I remembered Beale calling my energy soothing, and I wished I could summon just a tiny fucking shred of “soothing,” because I was a nervous wreck and it was all his fault.
How dare he attempt to take me seriously as a person?
How dare he hold me like he was afraid I might fly away?
How dare he be all hearts and flowers perfect, when everything about our fake relationship was so very clearly impossible, including the fact that when I’d had the opportunity to tell the truth, I’d purposely lied and told him the situation in New York was “a relatively minor personal problem” that had nothing to do with him?
I had no clue how to handle this because it was totally outside my frame of reference. I didn’t have real relationships, let alone fake relationships. Jesus Christ in a blanket, I didn’t even do friends other than Mason. I didn’t do… trust, and I wasn’t sure how to start.
Beale was the one person in the world who knew me as Toby and as Hagatha, and he not only liked both parts, he saw them as two halves of a whole. Even I didn’t do that. It was weird enough to have someone like me; it was next to impossible to believe that someone liked all of me. It was an equation that would not equate.
“And it’s not gonna equate, even if you stand here pondering it for a hundred years,” I told my reflection. “So focus on Beale and make this perfect, asshole.”
I huffed. If Beale could hear me, he’d probably say this was more evidence that I was a nice person. Good people like Beale always thought other people were good too.
My motivations, though, were entirely selfish. I wanted it to be perfect because I wanted him to remember it that way. You always remembered your first, right? Well, I wanted no one who came along after me—no gorgeous hunk of big-dicked, soul-matey enchantment—to ever compare. It was only fair, since that orgasm out by the pool had been one of the most gratifying sexual encounters of my entire life, and there was no way I was going to forget that, even long after I was back in the city, carrying a giant, unrequited crush as a souvenir.
“Toby?”
I whirled to find Beale leaning against the bathroom door frame, gloriously naked, fully aroused, and watching me make sad faces at myself in the damn mirror. By the hair of Justin Bieber circa 2012, was I to be allowed to maintain no vestige of my dignity this week?
“You okay?”
“Yes! Yes, fine. Obviously. Just getting the supplies, and… things.” I clutched the extra-large condoms in my hand. “Um. Where did we leave the lube earlier?”
Beale looked down at the counter, approximately two inches from my right hand. “There?”
“Oh.” A burst of desperate laughter bubbled up from my chest and got caught in my throat. “Ha. Silly me.”
“Toby,” Beale repeated. He took a step toward me, so I looked up and our gazes locked. Those kind, patient blue eyes seemed to see all my silly, selfish, chaotic thoughts, and I realized I was willing to give up all my dignity this week. Every last shred. And it would be worth it, just for this chance to be with someone who made me feel cherished and safe and seen and wanted. So very wanted.
“I’m nervous,” I blurted. “I don’t know why! I’m the furthest thing from a virgin you could find.”
“Well, I’m not nervous.” He closed the distance between us so he could chafe my chilly arms with his big hands. His cock poked my belly, but he ignored it. “You know why?”
I shook my head.
“Because it’s you, Toby.”
I blinked. “If this is about my soothing energy…”
Beale shook his head and lifted both hands to cradle my jaw as if I was something infinitely precious. Then he leaned down and kissed me—hot and hungry and real.
I’d been kissed a thousand times. Maybe ten thousand. Hell, even a hundred times by Beale this week alone. Still, this one felt different. Like Beale was trying to tell me something. Like I was trying to tell him something back.
The next thing I knew, I was ass-down in the center of the bed and Beale had covered me with his body. He pressed hot openmouthed kisses to every part of me he could reach—my nipple, my bicep, the sharp jut of my hip, the thick cord of my neck that he’d figured out slayed me. He whispered sweet, silly things against my skin—how beautiful I was, how lucky he was, how special I was, how badly he wanted me—like he hoped the words would sink inside me, and I’d have sworn a couple of them did. I felt marked by him every place the words touched, as surely as if they’d been written in indelible ink.
By the time he made his way down my body to my cock, I was fully hard again and moving restlessly against the sheets. Then he opened his mouth over my cock, and I swear to fuck, I saw stars. I didn’t realize I’d been trying to move away from the gorgeous torture of it until I felt his hand splayed against my belly, holding me down and making me take it.
“Holy shit, Beale.” My voice was slurred, wrecked. “Please.” I wasn’t sure what I was asking for—for him to fuck me, for him to bring his cock to my lips so I could taste him, for him to end this quickly because it had all become way too real when we were nothing but a lie on top of a lie. “Let me touch you. Let me make you feel good.”
Beale lifted his head, and his hair fell across his forehead. He grinned rakishly with spit-slick lips and reached for the lube so he could coat his fingers. “I’m onto you, you know,” he said casually.
My eyes widened. I had no idea what he meant. Was he talking about the thing with Jayd? Or the fucking feelsy-crush-thing I was pretty sure was giving me bulging heart-eyes every time I looked at him? Or…
“You don’t like anyone to pay too much attention to you, do you?”
I swallowed. What the fuck was that? Who made startling, heart-squeezing pronouncements of things a casual hookup would never notice about one, accompanied by a devastating smile, in the middle of particularly good sex? It was rude. Unforgivable. Not fucking done.
“You said I was a drama queen,” I reminded him in a lusty frog croak that was approximately as sexy as you’d think it was.
“’Cause you are.” He stopped to run his teeth over my nipple, and I shuddered. “But that’s just another way of distracting me from what you’re really feeling, isn’t it? The same way you turn the tables on me every time we’re talking about you.” He sucked hard at my other nipple. “The same way you’re more comfortable when you’re the one giving pleasure than when you’re receiving.”
Dear sweet baby Jesus, if I suddenly became that guy who cried during sex, I was gonna… fuck. I didn’t even know. Find a sword and fall on it? Swear off sex forever? Something powerful and atrocious and…
“But that’s not happening today, Tobias Elford. Because you are the absolute center of my attention. And I like everything I see.”
I made a noise that was halfway between a moan and a sob—okay, more of a sob trying valiantly to be a moan—that turned into a full-on epic porn-star squeal the minute his fingers breached my hole. He’d done such a spectacular job of loosening me up earlier that it barely burned, and the pressure of his big fingers inside me was ten out of ten epic stars.
“Fuck me,” I begged. “Please, Beale. Please, baby.”