Homecoming (Dartmoor Book 8)

by Lauren Gilley

  It felt natural to stroke his hair, slowly work the stiffness of pomade from the ends until it felt silky-soft and natural again.

  Tenny’s breathing quieted after a few minutes; his shivering eased. When he spoke again, his voice sounded almost normal – but not the angry, cold voice he used out in the common room around the others. The tone he used when it was just the two of them, in the cigarette-scented aftermath of sex, once the girl of the evening had gone.

  He said, “You were jealous tonight.”

  “Yes.”

  A beat passed. Tenny pushed up, just far enough so they could regard one another. His face was blotchy and pink, and his eyes were shiny, but his cheeks were dry, and he looked in-control again – if softer than normal. Unguarded.

  Reese knew this was a rare mood, and he didn’t want to say the wrong thing for fear one of the many masks would return.

  Tenny reached to trace his lower lip with a thumb, his touch gentle, his own lower lip caught between his teeth a moment. “Why were you jealous?” he asked. “Did you wish it was you sitting there between those girls?”

  “No.”

  “No?” Tenny pressed at the center of his lip, pulled it down a fraction. “What didn’t you like?”

  He swallowed, and felt his pulse flutter. “I didn’t like them touching you…when I couldn’t.”

  Tenny stilled a moment – and then pressed the pad of his thumb to the edge of Reese’s teeth. He wet his own lips, until they shone in the lamplight. “I want to try something. Hold still.”

  He pulled back farther, and shifted down Reese’s body.

  Reese tried to sit up–

  And a hand landed in the center of his chest, and pressed him back. Tenny’s gaze sharpened. “Lie still, or I’ll stop.”

  Reese lied back, swallowing again. He didn’t know what it was that would stop, but the idea of Tenny running off and retreating from him again filled him with dread. He held still.

  Tenny moved downward, until he was at his waist, and then pushed the hem of Reese’s shirt up – all the way up, until it was gathered beneath his arms. He hummed, and stroked a hand down Reese’s chest, his stomach. Reese shivered, goosebumps breaking out all over his skin, and Tenny’s mouth curved up in a small smile.

  His hand shifted lower, until it was cupped over Reese’s cock, soft again, but twitching with immediate interest.

  “What are you doing?” Reese asked.

  Tenny massaged at him, through his jeans, and stroked patterns across his belly with the fingers of his other hand. His gaze flicked up, bright blue through dark lashes. “Does it bother you?”

  Reese thought the way he was hardening was proof that it didn’t, but he said, “No.”

  “Do you wish it was one of the girls instead?”

  “No.”

  The smile got a fraction wider, and Tenny’s gaze dropped again. He stopped petting him long enough to open his belt, and then his jeans. He gave a little cluck when he started to tug them down, and Reese lifted his hips enough to help.

  “Good boy,” Tenny murmured, and Reese could see his own cock twitch inside his boxers.

  Tenny hummed another little note, amusement this time, definitely. He left Reese’s jeans bunched down around his thighs, and then pushed his boxers down, letting his cock spring free.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d taken it into his hand, stroked it – but it was the first time he’d done it without a woman in the room with them.

  It was the first time that, after a moment, he leaned down and put his mouth on Reese.

  It was hard, during sex, to keep his breathing regulated, but Reese didn’t make noise. He didn’t talk, didn’t express the way he felt, not like Stephanie did, didn’t curse the way Tenny sometimes did, when pleasure left him looking almost angry.

  But he gasped, now, because there was a warm, wet, expert mouth drawing him in, inch by inch, and it was Tenny’s mouth, and that knowledge coupled with the sensation had his eyes closing, and his head kicking back. He gripped the comforter in both fists because he had to touch something.

  Tenny pulled off long enough to say, “You can pull my hair.” Then he swallowed him all the way down to the root.

  Reese let out another sound, a half-choked moan over which he had no control. He opened his eyes, and lifted his head, because he wanted to see. Because Tenny was beautiful, and this was…he had no words for this. He did grip his hair, but he didn’t pull. He petted through it, felt its softness slide between his fingers, and watched the stretch of Tenny’s lips, and felt the movement of his throat as he swallowed.

  It was overwhelming.

  Tenny didn’t tease and alternate his technique like Stephanie sometimes did. He brought him off quickly, efficiently, and Reese had to let his head fall back after he came, stars bursting black and white across his field of vision. He was panting, sore all over from the strain of holding still when his hips had wanted to kick. He felt wrung-out like a dishrag, and just as limp.

  Tenny sat up and wiped his mouth; licked the corners of it. His smirk was smug – but his gaze was guarded again, glittering and uncertain.

  Reese was too spent to feel guarded. To move with any grace. He lifted an unsteady hand and beckoned.

  “What?” Tenny asked, brows drawing together.

  “Come here. Please.”

  When he was close enough, Reese caught a fistful of his shirt collar and hauled him down to kiss him. His mouth tasted like – well, that was him on his tongue. Reese lapped at the roof of Tenny’s mouth, shocked, electrified all over again.

  Tenny stiffened a moment, and Reese thought he would resist – but then he was kissing back, and after a moment, he was grinding his hard cock against Reese’s hip, panting into his mouth.

  Reese slid his hands down Tenny’s front, and around his hips, until he could palm his ass his through his jeans and urge him forward. Again, Tenny resisted until he gave in. Then he pulled back from the kiss, head hanging, breathing in quick, ragged draws as he worked his hips steady, the bulge of his erection driving again and again into the hollow of Reese’s hip.

  The denim chafed at him, but he didn’t want Tenny to stop. Kissed his temple, his cheek, his ear. “Good boy,” he murmured, echoing the words Tenny had said so many times to him.

  Tenny let out a choked cry and stiffened, coming in rippling spasms that wracked his whole body above Reese’s.

  It seemed to go on a long time, and then Tenny collapsed onto him with a groan, splayed out and boneless. “Christ,” he huffed into Reese’s neck. “Oh, Christ, I can’t do this.” But a moment later he lifted his head and blearily sought Reese’s mouth with his own, a tired, clinging kiss, still touched with desperation.

  Reese had the sense nothing had been solved, but maybe something had begun. A start in the right direction.

  When Tenny pulled back, and he saw that his eyes were fever-bright, he thought Tenny must be thinking the same thing.

  Forty

  “Doing okay?” Carter asked, arm sliding around her shoulders.

  “Yeah.” Leah leaned into his side and turned a smile up to him. His expression was worried again.

  He’d been very attentive tonight – maybe too attentive, because he kept giving her these measuring looks like he was waiting for her to freak out.

  They were more or less alone now, as alone as you could get in a crowded room full of bikers, old ladies, and club chicks, with music blasting and booze flowing. Aidan had been telling a story that involved lots of rude hand gestures and which caused Sam to continually cover her face in played-up embarrassment. It shouldn’t have felt intimate, looking up at Carter now, but the din created pockets of small, close quiet in the space between bodies.

  She’d had a glass of wine – okay, two – and felt pleasantly warm. She knew almost everyone here, and she’d been talking with Ava most of the time, getting to know the rest of the old ladies better. She’d settled, nerves long forgotten, but he was concerned, and that was cute.


  She reached up to touch his face, a light scrape of her nails down his jaw. “I promise I’m really fine. Why are you so worried?”

  He shrugged, and glanced away, out across the shifting crowd of bodies. “Dunno. Guess I was just kinda – it was a lot, my first party.”

  “But it’s not my first party,” she pointed out.

  “No. You were nervous, though.”

  “I was. I’m better now.”

  He didn’t seem relieved to hear it.

  “Are you okay?” she countered.

  “Yeah.” He sipped his drink, Scotch by the smell. She hadn’t known he drank that, and wondered if Mercy had been the one to fix his drink.

  “Carter.”

  He turned back to her.

  “What is it?”

  “I–” He paused. Made a face. Then set his drink aside and reached for her hand. “We can’t really talk here.”

  Bemused, she let him lift her to her feet and then lead her not to the front door, like she’d expected, but down the back hall to the dorms.

  A few doors stood open, but more were closed. And there were sounds coming from beyond them.

  She laughed, and couldn’t manage to make it sound easy. “I forget it was like orgy city around here on party nights.” She hadn’t actually forgotten, it was, just – one thing to know it, and another to hear it.

  He glanced back over his shoulder with an apologetic glance. “Sorry.”

  “Not like I didn’t expect it.”

  But the mood had shifted, she could tell. Had slid into a tense space that had the potential to toss them one way or the other. All it would take was telling a dirty joke – or pulling her hand from his grasp.

  She did neither. Followed him into a dorm room that, after he’d closed the door softly behind them, finally letting go of her hand, she realized was his. She’d seen the dorms before, unremarkable, but private, each with their own bathroom, and small, covered windows. Each with the same ugly orange carpet, but always with scrubbed surfaces and clean linen. Ghost didn’t tolerate slovenliness.

  This room had signs of a longer-term habitation. A stack of folded t-shirts on top of the dresser. Personal effects on the nightstand: an empty glass, an alarm clock, a magazine. Several pair of sneakers sat lined up against the wall by the door, and a gym bag hung off the closet doorknob.

  “Do you live here fulltime?” she asked, turning to him.

  He’d been turning, too, to face her, and he froze a moment. She realized too late that she’d said something that struck a nerve, and rushed to say, “No, it’s great. It is. Why wouldn’t you live here?”

  His gaze landed somewhere to the left of her, and he nodded, face too blank. “Yeah. I know.”

  Shit, things had tipped, and she hadn’t even meant them to. This felt like letting go, rather than stepping closer. “Plenty of the guys live here,” she said.

  “Some. Not plenty.”

  “The single ones. All the ones who have their own places are married.”

  He let out a breath, and she thought some of the tension across his shoulders eased.

  “I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad about it.”

  “I know.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, heedless of the way it stuck up afterward. “I know, it’s just – kinda answered my own question.” A quick, grim smile.

  She stepped closer. “What question?”

  “Just that…” He blew out a breath. “Things are good. They’re good, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “They feel good. And I like what we’re doing. And this – bringing you here with me tonight feels like another step. And I want it. It’s a good step,” he added in a rush. “I want – a lot of things. Things I’d given up on, really. And maybe that’s why – look, I keep thinking that you’re going to change your mind, I guess.” He scrubbed at his hair some more, expression going miserable. “And I feel stupid saying it, ‘cause maybe that’ll make you realize you should change your mind. But I wouldn’t blame you.”

  She closed the last distance between them, and rested her fingertips lightly against his stomach, pushing past the light barrier of his shirt so she could feel the warmth of skin and muscle through the fabric. “What are you saying?” she asked, frowning.

  He flapped his arms, looking helpless. “You’ve got all your shit together. A job, your own place. You had a real relationship in Chicago. You’re an adult. And I’m…I live in a dorm. And I’ve never had a serious girlfriend, and, yeah, the sex is hot, but what if you wake up one morning and realize that’s not enough? That the risk of being around the club isn’t the life you want, and–”

  She reached with her other hand and shushed him with a finger against his lips. Life, he’d said. It sent a terrifying thrill through her. She’d thought she would live her life with Jason, but that had fallen apart, because he’d only ever thought in increments of months, and now here Carter was talking about life, and he was so earnest, but it was so soon, and it made it a little hard to breathe.

  “Hey,” she said, softly, trying to keep the sudden tremor of nerves from her voice. “The club doesn’t scare me, remember? I’m not going anywhere. We have lots of time to figure things out.”

  He swallowed, and sucked in a breath against her finger. When he spoke, she felt his lips tremble. “But I want…things,” he said, even more softly.

  She let her hand drop to his chest, over the rapid tattoo of his heartbeat. “What sorts of things?”

  He hesitated, gaze tracking back and forth across her face. He said, “I brought you here tonight as – my old lady.” The phrase wasn’t unexpected, but it still landed like a jolt of electricity; she could see that it did for him, too. “I always wanted, even when I told myself I didn’t, and that I wasn’t…but that’s why I brought you tonight.”

  “I know that.” But shivers crawled across her skin. She didn’t understand why it was like this with him; why every simple exchange had the potential to become so fraught. The way they sparked like this, so wholly unexpected.

  She watched his gaze fix on her mouth, watched his pupils expand. “I don’t want it to be too much for you.”

  “It’s not,” she said, “none of it,” and meant the words to encompass a whole bevy of things. Some sweet, some decidedly not.

  “I don’t want you to get scared,” he said, voice dropping. His hands landed on her waist, warm and grounding – and thrilling. She remembered the last time they’d been on her, skin to skin, and wanted that again, suddenly, terribly. Her pulse settled hot and erratic between her legs.

  “You don’t scare me,” she promised, and he kissed her.

  ~*~

  Still floaty from orgasm, Reese didn’t quite believe that this was happening as Tenny stood up and stripped, and then he sat up and allowed the rest of his own clothes to be pulled off. Didn’t believe it when Tenny straddled his thighs, and worked Reese’s cock slowly back to hardness with one hand while he reached back behind himself with his other hand, fingers coated in lube.

  But then Tenny shuffled into position, muttered, “Don’t say anything, just hush,” and slowly lowered himself down onto Reese’s cock. Entering him was real. It was impossible not to believe when he felt that slick, tight grip, and Tenny let his head fall back as he lowered himself down, breathing out in a low, moaning rush that sounded like pain, but which looked, from his expression, like ecstasy.

  Reese had always loved to watch him when he was like this, flushed, and sweat-shined, all gleaming, clenching muscles, drunk with pleasure. But now there was no one in between them, no barrier; he could look his fill. And this time, the electric pleasure of being inside someone one was coupled with that unfettered view, and it was Tenny, it was all Tenny; it was Reese’s cock wringing those sounds from his mouth, his body offering pleasure that twisted Tenny’s face, and made his hard cock jump and drool against his stomach.

  Don’t say anything. But he hadn’t said he couldn’t touch.

  Reese sat up, sudde
nly, which changed the angle.

  Tenny swore. “Presumptuous,” he scolded, breathlessly. But he didn’t try to get away when Reese put his arms around him. Gripped his back, his shoulder, his waist, his hips – lifting and dropping, still, until Reese moaned and kissed him.

  It was sloppy and uncoordinated, and when they broke apart – Tenny’s eyes glazed and low-lidded, his lips bitten red, his face flushed – Reese’s gaze slid down to his throat, to the scar there, and the smear of red lipstick the groupie had left there earlier.

  Without thought, Reese leaned forward and licked the spot clean.

  Tenny made a strangled sound and clenched down on him hard. Reese’s hands spasmed along his ribs, and he fastened his mouth to the spot, sucking at the scar, tracing its shape with the tip of his tongue.

  “Oh, Christ,” Tenny murmured, his rhythm going erratic. “Oh, Jesus, I can’t–”

  Reese felt him come. The splash on his own stomach; the rippling spasms of Tenny’s body.

  “You bloody idiot,” Tenny said, though it sounded like praise. He gripped Reese’s shoulders tight. Fisted the hair at his nape. Clung to him.

  Then he was tugging his hair hard, lifting his head, their gazes coming together. “Here. Come here to me.” He lay back, and pulled Reese with him, on top of him, still inside him. “Finish. Let me see.” He hiked his own leg up and over Reese’s shoulder, even though he winced, and he smiled wide, though tears sparkled in his eyes. “Come on. I’ve shown you how.”

  He had, and so Reese knew to be gentle, and to go easy – not because Tenny had ever told him that, but because Tenny had shown him that under all his sneering and snark, he was unbelievably fragile, so utterly human and laced with cracks, like a dropped piece of pottery.

  It was unlike any of the sex Reese had had so far.

  It was better.

  And, after, shaking and gasping, Tenny stroked his hair and murmured, “Good boy. Christ, what will we do?”

  ~*~