by Emma Lyon
Then I looked up to what I’d unwrapped like a present: the long full flush of Lane’s cock, red-tipped and gorgeous in a nest of gold hair, so fucking delectable that I didn’t hesitate another second before running my tongue up the length of him and closing my mouth over the tip.
“Fuck,” Lane hissed above me. I smiled around him. It had been far too long since I’d had the opportunity to suck cock, and never one as gorgeous as Lane’s.
He was just thick enough to fit in my mouth perfectly, and fuck, he was long. I worked my mouth down over him until the tip of him pressed against the back of my throat, then took him as deep as I could.
“Jesus,” I heard Lane whisper, and a moment later I felt the tentative weight of his hand on my head. I took him deep again then pulled back to suckle the tip, listening to the ragged breaths above me.
I looked up. Lane was gazing down at me intently, seemingly entranced by the sight of his cock moving in and out of my mouth. I pressed my tongue against his slit, and his hand convulsed in my hair, the tug adding a pleasurable zing.
“You have an amazing mouth,” Lane said, his voice taut with tension.
I released the tip and licked the underside, then moved lower to lick another stripe over his balls. “Yeah?”
Lane laughed breathlessly. “Yeah.” His eyes lowered to the tent in my shorts. “Need some help there?”
I was so hard I’d forgotten what it felt like not to have my dick ache. I got the button of my shorts open and somehow unzipped them, pushing them down far enough to free my cock. I cupped my balls then stroked myself, knowing I wasn’t going to last long.
Lane stared down at my stroking hand with a hungry look on his face, and licked his lips.
I had an overwhelming need to chase that pink tongue back into Lane’s mouth. So I rose from my knees and kissed him deeply while keeping a hand on myself. When I pressed against his length and wrapped my fingers around both of us, still slick from my mouth, Lane groaned and grabbed onto my arms.
God, I liked the look of him like this, all fucked out and wanting. I wanted to take him apart bit by bit until he was a writhing, needy mess. I sped up my stroking and muffled his moan with my mouth, because if we weren’t careful we were going to wake the entire house. But that was subsumed by the need to make Lane come, to pull his release from him and know that I was the one who did it.
I was so fucking close. So fucking there as my balls tightened and took me over the crest, releasing my come all over my hand as Lane came a second later with a muffled cry.
I sagged against him and pressed my forehead to the door next to Lane’s head. That was…hell. I didn’t have the words. Wiping my hand shakily on my stomach to clean off later, I heard Lane’s breathless laugh in my ear. “That was phenomenal.”
As I took Lane’s mouth in another kiss, I could only agree.
Finally forcing myself from the haven of Lane’s mouth, I went to wash the sticky mess from my stomach and brush my teeth. When I braved the bedroom again, Lane had changed into a t-shirt and sleep shorts, and passed me silently on my way to the bathroom.
I dug in my bag for a t-shirt to sleep in, then shed my shorts and exchanged my boxers for a pair of loose cotton sleep shorts. When Lane returned, we got into bed awkwardly, despite the fact that we’d just come all over each other. Or more likely because of it.
The queen bed wasn’t big enough for me not to be fully aware of him lying a scant foot away from me. I wondered what he would do if I pulled him into my arms and tucked him tight against me, the way I wanted to do.
The bed dipped as he shifted on his side to face me. “Hey.”
I turned to him. “Hi.”
For a long stretch of time it didn’t seem like he was going to say anything more, then he asked, “When’s your birthday?”
I blinked. The hint of moonlight coming in through the windows lit Lane’s hair and face softly in pale blue light, but it wasn’t enough for me to read the expression on his face. “Uh, September third.”
“How old will you be?”
I had to think a moment. “Twenty-six.” Lane was silent. “How about you? You said Pisces, right? Isn’t that March?”
“March seventh.” He sounded surprised that I had remembered. “Also twenty-six. Then, I mean, not now.”
I listened to his soft breathing, his mouth so close to my own. All I had to do was move a few inches to find my mark.
Fuck it. I leaned forward to press my lips to Lane’s, then tucked my head into the crook of his shoulder. “You swear you’re not a covers hog, right? Because I might get a little feisty if I wake up and find out you’ve stolen them all.”
Lane’s low laugh rumbled through his throat and shook my cheek. “Not that I know of, but you have my permission to fight me for them if I do.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
17
Lane
I woke to soft morning sun through the windows and a disappointingly empty bed.
Rolling onto my back, I stared up at the ceiling watching the night before play across it like a movie reel, the main focus of which was the moment my entire soul had been pulled out through my dick by Zach’s hand.
I wondered what, exactly, we were doing. What I wanted us to be doing. As far as I knew, this was just a fun diversion for Zach. Maybe Cassie was right and I should let myself have fun without looking at it too closely. Even just three days of Zach was better than none. I should enjoy myself while I had him.
The rumpled sheets were still warm where Zach had slept, so he hadn’t been gone long. I threw on shorts and went downstairs, and found Ethan alone in the kitchen in pajamas with a bowl of cereal and his phone. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” Ethan said, not looking up from his phone.
I went to the coffee maker, popped a pod in, and waited for it to brew, wondering how I could ask Ethan where Zach was without getting ribbed about it endlessly.
“If you’re looking for your boyfriend, he went out for a run,” Ethan said, saving me the trouble. I glanced at him, but he was still absorbed in his phone.
“Oh.” I hadn’t known Zach was a runner. Another thing I probably should have known about him. I brought my coffee over to the island and sat on the stool next to Ethan. “How’s everything with you?”
Ethan blinked up at me. “Um, fine?”
“School is good?”
“School is fine.” He reached down and turned his phone off. He’d been texting with someone, I saw, before the screen went black.
“Anyone special?”
Ethan sighed. “God, you’re nosy. Just because you’ve found your stud doesn’t mean everyone has.”
I nearly spit out the coffee in my mouth. “Stud?”
Ethan shrugged. “Zach’s all right.” He glanced sidelong at me. “Not someone I ever thought you’d go for.”
“Really?” I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug and gave in to curiosity. “In what way?”
“I don’t know.” Ethan played with the side of his phone. Another text came through, but he turned his phone off quickly again before I could see. Not that I was snooping in on my brother’s many admirers. “You’re totally different around him. Happy.”
I blinked at the revelation that Ethan didn’t think I’d been happy before. “It’s not like I’ve never had a boyfriend.”
Ethan snorted. “You mean Bryce? Come on, Lane, you were stressed out all the time you were with him. He made you miserable.”
“He did not,” I said reflexively, but the part of me not in shock at Ethan’s assessment wondered if that could possibly be true. Bryce’s reluctance to be public with our relationship had made me unhappy, but I’d understood where Bryce was coming from. Hadn’t I?
“Yeah, he did.” Ethan shrugged. “Anyway, Zach seems cool. God knows you need someone to loosen you up.” He made a face. “Forget I said that. I don’t need to know what you do in bed.”
“Bite me,” I said out of habit, but I was still reeling
from all the shocks my brother had just delivered. First, that Ethan had actually been worried about me, not that he would come right out and say it. Then again, I loved my brother and wanted the best for him, so it shouldn’t be such a surprise that Ethan felt the same.
Thinking about Bryce and Zach side by side, I realized they were, in fact, polar opposites. Where Bryce was ambitious, Zach was…well, not unambitious, because he wouldn’t be in law school and working two jobs at the same time if he was, but it didn’t seem to be about power or prestige or whatever for Zach. He was just a hard worker.
And while Bryce had been reluctant to show affection in public, and sometimes private, Zach was all about frequent, casual touches, so much that it sometimes felt like he couldn’t keep his hands off me, with no regard to who might be watching.
And that blowjob….Bryce’s attempts at oral sex had been perfunctory, though he certainly had never minded me doing it to him. But the few times he’d reciprocated, Bryce had most definitely never blown my mind like that.
I was thinking about that when the door leading to the garage opened and closed, and Zach emerged from the mudroom all gloriously sweaty and gorgeous, and I was sure my thoughts were written all over my face. “Hello.”
Zach grinned like he was remembering last night too, and stalked up to where I sat at the island so he could lean down and kiss me.
“Gross,” Ethan muttered from behind us.
“I am definitely gross,” Zach said, and he was, kind of, but in a sexy, sweaty way. I couldn’t stop looking at the curve of damp hair falling over his forehead above those green-brown eyes. “So, I’m going to shower, get dressed, and then cook us all breakfast.” He frowned at Ethan’s cereal bowl. “Not that crap.”
“What’s wrong with cereal?” my brother said, but Zach was too busy jogging up the back stairs to answer.
I cupped my hands around my coffee mug. Ethan gave me a dirty look. “You have the dumbest grin on your face.”
I was sure I did.
After breakfast, which was eggs and sausage and toast, and which my mother joined us for and even Ethan admitted was better than cereal, Zach and I went down to the pool while Ethan disappeared to his room and my mom went to the living room to read. I had brought down a bottle of sunscreen, and when Zach gestured for me to sit on the lounge chair in front of him so he could get my back, I teased, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Zach leaned forward to murmur in my ear, “Don’t trust me to keep my hands to myself?”
“I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t,” I shot back, and heard Zach’s chuckle.
At the first touch of Zach’s hands, though, I knew the joke was all on me.
His strong hands smoothed down my back, leaving a trail of tingling electricity. The sunblock was cold on my skin, but not even that was enough to counteract the heat of Zach’s touch, or my growing response as he straddled the lounge chair behind me and I felt the unmistakable pressure of his dick nestled up in the crease of my swim trunks.
His thumbs drew concentric circles over my shoulder blades, then moved down my spine. I choked off a gasp when they dipped beneath the elastic of my swim shorts, because yeah, I was thinking about that. What it would feel like to have Zach inside me.
I shivered.
“Lie down,” Zach whispered in my ear.
I wasn’t sure I could convince my limbs to move, but somehow I shifted around on the chair to lay down on my stomach, skin still buzzing from the aftershocks of Zach’s touch. He sat next to me and ran his hands back up my spine. When they settled in at the curve where my neck met my shoulders, I let out a shaky breath when he began to massage the muscles there.
My dick, caught between my stomach and the cushion of the lounge chair, throbbed with every rub.
I heard the click of the sunscreen bottle top, then shivered at the touch of cool cream being worked into my lower back, fingers dipping again beneath the elastic of my shorts. I bit my lip to keep from moaning when Zach’s middle finger slid a millimeter into my crease.
Then his hands were gone, and Zach leaned down to kiss the top of my head. “What about you?” I managed, caught between arousal and a state of relaxation so profound I knew I’d only last a few more minutes before falling asleep.
“I’m good,” he said. The chair shifted, and a moment later I heard the splash of pool water.
With the sun beating down and the memory of those hands still tingling everywhere on my skin, I drifted on a haze of contentment.
The next thing I knew I was watching my brother crouched at the side of the pool talking to Zach, who had put his arms up on the pool edge. Zach looked over as if sensing my attention.
“Hey, sleeping beauty,” he called, his voice thick with amusement. I blinked again—had I slept? I was groggy enough that I must have. “Your brother thinks we should go into town for oysters. You in?”
Getting oysters in St. Michael’s was an annual tradition for us, so I wasn’t surprised by the suggestion. But I was surprised and pleased that Ethan had consciously included Zach.
“Hell, yes,” I said, though it came out a sleepy mumble.
Zach pulled himself out of the pool—holy shit, those arms—and came over with evil intentions written all over his face.
“Don’t you dare,” I said, holding up an arm to protect my face as he shook his wet hands all over me, the cold drops on my sun-heated skin as bracing as a shot of caffeine.
“Let’s go,” he said with a wicked grin as he looked me up and down, his meaning as clear as the blue sky. “I’m hungry.”
18
Zach
I reached for Lane’s hand once we left the rental SUV in the parking lot and started across the grassy lawn of the Maritime Museum. I was pleased when he took it without a word and laced our fingers together.
“Our dad spent most of his summers here, so he’s the one who started the oyster tradition,” Lane said.
I looked around us. The place was like a picture postcard with the lighthouse and museum buildings in front of the docks and water of the bay. The town itself was one of those quintessential main street villages with restaurants and shops lining the main throughway and thronging with visitors for the holiday.
Ethan led the way up the steps to the porch of a white clapboard house with black shutters and tables on the porch and a patio around to the side. The interior was as house-like as the outside, cool with air conditioning and just starting to get busy.
Ethan grabbed a table in the back and Lane dropped my hand. “I’m going to check out the oysters,” he said.
“Uh,” I said, as Lane disappeared through the double doors leading to the kitchen. Ethan snickered.
“Don’t worry, they don’t mind if you go back there. They lay out all the different varieties so you can look them over first.” He eyed me. “Lane takes his oysters very seriously.”
“Good to know,” I said. I sat in the chair across from him as a server came by with water. Ethan ordered a pitcher of beer and rolled his eyes when asked for ID. She came back a few minutes later with a pitcher and three chilled glasses.
Ethan poured for us both, still eyeing me a bit skeptically, and I wondered if this was going to be the Brother Talk. Ethan didn’t disappoint. “So, you and Lane.”
I took a sip of the chilled beer. “Is this where you threaten bodily harm if I hurt him?”
“Something like that,” Ethan said. I suppressed a smile at the thought of Ethan threatening anyone. He wasn’t skinny but he was even leaner than Lane, all long limbs and coltishness. But the fierce gleam in his eyes was very serious.
“I don’t plan on hurting him,” I said. It was the last thing I wanted to do. Hell, after seeing him here with his family, and the obvious love he had for them and vice versa, I was already halfway to falling for him.
I took another sip of beer to cover my shock at that realization. Because it was one thing to flirt, to give into attraction with a friendly blowjob or two, and quite another to
wish I was here as Lane’s actual boyfriend and not just his pretend one.
“Lane’s not someone you can fuck around with,” Ethan said abruptly.
I swallowed the beer in my mouth and lowered my glass. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that he doesn’t just open up to anyone. If he does, it means he really likes you. And if he likes you, then he’s all in. He let that ass Bryce string him along for years because he’s not someone to cut and run just because something gets hard. Even when he should.”
I picked my words carefully. “I like him a lot, too.”
“Just don’t fuck him over,” Ethan said, as the doors to the kitchen opened and Lane emerged, heading back to our table.
“We’re definitely getting the Bluepoints,” Lane said, taking the chair next to me and reaching for the pitcher of beer. “The Malpeques look good, too.” At our silence, Lane looked back and forth between us. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said, taking his free hand and clasping our fingers together on the table, liking the way his cheeks pinked slightly. And sure, it was a bit like marking territory, especially with Ethan’s eyes boring into me, but it also felt like laying out my intentions.
The server came by again, and Ethan and I deferred to Lane in ordering the oysters. When they came, we argued about the right way to eat them—I preferred hot sauce and lemon, and Lane preferred plain—until Ethan tried my way and grudgingly admitted it wasn’t bad.
“You’re both heathens,” Lane said, covering his eyes when I loaded one of mine with hot sauce. “I can’t look.”
I slurped it down noisily. “Delicious. Aren’t these supposed to be aphrodisiacs?”
Ethan snorted. “Not that the two of you need that. You know my room’s just down the hall from yours, right?”
Lane flushed a brilliant red and lowered his hand from his face. “You can’t hear anything from your room.”