Page 29 of The Aster Valley Collection, Vol. 1

TILLER

I couldn’t sleep. Mikey and I had stayed up late playing Scrabble on a deluxe spinning board we’d found in the cabinet under the TV. The man had some Scrabble chops, but I’d still beat the pants off him.

Every time I scored high on a short word, he made the most adorable miffed sound in his throat and squirmed in his seat as he struggled to come up with a plan to do better on his next turn.

Needless to say, by the time we’d gone our separate ways to bed, I’d been turned on and frustrated as hell.

Instead of tugging one out, I’d forced myself into a cold shower and tossed and turned for another hour.

But now I was too annoyed with myself to stay in bed and try to sleep any longer.

There was no point. I threw the covers back and got up.

After grabbing a string cheese and my water bottle out of the fridge, I made sure the door to the back hallway was closed before I turned on the TV so I wouldn’t accidentally wake him.

I flipped through my movie account that Mikey had set up for us before deciding on an old heist movie. The Italian Job was one of my favorites, and I settled into the familiar opening scene after stoking the fire back to life in the fireplace.

The sofa was soft and comfortable under the afghan Mikey had been using earlier, and I could smell a faint trace of his familiar Mikey-vanilla scent on it whenever I shifted.

About halfway through the movie, I heard the creak of a door opening. I turned around to catch him shuffling out of the back hallway with a deep red quilt wrapped around his shoulders. His hair went every which way from his pillow, and his eye squinted against the light from the TV.

“Did I wake you?” I asked softly.

“No. I shouldn’t have had the hot chocolate before bed. The caffeine.” He grabbed his water bottle out of the fridge and came over to curl up in the chair he’d been sitting in earlier. “ The Italian Job ?”

“Mm-hm. You want me to change it to something else?”

The edge of his lip curved up. “Hell no. I love this one.”

I clicked Play again and settled back into the sofa cushions.

Somehow, without really stopping to think about it, we watched three more heist movies, one after the other.

When one finished and we took a bathroom and snack break, we talked about our favorite parts and what we would have done differently.

It turned out, Mikey was as much of a heist fanatic as I was.

“Do you have a ‘go bag’ packed?” he asked, looking over his sexy glasses as he cut up a pineapple and tossed it together with some raspberries and blueberries.

“Not exactly,” I said hesitantly. “But I know exactly what would go in it.”

“Ah-ha!” he said with a laugh, pointing at me over the kitchen island with the sharp knife. “Tell me.”

I began to list the contents of my imaginary backpack, including fake identities, untraceable phones, cash in small bills.

“Multiple currencies?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.

“Dollars—US and Canadian—euros, and pesos. The UK has too many CCTVs, so there’s no point in having pounds.”

We laughed over some of my more outlandish ideas before settling back in to start the next one. I munched happily on the fruit bowl he’d fixed while he snuck bites from something he had stashed in his pajama pocket.

“What do you have there, little sneak?”

“Muffing,” he muttered around a full mouth.

“Is it chocolate muffing?” I teased.

“Moe.”

I stood up and walked over before crouching down to get in his face. “I think it is. And I think I deserve to share your secret chocolate stash.”

He clamped his lips closed and shook his head while shooting me innocent puppy eyes.

I reached under the blanket and into the pocket of his pajama pants. Mikey stiffened, and I suddenly realized what I was doing. Instead of yanking my hand away, I met his eyes and reached in deeper.

Time seemed to stand still while I searched his pocket. I came out with a small zip-top bag of colorful gourmet jelly beans. My fucking favorite. The baggie had a sticker from Honeyed Lemon on it.

“You little harlot,” I said in a low voice, shaking the baggie in front of him like I was a cop who’d found a bag of smack. “Sneaking around with your fancy little stash and not sharing any with me.”

His cheeks were the same shade as the cotton candy beans. “You can’t have them. You’re on a strict?—”

I cut him off with a grin. “Don’t you dare. These are four calories per bean, and I can burn off this entire bag with a simple beatdown of one small personal chef.”

We locked eyes for a second before we both moved.

I snatched the bag out of his reach as he lurched up to try and grab it back.

He ended up climbing my body to get at the candy in my hands while I held it as high as I could with my good arm.

As eager as he was to get the jelly beans from me, he was also conscientious of my injury.

We grappled for a few moments before I faked a gasp of pain.

Mikey lurched back and fell onto the overstuffed chair with wide, worried eyes. “Fuck! Did I hurt you?”

I stepped back, ripped open the bag, and began pouring colorful sugary beans into my mouth. “Suckah,” I said between mouthfuls.

“You cheater!” He lunged for me again, and we both went down. I tried making it onto the sofa so we didn’t hit the hard floor, but then the little minx had his fingertips in my ribs, and I could barely breathe through the laughter.

“Gonna choke,” I warned, trying not to inhale the jelly beans.

“That’s what you get for being a cheaty cheater, you asshole!”

I tossed the empty bag over my shoulder and wrapped my good arm firmly around his back before flipping him onto his back.

One of my knees jammed into the crease of the sofa while I used my other leg for leverage to stay on top of him.

Mikey squealed and laughed, gasping for breath and struggling beneath me.

He was so much smaller than I was, but his body was full of energy and light.

I’d always loved spending time with him.

Simply being in his presence tended to both lift my mood and help me relax, but this…

this was next-level. Feeling his body squirm under mine was waking up every blood cell and body part I possessed, and when I felt myself hardening, I knew I needed to stop this before it went too far.

“Fuck,” I breathed, suddenly coming up against the intersection of stop and don’t-ever-fucking-stop. But I couldn’t stop. At least… at least, I didn’t want to stop. I met his eyes. “I want you so fucking much.”

There. I’d said it.

The desire in his eyes was unmistakable. Time slowed again as the fire cracked and popped in the background.

“Then take me,” he said so softly, I wasn’t sure it was real. I stared into his eyes for another few seconds before lowering my face slowly. I wanted him to have plenty of time to resist, to move out from under me or slap me or… give me any indication he didn’t want this.

But his brown eyes only turned more melty, and the tip of his tongue came out to wet his bottom lip.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” I whispered. “Tell me to stop.”

His hands came up to slide along the sides of my neck and pull me closer. “Impossible.”

When my lips landed on his, I felt like I could breathe again. He tasted like sweet strawberry candy, and I would never be able to get enough of it.

I groaned against his mouth and tightened my arm around his slender body. He felt incredible in my arms, underneath me, against all the parts of my body that had dreamed about pressing into him like this.

The kiss started out light and teasing, a few hesitant brushes of lips and swipes of the tongue before Mikey suddenly lurched up to deepen it.

His fingers tightened on the back of my neck, and his hips arched up into me.

As soon as I felt his hard cock press into my stomach, all bets were off.

His need was like a powder keg blasting my self-control to ash.

I ground down against his leg while licking into his mouth hungrily. The little whimper sound that came out of his throat only threw more fuel on the fire.

“Fuck.” I groaned and then hauled in a breath. “Fuck, I want you so fucking badly.”

I shifted until I had a knee pressed between his legs. The hand I had wrapped around his back had moved down into the back of his pajama pants, and I cursed the sling that kept my other arm immobile between us.

The soft skin of his bare ass beneath my fingers made my dick even harder. I squeezed and grunted into his mouth like a damned animal. The soft sounds of his panting and the leg he brought up to wrap around the back of my thighs reassured me he was on board with everything that was happening.

My mind spun with the reality that I was finally, finally kissing and touching Michael Vining.

I tried not to think about what this meant—whether or not it was a one-off thing—but I couldn’t help but think about how it was already the single hottest hookup I’d ever had, and we weren’t even naked yet.

Mikey’s hands moved under my shirt and around to my stomach. I felt the muscles contract in response, and my dick jerked in desperation. Please touch me.

He muttered something against my mouth that sounded like big fucking dick , but since my brain cells had left the building, it was purely a guess.

And then his cool fingers were on the hot skin under my pajama pants. I sucked in a breath as they inched closer to my straining cock.

“Please,” I croaked. This time it was out loud because I needed it so badly. If he didn’t touch me soon, I was going to cry like a baby.

I tried to distract myself by sneaking a finger down the cleft of his ass cheeks. As soon as I brushed the edge of his hole with a fingertip, his hand wrapped around my dick and I cried out his name.

His voice was shaky and breathless as he thrust his hard cock into my side. “Gonna come if you touch me like that again.”

“Come. Want you to come,” I murmured between kisses to the tender skin behind his ear. I licked and bit at his earlobe as I tried not to thrust too hard into his grip.

“Your arm,” he said hesitantly.

“Fuck my arm,” I growled. “Hate my arm.”

He managed a chuckle between gasping breaths. I yanked my hand out of his pants long enough to suck my middle finger into my mouth to get it nice and wet. When I slid it back down between his cheeks, his strokes on my dick became irregular. He was on the edge, just like he’d said.

I slid the tip of my finger inside him and listened to the garbled sound of need escape his throat.

“That’s it,” I urged. “Give it to me. Come in your pants like you’re about to make me do.”

It was dirty and raw—both of us humping and begging and gasping—but I didn’t have a single desire for it to be any different. It felt real and perfect and somehow inevitable.

“Tiller!” He thrust his cock into my side and threw his head back with a cry. His hand reflexively tightened around my dick when he came, and between that and seeing his face as he orgasmed, it was enough to finish me off.

I pumped into his grip and pressed my face into his damp, hot neck. As I gradually came down from the high, I realized one of Mikey’s hands was rubbing lazy shapes on my bare back where my shirt was rucked up, and his other hand had loosened its hold on my dick.

I pressed kisses into the side of his neck and down along the ridge of his collarbone.

At some point, I must have stretched out the neck of his T-shirt because it was wide enough now for me to see the pale freckles leading to one shoulder.

A few wisps of chest hair peeked out from the shadows, and I could smell the soap on his skin from the shower he must have taken earlier.

It mixed with his own body scent in a way that drove me wild.

Hell, everything about Mikey drove me wild.

“You okay?” I asked, almost too scared to listen for the answer.

I nuzzled his cheek and felt his smile before he spoke. “Mm-hm. You?”

After letting out a sigh of relief, I propped myself up so I wouldn’t squash him. “More than. That was hot.”

He flushed a deeper pink and nodded. “No kidding. I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

I realized we were both in the awkward position of being one-armed.

He had a handful of jizz while I had one arm in a sling.

I sat up and reached for the kitchen towel I’d been using as a napkin with the fruit bowl earlier.

When I handed it to him, he smiled and cleaned off his hand before squirming to get the rest of the way out from under me.

“Gonna need to, ah, change my pajamas,” he said without looking at me. This awkward shyness around me was new, and while I found it a little endearing, I didn’t want him to ever be uncomfortable.

“Can I… I mean… we could… take a quick shower? Together?”

Mikey’s eyes widened as he looked over at me. He was probably wondering how someone so dorky could possibly whack the dork meter even higher. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s… yeah.”

It turned out, this dork was in good company. I grinned at him. “So… that’s a yeah, then?”

He swatted me with the nasty dish towel and then took off running toward the back hallway. “Last one in is a cocky pro baller!” he yelled over his shoulder.

I took my time standing up and shimmying the sticky pants off my junk. Mikey was wrong.

The last one in was the luckiest man on the goddamned planet.