Physically, I wanted him. Emotionally, he scared the hell out of me.
“You don’t like being looked at.” Steven’s fingers found their way into my hair and short though it was, there was just enough for him to tug. “But I like looking at you, so…” I was used to guys forcing—okay, not forcing. Encouraging—my head to dip further, but Steven didn’t. He pulled me back, trying to tilt my head while still holding me steady.
I wavered. Wanted to pull away completely. Keep it together, Blackman, for fuck’s sake. I tried to shake him off or at least let him know I didn’t need him to hold me like that, but his hands stayed in my hair. Not once did his fingers tighten, not once did he move too suddenly for me to know what he wanted and never, never, did Steven force me with his hands into something I didn’t want. Earlier he’d given me permission. Now his hands asked for the same.
But, I just couldn’t. I pulled back, his hands loosened their already-tentative hold and his head fell back, thudding against the wall.
“God, please, Kit, you—”
He must have thought I was only pulling back to move forward again, to take more of his cock as deeply as I could into my mouth, but I just couldn’t.
“Sorry, I…” I wiped the back of a crooked finger over the corner of my mouth, but there was nothing there. And I fell back on my haunches, steadying myself on one hand. “Can’t…”
“Kit?” Steven’s voice was a mixture of confusion and disappointment all in one pleading syllable. My name.
God. Even those three letters on his tongue made me feel guilty.
“Don’t do this to me.” His words rushed out of him, pleading, with an unsaid-but-somehow-groaned oh no chaser.
“I can’t.” I hauled myself to my feet and could have laughed at my need to look at him then. Then, after I’d fucking ruined the mood. “I hate being… This. I can’t…”
He bit his lip and the two vertical lines at the bridge of his nose belied his need to frown and I wondered why he didn’t just give in to it.
My feet, no longer nailed to the floor, flinched in the direction of the exit and Steven’s lightning-fast down-up glance told me he’d noticed. Earlier I’d heard confusion and disappointment in his voice—now I saw only the latter in his eyes.
Two grown men staring each other out.
And I blinked first.
Chapter Ten
Some nights later, I hovered in the no-man’s-land somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, kept from restful unconsciousness by that irritating, damned inconvenient conscience of mine. I’d shut down and Steven felt shut out.
Logic told me the simplest thing would be to ride it out, just coast until the lease was up and he—or I—had the option of moving away without too much of a fuss, but—
Yeah, Blackman. The simplest, most cowardly thing, more like.
I punched one of the pillows into shape with more enthusiasm than was needed and tried to get comfortable, wondered if just lying there as if I was asleep would work. Maybe I could fool my body into thinking it could rest.
Some hope.
The door handle turned slowly but I didn’t flinch, as if some part of me already knew it would happen. I stretched my legs then curled them back up, moaning softly in a parody of absent-minded near-unconsciousness. Look how oblivious I am of every move you make.
I knew who it was. Anyone else—Gary, Gemma, a houseguest—would knock before entering. Steven, though he’d lived here the shortest time, had no need of such niceties. He crept to keep his visit discreet, but only to avoid waking Gary and Gemma. He was here at all because he had the right.
He closed the door just as quietly, I imagined with one hand easing the jamb back into place as the other clicked the handle.
With two footsteps he’d reached the bed, and the mattress tilted with his weight. Still I didn’t acknowledge him.
“I know you’re awake,” he whispered. “If I couldn’t sleep, you wouldn’t either.”
“Arrogant shit.”
A low laugh was his only response. Initially.
Cool air whispered across my back as he moved the duvet and slid in behind me.
“Coming from you…” He curved his body against my back and I exhaled at the feel of his treasure trail against my bare skin.
Shit, he would have noticed that. Then mentally I shrugged. What did it matter if he knew how his presence played havoc with my ability to breathe? So I only remembered to exhale when he was touching me, big deal.
“…that’s high praise indeed. So.” He wriggled his hips. “Guess why I couldn’t sleep.”
He didn’t wear a vest, but had pulled on boxers which did nothing to conceal how hard he was. The least amount of clothing he could get away with, just in case he was intercepted before getting to my room.
“Same reason you couldn’t, if I’m right.” He slid his hand down my bare chest, past my abs and muffled his laughter against the back of my neck. “Thought so.”
“Cocky bastard.”
“We both are. That’s the problem.”
I wanted to ask how he could be so flippant after what had happened in the bathroom, after us barely speaking for days. After me freaking out, after all the petty disagreements we’d had—petty disagreements which, bundled together, looked like a pretty good collective reason to call it quits, to me. But maybe this was his way of making things right again. Or at least pretending they were.
“What do you suggest we do about it?” he asked.
“You could have stayed in your room and whacked one off.”
“And what would you have done?”
“The same.” While not confessing that had he never appeared in my room, the damn boner he seemed so pleased to encounter wouldn’t have been nearly so painfully hard.
“Ah, but where would be the fun in that?” Steven’s fingertips toyed with the waistband of my boxers. I moved
