As soon as I said it, I felt that same tug in my chest. The one that made my life itch and feel off somehow. I’d never regretted settling in Dallas before, but knowing Charlie was in Hobie made me sure I wanted to stick around a while longer, at least while he was in town.
Charlie’s face softened. “Okay. I get it. You’re right. All either of us needs is judgment from the resident homophobe anyway.”
I combed my fingers through his hair to brush it away from his face. “Can we close out the negotiation portion of this deal and get to the good stuff?”
His grin was back and he had a wicked twinkle in his eye as his lithe body slithered fully onto mine. Just as he was opening his lips to suck one of my nipples into his hot mouth, the door opened.
Before West peeked around the open door, Charlie hit the floor on the other side of the bed with a loud thunk.
I was fairly sure I hadn’t chucked him off me, but I was equally unsure of how he’d come to hit the ground.
“Uh, is everything okay in here?” West asked, craning his neck to see over the mattress.
I sat up and hugged my knees in hopes of disguising the quickly deflating tent in my shorts.
Charlie popped up from the floor with a grin. “Yep! You just startled me, that’s all. Sorry.”
My brother’s eyes took in the slim beauty before us. Charlie’s black briefs rode low and his tight tee had risen up to expose his flat belly and delectable happy trail. The shapely muscles of his pale thighs stood out against the dark fabric of his briefs, and I thought West might actually pull out his phone and take a photo.
“Do you mind?” I growled at my brother. “Charlie, put some pants on before West winds up divorced.”
West’s eyes snapped to me, and he shook himself. “Just appreciating a fine example of healthy quads and abs, brother. Clearly the man takes care of himself. It’s my duty as a physician to assess—”
I stood up and slammed the door in his face, punching the button lock on the handle and turning to scowl at Charlie.
“Was that necessary?”
“What?”
“The preening. You might as well have stripped for him.”
Charlie’s questioning glance turned devious, and his hands moved to the hem of his tee. As he worked the tight fabric higher over his chest, he made a show of running his palms against smooth skin and long fingers across dusky nipples.
“Motherfucker,” I breathed.
“Mm,” he teased, pulling the shirt the rest of the way off and running his fingers through his long hair. “Like that?”
I crawled across the mattress until my face was in front of his stomach. I dropped openmouthed kisses along the trail of ginger hair leading from his navel to his low briefs. His cock hardened behind the dark fabric, and I mouthed that as well, dampening the cotton and inhaling the scent of him.
Charlie’s fingers dropped into my hair as he let out a shaky breath. “We don’t have time. Your brother’s waiting for us.”
I shook my head and reached up to peel his tiny briefs down his legs. His dick jutted out as soon as it was free from its confines, and I immediately grasped it in one hand so I could taste it.
Charlie’s hand tightened in my hair, and his other hand landed on my shoulder as if to keep his balance.
“Fuck, Hudson. Feels good,” he murmured.
I looked up at him through my lashes and saw the red blotches of heat on his chest and neck. His bottom lip was caught in his top teeth, and his eyes were closed, thick lashes spilling across freckled skin.
I pulled off his cock long enough to tell him how beautiful he was.
Charlie’s eyes opened halfway, and his hands cupped the sides of my face. I continued to lick and suck and pull while our eyes locked together. We’d done this before, back in Cork in my hotel room, only this time things between us were very different.
We’d known each other for months instead of days. We’d worked side by side for weeks. I’d seen him naked and soaked up the feel of his bare skin against mine halfway around the world. I knew more of his hopes and fears now than I had then and held them in my heart in a way I hadn’t before.
This time might have included the same sex act, but it was eons away from a quick one-nighter. It meant something… at least, to me it meant something. I had no way of knowing what our coming together meant to Charlie, but I could at least tell by the way he stared at me, it wasn’t completely casual or transactional.
I ran a free hand up his flat abdomen to his chest, feeling the bumps of muscle beneath his skin. The salt of his precum gave me a taste of things to come, and I redoubled my efforts to please him. I pulled against his hard length with my tongue on the upstroke and sucked in my cheeks on the downstroke. I felt the heaving breaths under my palm on his chest and heard his attempts to stifle his gasps and moans. As he neared his climax, his fist shot up to his mouth to muffle the cry as he shot long and hot into my throat.