It was early morning when my phone buzzed with a message. Hoping for Ash, I slipped it out of my pocket and glanced at it under the desk. But it wasn’t Ash, it was Glenn, and he’d sent me a photo. It was him and Jed kicking it on the deck of Max and Jed’s lakeside cabin. Glenn was drinking beer, as relaxed as I’d ever seen him, while Jed somehow managed to appear annoyed, chill, and amused all at the same time.
I laughed out loud. Jed was a handsome motherfucker, but he wasn’t a selfie kind of dude. It surprised me often that Glenn was, and that he let Danni stalk him with her camera when he was in town, but then, who could resist Danni?
The rest of my shift played out with its usual dose of stress, humor, and heartache.
I walked home in the rain, trying to decide if I was hoping to find Ash still asleep, wide awake and waiting for me, or cooking breakfast. I had a hunger for all things that included him. The order didn’t matter.
But as it happened, he was awake and making bacon to go with the pancakes Cosmo had demanded. And he’d made coffee. If I hadn’t already devoted my entire soul to him? Well. Fuck it. I’d do it all over again.
I claimed a mug of java and sat at the breakfast bar with Cosmo while she shouted at me and stuck stickers to my face.
Ash brought her plate of pancakes. He’d optimistically loaded them with fresh fruit.
I rolled my eyes and reached for the syrup bottle. “Pick you battles, dude. We’re the fun uncles, remember? Not the food cops.”
“You just don’t want to scrape strawberries off the floor for the next week.”
“Truth.” I compromised by squeezing syrup all over the strawberries, hoping it would fool Cosmo into eating them.
It didn’t, but I got a kick out of watching her boss Ash around, so there was that.
After breakfast, I went to bed and knocked out for a few hours. I had no idea how much time had passed when Ash joined me under the covers, and I didn’t care. After a tough few days, hiding out in our big bed together was my favorite thing to do.
I rolled into his arms and dozed against him for a little while, then I showed him the picture Glenn had sent me.
He rubbed his cheek on my bare chest. “That’s nice. I wonder where Max was.”
“Not far, I’d imagine.”
“I loved him. He was so easy to be around.”
“I know.”
“Did he remind you of Maggie?”
“Totally. Couldn’t you tell by how often I fell asleep in his presence? Man, he must’ve thought he bored the hell out of me.”
“I don’t think he thought that. He told me he likes company. He thinks it’s good for Jed to have people around.”
“Makes sense. It’s good for us too.”
“Not today.”
“No?” I glanced down at Ash. “Why’s that then?”
“Because I want to start the new year off right.”
He’d have caught me off guard if I hadn’t been ready for this moment since I’d set foot in the apartment that morning. I pulled him over me, trying not to be over careful with him, and for the first time in days, it wasn’t that hard. If Ash could handle Cosmo, he could handle me.
We kissed, and I stripped him of the sweatpants and underwear he’d come to bed in. I was already naked, and I planned on staying that way for as long as he’d let me.
Ash and I had been together a long time, but every moment we spent together like this, I was still shook by how easily he set me on fire. Sex was…complicated for him, but over the years, it had gotten easier for him, and now he didn’t flinch when I kissed his neck, or let my hands roam his back.
His shivers were the very best kind.
I laid him out beneath me, and went to town on every glorious inch of him until he took back control and flipped us over. He kissed me, hard and searching, and rubbed his cock over mine.
A ragged moan escaped me. “Hope you’ve plans for that, ‘cos I’m losing my mind down here.”
Ash shot me a wicked grin. “I’ve had plans for you for days. Is it normal for surgery to make people horny? I literally can’t think of anything else.”
“Um…it’s not a phenomenon I’ve heard of, but you’ve always been an anomaly, babe.”
“Not on purpose.”
“Doesn’t have to be. Enjoy it, man. Make hay and all that.”
“You’re funny when you’re tired.”
“I’m not tired. I slept all day.”
“No, you didn’t. It’s lunchtime.”
“Oh.”
Ash laughed. “Sorry. I missed you.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’d stay awake the rest of my life if it meant I got to be with you like this.”
In answer, Ash circled his hips again, and my legs made a natural, instinctive cradle for him. He dropped to kiss me again, and our bodies melded together in a perfect fit, not a bible’s width between us.
Lube seemed to appear from nowhere, or maybe I was just too distracted by Ash grinding against me to notice him opening the nightstand drawer.
Either way, if I’d had any doubts about how this was gonna go down, they evaporated as I stared up at him. He was going to fuck me, and I couldn’t wait.
Ash
I’d had dirty things on my mind for days. At first, it had unnerved me. As hot as I was for Pete, constantly thinking about fucking, even the healthy kind, wasn’t where my brain was usually at.
But it didn’t seem to matter how much I had going on to distract me, I couldn’t stop. I replayed the frosty morning in that North Dakota cabin over and over, and I couldn’t help imagining what it would feel like to flip our positions. I’d fucked Pete from behind before, but never sober, and never like that. He had the most beautiful back, but the sight of it still scared me sometimes. More than showing him my own, cos I trusted him more than I trusted myself.
That’s stupid. You’d never hurt him like that.
I’d spent our entire relationship wishing it was that simple.
But nothing about the convoluted mess in my brain was simple.
So I ignored it, and acted on the instinct that had driven me to wake him up in the first place.
I coaxed him—not that he needed much persuasion—onto his belly and teased him with my fingers. He rose up onto his hands and knees, chasing sensation, but I’d fucked him like that before. I wanted to try it the other way—I wanted him to feel like I had in North Dakota.
Safe, loved, and so consumed by pleasure there was nothing else in the world.
Just him.
Just me.
Us.
I pushed him down on his belly again. He found my hand, squeezed it, and widened his legs enough to let me in. Then he curled one toward his hips, and new heat rushed me. I crawled over him and ran my hands over his muscular ass.
He growled and bucked into my touch. “Do it. Stop thinking.”
I wasn’t thinking about anything except fucking him, but I took the hint, and aligned my cock with where he wanted me most. Sliding inside him was a dream. He wasn’t like me—he didn’t need babying every step of the way. He took my cock all the way in, and pushed back against me, urging me on.
Hunching over him, I started to fuck him, reeling at the deep sensation the unfamiliar position gave me. It was magic and knowing exactly how it felt for him was even hotter. And perhaps, necessary. It took my worries away. My fear of hurting him faded as if it had never been there, and I fucked him with sharp thrusts. Skin slapped skin, and the bed jumped on the wooden floor, sounds that had once haunted my dreams, but I loved them now. Pete’s groans made pleasure coil in my belly.