Page 20 of Vine (Island Love #3)
CHAPTER 19
MAX
I joined Caspian later. In general, I maintained a strict bedtime routine: tidying the house before ablutions, then bed, whereupon I usually listened to a podcast or watched a nature documentary. Or reread a few pages from Perfect Peach, which lived on my bedside table. Tonight, the guide was superfluous, seeing as la mer Caspienne was already in my bed.
Burrowed deep into the duvet, Caspian snored. Not like my dad and his impression of a vacuum cleaner with a coin stuck in the nozzle. More of a cute bumblebee too drunk on sweet nectar to buzz properly. For a long time, I sat by the bed and watched him, curled in on himself like a shrimp, his vulnerable parts tucked away. In contrast, at my feet, Noir also snoozed, but spreadeagled on his back with his paws in the air, showing off his pink hairless belly and floppy balls. It was an exposed position; I’d read it signified complete trust.
Maybe Caspian would sleep on his back one day. Until he did, I’d curl myself up too, snuggled around him like an extra layer of protection.
“You slept for ten hours and six minutes,” I informed him when he woke.
“Good.” His voice was a dry, croaky rasp. “My life has a tendency to deteriorate when I’m awake.” Rubbing his nose, he blinked a few times.
We faced each other, resting our heads on our respective pillows. I’d not practised curling around him last night. I’d stayed on my side, as he’d fallen asleep before I could check he consented. “You can stay here with me today.”
He yawned, so widely I could inspect all his bottom teeth. They were almost as good as mine. “As appealing as that sounds, Max, I’m going to have to face the music some time. Might as well get it over with, even if I don’t like the tune it’s playing.”
Many years ago, by painful degrees, I learned people aren’t hungry enough to eat a horse, they do not repeat themselves until they are blue in the face, nor are they dying for a drink. Not unless they are crawling through a desert. Therefore, I was ninety-nine percent sure the world outside my bedroom wasn’t blasting out a dreadful tune.
Emboldened, I hazarded one of my own, my second in two days. “We could change the tune.”
It must have been a great response. Under the duvet, Caspian’s fingers threaded through mine, and his unhappy mouth turned up at the corners. If he kept that sleepy little smile going for much longer, he was going to get himself kissed.
A warm foot hooked around my calf. “And how do you plan on doing that?”
“I haven’t worked out yet.” And I never would if his foot climbed any higher. “But we could stay here in bed and see if either of us comes up with something.”
He gave a sexy, soft laugh, and his foot wheedled in between both my calves. A restful night had done him good. The dark circles hadn’t gone away, but he’d calmed. Through the fabric of my pyjamas, his knee nudged my optimistic morning erection. A purring sound I wasn’t used to making escaped my throat. Caspian’s sleepy smile changed into a naughtier one. “Well, that didn’t take very long.”
Raising himself onto an elbow, he folded back the duvet from around my shoulders until it bunched at my waist. Halfway through the night, I discovered that sleeping next to another man was hotter than the inside of a McDo apple pie, and I’d flung off my pyjama top. The tip of Caspian’s tongue poked between his lips. Very deliberately, he walked his fingers across my collar bone and down my bare arm, before circling his palm around my bicep.
I flexed it, and he chuckled. “I reckon you could take on the world with these.” He gave the muscle a squeeze. “Maybe that’s where I’m going wrong. I should build my muscles up.”
He didn’t need to; he could borrow mine. “I like you exactly as you are,” I blurted, and my face heated. “Let me do your heavy lifting.”
He smiled into my eyes, and my belly squished. “Perhaps I should.”
We kissed, even though we hadn’t brushed our teeth. So not with tongues. Caspian pestered my erection with his knee. “Do we need to do something about this, big boy?”
“Big man,” I corrected, and he laughed, an excellent morning sound. Usually, the weather report on the radio filled the gap between sleep, masturbation, and my first coffee. Caspian’s gravelly, just-woken voice was much warmer and sweeter. If I could persuade him to recite the shipping forecast for southwestern France, my erection would take care of itself.
Duvet-warmed fingers smoothed up my flank. As he watched my reaction, the tip of his tongue poked between his teeth again. If eyes could talk, his would be shouting I’m horny too. Mind you, they’d be competing over the clamour of my own. As his knee pressed into my achy, heavy balls, his mouth teamed up with his eyes. “Not sure you should be carrying this extra weight around with you all day.”
In a sudden move, I pushed him onto his back. “That’s it.” I grunted. “Enough talking. We’re going to have sex now.”
Climbing all over him, I wrenched down his underwear. Unlike me, Caspian didn’t wear comfy boxer shorts. He wore small elasticated briefs, and they were the most stupid but sexy scraps of fabric ever sewn together. At a little tearing sound, he burst into laughter. “Oh my god, you’re so…” he searched for the word in French, “toppy!”
I withdrew like I’d been slapped. Merde, what was I doing? He wasn’t here for sex! He was here because he needed rest and care. And help and advice from Colette.
Caspian’s eyebrows pulled into a frown. “You’d better only be stopping to grab lube and a condom, Max.”
“What?”
“You know, those things men like us use to … um… ease the passage, so to speak?”
“What passage? You’re supposed to be resting.” His words were firing into me, but my brain was spitting them out again. The shipping report and coffee began to seem more attractive.
Caspian chuckled. Taking my hand, he guided it under the duvet. At the same time, he brought his knees up and tilted his hips forward. As our joined hands bypassed his dick, he rearranged his hold, so that my index finger prodded the divide between his bum cheeks. Blood rushed to my groin. “This passage, big man .”
“What, you mean, now?”
His eyes danced. “Yes, now. Unless you have something urgent to do first. Or need to light a few scented candles to get yourself in the mood.” This time when he thrust up again, his thigh made proper contact with my erection dangling over it. “Though it’s my impression you already are.”
With a flash of his quite good teeth, Caspian jerked his chin towards my bedside drawer. “Come on. Lube? Condoms?”
Some of the blood rushing to my cock diverted to the skin of my cheeks. “Yes, there are both in there.” I focused on his left ear. “But I’ve never performed penetrative sex. Or been penetrated myself,” I added for clarity, in case he was proposing we do it the other way around. “Except with a gloved finger by a doctor when I had appendicitis aged twenty-one. It was… unpleasant.”
As was a painful experiment with a lubed carrot, but that was private. I waited for Caspian to laugh. Instead, he pressed his lips against my beard.
“Well, I’m asking you to penetrate me, big man .” His thigh and my erection edged closer. “A dose of Vitamin Max might be just what the doctor ordered.” Now he did laugh, but only in a teasing, friendly way. “And before you say it, I am well aware you are neither a vitamin nor a prescription item.”