Page 53 of This Might Hurt

JUDE

Andrew’s teary eyes widen, staring at me with as much bewilderment as if I just kicked a puppy instead of saying something nice.

His soft lower lip quivers a little. He digs his teeth into it desperately, but after a moment he drops his head, breaking eye contact for the first time, and starts sobbing.

“Oh, hey.” I scramble forward and throw my arms around him so we’re kneeling chest to chest in the middle of the floor.

He pushes his face down into my neck, smearing cum and snot along my skin.

His wide shoulders jerk as he coughs out a few more hoarse, scraping sobs, then goes still and struggles to catch his breath.

I grip him tighter and rub my face in his hair as I look around properly for the first time at the room where he grew up.

I can taste his presence all through this house, a strange tang of fear like biting down on metal.

It’s so heavy. I pictured us bursting into this place and doing…

I don’t know. Whatever he needs to feel like he won.

Now I’m looking into the face of a family so powerful and twisted that it made him like this—where being told that he makes someone happy is the thing that breaks him.

I’ve always said that the key to bluffing is to believe your own bluff.

I truly meant it. Right now, as he cries into my neck with his chest ripped wide open, I can’t make myself believe that I did the right thing by helping him with this giant, fucked-up bluff.

But if I say any of this to him, he’ll wonder why the hell he brought me in the first place.

Andrew clears his throat and I realize his body’s gone still and tense, awkwardness radiating off his too-warm skin. I angle my head to catch the edge of his profile in the dim light. “You want me to let go now?”

He makes a little grumbling, huffing sound instead of using words, pressing closer as if to contradict himself.

When I unwind my arms from him, he sits back on his heels and blinks painfully, confused at how much the light has changed since we last paid attention.

He looks fucking wrecked, his clothes and hair rumpled and his flushed face all wet.

Letting out a slow breath, he shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it.

He starts to touch his own face, then grimaces.

“Here.” I find one of the towels the staff left folded on the bed and try to wipe the cum off his cheeks, which is very generous of me considering I want to leave it there forever. He squirms and tugs away like Buckley when I’m trying to get something out of his whiskers. “Stop, let me—”

When I try again, he jerks back with a protesting growl and glares at me.

“What? You want…” I squint at him, trying to make sure he’s the same asshole I woke up with this morning. “You want to leave it there?”

He narrows his eyes.

“Andrew, come on,” I protest, my patience running out. “I can make more anytime you want.”

One of his eyebrows goes up. After a long moment his shoulders hitch, and he bites his lip again.

When I realize he’s laughing, I can’t hold back a snort.

I crawl over and push my forehead into his shoulder, giggling like a moron and incredibly relieved that I didn’t mess him up forever.

“We’re so fucking weird,” he mumbles, wrapping his arms around me.

Finally he pushes me away with a sheepish expression and scrubs his face thoroughly on the towel.

He has to get right in around his eyes and nostrils and brows, then down his chin and neck to his chest, because I did a really thorough job.

When he glances up, I realize I’m watching him with my mouth partly open and my cock getting hard again.

He lowers his hands to his lap, still gripping the towel between them, and studies me with red-rimmed eyes that are full of his normal self again, both sharp and gentle at once.

It looks like he’s thinking really hard, which I’m glad for because my brain is buzzing, drowned out by the sparking of my nerves and my animal instincts.

I shouldn’t be doing any thinking for us.

Finally he tosses the towel to the side and presses both hands into the carpet to slide himself forward until his knees touch mine.

I keep very still, holding my breath, and watch his eyes trail from my face, down the cream-colored shirt he bought me, to my briefs and my pretty obvious bulge.

He lets out a long breath, swallows. Heat rushes through me like lightning when he reaches up and rests two fingers at the base of my throat, slides them out along my collarbone as far as the shirt will allow.

“You don’t have to…” I whisper. “I know today’s been a lot.”

His eyebrows furrow and he bumps his palm lightly against my mouth to shut me up before dropping his hand again.

He flicks open one button, then the next, pausing between each one to spread the tips of his fingers along my skin.

When my shirt is hanging open, he studies my body and I realize that he’s never gotten to take his time looking at me before.

His hand travels all over in a random, unhurried path, tracing my shoulder, then across one nipple, down to the hair under my bellybutton.

My dick is painfully hard now and I’m doing a worse and worse job at staying still, shivering and making soft, guttural sounds every time his fingers find somewhere new.

He cups my bulge lightly, curiously, and I let out an embarrassing whine.

Without letting go, he leans in and presses his lips to mine.

He hesitates a moment, then slips his tongue into my mouth.

He barely knows what he’s doing, but there’s something about the methodical, determined way he tries one thing, then another, that makes it feel like he’s the guy who invented kissing for the first time.

Like everything he does is perfect, because he’s making the rules.

We make out for ages as he pushes my shirt down off my shoulders and traces the lines of my spine and shoulder blades, scooting closer until he’s almost straddling my lap.

We both go still when the erection in his slacks presses against mine.

Our mouths pull apart and he rests his forehead against my temple, both of us gasping.

I lose control of my hands, slipping them under his shirt to stroke his heated skin, and he tips his pelvis forward to increase the pressure between our cocks with a shaky moan in my ear.

“Do you want it?” I breathe, as if that sentence makes sense, but he nods immediately. He slides one hand up into my hair, carding it in a tender way that melts all my bones. “Have you ever taken anyone in there?” I ask, my head foggy as I struggle to think about how to do this right.

“No.”

I huff out a curse, because I’m already a fucking animal when it comes to him, and that almost sends me over the edge.

“I don’t…” I scrunch my eyes shut, willing myself to be good.

“I’m always careful. I don’t have any reason to think I could be positive for something, but I don’t have test results.

I’ll do this however you want me to, princess. ”

He pulls back so he can rest his forehead against mine. “It’s okay. If you thought there was the smallest chance in hell I could get hurt, you wouldn’t even offer.”

I nod, fucking besotted, because it’s true. If I ever damaged him, I’d punish myself just as severely as I’d punish anyone else.

It’s dark outside now, velvety and humid but without the crickets from Ramona’s house, only eerie stillness.

I help Andrew pull his shirt off, then he gets off my legs and drags his slacks down while I speed-strip my shirt and briefs.

My cock springs up ecstatically, now that I’m no longer using all the willpower in the world to ignore it.

“Do you have lube?” I whisper as Andrew tidies his clothes and pushes them aside.

He has to think for a second, like he doesn’t use it very often.

“Bottom left bathroom cupboard.”

When I come back with the weird fancy organic lube bottle, he’s sitting with his knees pulled up under his chin and his briefs still on, watching me carefully.

His eyes are glazed with want, but I can see that his nerves caught up with him.

I wasn’t kidding earlier, when I told him how lucky I felt.

To see him like this and know he’s mine, so strong and wise but so innocent, like different pieces of him didn’t grow up at the same time, makes me want to cry.

I snatch a pillow from the bed on my way past, then crouch down in front of him and take his face in my hand. “I promise,” I murmur, kissing him in between words, “you’re gonna feel really fucking good.”

He nods, fingers digging deep into my arm.

Kissing him again, I climb gently on top of him and ease him onto his back on the plush carpet.

I rub my cock against his belly, letting him feel my weight on him, letting him press up into me with a soft whine, then helping him get the pillow under his head.

I fucked around with quite a few guys in high school and community college, but I’ve never done it like this.

Not like a sacrament, and not with a virgin.

It has me leaking precum uncontrollably as I kiss a path down his tense body to the edge of the briefs he was scared to take off.

Instead of attacking them, I nudge his knees up and nose along his delicate inner thigh.

Everything about him—his skin, his smell, his damn leg hair, feels expensive and perfect in a way that puts the rest of us peasants to shame.

When I lick down toward his hip crease, he grabs for my hair and tries to crush my head between his thighs, which I have absolutely zero complaints about. I press my tongue against the erection in his briefs, tasting the wet silk, savoring the scent. “I’m gonna take these off, okay?”