“Roark,” I groaned, hands in his thick black hair as he swallowed my cock in one fluid movement. Never had anyone taken all of me down the back of their throat, and the pressure and suction, the way he leaned back and laved and licked before repeating the maneuver, made me clutch at the wall behind me to remain vertical. “Holy fuck.”
He got his hand wrapped around my leaking cock and began fondling my balls, running his fingers over my crease as he sucked and sucked until I was there, ready, shaking with the concentration that it took to keep my control and not dump onto his tongue.
“Stop,” I commanded.
It took a moment for him to answer as he eased slowly off the end of my dick to lift his eyes to mine. “Why? I want to taste you.”
But instead of listening, I grabbed hold of the short-sleeved T-shirt he was wearing over the long-sleeved one and hauled him to his feet.
“Ess?”
He was confused, but more than that, he was excited, and I saw it in the sudden flush, the way his pupils dilated, and the sharp catch of breath.
Spinning him around, I bent him forward over the back of the couch, loving the way he instinctively grabbed hold.
“Where’s your stuff?”
“There’s lube in the second drawer of the end table, way in the back.”
“Really?” I teased, smacking his ass.
“Just—I wanted to be ready if you ever came over.”
I scoffed.
He looked over his shoulder at me. “It’s only been you for months now, ever since I realized I was living to run into you and get a smile.”
“What about the pharmaceutical rep?” I asked as I reached the end table and rummaged around until I found the tube I was looking for.
He didn’t answer, and when I checked to see why, I found his eyes riveted on me.
“Hello?”
“Yes?”
“God, you are very good for my ego,” I said as I slipped back around the couch to him.
“Your skin is like dark sepia in the low light,” he said hoarsely.
Normally I heard food descriptors attributed to me and my coloring—mocha, chocolate, caramel, and coffee—never anything else. It was never anything more descriptive. But he was a doctor, he was precise, and I liked that. “Is it?”
He nodded as I reached him.
“Big fan of all the shades of brown, are you?”
“Just you,” he breathed. “Everything you.”
“Pardon?” I asked, dropping the tube down onto the couch before I flicked open the button of his jeans and quickly unzipped the denim that hugged his gorgeous round ass.
“I love everything about you.”
I pulled down his jeans and briefs, and when his wet cock bounced free, I took hold and slid my thumb through the pearly drops of precum dribbling out of the slit.
He shuddered in my hand.
“I don’t need protection. It’s been a while for me, close to a year and a half, and I’ve been tested since,” I explained, nuzzling his hair aside to kiss the side of his neck. “And for the record, that’s the only reason I care about the pharmaceutical rep.”
“I’ve never”—he clutched at the back of the couch as I gently nibbled up his throat—“been with anyone without a… ah… ah—”
“Condom?” I offered cheerfully, squatting down behind him and helping him take off one Nike canvas sneaker and then the other before shucking down his jeans and briefs.
“Yeah, that,” he barely answered, his breathing ragged right before I couldn’t take it a moment longer and sank my teeth into his ass.
He bumped forward with a cry, and I grabbed hold of his hips, stilling him before I rose, kissing my way up the curve of his lower back to his spine, rucking up his T-shirt until I pulled it over his head and down to his wrists.
Curling over him, pressing my chest along his back, I breathed next to his ear as I spoke. “There won’t be anyone but me, yeah?”
“Not until you say you’re done.”
I smiled before I turned his head so I could have his mouth.
“And I’ll need a notarized letter if you plan to stop sleeping with me.”
“Duly noted,” I agreed before I kissed him.
I’d loved before, twice, but I’d never been
in
love, and now I got it as I felt a flutter in my chest. There had always been something not quite right in the past—wrong person, wrong time—but now, finally, I was who I wanted to be, and where, and how. I saw myself growing old in Mangrove, living a whole life here, and if I was lucky, I’d have Roark with me for most or all of that time. But I wouldn’t waste any more, and I’d make sure he knew what I wanted.
Breaking the kiss, I grabbed his hips and wrenched him backward so he had to bend over to keep his balance. Forcing his legs apart, I leaned sideways and grabbed the lube, and the sound of the cap popping open made him shiver.
“I don’t take any promises lightly,” I said as I greased my cock before sliding a lubed finger into his ass.
“Neither do I,” he mewled, pushing back, trying to get me to press in deeper.
“You have to go slow and easy.”
“You don’t,” he ground out, his voice thick with craving. “I like slow, but not stopping. Never stopping.”
“You like the stretch?” I asked as I added a second finger that he immediately rammed back on, hard and fast.
“Yes.”
“You want to be filled?”
“Yes,” he growled, and I heard the hunger.
Quickly I withdrew my fingers and took hold of my cock.
“Hurry.”
Pushing against his entrance, I opened him slowly, gently, but as he’d asked, never hesitating, just the relentless press into his body.
“Oh Jesus, you’re huge.”
His ass was tight and hot, and when I shoved deep and felt him take me in, the vise of suction fisting around me, I roared his name because he felt so fucking good.
His muscles rippled and twitched, and I felt them all along my length as I eased a few inches out, only to drive back in, harder the second time, the slick lube that allowed the initial breach now making the in and out pumping a graceful, slippery pounding.
His back arched under my chest and abdomen, and as he met each short, pistoning thrust, I realized I’d never had a lover chase his own pleasure. Everyone else had expected me to pummel them to orgasm. But Roark was loud and demanding, and even when I tried to be gentle, he wouldn’t let me.
“Grab your cock,” I ordered, leaving no question of who was in charge and who was the one doing the submitting.
He stroked his flesh mercilessly, and I felt his muscles clamp down around me even as I reveled in being buried inside of him.
“I’m never loud,” he confessed in a ragged breath, spurting over his hand, coating his fingers as the sight of his climax triggered mine. The sound of him, the feel, his taste, and his abandon wrung my orgasm from me as I used him, pumping hard, filling his channel as I held him tight, one hand gripping his hair, the other on his hip.
The aftershocks were brutal, battering, rolling through us, causing me to ease from his flesh, spin him in my arms, and crush him to my chest, enfolded and safe. He nestled against me, coiling tight, breathing with me, in and out.
“Come get in my bed,” he begged me. “Please.”
I knew where his bedroom was—I’d tucked him in before so I, not him, led the way down the hall.
“Are you thirsty?” he asked as I opened the door and pulled him inside.
“I just want to lie down with you,” I confessed, not even bothering to switch on the lamp, the moonlight allowing me to see in the dark.
His bed was a huge California king sleigh bed with a polished mahogany finish. The first time I saw it, I’d wanted to be in it, and as I sank down onto the soft sheets amid more pillows than any one person needed, with Roark coiling around me, I wasn’t sure I could ever make myself leave.
His left hand smoothed up my abdomen to my chest before settling on the side of my neck. The sounds he made, the sweet little sighs, the sharp indrawn breaths, all let me know that he appreciated the feel of my skin, of me, under his palm.
“We’re a mess,” I murmured as I wrapped him up in my arms and hugged him to me, allowing no wiggle room, just us plastered together, his head notched under my chin.
“Yes.”
“We’re going to make everything sticky.”
I grunted softly.
“I don’t want to date you.”
“How come?” I rumbled, not worried, knowing that this was only the first part of his thought. He was getting there; sex had addled his brain.
“We’re supposed to be together.”
There was the rest. “Yeah, we are,” I agreed.
“So let’s do that.”
“What is it you want?”
He took a breath, which had to be hard, since I’d only tightened my hold, not loosened it. Not that he was complaining. Apparently being bear-hugged agreed with him.
“You won’t get scared.”
“If the big thing didn’t do it, I think you’re good,” I said gruffly.
“But you’re okay with that, with me being sick.”
“I want you to be well, but as long as you’re okay with letting me take care of you and look out for you, as long as you don’t get mad when I remind you to eat right and get lots of sleep and—”
“So, basically, let you be you.”
“Right.”
“And you’ll let me be me.”
“I wouldn’t want you any other way, but you have to take care of yourself not just for you, but for me and for Ivy now, too, yeah?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Good. We’re on the same page.”
“So then, I don’t want you to see anyone else but me.”
“And you either.”
“I want us to spend as much time together as we can, until the day you say, baby, this two houses thing ain’t workin’ for me anymore.”
“Do I have to say ain’t?”
He snorted. “No, you don’t.”
“That’s lucky,” I teased, hooking a hand around the back of his head, taking hold of his hair, grasping tight and yanking so his eyes met mine. “But you could move in with me anytime you like.”
His eyes fluttered as he let the obvious joy of being manhandled, of being made to hold still, wash over him.
“That little catch of breath there spoke volumes,” I announced before I bent close, my lips hovering over his. “You’re crazy about me.”
“Oh yes,” he rushed out.
“That’s lucky, since I feel the same.”
“I’m going to make you so happy,” he whispered against my lips before I claimed his and he opened for me.
“I know,” I crooned after I pulled back, and rolled him over, lying down between his parted thighs.
He wrapped his legs tight around my hips. “Don’t let me go. Don’t ever let me go.”
“No,” I promised before I kissed him again.
I WAS
surprised when Roark came staggering out into the living room wrapped in the quilt from his bed.
“What’re you doing up?” I asked quietly, even as he reached me and leaned into my side.
I myself was wrapped in the flat sheet from his bed as I stood in his living room in front of his bay window.
“I might ask the same of you,” he said, groggy from sleep, his voice gravelly and low.
“Oh, it’s just this thing I do.” I sighed, gesturing at the pink, red, and yellow streaked sky. “I only sleep ’til sunrise.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I sleep until the sun comes up, I watch it, and then I either stay up or go back to bed. Either way I’m good. I just never like to miss it.”
“Even on vacation?”
“Even on vacation.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “My mother used to say that you needed to greet each and every new day so the Lord would always know you were thankful for the time you’d been given.”
He lifted his gaze to mine. “I love that.”
I smiled at him. “It’s annoyed a lot of people over the years.”
“Oh, no, it’s perfect. I’ll wake up every day with you from now on.”
“As long as you promise to go back to sleep,” I cautioned him, “because you especially can’t get run down.”
“Then you’ll have to make sure I want to go back to bed.”
“Oh, I can make sure of that,” I said, bending quickly and putting him over my shoulder.
“No, wait, the sunrise!” he protested. “We have to say thank you.”
I turned to look at the sky changing from dark-washed pink to bright blue. “Thank you for another day,” I murmured, smiling even as I rubbed the ass of the man not squirming in my hold. I turned him so he could see too.
“Thank you for the day,” he sighed.
“Okay, good, now back to bed.”
“You can put me down,” he said, laughing.
“I could,” I agreed as I did the caveman thing and carried him back down the hall toward the bedroom.
“Though this is kind of hot.”
I was laughing, too, when I threw him down on the bed and climbed in with him.
I THOUGHT
it was going to be a quiet, slow Sunday, and as I sat with Roark and Ivy, Dwyer and Takeo, and Hutch and Mike on the back patio of my house, having an amazing meal everyone had pitched in to prepare, I was surprised when the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Mike volunteered, darting back into the house.
“Can I have a mimosa too?” Ivy asked Takeo.
“Do not ask me, ask your father. I have been drinking since I was ten. I doubt I would be the best person to put the query to.”
“Yeah, no,” Dwyer said kindly, taking hold of Takeo’s hand.
“No,” I answered her.
“Crap.”
“So who had money on when Coz’s sister and Chris whatshisname, the hardware store guy, would hook up?”
“Hook up?” Roark groaned. “Really, Hutch? In front of Ivy?”
“He always has a potty mouth,” she told him, leaning over and patting his arm as she’d intermittently done since the two of us got to my place a few hours ago.
I had left Roark in my kitchen, then gone next door and collected Ivy from Hutch and Mike’s place. When we got back, I walked her into the kitchen and told her that Roark and I were going to be seeing a lot of each other, and therefore she, too, would be around him all the time.
Instantly her eyes filled with tears, and Roark had been fast to take her hands and comfort her.
“Oh honey, I promise I’m not trying to take your daddy away from—”
“What?” she asked, before dissolving into laughter for only a moment before the hiccups began. “Ohmygod, no, not even. Pretty please take him.”