Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
The words weren’t there, but the feelings were. They reached up and squeezed my throat, banging the final nail in the coffin of my desire for him. This was so much more than a hookup, more than fake anything, and yet I hadn’t wanted this. I hadn’t been looking for anything like it. In fact, I’d deliberately set out to avoid falling for someone again.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the moment. How many times did I need to remind myself to simply enjoy this time with him?
“Harder,” he begged. “Faster. It feels… it…” His breathing was fast, and his hand clenched on the skin of my hip. “Too much. I need… Jack, please.”
I sped up and pounded into him harder, ignoring my desire to flip him over so I could look into his eyes as I pushed him over the edge. If I did that, if I made the connection between us even more intimate, I might ruin everything. I didn’t want to lose him completely, and I knew that if I told him how I was feeling, I’d be crossing a line we’d never recover from.
I knelt up and pressed a hand flat between his shoulder blades, holding him down firmly against the bed as I drove into him. With my teeth clenched against words I couldn’t say, I silently begged for him to come. He stroked himself with one hand, whimpering and crying out when I thrust into him.
Just as I felt my own release bearing down on me, I heard him scream my name and felt his body tense as he came. Watching, hearing, and feeling him come was enough to bring my own release on swift and hard. He was so hot, writhing and crying beneath me, that it ripped my own orgasm out of me with shocking force.
I groaned until I gasped for breath. My arms shook as I tried to keep from collapsing on top of him and crushing his smaller body into the bed. After dropping small kisses across his neck and shoulder and murmuring words to him about how beautiful he was, how incredibly sexy he was, I gently pulled out and turned to find the bathroom. I returned to the bed with a damp towel to help clean him up and then moved him under the covers so we could lie together and catch our breaths for a little while.
Teo rested his head on my chest and lazily ran his fingers across my skin while my own found their way into the messy waves of his hair. I half expected him to fall asleep on me. He’d had a long week trying to balance looking after Mr. Banks with also finishing up some of his consulting work. But after a few minutes, he surprised me.
“I was trying to think of what to make to bring to your sister’s tomorrow night, and I realized they’re probably going to have birthday cake, right? So I shouldn’t do dessert. What do you think about a big greek salad? I put olives and pepperoncini in it. Sometimes I put little strips of salami in it too, but I don’t have to do that if there will be vegetarians there.”
He tilted his head back to look up at me with those gorgeous eyes.
I ran a thumb across one of his dark eyebrows. “You don’t need to bring anything.”
“Jack, I’m Italian. We bring food. It’s kind of a requirement. Normally I’d bring cannoli or these tiramisu cupcake things my mom always made for bake sales. But if there’s going to be a birthday cake, I should bring something else. Oh! I could put together an antipasti tray. Like cheeses and meats, olives and stuff. Would that be better?”
He settled his head back on my chest. “I don’t want to show up empty-handed.”
“The salad sounds great. I know my mom especially would love it since she never likes to eat heavy things at a family get-together like this.”
“Oh good. Then we’ll have to go to the market in the morning and pick up what I need. I already have a big plastic bowl with a lid we can take it in, but I might need to find something to put the dressing in.”
“Doesn’t it come in a bottle?”
He leaned up again to meet my eye. “It’s homemade. For shame, Jack Snyder. For shame.”
I laughed and kissed the top of his head. “Sorry. Mine has always come in a bottle. I thought that’s how dressing was made.”
Teo chuckled. “It’s plucked from the bottle tree just like that.”
“Exactly.”
A comfortable silence descended as we continued sharing soft touches and enjoying the quiet together. Socrates had jumped up and made a new nest on a side table in front of the window, burrowing down into one of Teo’s T-shirts that had been left there. There was no sign of the other cat.