Page 18 of Regal Feather
Nope.
I was perfectly okay. Everything was under control.
SEVEN
santos
“Are you okay?” Ever asked for what had to be the tenth time ever since we’d gotten in the car.
At least this time, he had waited until the car was parked in the garage attached to the villa that had now become my permanent residence. I sighed as I killed the engine and checked that everything looked good.
“Yeah.” I winced. Lying to Ever was never part of any plan. “Exhausted.”
“Oh. We can go lie down. If you want.”
“You don’t have anything scheduled with your Dom?’”
Ever scrunched his nose. “No. It doesn’t work like that. Sir Ismael sends me tasks, and when I complete them, he pays me attention until the next task.”
It was my turn to compose my face. “And you like that?”
“Hm.” A blush spread down his neck as his gaze darted around the confines of the car. “He’s not like this with everyone. We negotiated it during the first month we chatted. I like to play with…humiliation, and feeling insignificant. He gives me that.”
“Okay.”
I’d have to do some research if I wanted to have any chance of understanding any of that, and reconciling it with theaffectionate as fuck, touch-starved Ever I knew. That would be a task for another day, though. Right now, I just wanted to lie down like he’d suggested and turn off my phone in case that therapist decided to reach out sooner rather than later.
It was when we were in his room, chilling on his bed, and Ever had changed into an oversized hoodie and nothing else that I could tell, and I had all limbs of bare skin all over me that I thought back to what I’d told Carlos. I just want something to feel the same.
Anxiety built up at the base of my throat, but Ever was right here. Ever could feel the same. I desperately needed him to feel the same.
“Can I kiss you?”
The question might’ve come out of the blue, I’d admit. I was supposed to have better game than this. I was supposed to be better. Ever just glanced up at me. I could feel his heart was racing, but he wasn’t running away. He just stared at me with dilated pupils and parted lips before he nodded. It was a small move, but I was too attuned to everything him to have missed it.
So attuned, I could feel the hot prickling at the corner of my eyes when my tongue brushed his lips, and he was just as soft, as pliant, as perfect. Kissing him did feel the same. He was the same, the same perfect body that just wanted to be pinned down and held and loved. He might’ve added kink into it now, and the layers that came with it, but at its core, I refused to believe that things had changed. That kissing him like this didn’t have him as suddenly desperate and thirsty as it had me, begging for more in the silent way we had helped each other plenty of times.
It was almost like no time had passed. Our bodies had grown, bulked up, yes, and he wore a different brand of lip gloss that gave his mouth a tarter taste, but all that was irrelevant when it was my lips on his. When it was my fingers digging into his hip. My hips thrusting against his thigh because I had flippedus, so I was covering his body length without being aware of the movement.
Muscle memory was certainly a thing.
“Can I fuck you, babes?” I nuzzled his jawline, preening at the way his spine arched because I still knew what made him tick. What drove him wild. “I can record it for your Dom, too.”
Ever’s breath hitched. He squirmed until he was more comfortable beneath my weight. It took everything in me not to groan. Not to take a hand to my tingling lips. Or to the redness in his because I might’ve spent longer assaulting his mouth than I’d thought.
“Just had a heavy meal,” he whispered. I didn’t think it was a refusal, but I waited him out. Kept my face still because he made a point, but I just couldn’t think rationally when I’d just gotten my first taste of him in a decade. “Uh, you can fuck my thighs if you want. It has a fancy name, I don’t remember, but it’s a thing.”
I screwed my eyes shut. “I know it’s a thing.”
“Are you not into it?” A quick peek showed him nibbling on his lip. “If not, we can wait a bit, and I can douche in the bathroom.”
I shook my head.
“I’m into it. I swear.” What I associated intercrural with had nothing to do with Ever, and I refused to bring it into this space. “Where’s the lube?”
“Nightstand. Top drawer.”
“Okay.”
