“Hey.” Alexander whipped his eyes from that fucking mesmerizing neck to Cary’s eyes, the skin around which was crinkling in a sheepish grin as Cary added, “I fell asleep.”
“You have a talent for stating the obvious,” Alexander said, but he kept his tone gentle.
Cary yawned as he sat up and stretched.
“Long day?”
“They all are. So are the nights.” When Alexander raised his brows, Cary grinned again and shook his head. “Nah, just burning the midnight oil pretty much every night.” Then he rolled his eyes. “I’m probably not supposed to admit that. But hey, now we’re even. I know you have a board of directors riding your ass over Liu, and you know that I’m chronically sleep-deprived because of him.”
It was a demanding industry. They all worked long hours, but Alexander couldn’t imagine being a start-up. He’d always been in established banks, working his way up from the junior trader job he’d gotten out of college. As he grew more senior, with each new position, he stepped into existing systems at large organizations where processes and operations had already been established. Objectively speaking, what Cary did was probably a lot harder. “It’s a tough business,” Alexander said, lowering himself to sit on the sofa, but leaving some room between them.
Cary cocked his head. “I thought you were going to become a teacher. What happened to that?”
All those early morning walks to the dining hall. They’d talked about so many things. But he was surprised Cary remembered.
“Science teacher, right?” he went on. “And you were always so good with the younger campers. You seemed so sure that was your path.”
Alexander did a quick cost-benefit analysis of what the truth would cost him. The truth was that he had changed his mind that last day at camp, at the scene of his humiliation. He didn’t know then that banking would be where he would end up, just that a measly teacher’s salary wasn’t going to be enough anymore. He couldn’t change his sexuality, he’d known that. But he could change his class. And so Kitchen Boy had started plotting his own demise that very day, in the dining hall at Camp Blue Lake. He was going to harden his heart, he was going to get as rich as possible, as quickly as possible, and he was going to show all those assholes they couldn’t keep him down. And he had.
But he couldn’t tell Cary that. They’d reached a…not a resolution, per se, but a détente when it came to the personal stuff. They had the “sex” box decisively disentangled from the “war” box. But that did not mean Cary needed to know that he had been the cause of…everything. And, to be fair, he hadn’t, really. He’d been the start. And then when Alexander’s mom’s cancer hit, it had been inspiration to double down on his “harden heart and become obscenely rich” quest. He could safely tell Cary about that. “My mom got sick my last year in undergrad. Breast cancer.”
“Ah, shit, I’m sorry.”
If Cary remembered that he’d wanted to be a teacher, he no doubt also remembered that Alexander was the kid of a single mom. It had always been Mom and him against the world. “I decided I needed to make more money than I would as a teacher, so instead of a biology degree and teachers’ college, I did econ and then an MBA.” It was part of the truth, never mind that he’d made that decision long before he’d even started undergrad. Never mind that he’d made that decision standing in front of a toaster while Brooks Martin III taunted him and Cary betrayed him.
Cary whistled.
“Yeah,” he said, not knowing how to explain how the prospect of life without his mom had scared the shit out of him, even as it had cemented his resolve about his life’s path. The doctors had swooped in, and Alexander had been powerless to help her. Money was the only thing he could think of that might smooth the way, and luckily, he was on the path to making serious amounts of it. He settled for, “She sacrificed everything for me. She ended up beating it, but the stats for recurrence were real. She was only forty-five. I thought if I could do something more lucrative, she could retire after the treatment. Take care of herself.” It was all true, even if it hadn’t been the original reason he’d turned away from teaching.
“So you went into banking.”
“I did.” Those early years were a blur now. He’d worked nonstop and slept hardly at all. “I finished my MBA early and applied for junior trader jobs at all the major banks.”
“You’re a good son,” Cary said softly. He reached a hand out and rested it on Alexander’s cheek.
Whoa. Alexander’s uncomfortable little stroll down memory lane had prevented him from noticing that Cary had come closer to him, closing the gap between them on the sofa, but the physical contact jolted him into the present, where he had to work harder than he would have liked not to lean into Cary’s hand. “She was a good mother.” He cleared his throat to try to break through the shakiness in his voice. “She is a good mother.”
Enough. He didn’t talk about shit like this. And he certainly didn’t need Cary feeling sorry for him. He brought his own hand up to meet Cary’s and pulled it down from his face. Time to get on with the show. He brought Cary’s hand to his mouth and kissed his palm with an open mouth before asking, “Still tired?”
Cary shook his head, pupils dilated, and that mouth that drove Alexander so batshit fell open slightly. It made Alexander feel powerful to have been the cause of the obvious desire visible on the other man’s face. But that was absurd because Alexander already was powerful—at least when he wasn’t letting himself wallow in past hurts and fears. Time to remember who he really was, who he had become: a man who wielded his authority with ease, at the bank and in the bedroom. Hell, he could have David moaning in ecstasy inside of five minutes and then get up and fire off a report to the board on the next quarter’s projections in the next five.
Cary leaned in and pressed his lips softly against Alexander’s. He kept his lips closed, his touch feather-light, enough that it almost tickled. Gently, Cary pressed considered kisses along Alexander’s jaw as he threaded his hands through Alexander’s hair. Alexander sighed, a deep, involuntary sigh that he could feel blowing away what felt like a lifetime’s worth of tension along with it.
It shouldn’t have been so arousing. Hardly anything was happening, objectively. Yet need pooled, sure and insistent, low in his belly, just as it had last night. It wasn’t a frantic need, though, not yet. It was heavier, bigger—relentless but soft, which should have been a contradiction but somehow was not.
“You’re so beautiful,” Cary whispered, coming back to Alexander’s mouth as he untucked Alexander’s shirt and slid his hands up inside it, applying a bit more pressure than before as he stroked up Alexander’s ribcage. The pressure on his mouth deepened, too, and Alexander opened, his usually tense jaw turning to jelly as Cary’s tongue sought entrance. They kissed and kissed and kissed, tongues tangling, licking deep into each other’s mouths as if they had all the time in the world. Cary took his time undoing the buttons on both his and Alexander’s shirts, never breaking their kiss.
This wasn’t how Alexander had pictured things going. He’d imagined a repeat of their insistent, almost frantic coming together from the other night. This was the opposite of that; it was slow and measured. Slow and measured wasn’t really Alexander’s style, but he couldn’t quite make himself break the spell in order to speed things up.
When they were finally chest to chest, skin to skin, Alexander moaned. The sensation of Cary’s hairless chest rubbing against Alexander’s was unbelievably erotic. As Cary drew his hands lightly up Alexander’s sides, Alexander was seized with the strongest desire to fall. Holding himself upright no longer seemed like it was possible, so he gave in to the impulse, but not before wrapping his arms around Cary and pulling him down, too.
They landed in a tangle of limbs, Alexander on his back on the couch and Cary sprawled out along his body. As they made eye contact, Cary’s smile boiled over into laughter. Alexander almost didn’t recognize the sounds coming out of himself. He was laughing, too, but it felt like it was c
oming from somewhere else, like some external source of joy was pouring itself into his chest. It was just like at that stupid games day. He couldn’t staunch the laughter.
“We have a problem,” Cary said, still grinning as he touched his nose to Alexander’s.
Alexander stopped laughing. “We do?” His mind ran through all the possible things that could derail what was about to happen. He had condoms. The door was locked. They had the whole goddamned luxury penthouse to themselves. “What is it?”
“Pants.” Cary made a goofy face that made Alexander laugh again. Goddamn, laughing during sex was also not Alexander’s style. But again, objection didn’t seem possible, especially not when Cary levered himself off Alexander and stripped off the rest of his clothes. God, he was beautiful. He always had been, had always been that compelling mixture of muscle-bound and graceful. But Cary the man, as opposed to Cary the boy, was something to behold. The close-cropped hair, the stubble. The glorious cock straining toward Alexander.
The grin that just would not quit as he tackled Alexander’s pants. Alexander let himself be manipulated, lifted his hips when prompted to do so, watched Cary slide his pants all the way down over his feet and shove them aside. Then Cary climbed back onto the couch and, on all fours, lowered his head to Alexander’s ankle and darted out his tongue. Alexander gasped. He was pretty sure no one had ever licked his ankle before. He was pretty sure he’d never wanted anyone to lick his ankle, but clearly he’d had no idea what he had been missing.
Slowly, torturously, Cary started working his way up, kissing and licking Alexander’s shin, stopping for a long time to tease the back of his knees. He worked his way up Alexander’s thighs, lavishing attention on one, then the other, his breath coming as short and raggedy as Alexander’s. Goddamn. Maybe there was something to be said for Cary’s slow burn approach. And every few seconds, Cary would look up and make eye contact with him, those beautiful blues telling him that Cary was as turned on as he was.
But then, almost as if he had heard Alexander’s thoughts and had decided to mess with him, Cary pulled back and fixed Alexander with a smoldering stare. “Sit up,” he commanded.
Alexander furrowed his brow. Submitting to Cary’s slow, teasing, torture had gone against his instincts. But now that he had submitted, he felt semi-stunned, incapable of changing gears. And in truth, he wanted to keep being ministered to by Cary’s careful touch, wanted to keep being seen by Cary’s watchful eyes.
“Up,” Cary repeated. “We have a date to finish what we started the other night, do we not?” He levered himself off the couch until he was kneeling next to it, patting the cushion in front of him in clear invitation.
Alexander groaned. As appealing as the idea was, it wasn’t…right. Not now. Alexander laughed. Partly because he was about to decline a blow job. But mostly because laughter was so close to the surface this evening. For some inexplicable reason he chose not to dwell on too much, he didn’t want that laughter to go away. And if Cary stopped looking at him, it would. He needed Cary with him. It was almost frightening, this need. It felt for a moment like he would do anything, give up anything, to be able to keep looking into Cary Bell’s smiling eyes. So it was self-preservation, really, when he pulled Cary back up, so they were lying eye to eye. It was self-preservation when he flipped them. Never had he been more thankful for his oversized couch as when he settled the length of his body over Cary’s. They were almost perfectly matched in height, so he lined them up, nose to nose, but also chest to chest. Cock to cock.
Cary moaned, and Alexander lowered his head, keeping his eyes open as he kissed Cary, keeping the pace measured, wanting to recapture that slow-yet-insistent quality from before. Cary must have shared, or at least sensed, his aim because he returned to the slow, sensual stroking that had driven Alexander so mad before, but this time focusing on his back. He ran his hands slowly, slowly down from the nape of Alexander’s neck to his ass, which he began kneading as they ground their cocks together.
It went on and on, a bottomless kiss, until the pressure in Alexander’s dick grew so bad he had to pull away so as not to blow his load prematurely. Levering himself up on his elbows so he wasn’t lying directly on Cary anymore, he reached a hand between them and took Cary in hand, groaning when he found him slick with pre-come. Cary was panting, covered with a light sheen of sweat everywhere.
“I need you,” Cary whispered, and Alexander felt it in his dick, despite the fact that, at that moment, no part of Cary was touching it. And then, God help him, Cary lifted his legs, hugging his knees to his chest so he was completely exposed to Alexander. “I need you inside me,” Cary insisted, still whispering.
“Fuck,” Alexander muttered, feeling like every part of him might explode at the same time.
“Yeah,” Cary said. “Fuck. Please. But keep kissing me while you do it.”
Nothing about this encounter was going the way Alexander had planned. He had thought they’d go fast, hard. He’d thought they’d trade hand jobs, or that Cary would go down on him as he’d threatened in his text. But as soon as Cary had spoken, as soon as the words came out of his mouth, Alexander had known they were right. Those words had triggered a wanting that ran so deep in Alexander that it felt like it had always been there, lurking, waiting to be awakened.
It took all the strength he had to wrench himself away, even though it was temporary. Both his dick and his ego pulsed when Cary held tight and made a noise of protest. “I’m just getting a condom,” he whispered, stroking his hand down Cary’s face before moving away and opening the drawer of the side table with shaking hands. Making his way back to Cary, he rolled on the condom and squirted some lube in his hand before dropping the bottle on the floor next to the sofa. In a hurry to get back to those drugging kisses, he climbed on top of Cary and lowered his lips to Cary’s open mouth. But this time, he let one lube-slicked hand slide over Cary’s hole. He was rewarded with a low moan.
“I don’t need much,” Cary said, his voice thick. “I’m ready.”
Alexander shook his head. That might be true, but they had set this strange, steady, languorous pace, and Alexander didn’t intend to change course now. No, even if it killed him, which he feared it might, he was going to torment Cary until Cary was on the verge of losing his mind. Then he would slide into him and watch him actually lose it. He teased Cary for a while, massaging the sensitive skin around his opening before using one finger to breach him.
“More,” Cary whispered, pulling back from their ongoing kiss and speaking against Alexander’s lips.
“Patience,” Alexander whispered back, but he relented and added a second finger. Cary strained back against him, rocking his hips, moving himself up and down the length of Alexander’s fingers. It was almost too much, to watch Cary Bell giving himself up to pleasure like that. Giving himself up to Alexander. He thought at first that the low keening was coming from Cary, but realized with a start that it was coming from him. His whole body was vibrating with want, a want so strong he felt as if he were being pulled out to sea by a riptide. There was nothing to hold on to.
“Come back here,” Cary growled, grabbing his head with both hands and bringing it back down for more kissing.
Cary. There was Cary to hold on to. Cary who slid his hands around Alexander’s chest and held on as if Alexander were the life raft and Cary the one at risk of drowning.
Cary who whispered, “Please. Now.”
He was powerless to string this out anymore. So he withdrew his fingers, and, in a rush to soothe the moan of protest from Cary that followed, reached for some more lube, applied it, then used his cock to nudge Cary’s hole. Ignoring Cary’s exhortations to hurry, he took it slowly, teasing and rubbing. When, finally, he thought they might both be in danger of coming, he pressed carefully forward, and oh God, the unbearable, beautiful tightness, the widening of Cary’s blue-gray eyes. It was almost too much. He had to close his eyes as he completed that initial, achingly slow stroke.
“No,” Cary
said, and Alexander whipped his eyes open, alarmed and dismayed in equal measure.
Cary smiled. “No, don’t close your eyes, I meant. But don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop. But look at me.”
Alexander heaved a shaky inhale. The second request was harder, for some reason, than the first, but Alexander did as instructed, finding Cary’s smoky blue gaze. He didn’t move for a moment, remaining fully seated, buried to the hilt in Cary’s impossible, tight heat. Normally, in this situation, assuming his partner was into it, he would establish a fairly aggressive rhythm. But everything up to this point had been so slow and languorous and yet…searing. So instead of pulling out, he ground himself deeper into Cary and was rewarded with a sharp inhale and the slow blossoming of a smile. Then he did pull back, but slowly, almost experimentally, taking a good ten seconds to bring himself back and push in again. It was torture. It was exquisite. It made him smile along with Cary. Again, when fully seated, he ground in harder. Cary, still smiling, nodded and strained up to meet him, as if as close as they could be was not close enough.
Alexander repeated the long, slow departure and return, changing up his angle slightly, trying to hit Carey’s sweet spot. He was rewarded with a sharp gasp of pleasure—there it was. Another stroke, and this time he reached down and jacked Cary’s cock between them. Part of him wanted to do this forever, but it was too erotic, almost painful in its perfection. He wasn’t going to last. The pressure was almost unendurable—in his balls, around his dick. With his whole body shaking from the effort of holding off, and of maintaining their slow, measured pace, Alexander withdrew one more time. Cary had stopped breathing but was still looking at him, not smiling exactly but his mouth wide open in unconstrained joy. This was going to be it—he made his way back home one more time, slowly, carefully, maintaining the eye contact Cary wanted even though he thought his body might burst into flames. He filled Cary fully, working Cary’s cock between them. And when he was in as deep as he could go, he reached for more, grinding against Cary until he came. And came, and came, and came. It shook his whole body. He watched Cary the whole time, and as Cary bucked wildly, in opposition to their punishingly slow rhythm of a moment ago and spurted between them, he watched Alexander back.
His Heart's Revenge (49th Floor Novels) Page 11