I want to ask you something.”

“Shoot,” I say, kissing his hair.

He squirms in my arms, turning his face up to look at me. “I was wondering if we could stop using condoms. ”

“Oh.” And now I’m the one squirming, aware of my half-hard dick that’s now coming back to life at this because it’s very interested in the idea of not using condoms. “Um,” I say, “why?”

“Why do you think ?” he says scornfully. “Because it would feel so much better for both of us. Duh. Besides, I hate the smell of latex.”

It really was a stupid question. And I haven’t really been thinking about it, but now that I am, I suddenly want it too.

Even if it might be a disastrous idea. I try to think with my big head and not the little one, which doesn’t give half a shit about good ideas or bad ones, only how Noel would feel around me with absolutely nothing between us and fuck me.

“Well,” I say, “when was the last time you got tested?”

“Before Jordan. Clean.”

“That was a year ago.”

“I used condoms with him the whole time. And I’m on PrEP.”

Yes, I remember seeing the box in his nightstand.

It was more than what I’d been doing, which was fuck all—but in my defense, I was married to the same woman for several years.

Which I tell him, honestly: “I didn’t use protection with Demi, since she was on the pill.

It’s been years and years since I’ve gotten tested.

” I pause. “I mean, do you want me to? Would that make you feel better?”

A half-shrug in response. “I trust you.”

And he has no idea, not the faintest , how much it means to me to hear him say that.

At last .

All I’ve wanted since we’ve begun this ride of ours was for him to trust me, even a little.

To open up to me, to give himself over. I’ve only gleaned the bits and pieces, here and there.

I’ve felt it, when we have sex. But to hear him tell me he trusts me means so much more because he’s never come close to such a confession.

There’s the vulnerability of the moment—sex—and then there’s admitting it outright.

I tip his face up toward mine and kiss him. “I trust you, too,” I tell him.

I am so reluctant to leave Noel for the mountain the next morning that I almost don’t. Even though that’s the whole reason I came here in the first place.

I wake long before my six-thirty alarm, and he’s still fast asleep tucked into my side.

He doesn’t stir when I lean over to switch on the lamp and check the time on my phone (fifteen ’til six).

Or when I snuggle closer, either, my lips brushing his bare shoulder before I run the tip of my nose along his neck, burying my face in it.

It’s one of those quiet moments when I feel no shame whatsoever.