“No way,” I said, smiling.
He nodded, biting his bottom lip. It was all the encouragement I needed.
“Good. I want it. You can come in my mouth, Max.”
His eyes shot wide. “Are you sure?”
“God, yes,” I said. “I want you to. I told you, I want to taste you.”
I’d had no idea that Max was close, and now it felt like a prize waiting for me, something I wanted to work even harder to get. I went back down, taking Max deep in my mouth, working him harder and quicker than I had been before.
“Jesus, Owen, it’s so fucking good,” Max uttered. He deserved all this and more, anything I could do to show him how much he meant to me. And it was hot, the way he looked when I glanced up at him. He could barely keep his eyes open, but every few seconds he tried to look down at me, like he wanted to watch.
“God, I’m close—I’m gonna come, Owen,” he said. His fingers gripped tighter against my head, and then he let out a long, slow moan. His hips bucked upward. I felt his cock pulsing in me, and I worked my mouth along him faster and tighter until I felt him start to come.
And I felt like I’d fucking won. I hummed around his cock, ready for anything he would give me.
He came over and over, saying my name under his breath, holding me so tight against my head. I swallowed, barely able to taste anything because he was that deep in my mouth.
It was surprising, but it wasn’t bad at all. All I could think in that moment was that I could get used to this. I could get used to making Max feel so good. For God’s sake, I could do it every day. I wanted to get better at making him come, too—figure out which techniques he liked best, tailor it to what he loved.
I was already thinking about when I could do it again.
I didn’t know what would happen next, though. I pulled off of him slowly, swallowing again and taking a quick sip of water from the glass on my bedside table. Max was lying with his eyes closed, breathing deep, a thin layer of sweat all over his body. He looked utterly fucking gorgeous, in a way that almost made me a little dizzy.
All of this had been right in front of me for so long. And all I needed to do was to open my eyes and see it.
Max was looking at me, completely contented and lazy. He motioned for me to come closer. He pulled me in, then, into a deep kiss, fully taking control and kissing me harder than he had before.
“You’re fucking amazing,” Max said, pulling back to look me in the eyes. “How—how do you—how is this even fucking happening?” he said.
“Was it okay?” I asked.
He lifted an eyebrow. “It was a whole lot more than okay. Was it… was it alright for you? I know it might have been a lot. I kind of got carried away.” For a moment the hesitation was on his face again, the apprehension.
I pointed down at my cock, hard as ever underneath my shorts, with a wet spot at the tip. “It was more than okay. That was ridiculously hot.”
A small smile appeared on his face. He reached down, gently stroking his fingers along my cock. I’d mostly been ignoring it for the last many minutes, focusing completely on Max, but now when he touched it, I realized just how turned on I had gotten.
Suddenly Max propped himself up, pushing a few pillows up against the headboard on my side. “Here,” he said, pointing. “Sit, with your back against the headboard.”
I obliged, and he made his way to the center of the bed. “I wanna return the favor,” Max said.
“You do?” I asked. I hadn’t known if Max would be interested in reciprocating, and I lit up at the prospect. I’d fantasized about this yesterday morning, and even now it seemed that it may actually happen, I still could barely believe it. There was a vulnerability I felt as I lay back on the pillows, a vulnerability that I hadn’t quite felt before.
I was giving up control to Max. And I knew he had done this with other guys before, unlike me—would my cock be enough? Would he be comparing me to all the others?
But I couldn’t dwell on it for long. Within moments, Max had positioned himself between my legs and was tugging down my shorts, throwing them off the bed. My cock was freed, standing at attention right in front of my best friend’s face.
And unlike me, Max didn’t waste any time. He took one moment to gaze at my cock before he wrapped his lips around the tip, sucking and then dropping lower right away. Within a moment, he had worked his mouth all the way to the base, and I felt like someone had pulled a rug out from under me.
“Oh holy fuck,” I said, looking down at him. He took me like an absolute pro. “That is fucking incredible.”
Max just hummed around my cock, twisting his mouth back and forth as he pulled upward, pausing at the tip to spiral his tongue around it. As he worked back down again, he laid his tongue along my length in long, slow stripes.
He began to do things with his tongue that I had never felt in my goddamn life. It was as if his sole purpose in this moment was to drive me wild, to systematically dismantle my brain from thinking about anything other than his mouth on me. And it was working.
But more than his technique, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Fantasizing about Max in my dreams or daydreams had been one thing, but actually seeing him there between my legs was something else entirely. I could feel the warmth of his body where I had my legs wrapped around him, I could feel his hair as it brushed against the soft skin of my inner thigh. His lips around me looked better than anything my fantasies could conjure up.
Max wanted me like this. After knowing me for so long, after seeing me at my absolute worst.
I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve to have a friend treat me like this, even after everything I had put him through. And despite that, here Max was.
And a thought pierced straight through my brain at that moment: had I always had this feeling lying under the surface of my thoughts? Had there always been this undercurrent—this wanting, this feeling of need for Max—but I’d been so numb to it, been far too scared to ever acknowledge it? Because I never would have dared to think I would deserve someone like Max. I had labeled myself as “straight” for so long that maybe my brain wasn’t able to consciously consider that what I felt for Max was… more.
But maybe it had always been more.
The realization hit me like a crushing wave as Max worked his mouth along my cock, looking up to meet me right in my eyes. His gaze wasn’t the usual quiet, dutiful Max. It was the look of someone who knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that there was nowhere else I would rather be in that moment, knew that he was my entire fucking world.
I was totally his.
He slowed for a moment as he gazed at me, but when he looked back down, his determination was back and more than ever. He stroked the base of my cock with one firm hand while he worked his mouth on top, and I was more overwhelmed than I’d been from anything else. The dream, the fantasies, touching myself to Max—none of it compared. My friend was about to make me come,and I had seen it in his eyes: he wanted it, wanted to take every last drop from me and make me his own.
“Oh my God, Max,” I managed to utter, my voice completely breaking. “You’re going to make me come—”
His free hand gripped tight on my thigh. I reached down, holding his head in one of my hands while my other gripped tight against the sheets. He bobbed on my cock, and I felt myself begin to lose control.
I groaned far too loudly as I started to come, but I was only dimly aware of it. My entire existence was reduced to just this room: just me and Max, and the secret he had unlocked inside me. I felt myself come like I never had before—so much stronger, more urgent, than I even knew I was capable of. Max didn’t miss a beat, sucking strongly and firmly as I came, feeling like electricity was coursing through my entire body, and Max was there to take it all.
He wanted it all. All of me. Even after everything.
I felt a single tear break off from the corner of my eye. It was nothing like sadness—sadness was the last thing I was feeling. It was just total o
verwhelming, like my brain was short-circuited, in disbelief that this was actually happening to me.
I was reduced to a blissful set of sensations. Warmth, calm, release. It felt like minutes and minutes passed as Max gently pulled off my cock, kissing me gently along my thighs, slowly moving back up to the empty spot on the bed next to me. He kept his arm draped over my chest as my breathing slowly returned to normal, and his touch felt like the only thing real in the world.
When I started to float back down to reality, I had no words to say. But there was a surge of emotion that flooded through me as I slowly blinked open my eyes and saw Max on the bed, eyes barely open, looking over at me. I reached out, grabbing him in my arms, and pulled him as close and tight to me as I possibly could. I kissed the top of his head, then gently lifted his chin so that I could press a kiss to his mouth. He wrapped his limbs around me, tight and close. This, I realized, was how close I’d wanted him on the other nights he’d spent in my bed. I’d wanted us like this: naked, wrapped in each other, not knowing where he ended and I began.
And even after the incredible storm of emotion and experiences I’d felt that night, this simple embrace almost felt more intimate than anything we had done.
Because this didn’t just feel like a strange fantasy that I had fulfilled, and now was done with. I wasn’t done with anything at all.
Instead, it felt like the beginning.
Knock knock knock knock.
In my dream, I was in a field. Wildflowers were everywhere—so many, and in so many colors I’d never even seen before.
I knew I’d never be able to define them all, never be able to name every gorgeous thing I was seeing, but it was beautiful nonetheless, and I felt at home.
Knock knock knock knock.
Lying next to me in the field was Max, and we were holding hands, the simplest yet sweetest thing I could imagine.
“Can we have this forever?” I asked Max in the dream.
Knock knock knock knock.
“I’ll always be yours,” Max said, and I felt the dream being stripped away from me in layers, like an image becoming fuzzy until you can’t even see what it is.
Knock knock knock knock.
“Owen! Max! Wake your asses up!” Megan’s voice called through the hallway, and I knew I was finally awake. My hand was still clasped in Max’s, but we were in bed, naked, together in the beach house.
And fuck if that wasn’t even better than my dumb little flowery dream.
Max bolted up in bed next to me, his hand falling away from mine. He looked toward the door, then back at me, panic in his sleepy eyes.
“Does she…?” Max asked, quiet as a mouse.
“It’s okay,” I said softly, sitting up in bed. “I think she’s knocking on both of our doors. She doesn’t know.”
I got up quickly, picking up my clothes and pulling them on. Max did the same, and for a moment we stared at the door, trying to listen for Megan outside.
“Guys! Wake up already. It’s so late! I need help finding a dress,” her voice called from further down the hallway.
“It sounds like she’s in her room,” Max said.
I nodded, wiping at my eyes. “Um,” I said, trying to think but still half-asleep. “You should go out first. Open your door, make it look like you were in there, I guess,” I said. “I know Megan probably wouldn’t care if she knew we were together, but… it’s… too weird. It’s not the right time to tell people about this.”
Max bit his bottom lip, nodding. “Yeah. Not the right time.” He looked beautiful, even now in his groggy panicked state. For a moment I couldn’t help but look at the beautiful slope of his shoulders, the delicate, tanned skin of the back of his neck.
For a minute, reality seemed to slip away again, and I remembered how it felt to have Max be my entire world. I reached out, skating my fingers down his bicep. Max met my eyes, and I was transported to last night—the sounds he’d made, the look in his eyes when he’d wrapped his lips around my cock—
Knock knock knock knock.
I jumped away from Max when I heard the rasping at my door again.
“Owen! Get up!” Megan said.
When her footsteps on the floorboards trailed off a second time, I nodded toward the door.
“Go. Now,” I told Max, and he made a run for it. A minute later, I heard the sounds of him talking to Megan, and I figured we were in the safe zone. I left my room, heading over to Megan’s.
“Finally!” Megan said. She was smiling and had four different colored dresses laid out on top of her bed. “I just found out: Henry’s parents are on a two-day boat cruise, and he’s having a party tonight. We’re all going. Now help me pick a dress.”
“What kind of party?”
“Just a beach house party. Some of his friends from Boston are coming down. It’ll be like college all over again, except… we’re older now.”
Max was sitting on the other side of Megan’s room. I caught his eyes, and for a brief moment, we shared a look. I knew we were both thinking the same thing.
We had a secret. Something just between the two of us, something that had lit a fire inside me that I’d never known was possible. It didn’t make sense to me—last night was a blur of pleasure and new experience and bliss—but even if I didn’t know what it meant yet, it was something I shared with Max and only Max.
And nothing had ever felt so special in my life.
Why the fuck did I think it would be a good idea to attend a house party?
I had been so wrapped up in Max earlier that I hadn’t stopped to think about what it would actually be like. But as we walked in, I realized my error quickly: this was going to be a fucking awful night, no matter how good I’d felt before.
There was alcohol everywhere, of course. I could have expected it, but it hadn’t really occurred to me until it was surrounding me, closing in on me from every direction.
I didn’t feel tempted to drink, but I did feel out of place. There would have been a time that this environment was my happy place, and now I sort of felt like an alien. On our way over, it had begun to rain, and it looked like a summer thunderstorm was on its way. Normally I would have had an escape hatch from a party like this: I’d go out to the back deck or the beach to decompress, to be away from the crowds and the drinks. But when the rain began to fall, only growing heavier, I felt like a caged animal inside the house.
Henry had at least thirty friends over, some of them his friends from Boston and some of them local twenty-somethings from the beach. There was music, snacks, booze, the whole nine yards, and Megan was right: it was like a throwback to our college times.
Max and I were stationed in the corner of the living room by the food table, munching idly on chips and salsa. I wished that we were back in my room, naked under the covers, but I knew I’d have to wait until later for that. Max had declined multiple offers for beer and champagne, and it had hit me with a pang of guilt each time. I knew it was Max’s own decision, and that he was only trying to be respectful toward me, but I felt like my presence was dampening his fun. Like if I weren’t there, he’d be able to drink freely.
I tried to push down the intrusive thoughts for the moment, commenting on how good the snacks were and telling Max about stories from wilderness. He was an angel, of course, as always, but I still couldn’t help but feel like he’d be better off without me here.
“Hi there,” a guy in swim trunks and a button-up short-sleeve said as he walked up to us. He looked slick and polished, like he could have been in an Abercrombie catalog, but he was wearing sunglasses, indoors, at night. I had to hold back laughter as he walked up.
“Hello,” Max said. “I’m Max, and this is my friend Owen.”
“Nice to meet you two. I’m Joseph.” He shook both of our hands, and after greeting Max took off his sunglasses.
I watched as his eyes skated over Max’s body. It was fleeting, but it was definitely there. He was checking Max out.
“I wanted to come over and i
ntroduce myself—Henry tells me you two live in New York City?”
“I don’t anymore,” I said.
“I’m still there,” Max added.
“How do you like it?” Joseph asked, leaning against the wall near us and crossing his arms. His comically large biceps pushed outward, and I wondered if he was doing it on purpose.
Max shrugged. “I’ve lived there forever, so to me, it’s just home. Stupidly expensive, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to live without a roommate, but it’s worth it. I love the city.”
Joseph nodded. “I love cities too. I don’t know how anyone could live in a small town. So boring, just nature and gossip and nothing to do.”
“Sometimes I prefer nature to people, honestly,” I said. “When I need silence.”
I already didn’t like Joseph, and I didn’t stop to think long enough to realize that my statement may have seemed rude. But part of me didn’t care. I would rather have been talking to Max than this guy, socialization be damned.
Joseph just stared at me, his eyes unreadable, before looking back at Max with a smile. “Well, it’s great to hear you love it—my company is relocating me to Manhattan next month.”
“Where are you going to be working?” Max asked.
“I work for Teleflux; their headquarters is on Third Avenue and—”
“Teleflux? Really?” Max said.
Joseph nodded.
“I work, like, a block away from there,” Max said, his eyes lighting up. “Teleflux are our main competitors. We have a healthy rivalry, but I still go to lunch with guys from there at least once or twice a week.”
Joseph smiled. “Well, it looks like we’re probably going to be hanging out a lot, then,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know of any good gay bars in the area, would you?”
He and Max continued on, talking about their companies and a couple mutual people they knew in Manhattan. I stood there, stuffing my face with chip after chip, growing more uncomfortable by the minute. It was clear by now that Joseph was hitting on Max, and I couldn’t think of any reason why he wouldn’t succeed. Over the next few minutes, I learned that Joseph had graduated last year from a Master’s program at Harvard, that he was gay, single, and “just liked to have a good time.” He and Max bonded over their jobs, then moved on to talk about how hard it was to date in a big city while working so hard.
Summer Secret: Rose Falls Book 5 Page 11