I’d never wanted someone so much. Never craved to be inside someone so deeply my brain turned to mush. Only the reality that he wasn’t ready kept me from tearing his clothes away and reaching for my bedside drawer. In my head, my touch was bruising, demanding, but I ran gentle hands over him, ghosting over his clothed skin. I needed him to know how much I wanted him.
I needed him to know I could wait. That it didn’t matter.
Like he’d read my mind, he pulled back, fixing me with his trademark cynical stare. “I can’t let you fuck me.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“You want to, though.”
“So?”
“So... I don’t want you to be bored.”
“Bored? With what? This?” I brushed a soft kiss to his cheek, taking care to keep my hips still. “You’re out of your mind.”
“You don’t wish we’d spent all night fucking like a Grindr hook-up?”
Words formed to tell him I wouldn’t change a thing. That the night we’d shared was perfection, but the dick print behind my sweatpants betrayed me. All I had was the truth.
I moved fast and rolled Billy onto his stomach, pressing against him before the startled gasp had left his lungs. “Don’t tell me how I feel.”
Billy laughed. “Why not? It’s true.”
“I’ll tell you what’s true.” I thrust against him just enough to make my eyes roll. “We live together. Work together. Now we sleep together, and we’ve got all the time in the world to get to this. If it’s what we both want.”
Tension rippled through Billy as he fought the desire he couldn’t deny. He groaned and raised his hips a fraction, once, twice, three times. I drove the heel of my hand into his back, and met him in the middle, chasing friction. If he didn’t want me to fuck him, he was doing a terrible job of showing it, and my willpower had limits.
Hard limits. It would’ve been so easy to slip my hands beneath his waistband, and then my own. I pictured it as we ground together, slowed it down so every clothed thrust ramped up the torture. Billy’s groans grew breathless, and his hands balled into fists. “Please, Gus.”
Sweat beaded my brow, and then it hit me that he wasn’t asking me to give him more, he was asking me to stop. To take control of us before he lost it and did something his head wasn’t ready for.
It was a strange thing that he’d always been the one I’d wanted most, and yet the only man I’d ever physically pulled away from. Hook-ups were mutual. Premeditated, and even the thrill of the unknown was dulled by the inevitable. Billy was something else. I wanted him more than I could put into words, but I cared about him more.
So much more.
I eased off and dropped down beside him again. I couldn’t bring myself to apologise for throwing him around, because I wasn’t sorry. And when he finally rolled over and faced me, he didn’t look sorry either. His gaze was clear, his cheeks flushed, and the gentle heave of his shoulders went straight to my dick. Wow. Way to rein yourself in.
Billy scrubbed a hand down his face, then let it drop to the wrist he’d been clutching as he’d slept. He wrapped his fingers around it and pressed his thumb into my pulse point. “I’m not ready for you.”
“Perhaps I’m not ready for you either.”
Billy snorted. “As if.”
But we were talking about different things. I could’ve fucked him a thousand times over if he’d wanted me to. That was the easy part. It was the rest of it I was unprepared for. Without the distraction of him melded against me, my mind raced. What if we had fucked? What if I’d slept with him and then pushed him away like I did everyone else?
Worse, what if he’d pushed me away? History taught that it would’ve suited me, but the razor blades in my stomach said otherwise.
Billy sat up. He opened his mouth, but his phone cut him off, ringing from wherever on the bed it had landed while we’d been rolling around in our clothes.
I found it by my feet and passed it over, curious. Billy’s cracked and ancient iPhone never rang, and the only messages he ever got seemed to be from his phone provider reminding him to settle his account or they’d cut him off. Not that I ever peered over his shoulder or anything. Of course not.
Billy answered the phone with a grunt. “What are you calling me for when your secretary lives in the same house?”
Luke. I turned my head to hide my smile as Billy listened in silence to whatever his brother had to say. Luke spoke too softly for me to eavesdrop anyway, so I lay back and stared at the ceiling. Billy’s hand found its way to my belly and drew absent patterns on the bare skin my rogue T-shirt had left exposed.
His touch was fire. I shuddered and bottled the feeling in case I ever found myself on my knees behind him again. As if I needed a reminder that everything about Billy was hotter than the sun, no matter how far it went.
“Okay,” Billy said. He dropped his phone on the bed.
I assumed Luke had gone and shot him a quizzical glance. “What did he want?”
“No work today. That school job got cancelled.”
“Day off?”
“For you. I’ve been summoned for a parent child contact day.”
“A what?”
Billy’s expression soured. “Brotherly bonding. You know, organised fun that’s no fun cos it’s awkward as fuck.”
“You don’t know it won’t be fun. Your bro’s hilarious when he’s had a few.”
“Yeah, but it’s arse o’clock in the morning. Even I’m not drunk yet.”
Billy hadn’t been drunk since I’d found him passed out on the bathroom floor. Another shudder ran through me, but of an entirely different kind. I hadn’t told him I’d thought he was dead. That for
