Stay the Night

by Scarlett Parrish

  For some reason I hated myself then. I loved the way he smelt, of clean water and fresh shower gel and scrubbed skin. I loved the way his cock tasted, but I saw weakness in myself.

  Even as he groaned more deeply with every inch I took into my mouth, I felt like I’d given in.

  My resolve to stay back, not get involved, was on life support. The shallow, ragged gasps he hauled in when I ran my tongue along the underside of his cock nearly finished it off.

  Physically, I wanted him. Emotionally, he scared the hell out of me.

  “You don’t like being looked at.” Steven’s fingers found their way into my hair and short though it was, there was just enough for him to tug. “But I like looking at you, so…” I was used to guys forcing—okay, not forcing. Encouraging—my head to dip further, but Steven didn’t. He pulled me back, trying to tilt my head while still holding me steady.

  I wavered. Wanted to pull away completely. Keep it together, Blackman, for fuck’s sake. I tried to shake him off or at least let him know I didn’t need him to hold me like that, but his hands stayed in my hair. Not once did his fingers tighten, not once did he move too suddenly for me to know what he wanted and never, never, did Steven force me with his hands into something I didn’t want. Earlier he’d given me permission. Now his hands asked for the same.

  But, I just couldn’t. I pulled back, his hands loosened their already-tentative hold and his head fell back, thudding against the wall.

  “God, please, Kit, you—”

  He must have thought I was only pulling back to move forward again, to take more of his cock as deeply as I could into my mouth, but I just couldn’t.

  “Sorry, I…” I wiped the back of a crooked finger over the corner of my mouth, but there was nothing there. And I fell back on my haunches, steadying myself on one hand. “Can’t…”

  “Kit?” Steven’s voice was a mixture of confusion and disappointment all in one pleading syllable. My name.

  God. Even those three letters on his tongue made me feel guilty.

  “Don’t do this to me.” His words rushed out of him, pleading, with an unsaid-but-somehow-groaned oh no chaser.

  “I can’t.” I hauled myself to my feet and could have laughed at my need to look at him then. Then, after I’d fucking ruined the mood. “I hate being… This. I can’t…”

  He bit his lip and the two vertical lines at the bridge of his nose belied his need to frown and I wondered why he didn’t just give in to it.

  My feet, no longer nailed to the floor, flinched in the direction of the exit and Steven’s lightning-fast down-up glance told me he’d noticed. Earlier I’d heard confusion and disappointment in his voice—now I saw only the latter in his eyes.

  Two grown men staring each other out.

  And I blinked first.

  Chapter Ten

  Some nights later, I hovered in the no-man’s-land somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, kept from restful unconsciousness by that irritating, damned inconvenient conscience of mine. I’d shut down and Steven felt shut out.

  Logic told me the simplest thing would be to ride it out, just coast until the lease was up and he—or I—had the option of moving away without too much of a fuss, but—

  Yeah, Blackman. The simplest, most cowardly thing, more like.

  I punched one of the pillows into shape with more enthusiasm than was needed and tried to get comfortable, wondered if just lying there as if I was asleep would work. Maybe I could fool my body into thinking it could rest.

  Some hope.

  The door handle turned slowly but I didn’t flinch, as if some part of me already knew it would happen. I stretched my legs then curled them back up, moaning softly in a parody of absent-minded near-unconsciousness. Look how oblivious I am of every move you make.

  I knew who it was. Anyone else—Gary, Gemma, a houseguest—would knock before entering. Steven, though he’d lived here the shortest time, had no need of such niceties. He crept to keep his visit discreet, but only to avoid waking Gary and Gemma. He was here at all because he had the right.

  He closed the door just as quietly, I imagined with one hand easing the jamb back into place as the other clicked the handle.

  With two footsteps he’d reached the bed, and the mattress tilted with his weight. Still I didn’t acknowledge him.

  “I know you’re awake,” he whispered. “If I couldn’t sleep, you wouldn’t either.”

  “Arrogant shit.”

  A low laugh was his only response. Initially.

  Cool air whispered across my back as he moved the duvet and slid in behind me.

  “Coming from you…” He curved his body against my back and I exhaled at the feel of his treasure trail against my bare skin.

  Shit, he would have noticed that. Then mentally I shrugged. What did it matter if he knew how his presence played havoc with my ability to breathe? So I only remembered to exhale when he was touching me, big deal.

  “…that’s high praise indeed. So.” He wriggled his hips. “Guess why I couldn’t sleep.”

  He didn’t wear a vest, but had pulled on boxers which did nothing to conceal how hard he was. The least amount of clothing he could get away with, just in case he was intercepted before getting to my room.

  “Same reason you couldn’t, if I’m right.” He slid his hand down my bare chest, past my abs and muffled his laughter against the back of my neck. “Thought so.”

  “Cocky bastard.”

  “We both are. That’s the problem.”

  I wanted to ask how he could be so flippant after what had happened in the bathroom, after us barely speaking for days. After me freaking out, after all the petty disagreements we’d had—petty disagreements which, bundled together, looked like a pretty good collective reason to call it quits, to me. But maybe this was his way of making things right again. Or at least pretending they were.

  “What do you suggest we do about it?” he asked.

  “You could have stayed in your room and whacked one off.”

  “And what would you have done?”

  “The same.” While not confessing that had he never appeared in my room, the damn boner he seemed so pleased to encounter wouldn’t have been nearly so painfully hard.

  “Ah, but where would be the fun in that?” Steven’s fingertips toyed with the waistband of my boxers. I moved my hand to stop him but somehow our fingers ended up intertwined instead. Funny how that happened. “Kit.” His hand tightened on mine as a pause before he spoke again. “Will you at least look at me this time?”

  I inhaled, held it, and only breathed out again when the tension left Steven’s body behind me. He rolled onto his back and the absence of his hand from my waistband, now not even stilled against the outside of my boxers, knotted my guts in a way I wanted to ignore but couldn’t.

  His weight shifted again and when his feet hit the floor I propped myself up on one arm, looked over my shoulder. He sat there, facing away, in silence and not moving. It was after midnight, long after by my estimate, and so it was dark, but slivers of moonlight reached him, highlighting his hair, outlining him in flashes of silver. When his head turned to the side I imagined one of his thick black brows lifting, that studious look of intense scrutiny trying to make its way through the darkness to whatever he imagined he’d see in me.

  I might have been breathing again but little else on the inside was calm. My heart beat so fast it bruised me from the inside.

  Then Steven pulled at his shorts, and I didn’t know if his tut of frustration was directed at the fabric which seemed to melt away anyway, or me. When he reached for the bedside table, relief dropped me back onto the mattress, rocked me onto one side. Facing away from him.

  “You know.” His voice was so low I had to strain to hear it, but he knew I would. He knew I’d pay close attention to everything he said or did. “If I didn’t know you any better…”

  Foil tore. Business as usual. No foreplay, no chat-up lines. Let’s just fuck. “I’d be hurt.”

>   “You? Hurt?” The sound I made was something like a laugh, but didn’t ring true.

  “Sure. After all…” Another pause, silence to which I listened attentively, before he broke it with the inevitable twist-and-flip of the lube bottle. “I’m only human. And this…”

  The mattress dipped in the middle when he neared me again and as well as relief, there was fear. Steven frightened me whenever he was near. “This refusal to let me look at you?”

  “It’s dark anyway.”

  “I could put the light on.”

  “No.”

  “Fine.” His words snapped as sharply as the lid of the bottle seconds before he tossed it aside. I screwed my eyes shut, imagined him stroking the lube onto his cock. If I said yes, I could have watched him. If I’d let him put the light on. If I’d turned over and faced him. If I’d let him fuck me while looking me in the eye.

  If I said yes.

  A breath shuddered out of him and I knew he’d screwed his eyes shut too, if only momentarily. It was dark, he couldn’t see me, and it made no sense but sometimes we closed our eyes against things we couldn’t see anyway.

  “Shorts.”

  It took a moment for the word—the command—to register, but he didn’t have to say it again. I struggled out of them, and this became one of the rare occasions my aversion to eye contact shamed me.

  “Anyone would think you didn’t want to see me.”

  “Are you kidding? I—”

  Steven gripped my hip and pulled me against him. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  His voice dropped even further, if that were possible. “Tell me.”

  One arm curled under me, my head cradled in the crook of my elbow. With the other, the one I wanted to reach back and grab him with, I clawed at the sheet. “You know what.”

  He settled himself, making contact but not enough. His breath didn’t warm the back of my neck, and his voice fell onto me, so he must have been propped up on one arm. He had a habit of leaning his head on one cupped hand, so that was how I imagined him. The skin, the treasure trail just brushing against my back, was real. So was his other hand, for one second on my hip, then not. “Kit?” He exhaled slowly. “If this is how you want it, then…” His still-lubed fingertip barely circled once before he eased it inside me. I whimpered for half a breath before managing to bite my lip. “Fine.” He waited, probably for me to get used to the sensation, perhaps afraid of causing me discomfort, but the only thing making me uncomfortable was the fact his cock wasn’t inside me yet. “I wish you’d let me look at you.”

  “No, I—”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re scared of.”

  “I’m not, it’s just, no, don’t—” I bit my lip again to stifle the gasp when he withdrew.

  “No?” he asked, the laughter in his voice making the teasing obvious. “Really?”

  “Steven, you—”

  “You know what? I like it when you say my name. I really do.” He dipped his head enough for the ends of his hair to tickle my shoulder, and I wondered if he was about to kiss me, but no. “I like it when you sound desperate. But put the two together and I’m fucking undone.”

  “Jesus, just do it, will you?” I hoped my desperation wouldn’t carry, would just reach him and stop. I didn’t have much self-control left when I was so keen for him to fuck me. If he didn’t get inside me soon, I couldn’t count on not begging. Out loud.

  Which might have been what he wanted.

  “Do. What?”

  “Christ, why do you…just…”

  “Hey.” Behind me, his hand moved, back and forth, making it obvious what he was doing every time his skin brushed against mine. Again, Steven dipped his head and this time he dropped a kiss on my shoulder. “Tell me. I want to hear it.”

  “And I,” I said through gritted teeth, a barely-restrained growl at the back of my throat,

  “just want you to fuck me.”

  “Not like that.”

  “I’ve already told you I don’t like—”

  “I know. I know you don’t like being looked at.” Steven’s voice, on the surface, was a singsong, but underneath that was reluctant acceptance of something he’d never understand.

  “Try not calling it fucking for once.”

  I gulped. Jesus, he can’t mean…? “I don’t get it.”

  “Just tell me what you want to feel.”

  “You.”

  “Me? Or my cock?”

  “Same thing.”

  “No it isn’t, Kit. “ His laughter whispered over my skin, cool and taunting. “Tell me what you want.”

  “Fuck.” I thumped the mattress with the hand that wasn’t curled under me, cradling my head. The hand that should have been reaching back to Steven’s hip, or grasping his hair as he nuzzled at my neck. And he laughed, because my frustration was obvious. “I don’t know.”

  “Yes you do. You just don’t know how to say it.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re being like this.”

  “Demanding? Oh, Kit, if you think this is demanding, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

  “Just fucking get your cock in me, would you?” I had to whisper because we weren’t alone in the house, and thanked God it was dark, and I faced away from him. In daylight, or with the lamp on, facing him, with privacy allowing us to turn up the volume? I wasn’t sure if I could have borne that.

  “That’s more like it.” Steven laughed almost under his breath, his body weight forcing me face down on the bed, one knee nudging my legs apart. “It’ll do for now, anyway.”

  “What more do you want?”

  “For you to stop being so remote.”

  “I’m hardly being remote when you’ve got your cock up my arse.”

  “Not yet I don’t. Oh. Oh Jesus.” He groaned with the first inch, but I couldn’t make a sound. His groan turned to a long, low exhalation halfway between a gasp or a sigh the deeper he went.

  Both of my hands clawed at nothing in particular and I think the sheet or the edge of a pillowcase bunched underneath them but the only thing I was fully aware of was the fact Steven was inside me. He was inside me and it felt just this side of oh-God-this-is-too-much.

  “Fuck. You are really testing my self-control, Kit.” He circled his hips, a surprisingly gentle motion considering he was just about deep enough for me to feel his balls against the arse he was fucking too damn slowly. Yes, he moved slowly, but that was still enough to stretch me and make me feel every inch.

  “How am I testing your self-control? I’m not—”

  He pulled out an inch or two. Paused.

  “—doing anything.”

  “Because you make me want to do this,” he growled, pushing all the way back in, and it took all the strength I had to keep my gasp turning into a loud groan. “Only harder.”

  “Fuck. Steven.”

  “Can’t have anyone hearing, can we?” he asked, the playful tone of his voice laced with the sheerest thread of sarcasm.

  “Well, no. They’d wonder—”

  “Wonder nothing. They’d know exactly what was going on if I did this hard enough to make you scream.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I know you’re a screamer, Kit.” He used his weight to nudge me onto my front, but propped himself up on both arms above me, thankfully. My cock might have been hard enough to drill a hole through concrete but face down on the bed with Steven’s driving into me with his full weight behind it might have been a little more uncomfortable than I could bear. “I know you can be.”

  “Jesus.” I loved hearing him when he was like this but didn’t know if my tenuous self-control would hold out.

  “See, times like this, oh God…” Steven circled his hips and his quiet, throaty growl echoed mine. “Times like this when you want to let go, but you’re paranoid about fuck… keeping it all in…” He hissed in a deep breath and I rested my forehead against a bunched-up pile of pillows, heaving in as much oxygen as I could, staying as quiet and s
till as I could. “Hips. Lift your hips up.”

  Oh fuck, not that. Anything but that. But knowing how much I liked it was probably why he did it, and probably why I obediently struggled to shift my weight so I could get on my knees.

  We tangled, but Steven managed to stay inside me, moving deeper in fact when I spread my legs and the momentary shock of it, something like pain, made me grunt.

  “Careful.” He laughed softly, and I wished I could see him. My own reticence kept me face down and blind. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine.” I gulped when his hands curved over my hipbones, let him pull me in. He moved in deeper, almost shoving himself forward as hard as he could and in an instant my eyes misted over and I barely resisted the urge to sniff. If he thought he was making me cry…

  I couldn’t figure out what would be worse—Steven stopping out of concern for my physical comfort, or him carrying on and driving me to admit something I wasn’t yet ready for.

  His fingers tightened round my hip then spread out, searching, just touching my skin and sliding back into place with every rock back and forth. The bed creaked under us, mere protests against our combined weight and for seconds or minutes or hours, I wasn’t sure, we said nothing. Just breathed.

  Then Steven’s breath deepened, and he said but two words. “You know.”

  My heart sank in relief. I’d thought he was about to speed up and some small part of me said not yet, don’t let this be over yet.

  “You know, you wouldn’t have to worry about making a noise if you were lying on your back.”

  “Yes, I would.” It was getting harder and harder to keep it in, to suppress the need to cry out, and speaking just pushed me closer to the edge. The only thing I could do was grit my teeth and pray that when I needed to speak, words were all that came out, and not the groan rippling the back of my throat, ready to tear through the quiet of the bedroom.

  “No, because then…” One of Steven’s hands left my hip, wandered up my back, pressing against every ridge and bump in my spine, making it arch and me want to push myself back against him. His cock was inside me, but everywhere his hands touched responded with a desperation to get inside him, under his skin.