By the Book (17 page)

“Reece?” I could have sworn he gulped, his voice as on edge as mine. And I waited for him to speak, almost certain of what he’d say before he said it. He took a deep breath and asked a single-word question. “Bedroom?”

* * *

This is what you wanted, Hutton, I told myself as we stepped across the bedroom threshold, me trembling with nerves and Daniel with…something. You wanted this, even if it scares you.

“Reece. I don’t want us to be strangers to each other in the morning.” His lips moved against mine, his jaw under my hand. “Which is why I want to sleep in here tonight.” He pulled away and clambered over to the other side of the bed, throwing himself down onto the pillows.

Looking over my shoulder, I said nothing.

“Well? You gonna stay sitting up all night? Beds are made for lying in.”

“Yeah.” I rolled my shoulders in a rippling kind of shrug, able to follow his logic despite the bizarreness of the conversation. And this. Us. Our situation. “I guess they are.” As I lay down, he shifted his weight and stretched out an arm for me to fall onto. I turned my head toward him, and he curved the arm around, combing his fingers through the hair at the back of my head.

I kept expecting him to say something, but he never said a word, just kept his head turned in my direction, his hand on the back of mine. After half a minute or so, he brushed his other hand across my face, settling it in the curve of my neck as he moved toward me. The breath he whispered across my face just before kissing me was half a sigh, an exhalation forced out by a low, low moan from the back of his throat.

“Reece, you…” His entire body molded itself against me as his tongue slipped into my mouth, dipping slowly, tasting before he pulled away again. Always leaving me wanting more.

There was something inherently sensual in the way Daniel kissed, as if it wasn’t just about lips and tongue.
Truly
sensual in that he engaged touch and taste and sound as well, by running his fingers through my hair, taking his time to brush my lips with his own, moaning into the kiss and whispering my name when it was over.

I’d had sex with women that didn’t get me half as hooked as one kiss from Daniel. Maybe it was because it was all so new. Maybe it was the excitement. The illicit thrill.

Maybe I just needed to shut the fuck up and enjoy what he did to me, for however long it lasted, despite the waves of conscience lapping at the back of my mind.
It’s only been a few weeks, Reece. Only a few weeks since…

And every stroke of his fingertips on my jaw was a way of holding back the tide.

Touching his forehead to mine, he breathed against my lips, let
me
catch my breath, and kept up the steady, slow rhythm of his hand on my face. Then he shifted, moved onto his side again, no doubt to ease the pressure against his hard cock, but it did
me
no good to feel it against my thigh. I wanted…I wanted…

Christ
. I didn’t know what I wanted.

Daniel lifted his hand away from my face and inched it down my body. For those long seconds, I thought he was going to touch me. Again.
Wanted
him to. And I waited. Held my breath.

Exhaled when his hand broke contact with my skin.

His low groan, the way the silhouette of his arm moved, the hiss of skin on skin told me what he was doing, and I had never,
ever
wanted anything as much.

“Oh God,” he murmured, and I wasn’t sure if he was lost in the moment or if his words were a response to my hand traveling down his arm from elbow to wrist. Following the glacier-slow down-up of his hand stroking himself. “Christ. I can’t—I want…” He gasped against my face and stopped. “Reece. I’m fucking
aching
here. I need to come.”

I slipped my hand past the waistband of his shorts, brushed the head of his cock and—

He jumped back. Enough to break contact.

“What?” I’d been uncertain all this time—not whether or not I wanted this, but whether or not I
should
touch him.

“Just getting these damn things off.” Raising his hips off the bed, in seconds he was naked, boxers discarded. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Mind?” I echoed just before he pulled me into a deep kiss. “I thought…” Breath caught, jarred, eventually made it through my body. “I thought I’d done something wrong.”

“Whatever you do to me is
never
wrong.” He kissed the corner of my mouth, whimpering as I made contact again.

“Is that…” Just as breathless as him, but from nerves as well as desire, I faltered, unable to keep up that perfect rhythm. “Is that…”
Jesus, Reece. You’re a grown man. Say it
. “You like that?”

“Fuck. Oh fuck.
Yes
.” Daniel tangled his fingers in my hair, holding us both steady for a moment while he sighed and slowly, slowly moved back and forth.

All I had to do was hold him, wrapping my fingers round his cock, feeling each ridge and contour as his hips did all the work.

“Oh. My.
God
,” he moaned in my ear. “Fuck, that feels good. I knew it; I fucking knew it’d feel… Jesus, Reece, you have no idea.” He drew my earlobe into his mouth, gently at first, and when I felt teeth, sensed the danger of a bite, I tightened my hand as he fucked it, knew he’d gasp, the need to breathe greater than the desire to cause pain. Barely able to speak, his rapid breaths warmed my neck. His shoulders tensed and released, tensed and released with every stroke I gave—or every thrust he took. “Reece, don’t… Just…whatever you’re doing…” he moaned, falling onto his back.

Hands flung above him gripped the headboard as I moved onto my side. When I wrapped my fingers round his cock one by one, sliding my hand from the head all the way down, he growled from the back of his throat, quietly, almost purring.

“God, yes. Do it slowly. Wait. Tighter.
Jesus
.”

Eventually he lost all ability to speak, reduced to moaning on the upstroke, gasping when I moved my hand down. Occasionally he said one word, a monosyllable, under his breath, and I moved over him, leaned in for a kiss.

A moment before my lips brushed his, I heard him say it again.

“
Reece
.”

The intensity of the manner in which he spoke gave me pause, until Daniel’s hand snaked round the back of my head, held me close, his fingers tightening against my scalp as mine tightened around his cock. “Reece, I’m gonna come.” He sucked in a breath as I sped up. “I need… I want you to—” His hips rose off the bed, forcing his cock through my grasp. If the light was on, I could have seen him. Known whether his eyes were open or closed. Maybe he frowned.

All I knew was his lips parted beneath mine as he gasped for air, and when I kissed from the corners of his mouth along his jaw, he moaned softly.

“Daniel?”

“I want
more
.”

My strokes slowed, half to give him a chance to breathe, half to give myself the same privilege.

“Reece?” Slowly, from the hips, he pushed himself against me, moaning when I tightened my hold. “I want…”

More confident now, I stroked him faster, wondering how I could ever have been wary of this.
Him
. “What do you want?”

“I want…” He grabbed my wrist. “I want you to fuck me.”

Electricity shot through me; his hand on my arm caused pins and needles.

“Reece?” My name on his lips was nothing more than a whisper. “Say something.”

“I don’t know what to say.” I bit my lip, and my hand, yet on him, stilled.

“You’re still here.” He moved over me, his cock pressing against my thigh.

I let out a slow breath from between pursed lips. “Daniel.” What was I supposed to say? This, what he was asking—I didn’t know if I could. I
wanted
to, but aroused
and
unsure, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

His lips against mine, he murmured as his fingertips traced the line of my jaw, “It’ll feel amazing.” His lower lip trembled as he drew in a shuddering breath. “Like nothing on Earth. Honestly, I’ve never… God. I just want to feel your cock inside me,” Daniel whispered. “It’s all I’ve been able to think about.”

“Are you…?”

He kissed me. Lightly. And fast. To still make the contact, but without rendering either of us unable to speak. “Sure?” His lips curved into a smile against my own. “Never more so.”

“No, I meant are you
serious
?”

“Reece.” He took a deep breath. “Definitely. I want you”—he kissed me—“to fuck me.
Now
.”

Jesus, I don’t know what I’m doing. Help me out here, Daniel.

He reached across me and pulled open the bedside cabinet drawer, rummaged around and laughed under his breath. “Thank God.”

“What?”

“Condoms.” He tossed a foil packet in my direction; it landed on my chest. “It’s always when you’re really,
really
fucking desperate to get laid that you run out.” He fished something else out of the drawer as well, left it on top of the bedside cabinet.

My head turned toward the light
thud
it made as he set it down. I saw nothing but the vague outline of a bottle.

“Lube.”

Oh fuck, we’re really gonna do this.

“Don’t worry.” Daniel lay next to me on his side, propped up on one elbow, head resting against his palm. “You’ll be fine. You’ll be better than fine if I’m any good at reading people. Mind your eyes; I’m going to put the light on. You’ll see why in a minute.” He chuckled, and when he flipped the switch on the bedside lamp, I blinked my eyesight back into focus.

“I’m glad one of us has got faith in me,” I said, ripping the packet open with trembling hands.

“I’ll talk you through it.” A huff of laughter warmed my neck a split second before he kissed my jaw. “I’ve been told I’m very talkative when I’m…you know.”

“I should only start to worry if you’re silent?”

“No chance of that happening.”

“You’re the expert.”

“Why, Reece, are you suggesting I’m a bisexual pervert who’s more than happy to let someone like you fuck the hell out of me?”

As I reached for the lube bottle with hands slightly
less
shaky now, Daniel’s weight shifted and he ran a hand down my thigh. I shuddered. “You’re…” I gulped. “You’re gonna have to help me out here.”

“Need a hand?”

“Could say that.”

He took the bottle from me, flipped it open, and squeezed some lube onto one hand before tossing the bottle aside. “There.”

I craned my neck as he stroked the lube onto my cock; there was something so intense about the way he touched me, the silent acknowledgment of what we were about to do, that I couldn’t even face him, unseeing.

“God, I want this so much I can’t…” Daniel lifted his hand to my neck, pulled me in to a kiss more desperate than any I could remember, making it impossible for me to recall a time when I
hadn’t
touched or kissed him. “You have to get inside me.
Now
.”

His words turned my spine to jelly, and thank God I was lying down; nothing would have kept me upright after hearing such lust in his voice.

“Just.” He sighed. “Reece.” He kept his hand to my face as he shifted his weight. “You have to.”

“Then tell me.”

“Get behind me.” Daniel got on his hands and knees, and unthinking, hypnotized, I followed, put one hand on his hip and—

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Yes?” But there was a smile in his voice. An inherent
I know what you’re thinking.

I ran a hand from his hip to his spine, faltering when my fingertips met the edge of his tattoo. “That’s why you put the light on.”

He laughed. “That’s why.”

Pressing harder, I traced each bump in his spine, and it arched under my hand. I trailed my hand back down to his hip. “Jesus, you’re…”

“What?” He cocked his head but didn’t look over his shoulder. Every muscle and sinew just below the surface made his ink come alive, and when I touched the edge of one wing again, I was surprised to feel skin against my own rather than a feather.

“Nothing, nothing,” I whispered. “Doesn’t matter.”

“You need something to look at back there while you’re…” He moved back onto me, and when he touched the head of my cock, I jerked back, shocked at the sudden contact. “Jesus, Reece.”

Gripping his hip with one hand, I used the other to guide my cock partway into him, less than half an inch, just testing the waters, as if I could stop here and take no more. As if one kiss from Daniel was ever going to be enough without fucking him.

“Easy.” He panted once. Twice.

“Am I—”
Hurting you?

“No. Just go slowly,” he said breathlessly. “Make me feel every inch.”

“
Fuck
.” Barely able to believe what I was hearing, less able to move without trembling, I pushed against him, watched my cock slide in as slowly as I could manage. I wanted to be inside him all the way, but he was right. He was right.
Make him feel every inch. You’ll never fuck him for the first time ever again
. “God, Daniel, you should see this.”

His head fell forward, and he pushed back; I didn’t have to do a thing but watch him take every. Single. Inch of me into him, even as his movement took every last breath out of my lungs.

Gasping soundlessly, I held on to his hips, held him steady. Or myself. And when he moaned, it could have been me making the sound.

“Fucking hell, Reece, that’s just…”

“What? Tell me.” Screwing my eyes shut, I tried not to move too fast. I tried to keep it slow and steady, just the way he wanted, but he was so tight and it felt too damn good not to pull out nearly all the way and move back in just a little faster with each stroke. “Talk to me.”
You said you were a talker. Speak to me.

“Slowly.” He groaned when I moved in him, and I stopped to give him a chance to speak. And to give myself a chance to breathe. “That’s exactly how I like it.” Pushing against me, he arched his back, pulled me in deeper.

Arousal blurred the corners of my vision; all I saw was the rippling of Daniel’s backbone, the way every beam of lamplight hit the contours of his back, casting shadows from his shoulder blades over his wings.

From the base of my spine up, every vertebra liquidized, throwing me forward. I thought about holding on to his shoulders but couldn’t keep my balance and ended up leaning over him, bracing myself on shaking arms.