Authors: Rhys Ford
“Shoulda chased her out.”
The Irish was high in Quinn’s sleep-velvety voice, and Rafe’s cock thickened when Quinn shimmied up against him, closing the space between their bodies.
“You’ll get cat hair… up there.”
“Dude, she might as well have some fun. I don’t use it. I’m not sticking my ass over a water fountain. Paper’s good enough for me.” He nuzzled again, getting a low purr out of Quinn. His briefs were getting too tight, pulled up by his dick, and Rafe tugged at the elastic, hoping to give himself some room. “How are you doing? Okay?”
“I’m good. Tight. Skin’s tight, but that’s… worry. Still. Why?”
Quinn ground into him again, and Rafe hissed, this time certain Q knew what he was doing to him.
“What time is it? I should call—”
“It’s four in the morning, Q.” It was hard hearing the break in Quinn’s voice. Rafe feathered his fingers over Quinn’s stomach, stroking softly. “Your mom’s probably asleep, and Donal’s snoring in a chair next to her bed.”
“Mum’s the one that snores. Little poodle whimpers. Da makes fun of her for it.” The tenseness along Quinn’s spine receded, and he sighed, uncoiling slowly under Rafe’s touch. “You keep doing that, I won’t be able to go back to sleep.”
“Sleep isn’t really what I had in mind for you. Well, not for an hour or two.” Rafe bit Quinn’s earlobe, teasing it slowly between his teeth. “It’s early, still dark outside, and your cat’s busy playing in her own bubbling fountain. I say we take advantage of—”
“Do you know I almost called her Mangalica? It’s a type of furry pig.”
Quinn’s breath hitched again, but Rafe knew the slight gasp was less about anxiety and more about Rafe’s fingers sliding into Quinn’s boxers and finding his balls.
“God… shite and hell.”
“I love hearing filth come out of that pretty mouth of yours, magpie,” Rafe growled, gently squeezing Quinn’s sac. He got a response he liked. Quinn’s ass clenched along the length of Rafe’s crotch, snagging Rafe’s cock in its cleft. Pulling Quinn onto his back, Rafe bit at the soft spot under Quinn’s jaw. Hunger coursed through him, making it nearly impossible for his hips to stay still. Muttering, he trailed kisses up to Quinn’s ear, licking the ridge he found there. “God, I want to fuck you so bad.”
“Should we be doing this? Mum’s in the hospital—” Quinn began to object, but Rafe’s mouth shut him down.
Their tongues clashed and teased, long enough to be called a skirmish but not wet enough for a battle. After sucking out all of Quinn’s breath, Rafe pulled back, leaving him gasping. Rafe slid his finger between Quinn’s parted lips, then used the damp tip to trace around Quinn’s mouth.
“That’s exactly why we should be doing this. Celebration of life, Q. It’s what we do as a species. We laugh….” Rafe punctuated his words with nibbling kisses, working his way down to Quinn’s nipples. “Cry. Fear. And best of all, fuck. Because as much as I love your mother, and you
know
I love Brigid, I am so damned glad you were okay today. If anything’d happened to you….”
Rafe swore his heart stopped. Literally stopped. The darkness being held at bay by the bathroom light descended upon him, drowning his senses and choking his lungs. Sliding over onto Quinn’s body, Rafe lay down on his lover, draping his thighs on either side of Quinn’s hips, then capturing Quinn’s face in his hands. He needed to breathe. Wanted to, even, but the simple act of getting his muscles to respond seemed beyond him.
“I know it’s not been long… the two of us, I mean—” Rafe started.
“It’s been forever. You used to take the puddings from my lunches.” Quinn covered Rafe’s hands with his. “You’ve known me since forever. It just took you a bit to… look.”
“Oh, I looked. I just made sure no one noticed. I wanted to keep my nose where I had it.” He sobered, seeing his affection reflected back at him in Quinn’s face. “Love you, Quinn. Today… I was so fucking scared. In the car. At the hospital. You scare me more than anyone else in my entire life, Q. And I can’t imagine it being any other way.”
“Not exactly the most romantic thing there.” He squished his cheeks together with his own hands, making fishy kisses at Rafe. Letting go when Rafe laughed, Quinn said quietly. “I love you too.”
This time was different. Their second time. Gone were Quinn’s nerves, and instead of shivering from the unknown, they trembled with anticipation. Clothes were obstacles to overcome, and Rafe had a gut feeling Quinn’s boxers would be useless for anything other than buffing wax off of the Chevelle after he felt them rip in his hands.
He took his time with Quinn, finding all the secret places on his lover’s body. Rafe marveled at the sleek skin along Quinn’s ribs, then the velvet-rough texture of his balls, their rich, musky scent a perfect complement to the sweet-smelling soap. Soft, delicate hair ghosted over Quinn’s thighs, sparse and fine, a contrast to the thick, silken trail around and under his navel.
Rafe found Quinn was ticklish, mostly on the bottoms of his feet, his big toes stiffening, then curling under when Rafe playfully raked his teeth over the meat above his arch. Quinn made some noises about the spot being connected to the chest or heart in reflexology, and Rafe dove back into his explorations, not giving Quinn any more space in his brain to think.
There was a single, simple moment when Rafe knew Quinn’d gone over the edge of his mind and sank down into the animal hidden deep inside of him.
It was a sigh, a murmuring, mouthwatering sigh, and Rafe
knew
Quinn’s focus snapped in on him. Nothing outside of their joining bodies would intrude, and Rafe could savor every moment he had with his quixotic lover.
He couldn’t imagine his life without having a green-eyed, curious Morgan poking at the edges of the universe, unraveling things like the twist of thread or why some people thought cilantro tasted like soap. He’d never been bothered by the hummingbird scramble of Quinn’s mind. It fascinated Rafe—intrigued him beyond all measure—because he simply couldn’t imagine having that much of everything pouring down on him at the same time. Being Quinn meant bailing out the flooded rowboat of his brain with little more than a thimble. Rafe knew that feeling—knew it well.
After all, he’d had his own bailing to do.
With a kiss, Rafe dampened the torrential gush of sensations, leaving Quinn to experience the pleasure their bodies could give. One touch at a time.
His mouth found every inch of Quinn’s body, laving and teasing with teeth, tongue, and fingers. Quinn’s nipples were pink, roughened to a peak, and he clutched at the sheets when Rafe’s mouth closed over the head of his cock.
Quinn, master of languages and ponderer of the vast universe, dissolved into the filthiest string of Gaelic Rafe’d ever had the problem of parsing out.
He understood fuck and possibly dick, although Rafe wasn’t quite sure. He sank the barest of bites into the ridge of Quinn’s cock head, and he got another smattering of hot Irish. Yes, he thought, licking at the spot. That definitely was dick, arse, and now in the dirty stew Quinn spat out.
“See, I’m not understanding you exactly, babe. I’m definitely going to have to become fluent in that tongue of yours, Q.” Rafe got to his knees, parting Quinn’s thighs on either side of him with a nudge of his hands. “The one in your mouth too.”
“
Is fearr Gaeilge briste, na Bearla cliste
,” Quinn growled, grinding his ass against Rafe’s hands as he was lifted up.
Their joining came hard. Quinn demanded it. Fiery and insistent, his hands clutched at Rafe’s shoulders, then his hips. When Rafe put one oil-slick finger to Quinn’s hole, he was met with a round of begging, cloaked verdant and steamy.
“Please, Rafe.” Quinn strained to pull more of Rafe’s touch inside of him. He twisted his fingers, drawing them out of Quinn in a leisurely pull, catching the rim ever so slightly. “God in heaven, Rafe…
please
.”
“Anything you want, magpie.” Rafe slid more lube over his sheathed cock, then pressed its head up against Quinn’s hole. Bending forward, he captured Quinn’s mouth in a fierce kiss, whispering through Quinn’s slightly swollen lips as he slowly pushed in. “We’ll take this slow, Q. I want this to be good for you. So fucking good.”
He eased in, holding back despite Quinn’s impatient urging. It was the right thing to do, especially when Rafe felt Quinn’s body resisting him at first. Stroking Quinn’s sides, he calmed his lover down, reminding him to breathe.
“Relax, baby. Let me in. Take your time. We’ve got forever,” Rafe reminded him. Quinn inhaled sharply, and their eyes met, a kindling of evergreen and cognac. Then Rafe slid in, seated up to the root of his cock with a simple push of Quinn’s hips.
It was like heaven folding over them.
Rafe didn’t want to move. No, he’d planned to remain engulfed in Quinn’s hot clench for as long as possible—maybe even forever if he could figure out a way to get the cat to call for takeout—but Quinn moved, a small shiver of a rocking motion, and Rafe lost his mind.
They ran hot and fierce, coaxing out every last bit of strength they had in their bodies to ride the pleasure of being in one another… around each other… touching belly to belly, hands tangled together and thrusting. The bed squeaked and rocked, its headboard slamming against the solid wall in booming ripples of sound deep enough to rattle Rafe’s teeth.
It was all Rafe could do to hold on. And he held, wrapping Quinn up in his arms, and rocked, pistoning his hips forward in sharp snaps, thrusting in time to Quinn’s mewling, primal cries.
His shoulders stung, bruised from Quinn’s punishing grip on them, but Rafe continued, throwing his head back when Quinn bit down on his neck. There was a taint of copper in the air, and his throat grew hot, its skin painfully raked as Quinn bit again to get a better purchase. Rafe rode the pain, letting it shock him from the edge. With Quinn’s hard cock trapped between them, he rolled his hips, rubbing his belly against Quinn’s shaft.
“Come for me, baby,” he rasped, torn between reaching down to stroke Quinn off and holding Quinn’s hips up so he could hit the spots of pleasure he’d found in his lover’s clench. Quinn ended the debate with a gasping shudder, his body stiffening as his eyes rolled back in his head.
Rafe felt the splash of hot seed hit his chest, and he was done for. He poured himself into Quinn, wishing he could fill every bit of emptiness inside of him, washing away the awkward disjointedness Quinn felt whenever he opened his eyes. He longed to cradle Quinn, holding him in synch with the people and things around him.
But if he did, Rafe’s heart whispered, Quinn would no longer be Quinn. No longer the magpie caught up in the flashy silver of his next thought. There’d be no more journeys into mystical places of unexplored dreams and certainly no babbling streams of Irish-brewed imaginings, laden heavy with rainbows and the most secretive of stars.
Quinn
made
Rafe’s world explode with experiences—from the notice of a dew-jeweled spiderweb while walking for coffee to the wonderment of the city’s bedazzling cloak of lights, a garment she could only truly don once all of the penthouse’s lamps were doused. He’d learned the magic of a melting tiny marshmallow on his tongue right before it slagged into a mug of butterscotch-schnapps-dosed hot chocolate from Quinn.
Just as he’d caught a glimpse of heaven buried in Quinn’s body and was splatted by Quinn’s come.
His body folded in on itself, pouring out every bit of Rafe in its gush to fill Quinn. Rafe panted, resting his weight on Quinn’s heaving chest as he was wrung dry by Quinn’s asscheeks squeezing around him. It took a few seconds for the drunken, drowned feeling to subside, leaving only the sticky salt of their sweat and come. Rafe tried to catch his breath, giving in when he realized how silly he sounded trying to control his heaving intakes. Quinn sighed, grunting slightly when Rafe slid off of him so Quinn wouldn’t be crushed by his weight.
When Rafe felt himself pull free of Quinn’s rim, he mourned their parting, his cock bright with sensations. He needed to get the condom off. It only seemed important because the latex slithered around his cock head, its blood-flushed skin too prickly to be handled with anything other than the gentlest touches. Still, Rafe tugged the sheath off, then slid it onto the remains of Quinn’s boxers on the floor.
Sliding his arms around Quinn, Rafe felt his bones droop, liquefied in the soft afterglow of sex. His neck ached, probably torn open by Quinn’s teeth, and he wasn’t totally certain his shoulders weren’t black and blue from Quinn’s powerful hands, but Rafe didn’t care. He’d take the pain. The pleasure of having Quinn in his life… in his heart… was well worth it.
Clearing his throat, Rafe tried out the one Gaelic phrase he’d worked hard to learn, hammered into him by Kane as they waited for Quinn to return from seeing Brigid. Pushing Quinn’s damp hair from his strong features, Rafe whispered, “
Tá tú iontachá lainn.
”
He must have come close, because Quinn’s lips parted in surprise, and his eyes misted, folding a hazy lace over the green. “Ach, Rafe. Oh…
tá mo chroí istigh ionat
. Truly.”
“Sorry, Q, but that’s the only sentence I know,” Rafe replied ruefully. “You’re going to have to teach me what you just said. ’Cause other than telling you that you’re beautiful, the only other Irish I know has to do with fucking and asses.”
Quinn’s bark of laughter was loud enough to scare the cat out of the bathroom, and Harley tore through the room, launching herself off a corner of the bed to trebuchet herself through the open door and out into the hallway.
“Not to worry,
a ghra
.” Quinn teased Rafe’s mouth with a simmering kiss. “Those are words I can work with.”
“Y
OU
UP
for this? ’Cause, you know, Brownie and I can handle this.” Sanchez put their police-issued unmarked into park and stared at his partner. “You had it rough last night, man. Nothing stopping us from turning the car around and taking you back home.”