Page 47

FORTY-SEVEN

Jethro

My heart is pounding so hard I’m sure Clay can feel it. I’m still lying on top of him, almost nose to nose.

He wants sex, and I’m the dumbass who’s arguing with him. Why am I like this?

I guess because I’ve been trying to do things right for once in my damn life. I’m trying to be honest with myself. “You make it so damn hard,” I mutter under my breath.

“Likewise,” he says, grinding up against me. “But what if we were just…the old us? One more time. Nobody would ever know.”

He’s right. Canada’s best luxury hotel chain has provided us with complete privacy.

“I used to wait for you to come home. Knew I’d get to touch you,” Clay says, running a hand down my back and onto my ass, making me shiver.

“Yeah?” Pushing against my wiser instincts, I kiss him slowly.

“Yeah,” he murmurs against my lips. “Every night. Couldn’t wait until you walked through the door.”

“Y-yeah,” I admit shakily. “Me too.” Talking about this is a brand-new experience, though. For all the sex we used to have, we never discussed it.

He runs his thumb across my upper lip. “You never let on that you cared. You were so fucking casual about it. Just leaning over in the middle of a TV show and putting your hand down my pants.”

“Thought I had to be that way. Talking about it would have been too…” I blow out a breath. “Too real.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. Because he gets me. He always has.

“I didn’t ask questions because I was worried about the answers. I was worried one or both of us would find reasons to stop.”

He bites his lip, and it makes me want to bite it, too. “Mostly I didn’t mind. I liked the suspense of wondering what you were going to do with me. And when you’d decide it was time.”

I sink my hips a little lower onto his. “After dinner, we’d sit on that ratty old couch…”

He grins. “That piece of shit.”

“Sometimes I’d rub your shoulders.” I move my hands to his shoulders now and squeeze the muscles there. “If you got too tight, you’d get one of those headaches.”

“Mmm,” he says, closing his eyes as I begin to knead. “More.”

I slide off his body. “Sit.”

Blinking at me, he sits up. I maneuver behind him, opening my legs to straddle his hips before grabbing his shoulders again. “This was one of my approaches,” I whisper into his ear. “After I worked the kinks out, I might suck on your neck.” Demonstrating, I lower my mouth to his shoulder and drop a kiss. Then another one.

Clay goes very still. Then he tips his head to give me better access to the soft skin of his neck.

“Yeah, you loved it. Got super horny whenever I used my tongue.”

“Who wouldn’t, though?” he mumbles.

“This was only one of my tricks. Sometimes I’d reach over and start playing with you.” I slip a hand around him and then dip into his underwear to palm his hard cock.

He lets fly a string of curses. “Goddamn holy fuck.”

“Back then, you’d bite your lip,” I remind him. “You weren’t as vocal. Like you didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

He leans his head back onto my shoulder. “I didn’t want you to stop.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t.” I stick my tongue into his ear.

He groans. Loudly.

Getting Clay riled up had been my favorite hobby. “I used to think up ways to make you crazy.”

He lets out a gasping chuckle. “It worked.”

“Yeah.” Although now I understand that daydreaming about sex was just one of the ways I avoided thinking deeper thoughts about the two of us. “I was a tease sometimes.” I lighten my touch just to prove the point.

He growls.

“Before I met you,” I say while slowly stroking him, “I’d fooled around with guys before. A little slap and tickle. Jerking a buddy off.”

He makes a horny gasp and thrusts his cock into my hand.

“Always knew that I found guys attractive. Never wanted to put a label on it. But then came you.” I withdraw my hand suddenly, and Clay makes a noise of protest. But then I raise my palm to his mouth. “Lick it.”

He does.

I slip my hand back to its favorite place. “You changed me,” I say, as I start to jack him again. “You…” I use my free hand to tilt his jaw towards my mouth. “You did this.”

I take his mouth in a badly angled kiss that’s more tongue and ambition than skill, but it only takes a moment before we’re both panting.

“I remember,” he says shakily. “One night I just went for it. We were in a hotel. Like this.” He twists away from me, sliding out of my grip. Then he yanks off his underwear and removes his T-shirt.

He kneels on the bed, naked. The perennial golden boy. Tanned skin, toned body. Camera-ready face. Way out of my league. Or so I’d always thought.

But now he’s crawling toward me, pushing me down into the pillows before kissing me senseless.

I’m so turned on. And I feel so lucky. Then and now. Same as always.

The kissing continues as he rides my hips, pausing only to yank my boxers down. Then we’re skin on skin, raring to go. I’m twenty-two and desperate. And I’m thirty-seven and in love. I’m a total mess inside.

But Clay is here and nothing else matters.

“Jetty,” he whispers, bracing a hand on the mattress and looking down at me.

“W-what?”

“I’m really the first guy you kissed?”

I am almost too turned on to answer questions. “I said so, didn’t I?”

“Am I the only one?”

“Yeah. ‘Course.”

Clay likes this answer. A lot. The kiss I get next is blistering hot. Then he kisses his way onto my neck and down my throat. Onto my chest. “Am I the first guy who blew you?”

“Yeah,” I answer heavily. “And you’re sure as hell the only guy I ever blew, then or since.”

He looks up, blue eyes flaring. Then he continues on his path, kissing and tonguing his way down my body until he’s reached the promised land. He licks me from base to tip. And when he takes me into his mouth, I have to throw back my head with pleasure. My skin prickles, and my nipples tighten, and I can’t believe my good luck.

Except I don’t want to just lie here and be serviced. My inner twenty-two-year-old is in the mood to get messy. “Flip around,” I urge Clay. “I need to suck you.”

With his mouth around my cock, he groans. I feel it in my balls.

But then he does what I ask, and we scramble to rearrange ourselves diagonally on the giant bed.

“Hi,” I say to his erection, which is dark red and straining. “Remember me?”

Clay doesn’t have any time for my jokes. He grabs my hair and shoves my head toward his cock.

I take the hint, nuzzling him and skimming a loving hand over his sac, making him groan. “The first time, I tried to fake this,” I say, brushing his tip with my lips. “I wanted you to think I knew what I was doing.”

“Didn’t care about your technique,” he mumbles. “Wanted you so bad.”

Hearing this lights me up, and I sink into the heady work of pleasuring him. He tastes clean and salty, and it’s the best kind of sensory overload. Every place I touch him makes him shiver.

He’s torturing me at the same time, with kisses and tongue. It’s hot and dirty and a revelation. But it’s also deeply familiar. For years, I’d forgotten how this felt—the unique cocktail of lust and equilibrium that I’ve only experienced with Clay. I think I needed to forget it in order to survive.

I’d never been “the one” for anybody, certainly not a catch like Clay. I hadn’t understood that what we had together was rare.

Clay groans, then pulls out of my mouth. He flips his body with the grace of an Olympic swimmer and kisses me deeply. My hand fumbles between our bodies, taking both of us in hand.

He nips my lower lip, and I stroke us toward the finish line.

“Baby,” I gasp, because his blue eyes are closed, and I need to see them.

His bright gaze flips onto mine.

“I love you,” I say to him for the first time in my life.

“Fuck,” he says artfully.

Then we smash our mouths together and come all over the expensive hotel bedding.