And he very well might have resigned himself to being in a wheelchair he didn’t need just to manipulate her guilty conscience and to keep her under his control.
One thing was certain about this fucked-up situation: Sawyer was the last person in the world I was ever going to underestimate.
Ollie
They say practice makes perfect.
I was determined to be as good as Huck in bed. I didn’t have his wealth of experience, so of course there was bound to be a learning curve. But I was over feeling like a bumbling novice while he came across as a slick and seasoned professional. I’d been following his lead and learning from him since I was young. It was only natural that I fell into the same habit now that I was older.
It might be weird for anyone else, but Huck took it in stride when I asked him to teach me how to blow his mind, as well as other parts of him. His only condition was that whatever I learned, I wasn’t allowed to use that knowledge on anyone else. All his tips and tricks of the trade had to stay between the two of us. At first, I thought he was joking, but his gaze told me he was serious. He hadn’t said if he was sleeping with anyone else while we were hooking up on the regular these days, but it was clear he didn’t like the idea of me sleeping with someone who wasn’t him. I was too chicken to ask him what exactly he considered our relationship to be now that he had welcomed me into his bed. I was pretty sure the fact he came after me and caught me the minute I tried to run meant he might want to keep me.
The last couple of days, I’d barely been in the attic room. I was still creeped out by the shadows on the wall when it got dark, and it felt too isolated from the rest of the house. Plus, the slanted ceiling was too low for Huck. He hit his head more than once trying to navigate the odd room when he decided to crawl into bed with me after his shift at the bar. The next morning, he woke up with a knot on his head and was fighting a headache. He grumpily told me to just sleep in his bed and wait for him in his room. At first, I didn’t want to overstep, so I told him to call me when he got home and I would come down. But I found it impossible to sleep or study when I was alone upstairs, and I camped out in the living room instead. I was asleep on the couch when Huck came home, and I heard him grumbling that he knew how uncomfortable the old couch was when he picked me up and carried me into his room. When I looked at him after he laid me down on his admittedly much cozier mattress, he quietly told me he was worried about me and would feel better while he was gone if I took up his offer to treat his room as my own. He also mentioned it might be a bit awkward for Vernon and Harlen to have me take up the entire living room since neither had lived with a girl before.
I knew Vernon didn’t care, but he was probably right about Harlen. I’d settled into an uneasy kind of truce with the stoic football player, but it was obvious he still didn’t trust me, even more so now that Huck had sort of claimed me as his own.
It was inconsiderate to treat the common spaces as my own just because I was scared all the time, so I agreed to start spending time in his room when I was home and he was at work. I thought it would be awkward, but it was kind of like when we had sleepovers as kids, or when I waited for him to get home from school when we were teenagers. Only now, we did a lot more than innocently sleep side-by-side.
Tonight I’d learned that I needed to get a handle on my sexual prowess in the bathroom as well as the bedroom. Huck came home later than usual, looking tired and smelling like stale beer, cigarette smoke, and something a lot fouler. He mentioned that there was a bachelorette party that got out of hand, and he’d had to stay and clean up the kind of mess he didn’t wish on his worst enemy. He wanted to take a shower before falling into bed, so I offered to get up and scrub his very broad, very tattooed back.
Of course, getting to rub my soapy hands all over a wet, slippery Huck in an uninhibited way meant things went from clean to dirty pretty quickly. Once all the soap bubbles washed away, I kissed my way down his delectable body and finally let myself explore those silver rings pierced through his nipples. The little noises he made and the way he tensed and tightened his hold on me let me know when I kissed and licked a particularly sensitive spot, so the journey to what was waiting eagerly between his legs took a bit longer than usual.
By the time I wrapped my lips around his rigid cock, the water had turned cold, and I was shivering more from the temperature than from being turned on. I learned pretty quickly that kneeling in the shower with water trickling into my face was a lot less comfortable than getting on my knees in the bedroom. I wanted to power through and get him off because, without fail, he made sure I lost my mind with pleasure every single time he touched me.
Apparently, I was too cold to focus and forgot the first rule of going down on him: no teeth. I shivered so hard that I lost my rhythm and raked the edge of my teeth along the sensitive rim that flared around the head of his cock.
Huck yelped in surprise and put his hand on top of my head to still my up and down motion. A moment later, he had the water cranked off and was hauling me out of the shower. He hustled me into his big bed, wrapping the fluffy comforter around me without even drying me off first.
He chuckled when I looked up at him with apologetic eyes and patted the top of my wet head, using his fingers to smooth down my soaked hair. The curls were going to be a mess tomorrow, but I couldn’t muster the energy to care.
“The first rule I should’ve taught you: we both have to like what we’re doing when we hook up. If only one of us is into it, what’s the point? If you’re miserable and just going through the motions because you want me to feel some kind of way, it’s just going to make me upset. I don’t want to see you suffer. Especially when you have my dick in your mouth. Do you get where I’m coming from?”
I saw him shiver and held open my arms so he could climb into the cocoon I made with the comforter. Once I had my arms around his neck, he fell to the side so that we were lying diagonally on the mattress.
“You don’t seem to get distracted by anything when we’re together. I feel like your entire focus is on me, and the rest of the world falls away whenever you touch me. I want to be the same for you. A little cold water shouldn’t ruin the moment.” I pouted a little, and he immediately put his mouth over my protruding bottom lip.
“There are a million moments. Good moments. Bad moments. It’s okay if one or two get ruined. Another one will come along to make up for it, okay?” He rubbed his thumb along my bottom lip and grinned at me. “You have to stop thinking I’m always going to get everything right. I’m not a kid anymore, and the mistakes I make now have consequences. I’m more careful than I was back then, but I am far from perfect. Remember how mean I was to you when you first showed up?” I nodded slightly. “I have a lot to make up for. That’s part of the reason it seems like I can’t see anything else when I put my hands on you. I don’t want there to be any doubt about where you belong, Ollie.” His eyebrows twitched upward, and a smirk drifted across his mouth. “With me.”
My heart skipped a beat as I lifted a hand to trace the possessive expression on his handsome face.
“I can honestly say I don’t have any good moments without you, Huck.” From the minute he left, life had been bleak and dreary. It was only now I was starting to see the colors and light in things again. It could be overwhelming, and I was so worried about disappointing him.