by L. A. Witt
“Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirteen
Aiden
We got used to sneaking around. Connor was a pro at flying below his father’s radar, and as near as I could tell, Bradshaw didn’t suspect a thing. I could look him in the eye at work without flinching, even knowing I’d be out with Connor in a matter of hours.
The secrecy added a little thrill to it, but it wasn’t as addictive as Connor himself. As soon as I was off work each day, I’d hurry back to my apartment, throw on some civvies, and pick him up wherever we’d agreed to meet. Then we were off to wherever we could go and not run into any Americans, especially those from my command or who knew the Bradshaw family.
We were all over the island. North end. South end. Snorkeling. Checking out the castles. We stayed away from the bases and from Gate Two Street—too many people who might recognize either of us, and after my encounter with that asshole Marine, I was content to stay the fuck away from Gate Two Street anyway.
I was happy like this. We still fooled around whenever we had the chance—especially on a secluded beach or when we dared sneak back to my apartment—but mostly we just spent hours on end together. We watched more than a few sunsets while wandering around a beach. Or the ruins of another old castle. Or driving aimlessly around the island, checking out the remotest parts to see what was out there. Or having dinner in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere with a menu we couldn’t begin to read. Or grabbing a bite at the Family Mart before taking off to some deserted beach.
Or, as we were tonight, lying on our backs on the short, coarse grass near the lip of a cliff at Cape Manzamo.
A few hours ago, we’d had a spectacular view of the ocean and the coastline, but now there was nothing to see but stars. There wasn’t a soul around. The park was technically closed and had been since sundown, which was almost two hours ago, but no one had tried to kick us out, so we didn’t move.
We were fully dressed. We’d walked out here hand in hand, and we’d paused for the odd kiss, but lying here like this wasn’t the aftermath of some dangerously public interlude. Connor’s fingers laced loosely between mine, his thumb running back and forth as if he just wanted to stay constantly aware of that soft, warm contact.
As the sky darkened, more stars came out. Not just the bright ones you could see in the cities, but the tiny, faint ones that were almost impossible to see with any light pollution at all.
“This is one thing I miss about living in Nevada.” I pointed upward. “Skies like that.”
“Yeah? Even near Vegas?”
“Well, you had to drive away from the city, of course, but get an hour or so away on a clear night and it’s fucking amazing.” I paused. “Cold as shit, but so worth it.”
“Cold? In the desert?”
“At night, you’d better believe it.”
“Huh.”
We fell silent again. After a while, Connor released my hand and shifted beside me. I started to ask if he was comfortable, but then I realized he was moving closer. I wrapped my arm around his shoulders as he rested his head on my chest, and our fingers were once again laced together, this time on his arm.
We didn’t talk for a while. It wasn’t awkward, though. I’d learned to enjoy these moments when we just enjoyed each other’s company and the scenery. It didn’t matter if we were lost in a conversation or just lying together in silence—I liked being with him. Period.
Beside me, Connor shifted again.
“Comfortable?” I asked.
“Yeah. Just, uh, thinking.”
“About?”
He didn’t answer immediately. “About, uh…” He paused. “I’ve kind of been thinking the last few days. About how far we’ve…” Another pause, and this time he cleared his throat and shifted again. “How far we haven’t gone, I guess.”
“Yeah?” I absently stroked his hair.
“The thing is, I…want to.”
There was no way in hell he didn’t feel me shiver. I moistened my lips. “You do?”
Connor nodded, his face brushing my shirt. “I’m just…”
“Nervous?”
“Very. I know I…I know I want to.” He rubbed his thumb along the side of my finger. “Just really nervous.”
“Everyone’s nervous their first time.” I kissed the top of his head. “If they say otherwise, they’re lying.”
He laughed softly. “Guess I’m in good company.”
“You are. Definitely.”
“Does it, uh, hurt?”
“It can.” I let go of his hand and ran mine up and down his arm. “Depending on how careful your partner is.”
“Oh.”
“And it definitely doesn’t hurt if you’re on top.”
His fingers twitched between mine. “I guess it wouldn’t, would it?”
“Nope.” Still stroking his arm, I thought back to my own apprehension about anal sex. How all the horror stories and fears had stacked up against the real thing. “Listen, if we get there—and I want to, but I’m not in any hurry—we’ll be careful and take it slow.” I kissed the top of his head again. “I promise.”
Connor relaxed a little, but he was still tense.
I gently freed my arm and turned onto my side, propping myself up on my elbow and meeting his eyes in the near darkness. “Have you ever done, um, anything on your own?” I paused. “Like with a toy?”
“A dildo?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded.
“Did you like it?”
“Once I figured out how much lube was enough, yeah.”
I trailed the backs of my fingers down his face. “So you know it can be done, right? And you can handle it?”
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
“That’s a damned good start.” I leaned down and kissed him gently. “And even if you hadn’t tried it yourself, I promise you, I’ll make sure it’s not painful for you.”
“Thank you,” he whispered and pulled me down into a longer kiss.
My stomach fluttered as we held each other on the grass beneath the stars. I was nervous too, because I wanted to make sure things went right with him. I wanted to protect him. I wanted to have him. I wanted everything between us—the sex, everything—to be perfect. More than ever before with any other guy, I wanted—needed—this to be right.
Connor was nervous about the prospect of having sex with me. This was all uncharted territory for him, from the first touch to wherever we eventually took things. It was all new and probably scared the hell out of him.
Me? I’d been there, done that, but he’d have been blown away if he knew how nervous I was. Not about the physical aspect. No, I could handle that. Sex with him would probably kill me if everything else had been any indication, but what a way to go. Still, that wasn’t what had me on pins and needles with butterflies in my stomach and all that crap.
This wasn’t just about the sex we hadn’t had yet, or the fooling around we had done. If what we were doing was just about sex, we’d hide his car somewhere and spend every waking hour in my bed. Or these long drives would be to the resort hotels up near Nago, or the more cosmopolitan ones down in Naha.
But we didn’t hide.
Yeah, we fooled around sometimes, but we spent more time out of bed than in it. And I liked it. I liked the time we spent together, whether we were making out or going out, and that was the part that scared me. Connor may have been uneasy about taking the next step in the bedroom, but I was a nervous wreck over the places this was going that didn’t involve our bodies.
~*~
The car bounced and bumped through massive potholes as he drove between a couple of sugarcane fields.
“You sure we’re not going to get lost back here?” I asked.
Connor laughed. “We’re on an island the size of a potato chip crumb. How lost can we get?”
“Fair enough. But…” I looked around at the sugarcane fields and forest around us. As the fields ended, and this barely existent road was the only evidence of civ
ilization, I glanced at Connor again. “Okay, let me rephrase. Do you know where we’re going?”
“We’re going until we run out of road.”
“And when we get there?”
The car bounced through another pothole. As the road leveled out—sort of—he glanced at me. “Then we’ll be at a beach.”
“Will we?”
“Probably.” He put a hand on my thigh. “We’ve done this how many times before? Trust me on this.”
“Mm-hmm.” I would’ve taken his hand but didn’t want to take my own off the wheel on this bumpy “road”. “One of these days, you’re going to steer me into a pit full of spiders, I swear.”
He laughed and patted my leg. “I’m not crazy about spiders either. I promise, that won’t happen. And I’ll bet good money that this road”—he gestured up ahead—“takes us to a beach.”
It was a good thing I didn’t bet against him. After another click or so, we ran out of road, and, sure enough, there was a gorgeous expanse of beach without a single soul in sight.
“Ready to do some snorkeling?” he asked.
“Absolutely.” We’d been in the water a couple of times, but today was perfect for it. The water was glass smooth and crystal clear, especially in this secluded little lagoon.
“I checked online,” Connor said as we got out of the car. “There aren’t any jellyfish swarms out here right now. Closest one was spotted like ten kilometers from here.”
“That’s good.” I popped the trunk. “I really don’t feel like tangling with one of those bastards today.”
“No shit.” He shuddered. “I like box jellyfish about as well as you like spiders.”
“Great.” I pulled his snorkel bag out and handed it to him. “I’ve got the land covered, you’ve got the water. Between us, we’re fucked.”
He hoisted the bag onto his shoulder. “Just be glad neither of us is weird about snakes.”
“No kidding. Though, quite honestly, I’d rather tangle with the snakes in the water than on land.”
“Yeah, me too. If the Habu learn to swim, we’re all fucked.”
I shuddered. Snorkeling around deadly snakes was mildly unnerving, but at least the sea snakes weren’t aggressive. The Habu were nasty motherfuckers. If I ever saw one of them in the water, that’d be my last swim. Ever.
With our snorkel bags on our shoulders, I locked up the car, and we picked our way down the rocks to the beach.
The beach that turned out to be spectacular. Part flat, weathered rock. Part gleaming white sand. The water was calm and smooth, even in the open water beyond the mouth of the lagoon.
“Is it deep enough to swim here?” I asked.
“Should be.” Connor shrugged. “If it’s not, we’ll walk out until it is.”
“Fair enough.”
A rocky outcropping provided plenty of shade, so we put our stuff down under that. We changed into our swim trunks—the water was warm enough, we didn’t bother with wet suits—and put on some sunscreen.
As I covered my neck and shoulders in SPF 50, I looked around. We were absolutely alone. There wasn’t a soul in sight, not even a ship or a fishing boat out in the water.
No one in the world knew we were here. And since it was a Saturday, we had hours to ourselves before either of us needed to be anywhere.
I slowly turned to Connor.
He’d been smoothing some sunscreen on his arms when he met my eyes. After a moment, his hand stopped. Something like excitement or maybe nerves lifted his eyebrows. “What?”
“What?”
“You’re looking at me like…”
I grinned. “Like what?”
“Like that.”
I couldn’t even think of anything witty to say, or anything flirty, or anything at all. Because I was looking at him like that, and the only thing wrong with this moment was the fact that I wasn’t touching him.
I fixed that in a hurry.
Connor didn’t resist. As I pulled him into my arms, he raised his chin and met me in a hungry kiss, and he was already getting hard in his swim trunks.
“You know,” I murmured between kisses, “we have this whole beach to ourselves.”
His lips curved against mine. “We do. What should we do with it?”
I didn’t answer. I just wrapped my arms around him, shifted my weight and lowered us both onto the sand. Even in the shade, the sand was hot against my bare skin, but Connor’s body was even hotter. And if he kept kissing me like that, mine was going to burst into flames.
I pulled his head back and kissed his neck, not giving a damn about the faint taste and scent of sunscreen.
Connor groaned, his voice thrumming against my lips. “We’re never going to make it into the water like this.”
“I don’t care.” I dragged my lips across his collarbone. “Do you?”
“Not at all.” Arching against me, he asked, “You ever had sex on the beach?”
“No.” I came up to kiss him again, letting it linger for a moment. “But there’s a first time for everything.”
Connor tensed.
I stroked his face. “Relax. Doesn’t have to be today.”
“What if I want it to be today?”
Shivering, I leaned down and kissed him again. “We don’t have any lube or condoms with us.”
“Damn it.”
“It’s okay. We’ll get there.”
Truth was, I did have lube and condoms with me. Plenty of them. But I wasn’t ready to take Connor there yet. Not until I was sure he was ready.
“We should lose the swim trunks,” he murmured. “They’re getting in the way.”
“They really are.”
We tossed our swimming trunks on top of the rest of our gear, and then laid a towel down on the sand. It was cooler against my back than the sand had been, and less gritty, but I didn’t care either way as long as Connor’s hot—and now naked, oh my God—body was against mine.
I wrapped my arms around him and let myself get completely lost in the soft but undeniably hungry way he kissed. His tongue explored my mouth, but he was never forceful, never overbearing. He struck the most endearing balance between curious and cautious—trying new things and seeking out more, but still picking up on my cues and responding to them without resistance.
And although he may have been a virgin, his body sure knew what to do. His hips moved against mine, rubbing the underside of his cock against the underside of mine, and our breathing fell into perfect sync.
He broke the kiss with a gasp. “Oh my God…”
“Like that?”
“Mm-hmm.” He let his lips graze mine. “You?”
“Fuck yeah.” I pulled him down into another kiss. “And there’s no hurry for more. I’ve done all this before. This is all at your speed. Whatever you’re ready for, say the word.”
“I think I’m finally ready for this part.” He kissed the middle of my sternum, and planted one light kiss after another on my skin, each one a little lower than the last. My abs contracted under his soft lips, and I released a shuddering breath as he flicked his tongue across my skin.
“Jesus…”
He looked up at me, eyes gleaming, and flicked his tongue again. I gasped and squirmed—that area wasn’t particularly erogenous, but just knowing his mouth was on me was enough to turn me inside out. Knowing he was heading lower…
I moaned as he kissed my stomach again. Then he continued downward. The gentle, tentative kisses he trailed along my hip bone were almost more than I could take. Fuck. I was coming unglued, and he hadn’t even touched my cock.
He trailed more soft kisses along my hip bone. Whether it was to tease me or psych himself up, I had no idea, but it was a hell of a turn-on. Holding myself up on my elbows, I could barely focus my eyes as I watched him inch closer and closer to my very erect cock. I knew what that mouth was capable of when he kissed—I had to feel him give a blowjob.
Connor looked up at me. He grinned again, this time nervously, and I returned it.
I ran my fingers through his hair, and then along his cheek, and when I dragged my thumb across his lower lip, he shivered. I slipped my thumb into his mouth, and he immediately closed his lips around it. His tongue teased it in a pantomime of what I hoped—oh sweet Jesus, I hoped—he was about to do to my cock.
“You don’t have to.” I withdrew my thumb and slid it back into his mouth. “But don’t let me stop you if you want to.”
He grinned around my thumb. Then he ran his tongue along it before pulling free and dipping his head, leaving my hand hovering in the air as he slowly—maybe cautiously—ran his tongue around the head of my cock.
“Oh. Fuck.” My hand still hovered, though it shook a little now, but I couldn’t decide between resting it in his hair or just dropping it to my side. It was too damned hard to think about anything, even something that simple, when Connor’s tongue was on my dick. Finally, I settled on grabbing a fistful of the towel under me just for something to hold on to.
Steadying my cock with one hand around the base, Connor lifted himself up and took it between his lips. He went down a little, came back up, then went down a little farther, taking me a fraction of an inch at a time.
About the time he’d taken me impressively deep, he started to strain a bit.
I stroked his hair. “Easy,” I whispered. “Takes some…practice to train your…” What’s it called? What is—Jesus, Connor, that thing you do with your tongue… “Gag reflex.”
He eased up and focused on using his lips and tongue. On exploring with them. Fuck, I remembered what it was like to go down for the first time, when every inch of flesh was something new and fascinating, and Connor must’ve been as fascinated as I’d been. He teased with his tongue, mirroring some of the things I’d done to him before, slid his lips up and down, made sure my entire cock had his full attention. Some guys accidentally got their teeth involved at first, but he didn’t, and it was just warm, soft contact on sensitive skin.
And then he added his hand.
Oh my God.
“C-Connor, I’m…” I stared up at the sky, my head spinning so fast I couldn’t think straight. “I’m gonna…” My eyes rolled back, and I had just enough presence of mind left to force myself not to thrust into his mouth. I held as still as I could, my entire body shaking and wanting to fuck his mouth while he licked and sucked me right to the edge.