I led him to the bedroom and stripped his sweatpants and underwear, glad he’d refused my offer to turn the heat down. He was nowhere near recovered enough to be rolling around, but the sight of him sprawled out naked, even with the dressing still covering the surgery incision, was too good to hide under the sheets.
“You’re wearing too many clothes,” he whispered.
“For what?”
“For laying down with me.”
The slightly shameful pleasure at him being incapacitated returned. We went to bed together every night I wasn’t working, and he wasn’t traveling, but there was something about knowing he wasn’t going anywhere for the next few days, even though we’d just spent an entire trip in each other’s company, that made me smile.
“Stop grinning like that. You’re freaking me out.”
It was kinda sad that me smiling at him made him think I was some kind of maniac, but I was distracted from feeling bad about it by his dick. He was hard.
And so was I.
Ash
Pete brushed his lips over my neck. “What do you want?”
His gravelly whisper sent a shiver through me, and with it, a tiny, oddly pleasurable, shot of pain that clarified in my hazy mind exactly what I wanted—no, needed—from him right now. Talking dirty wasn’t usually my thing, but words bubbled up my throat before I could catch them and doubt myself. “I want you to make me come.”
If Pete was surprised by my sudden bedroom candor, it didn’t show. He merely grinned that damn fucking grin again and kissed me like he was sweeping my soul clean with his velvet tongue.
A bone-deep craving for him rushed over me. I wanted to take his weight, for him to pin me gently down so I could remember how he always made me feel safe, even when everything else was working against me. When I was so fucking sure the monsters inside me would consume as both. Pete thought I was afraid of him when shit got real, but I wasn’t. I was afraid of myself. Of how far I would fall, before he pulled me back.
But I wasn’t falling tonight—or if I was, it wasn’t anywhere bad. Pete had always been the master of my body when it came to long, slow waves of pleasure. He didn’t need to pin me down, because the gleam in his dark gaze held me firmly in place. Love at first sight didn’t mean much to me, but one way or another Pete had always entranced me…always broken through whatever had stood between us. Our lives had changed beyond recognition since Ellie had dragged me into his Lincoln Park apartment all those years ago, but the spell he’d cast on me then remained.
He didn’t fuck me, just took me in his mouth and tortured me until my recovering abdominal muscles screamed out for release.
I came with a loud groan, chest heaving, my bare skin sheened with sweat. I wanted to return the favour, but I couldn’t move.
Pete licked his lips and gazed up at me, head cocked curiously to one side, like he knew before I did that this encounter wasn’t quite over. “What do you want?”
The second time of asking was just as charged as the first. I sucked in a shaky breath and tried to tug him upright. “I want to watch you come.”
Pete’s eyebrow twitched. Bingo. I’d finally surprised him. “You wanna watch?”
“Yeah.”
His teeth replaced his tongue on his bottom lip, and he carefully scrambled up the bed to straddle me without putting pressure on my belly. His hand hovered over his dick.
I pushed it closer. “Go on.”
It was all the encouragement he needed. His hand closed around his cock and he jacked himself in time with my throbbing pulse while I looked on, tracking the tell tale signs of his building pleasure—his flushed skin and hooded eyes. His quivering legs, and the beautiful tension in his shoulders.
But still, I was caught off guard when a ragged yell tore from his chest. “Fuck.”
I dug my fingers into his thighs. “Do it,” I whispered. “Come.”
Pete jerked, and hot come spurted out of him, painting my chest. His beautiful body seized up, and then conversely relaxed with every jolt that passed through him. “Goddamn it, Ash.”
I laughed. If I hadn’t been totally obsessed with him before, I’d have stood no chance of not being now. Fuck, he was glorious, inside and out, and I loved him so much my brain couldn’t handle it.
Sometimes my mind blacked out when I was overwhelmed, but not now. Now, I pulled Pete as close as I could and told him exactly how much I fucking loved him, because I didn’t tell him enough.
I never could tell him enough.
Pete
Christmas was a trip. Despite baby Billy’s civilized arrival, sleeping didn’t seem to be his thing. In his ten days on this earth, he ran Danni and Joe ragged, which left Ash at the mercy of Cosmo and Liam while I dipped in and out, finding solace in the crazy busy ER, all the while freaking the fuck out because Ash was still recovering from surgery.
“Minor surgery,” he corrected me with an epic eye roll. “It’s not like, I dunno, I had my liver sewn up.”
I scowled at him across the kitchen. He had Cosmo on one hip—I’d told him a million fucking times not to lift her—and a pizza box in his hand. With his hair all over the place, and peanut butter on his shirt, it was quite the picture. It made me want to throttle and kiss him all at the same time.
Or snap a picture to treasure when I’d calmed down enough to appreciate the moment. Man, I needed a nap. Shame I was on my way out the door. I made a grab for the coffee jug. “Your sarcasm sucks ass.”
“If you say so, fucker.”
Ash trooped off to put Cosmo to bed. I expected him to be gone a while and resigned myself to not giving him a proper goodbye, but reappeared a few moments later, minus the toddler, and the pizza box. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just tired.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
Ash inserted himself between me and the kitchen counter. He slid his hands under my clothes and rubbed his thumbs over my ribcage. He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t have to. Ash was a man who spoke without words, and today, I was apparently a man who’d forgotten how to use them.
Instead, I leaned into his touch and wished the next twelve hours away. I wouldn’t be back before dawn, but Liam had left at lunchtime, and Joe was picking Cosmo up after breakfast. Praise the fucking lord. I loved my niece and nephews more than life itself, but damn, if I wasn’t ready for some alone time with Ash.
And it was NYE tomorrow. I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate than locking the doors and turning our phones off.
I kissed Ash, then wrenched myself away from him and left for work.
The city was covered in slushy snow, and the sky was gray, but my encounter with Ash, however brief and reticent, had lifted my mood. Sometimes, all I needed was his hands on me. His ghostlike touch.
Others, I needed more, but the days of rolling out of bed and into work were over. This dude no longer had the energy to fuck all day and work all night.
Shame.
Ten minutes later, I walked into the daily horror story that was an ER during the holidays. It was carnage, but the kind I could handle. I patched wounds, monitored patients, and placed phone calls to anxious parents wondering where their drunk college-aged kids had got to. For the first eight hours, no one died, then we lost an old dude with liver failure, and time began to drag.