by Neve Wilder
Dan grabbed me as I started to follow.
“What is it with you and grabbing me tonight?” I asked, struggling to wriggle free from his grasp. He was a strong dude. “He has the fucking car keys.”
“Give him the space. I’ll take you back.”
We stared each other down, and eventually I shook my head petulantly.
“I know whereof I speak,” Dan said, fixing me with a sage expression as I rolled my eyes.
“Fine, oh wise one.”
Dan and I went to cool off at a bar, and even though I didn’t necessarily want to, I forced myself to stop after one beer because if Evan was at the cabin when I got back, being hammered definitely wouldn’t help. It was strange as hell to not only be the sober one, but the level-headed one. I didn’t think I cared for it one bit.
The SUV was in the driveway when I returned, and I lingered outside for a minute after Dan dropped me off, just looking at the front door. I kept having this one thought that made my stomach flutter; I’d gotten so used to being shuttled around on a tour bus, or in a town car, whatever, that seeing the SUV in front of the cabin struck me as so perfectly domestic it would almost be funny if the current situation didn’t suck so much. Because I wouldn’t mind having something simple like this with Evan, wouldn’t mind getting off tour and getting in a car together and then walking into the same house with him. In fact, I’d— I stopped the thought before it could begin to sprout and take root. It was never gonna happen. Tonight was another reminder of that.
In the kitchen, I stopped and guzzled some juice from the fridge, spying a tiny orange glow out on the deck as I drank.
Evan had kicked cigarettes soon after we’d started writing together, but when I got outside, there he was smoking, a small mound of butts in the ashtray as evidence he’d been there for a while.
“Trying to make up for lost carcinogens?” I asked, then snatched the cigarette from between his fingers.
“Funny coming from you.” His gaze remained fixed on the horizon.
“Yeah, well, do as I say and not as I do. Or something.” I took a long drag off the cigarette, then pinched out the butt and pitched it into the ashtray. Evan watched without comment. “Let me ask you something.”
He groaned. “If it’s about whether I’m a pitcher or a catcher, I’m fucking leaving.”
I blew out a little chuff of air that wasn’t quite a snort, wasn’t quite a laugh, then twisted to face him, leaning back against the rail of the deck. “What do you want?”
Evan lit another cigarette and, after a moment, came to stand at the rail next to me. I turned and rested my arms against it, and we both gazed out into the darkness of the forest beyond. The cherry of his cigarette flared when he inhaled, shadows painting themselves into the hollows of his cheeks. I stole the cigarette again, took another drag, and scraped a shingle of ash onto the railing before handing it back.
“Like on a grand-scale level or right this very second?” he finally replied, glancing over at me.
“Whichever?” Whichever got him talking, whichever got that dark expression off his face.
He exhaled in a noisy rush of air. “Sometimes I want to throttle you.”
“I’d let you.” I kept the tease playful, encouraged by the sight of his expression downgrading from glower to frown.
He switched the cigarette to his other hand, freeing the one next to me, then reached up and closed his fingers around the side of my neck, his thumb pressing gently into my windpipe. “Unsurprising. You like all kinds of kinky shit.” He angled toward me, his hand shifting and tightening. A tingle rose through my jaw and spread over my cheeks before he released the tension of his grasp slightly.
“How do you know?” Another squeeze, this time brief, and when he traced his thumb down my Adam’s apple to the hollow of my throat, I shivered in hopeful anticipation. “Just a heads-up that you’re making me hard, so congrats on being right. Apparently I’m into being mildly throttled.”
Evan barked out a rough laugh, letting his cigarette fall to the deck and crushing it underfoot before sliding his hand down my shoulder, as if he intended to let it drop back to his side before a last minute change in course brought it back to my neck, where he tightened his grip again.
“What are you doing?” I didn’t move, didn’t want to, but I was curious.
“I don’t know.” He gave a brief shake of his head. “I don’t even make sense to myself anymore. I was so pissed at you for springing that song mid-show, but you were right. It was good. It got me out of my head, and once I got over panicking about it, it was exhilarating in that free-fall, oh-shit-my-stomach’s-floating kind of way. Like when we first started working on songs together. And then that asshat made that dumb comment, and even if I was still aggravated at you, I hated how what he said implied you were less than me.” He tilted his head to the side to look at me, and the vehemence in the blue eyes that had provoked our greatest hit crashed over me with such force I almost stumbled backward. “Because you’re not. Les, you’re so fucking not. It’s bad enough if you think that about yourself, but if someone else ever even remotely suggests it, it makes me want to hurt them.”
I couldn’t speak, could barely even breathe, and not just because his hands were moving over my skin, alternately applying pressure and then releasing and tracing gently, like they were directly connected to his emotions. I swallowed hard. Fuck, I was not going to tear up in front of him. I refused.
He blinked up at me and huffed out this self-aware laugh as he glanced at the one hand he still had around my throat. “I still want to choke you, too, I guess.”
“You’re being pretty diplomatic about it, though.” I brushed aside the threat of tears and gave him a small smile. “It’s kinda like an indecisive mix of murder attempt and massage.”
“A relaxing murder.”
“Name of our next album.”
We both laughed. It was weird and a little awkward just standing there with Evan gripping my throat, but somehow erotic, too. Awkward eroticism. Was that a thing? My dick said it was. I sensed we were hanging on the cliff’s edge of something, but Evan wasn’t sure how to tip us over, and after our last hookup, I sure as shit wasn’t going there.
“I should stop fucking with you,” Evan said. Softly, like he was telling himself, and yet he didn’t move away. His thumb turned little circles in the hollow of my throat, his fingers tightening again, this time to knead the back of my neck.
“I’m not sure I want you to,” I whispered.
“Which part, the massage or the choking? Are you a secret masochist?” He ran his thumb along the midline of my neck all the way to the underside of my jaw and tipped it up until I saw stars, literally, the bright canopy above filling my vision. I swallowed hard again, my voice coming out husky. “Right now I’m good with either, but if you go the choking route, you should probably know you’re not in my will, though you’re welcome to my notebooks. I think my ghost would be cool with some posthumous fame.” I probably had a bit of a masochistic streak in me, but mostly I had a strong desire for Evan to keep touching me—in whatever form that came. If he wanted to throttle me some more, so fucking be it.
“I’d credit you in the liner notes of course.” His voice came to me as a distant drawl, and I felt a wash of heat across my throat when he brushed his open mouth over it. A whoosh of cold air followed as he turned me to yank my T-shirt up. I lifted my arms so he could pull it over my head.
“If you didn’t, I’d haunt you.” This might’ve been a good place to ask him again what the fuck we were doing or remind him of everything that happened the last time we screwed around, or even our commitment to not mix our public charade with some kind of private one. But I didn’t. I was too turned on by this amazingly strange thing that was happening between us and too desperate to see where it would go to say a damn thing.
Chapter 30
Have you ever had a moment when you’re sick of yourself? Sick of how your mind works, sick of always trying
to think ahead, of trying to plan, of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and you want, for just one fucking second, to be different? I was at that moment. I had no idea what I was doing, but I couldn’t stop. Les’s warm body was a magnet for my touch, and as soon as I pulled his shirt off, my hands went roaming over his bare chest, examining the valleys between his ribs, tracing whorls of ink, rubbing his nipples to hardness against the pads of my thumbs. His breath stuttered when I pinched one.
“Hurt?” I asked, bending to chase the sting with a brush of my lips.
“Yeah, a little. Good hurt.” He shuddered through a nip of my teeth. “Addictive hurt.”
And wasn’t that almost a metaphor for the last six months?
Les twisted around to put his back to the rail, gripping it hard with his hands on either side, and I caged him in, caressing the backs of my knuckles up the side of his throat, making his head tip to one side and a soft hum of sound vibrate against my fingertips as his eyes fell shut.
“Maybe you’re not going to kill me after all, just rub me into a coma,” he murmured, a drowsy smile tilting the corners of his mouth.
I pinched his nipple again, and his shoulders jerked. “Or not.”
And then I kissed him, slowly, like I could trap the flavor of that sedate smile and hold it on my tongue. When I danced my fingers over the fly of his jeans, his eyes flashed open and widened, his pupils large in the darkness.
“Can I?” I asked, tracing the edge of his button with the corner of my thumbnail.
He gave me an abbreviated nod. “Right now? You can do whatever you want, sw—Porter.”
“Nice save.” I chuckled.
“Old habits.”
I yanked his button free and pulled down his zipper, finding his dick long and thick behind it. “What is it with you and underwear?”
“They get in my way. Obviously.”
I couldn’t disagree. It was sexy as anything seeing him half-undone, popping through his jeans as I reached my hand out and ran my fingertips over the head of his dick. I could tell he was trying to be stoic, but when I wrapped my hand around his silky shaft, so fucking warm and stiff, he exhaled in a hard gasp of air.
I stroked him faster, marveling at his body lighting up in front of me, writhing, pushing, pulling, and clearly aching for my touch. He threw his head back, and his chest rose and fell with sharp, panting breaths. Then I gripped him hard, squeezed up until the tip of his cock swelled and precum beaded along the slit. He winced at my roughness and staggered out another breath when I released him. Guess I was still choking him one way or another, and goddamn was it making me hard. I shifted my stance, my dick rubbing uncomfortably in the confinement of my jeans.
“Shit, yeah,” he whispered, lowering his chin to gaze down between us, then nodding to indicate my straining fly. “Let me see you.”
I obliged immediately, without even thinking about it. Did Les even know how much power he had over me? He eyed my exposed cock the same way he watched me play sometimes, a mixture of appraisal and appreciation. “Stroke it. Like you’re stroking me.” His fingers tightened around the railing, squeezing hard as he watched me stroke him and myself at the same time. “Yeah. Fuck.” One of his hands flew from the railing to ball up tight in my T-shirt, then released and dived under the fabric, gripping my rib cage firmly for a bruising second before drifting over me in a light caress that sent a tantalizing shiver up my spine. He slid his arm up through the neckhole of my shirt and clamped around my throat. Payback, I guess. Gradually, I inched forward until I could take us both in one hand, and his forehead bumped mine. We stayed like that for a handful of seconds, just listening to the pattern of our breathing speed up and coalesce in harsh exhales. It took only a fractional movement for his lips to meet mine. He licked the corner of my mouth where the cut was, then my lower lip until my tongue surged forward to meet his and taste him. Smoke and the salt of my own skin still lingered on his mouth. It wasn’t enough. None of it was.
Les growled when I pulled away. Actually growled with such a dissatisfied rumble that I laughed.
“If you’re about to flip out right now Porter, I’m gonna finish myself off and jizz on you anyway,” he warned.
“I’ll try to wait until after.” I released my hold on both of us, grabbed his loose waistband, and tugged as I turned toward the sliding door that led inside.
“Try to wait until never. Where are we going?” He was right on my heels, sneaking a hand down the back of my pants as we went.
“Bedroom.”
“What for?” Desire made his voice thick, but I could sense a hesitation in it, too. And hope.
“What the hell do you think for? Sex does happen in bedrooms, doesn’t it?”
“And on porches, living rooms, kitchens, outdoors…”
While we’d been standing there on the porch mutually captivated, I’d figured out what it was that had all my nerve endings singing and flushing my brain with those feel-good, crazy-making chemicals. It was having him under my command. Having him respond so viscerally to my touch. It was similar to when we wrote songs together, an effortless call and response between us. And I wanted to give the same to him.
We got to his bedroom and shed our clothes in seconds, then stood there staring at each other while I tried to figure out how to get from point A to B, because I could tell Les was still intent on letting me lead. He spoke softly as he stepped closer and ran a hand down my shoulder. “You can fuck me again. I’ll bottom for you, I don’t care.” He caressed my forearm, then took my hand in his, twining his fingers with mine. “Shit, I want you so fucking bad, I’ll take you however you’ll let me.”
The note of plea in his voice wrecked me. I shook my head. I wanted to feel his power, wanted him to talk to me the way I’d witnessed him do with others, wanted to feel possessed by him, marked by him. Fuck my own fears about what came after.
I took a shaky breath and said, “I want you inside me. You asked me what I wanted. This is it.”
His fingers tightened on mine, but he didn’t move as his gaze searched my face, I thought, for any evidence that I hadn’t meant what I’d said. But he’d find none. I wanted this.
After a moment, he released my hand. “Lie down.” His voice was a low-timbred purr that rode the surface of my skin like a shock wave and turned into a shiver at my shoulders. I turned and lay facedown on the bed, and Les crawled on behind me, sitting on my calves, his hands spanning low across my back. “I’m gonna make this good for you, I promise.”
“Don’t baby me.” My voice came out muffled by the comforter, and I turned my head, craning a look back at him, the dark swathe of his hair shadowing his face, the full lips and tensile strength of his hands gripping me. “I don’t want to be babied. Fuck me the way you fuck everyone else.”
I caught his smoldering gaze flickering over me a second before I lowered my head to the bed again.
“I can’t, Ev,” he said softly, “You’re not everyone else.”
The mattress shook as he got up. Hearing the click of a cap, I tensed instinctively, but then his hands glided over my hamstrings, over my ass, and up my back in long, lingering strokes that dug into muscle and relaxed me. I thought it’d be lube on his hands, but it was some kind of oil, silky and soft.
“Goddamn,” he breathed, sounding so reverent that my breath caught in my throat, and the joke I’d been about to make died there. When his fingers slid between my cheeks, I tensed up again. His chuckle poured over me as warm as the oil he was slicking me with, and he palmed my ass with both hands, kneading and squeezing until I blissed out again. His touch was so damn good, so firm and confident and attentive, like he was reading every twitch and movement of my body and responding accordingly, tuning himself to me. His thumbs spread me wider and finally brushed over my hole in slow successive strokes that had me soaring.
“Oh fuck.” I gasped as the very tip of his thumb pressed inside me.
“Yeah. Just wait. Fuck, I can’t believe I get to…”
“Turn over,” he demanded.
“Why?”
“Because I’m a greedy asshole and I’m going to make you look at me while I fuck you through this mattress.”
Fuck if that didn’t make my balls tighten up. I rolled onto my back, and he pulled my legs atop his, spreading me. I’d have felt far too exposed and embarrassed if it wasn’t for the wolfish way he watched me as he wedged himself between my bent knees. He took my cock in his hand again and stroked it, arousal coursing through me like a faucet turned full blast. With his other hand, he worked my hole, plying the muscle patiently but firmly. I clenched reactively and gritted my teeth as he slid the tip of his finger inside.
Les gave me a lopsided smile. “You’re gonna have to relax, or you’ll break my dick off.”
“Trying,” I ground out. Relax. I remembered the word, right?
He withdrew his finger until I let out a slow exhale, then eased it slowly back inside. This time I made a concerted effort not to tense up and was rewarded with a burn that diminished and became pure warmth. His expression was fierce and determined, lips pulled in, a discerning slant to his brow like he was still reading my every expression. “So fucking tight and warm. Can’t wait to feel you around me.” That helped. He pushed deeper, then added a second finger, glancing at my face as I winced through the sting. “It’ll ease up. Just wait.”
I gave him a short nod. His fingers glided lazily in and out of me, then he twisted his wrist and something happened. Something good. Something that flared inside me like a lightbulb flickering before blazing to life. A slow, delicious, pleasurable tingle that had me arching off the bed in pursuit of more. “Holy shit.”
“Mmm. Found it.”
“Shit, what are you doing?” I panted. Then, when he hesitated: “Don’t stop!”
Les braced himself on one hand, scooting back, then bending over and licking a wet stripe up my cock, kissing over my stomach, my pecs, my throat, all the way to my mouth, which he claimed in a slow kiss. His fingers pushed against me, twisted and caressed that white-hot spot inside me until I felt like I was melting. He rumbled against my mouth. “You like my fingers in you? Like them fucking you, stretching you, getting you ready for my dick?”