Hot as Heller (Aster Valley 3)

I licked and sucked and explored, taking each of his fuzzy balls into my mouth and licking hard across his taint, until sucking his dick down my throat again. While I didn’t have much experience giving men head in the real world, I’d spent an embarrassing amount of time watching porn and imagining myself giving award-winning blow jobs once I found a man who wouldn’t run and blab to the press about them.

Declan Stone would be the last person on earth to blab to the press about getting sucked off by an actor.

It didn’t take long before Declan’s fingers tightened in my hair and he warned me he was going to come. I stayed locked on his cock while he came in a hot rush down my throat with a loud cry. It had been so long since I’d done this, since I’d had a mouthful of dick and craved its release, that I wanted to stay down there like some kind of cockwarmer after he came down from his high.

I laid my head on his inner thigh and ran my fingers through the hairs there. His thigh muscles twitched under my touch.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, reaching for one of my hands and moving his lips along the back of it and up my forearm with reverent, open-mouth kisses. “Inside and out. I didn’t see it before.”

Hot tears threatened to fill my eyes, and I took a slow, steady breath to banish them before they appeared and ruined everything. He already thought of me as a child. There was no reason to prove him right with a crying jag. “Not surprised. I learned a long time ago to play the game.”

My admission surprised me—how did this man make me want to admit things I never admitted to anyone?—but it didn’t seem to surprise him at all.

“It makes sense. Not sure there are many people in your situation who had an easy time becoming their true selves. When you’re encouraged to be someone else from a very early age and rewarded for doing it well… it seems only natural you’d lose the ability to show your true self.”

His hand toyed with my hair as I thought about what he said. “True. It’s especially hard when it comes from your mother. I was in college before I had the guts to find a therapist to help me work through it. It took two years before I started to realize I’d let someone else dictate my entire future.”

“Who’s dictating it now?”

The question wasn’t pushy, simply curious, but it hit me hard. I moved up and buried my face in his neck again. I didn’t even need to say the words. We both knew the answer wasn’t me. I wasn’t dictating my own future, and that was the true cause of my discontent.

I would have been embarrassed if I didn’t feel so easy in his company. It was like a time-out from the real world. It didn’t matter what this semi-stranger thought of me. He wasn’t critical to my future. I could be myself around him—whatever that meant—and then go back to being the Finn Heller everyone knew and loved when I returned to LA.

But for now, I let myself face the truth.

“I feel like I’m stuck at a crossroads,” I admitted softly into his damp skin. “And there are trains coming from all sides.”

Declan pulled my face away from him so he could meet my eyes. His smile was gentle and kind. “You know all you have to do is step off the tracks, right? You don’t have to pick one to stay on. Step off and catch your breath. You’ve been working hard for a long time, Finn. You deserve some time to figure things out.”

He seemed so sure of himself, so confident that what he said was true, even though it felt about as far away from true as anything.

“You make it sound so easy,” I said with a laugh, moving to lie down on his shoulder and snuggle into his side. Declan’s arms wrapped around me and held me close.

“No. Not easy. But it is your choice.”

He sounded like he spoke from experience, and I was reminded that he had his own story to tell.

“Why did you leave LA? Did something happen?”

It was like seeing the metal shutters come down on the vegetable market shop down the block from my house. With one quick yank, all of the intimacy that had seemed to be growing between us was snatched away.

“I should probably go,” he said.

I felt like a vacuum had just sucked the happy, relaxed feeling right out of me. In its place was the sharp sting of rejection.

“Oh.”

Declan’s arms loosened around me, and he moved to the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry.”

Fucking hell. No fucking way. I was not a pity fuck who was going to cry when this man walked out while his taste was still salty on my tongue.