I swallow it all and wipe my eyes before I ease him out of my mouth. When I look up at his face, his eyes are closed. He looks like a sultan, faintly displeased. Then he looks at me, and his lips quirk up at the corners. It’s that secret smile that used to reach his eyes. It doesn’t now. He’s different. There’s a sadness to him—just like me.
My chest aches, the air in my lungs frozen—and then it rushes out, and rage sweeps the sharp pain away. My throat is cinched tight as a string knot, stinging like a pile of embers. I look up at him and fill my lungs until they burn. And say my lines. “If you stay, I’ll make it hard on you.”
I wrap my hand partway around his calf, taut under the softness of his jeans. He shifts his hips a little, his erection hanging, still pumped up like he could go again. The sight makes me feel weak with my own unspent lust—but I won’t show that to him.
“Every second you are in my city, you are mine to do with as I see fit. When I’m gone, you wait. If I find out you haven’t done so, I decide the consequence.”
Our gazes lock, and I know what he sees in mine.
“I don’t want to—” he starts quietly.
“Doesn’t matter.” I rise to my feet and squeeze my throbbing dick through my pants. “You’re here. Are you gonna go home, Vance?”
His face is bleak as he shakes his head.
“That’s what I thought. Why don’t you show me to your room?”* * *VanceI’ve never felt like this before—like I’m stepping into lava, and I know it’s going to burn like hell, but I still want to feel it.
How long has he haunted my thoughts, plagued them? Why’d he call the one night that he did, when we stayed for so long on the line together? Why’d he ghost me at the hotel? Luke McDowell the enigma has been taking up space in my brain for way too long. Now’s my chance to play this out.
Adrenaline makes my hands shake, so I ball them into fists as I walk up the stairs and down the hall that’s lined with shelves. My back and neck are sweating under his gaze, and my stomach feels empty and achy.
His body brushes mine from behind as I open the bedroom door.
“Go lie on the bed.”
I do as he says, kicking off my boots and lying my stomach. I can feel his weight indent the mattress as he climbs up behind me. Then his hand is roving down my back…over my pants-clad ass. It’s harder now, more muscular, I know—from all the MMA I’ve started doing.
“Pull them down,” he orders.
I do, and my cock springs from my boxer-briefs, pressed between my abs and the duvet. I work my pants down more, and his hand comes between my legs, stroking my balls so lightly that the tickling sensation makes me moan. Then he’s got the base of my cock, moving upward in a slow pump. I feel the mattress shake as he works his dick, too.
“You missed this, didn’t you?” His words are dark and silky slow. “When you got the church’s offer, you didn’t even think about it.”
I groan as he drops down so his cock is pressed against my crack. He rubs my hip as his other hand works its way under me, finding my erection again so he can give the tip a hard squeeze.
“Yeah. That’s right. Someone’s already oozing—aren’t you, Vance Rayne?” He gives me a few strokes, rubbing his stiff dick against me as I groan again—because it feels so good to have his hand around me.
If I had any fucking sense, I’d roll away from him and catch the next plane to LaGuardia. I’m all out of sense, though, and his cock is thick and heavy on my flank.
I thrust my dick against the sheets, and when that doesn’t ease the ache in my balls, I lift my hips up off the mattress to give his hand more clearance. Instead of squeezing tighter, he lets me go.
“Want it nice and easy? I don’t think so.”
His hand spreads my cheeks, and something presses to my hole. I shut my eyes, my cock throbbing as I will him to push inside.
“Are you ready, Vance?” He rubs his shaft over the globe of my cheek…strokes a teasing thumb over my hole. “If you’re not, I understand. You didn’t know who had invited you. It wasn’t me, after all.” He moves his hand off me, and I hear something rip before his fingers return—two thick, insistent fingers tracing me…then pressing in. I moan, lust-drunk and desperate to feel this again—it’s been him since I was with a man—but he pulls his fingers out slowly.