Page 8 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

“Oh my god,” he whispers. And, “Oh, fuck .”

I move. Slow at first, easy, murmuring to him to relax as I kiss his face and neck, and then faster and harder as he opens up to me.

He makes the cutest noises, keening and sweet.

One hand is still locked around the frame above his head, but the other comes around my back, fingers digging in between my shoulder blades.

I know I’m not going to last much longer with him wrapped around me like this.

“You feel so fucking good, Noel,” I tell him softly. “You’re perfect.”

“Luca,” he whines against my ear. “Please.”

He’s been so good, after all, and he’s taken me so damn well.

With some effort I straighten up and I take a moment to gaze down at him once more, how lovely and disheveled he is on the cusp of coming apart on my cock: red-faced and swollen-lipped, begging inaudibly.

He is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life until this moment and I’m going to immortalize it forever in my brain.

I let my eyes rake over him one last time, my hips still rocking against his, before my fingers caress along his flank, around his stomach and down at last to his pretty, rosy-tipped cock.

The moment I touch him he explodes. His hips burst upwards as a ragged, high-pitched gasp is torn from his throat, and his head twists to the side.

His come spills across his stomach as his nails rip down my back and he squeezes all around me, putting a chokehold on me, and I have no choice but to follow.

I roughly shove myself inside him as far as I can go and groan as I finish, right after him.

For a second the sensation is like falling.

It’s like being everywhere in him, all at once.

Like I’m spreading myself through the very core of him and it’s so intense, pulse after pulse as I empty myself until, at long last, there’s absolutely nothing left.

My head collapses against his neck. He pants my name again and I breathe his, and for one gratifying minute we stay just like that. Sweaty and wrapped up in each other. Me inside of him still.

And then he wriggles out of my grasp, off the bed, and disappears from the bedroom, leaving me alone and breathless.

Noel is dressed by the time he returns from the bathroom and I am not.

I am, in fact, lounging across his bed with the full expectation he is going to climb back in and rejoin me, but I can see now that’s absolutely not going to happen.

He folds his arms with a bemused expression as I lean over and begin grabbing for my discarded clothing.

“What is this?” he asks.

“Uh, nothing.” Just some mismatched expectations, that’s all.

“I was spacing out.” I think I disguise my disappointment well enough, though.

My underwear and jeans have somehow wound up across the room and I have to get up and walk, bare-assed, over to fetch them.

It’s a short walk of shame, as far as things go, but it feels like miles.

“Uh-huh.”

Fine, whatever. “Not much of a cuddler?” I say, yanking up my pants.

I turn around in time to catch his scrunched up expression. “What for?”

It takes me a few seconds to even figure out a response to that. “Uh...what do you mean, what for?”

“Cuddling after sex?”

I pause again to study his face. He seems genuinely bewildered by the idea, eyebrows knit together in an expression of consternation.

There are well-worn indentations in his lower lip where he worries it constantly with his front teeth—even now, as I watch him.

I want to tug it out of his mouth. “Why are you acting like that’s weird?

It’s completely natural. I’ve never not done it. ”

He’s dismissive. “Don’t see the point. No one’s horny anymore after.”

I don’t even know where to begin with that. “It’s not even remotely about being horny. Cuddling isn’t inherently horny . ”

“What is it about, then?”

Oh, boy. I sit gingerly on the edge of the bed and rub my hands together.

I am suddenly very cold. I also kind of want to just leave, since this has sharply derailed from something beautifully, intensely intimate to.

..whatever the fuck this is. The exact opposite. “You know, hormones and bonding and?—”

“Why would we bond?” he wants to know.

“Forget it, Noel.”

Noel tilts his head, as if considering me, before he comes and sits on the bed.

He crawls to the center and tucks his legs beneath him.

I am thinking about just getting up and leaving.

I’m in desperate need of a shower, anyway.

All I can smell is sweat and sex. Which is good until your partner makes everything weird, then you just want to be clean and move on.

“I’ve never bothered,” he tells me. “I just call hookups an Uber after. I sorta just want them to leave.”

“You want me to go?” I’m already standing up.

He grabs my wrist. “No. Not yet. I want to talk.” I sink slowly back onto the very edge of the mattress.

“Jordan would always get up right after, too,” he goes on.

“My ex-boyfriend. He’d get really hungry.

Literally, he’d just pull out, toss the condom in the kitchen trash and eat chips or something.

” He eyes me. “Do you want something to eat? I guess it’s past lunchtime. ”

I rub my eyes. “No.”

Noel seems unsure suddenly, as if my criticism of his post-coital behavior is hitting hard. For the first time I see a crack in his seemingly unflappable esteem. “Was it okay?” he frets. “Did I do something wrong?”

“What? No. It was good.” Really good, actually. I would’ve been happy to go over this post-mortem with him if he’d stuck around for a snuggle, but I’m not really in the mood for it anymore.

Hard to say no to his sweet face though.

It’s so earnest, the way he looks at me with those big, down-turned eyes of his—their color is brilliant in daylight.

They’re a brown so rich and light that amber is a far more accurate description.

They give him a vaguely sad demeanor even when he isn’t, and the effect is multiplied when he is upset. Which he seems to be, now.

Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything about cuddling. I guess cuddling with a hookup could be weird—I wouldn’t know, I never had any one-night stands with strangers, I don’t have a frame of reference. But then I remember he said his boyfriend never cuddled him either, and I do think that’s weird.

I reach over and take his hand, and after a split-second of resistance he lets me. I give him a smile. “It was perfect, Noel,” I say. “I really enjoyed it, if you couldn’t tell.”

He gives me a tentative smile back and ducks his head. “You’re a dork.”

“Sue me.” I take my hand back. “Did you like it?”

“Yes,” he says, still smiling. “If you couldn’t tell. ” He really is a brat. Before I can retort, he says, “Do you want to do it?”

“Do what?”

“The kink stuff. Try it out with me. It’d be fun. ”

“Oh...” Fun seems like an understatement.

I am positive it would be an earth-shattering experience if what we just did was any indication.

He was so ardent, passionate, intense, at least during .

Was he always like that for everyone? It’s my turn to say, “I don’t know.

” Immediately Noel is put out. I can see his face shutter.

“Hey,” I add, “I don’t know anything about this sort of thing.

And we literally just had sex for the first time.

This is all happening super fast for me. ”

“So what? You’re not getting any younger.”

“ Ouch. ”

Noel makes a face. “It’s a figure of speech, Luca. You know what I mean. I’m not calling you old, get over yourself.” He tosses his hair out of his face. “Seriously. Let’s assume you do move in—why not?”

“Like I said. I’m basic and boring. Missionary with the lights off type shit. What we just did was the most exciting, mind-blowing shit I’ve done in literal years.”

“What about before the wife?”

“Same deal—I mean, it was pretty standard stuff.” And I don’t know why I feel embarrassed telling a twenty-something about my not-so-illustrious sex life, but I do.

“You’re good in bed for all that,” he tells me, frank and sincere.

“Thanks, I guess.”

“You’ve never wanted to do more? Push some boundaries? We could explore it together, you know. It’s not all just beating the shit out of each other.” He tucks his hair behind his ears. “Luca, really. Are you gonna just live the same way you did before? What’s the point? ”

Well, that pulls me up short.

Because what is the point, actually? Of making one huge life change and then just doing fuck all after that.

Changing nothing. Living the same way, minus one part of your existence; in this case, my wife.

Was that what I was going to do? Because—if I am truly honest with myself—there is so much of myself that I’ve given up over the years.

Not only my queerness, but other things I used to love and enjoy.

Things I just stopped doing because it wasn’t necessary or convenient to how I was living my life.

Huh.

“It’s a lot at once is all,” I say at last. “I have to think about it, okay? This, the moving thing, all of it. I just need some time.”

He looks at me for a long moment. “Okay,” he says at last. “Fine. Think about it, then. You will actually think about it, right? You’re not just saying shit to placate me.”

“No. I’m not just saying that.”

He nods. I get the feeling I’m being dismissed, though. I can take a hint.

“I’ll call you,” I promise him, before I leave.

“You’d better,” he says.