Page 115 of Levi

“You sure you’re not too tired?”

He chuckles low against my ear. “Never too tired for you. I have stamina.”

I get a hand in his hair and roll him under me. He goes over onto his back with me settling down on top of him.

I’ve never been the man on top of anything.

What I’ve had with other men came quick and half-ashamed, a hand or a mouth in the back of a bus with somebody who wanted it done quick and gone before the next stop.

Nobody ever cared enough to hand me their time. He’s under me telling me to take as much as I want and my chest pulls so tight it hurts to breathe around.

I don’t hurry with him. I’ve never been allowed that, and I’m not about to burn through it in the dark like everything else.

I’ve been around Dante many times and never got to look my fill. In that clean SUV of his I learned to ration it. One good long look while he pulled out of the drive and his attention was elsewhere, and then I’d turn and stare a hole through the window the rest of the way so he’d never catch me at it. Never catch me staring at his forearms under a rolled-back polo sleeve, or his hands sitting easy on the wheel, long-fingered and sure, while I sat there with my jaw shut wondering what they’d feel like wrapped around my cock. Now I’ve got time.

He’s long all over, laid out under me. Lean the way a ballplayer runs lean, not built in a gym, all of it strung tight over the muscle, strong through the arms and the shoulders where I’ve got my hands. His skin’s a beautiful bronze, and there’s not a mark on it anywhere, no ink, nothing to mess it up.

He keeps himself smooth. No hair on his chest, none down the flat of his belly, none lower. Dante shaves every inch of himself and probably swims in those little cut trunks that leave him nothing to hide behind. Black hair. Black eyes fixed up at me. A face that belongs in a magazine selling watches and has got no business being under a country boy from Tennessee.

And the smell of him. My God. I caught it the first day and never quit noticing. A clean expensive scent, warm skin underneath. His pillows carry it too. I turned my face down into one of them earlier just to breathe him, before I caught myself doing it. Now it’s coming up off his throat and his chest, and I put my nose to it and pull it in and don’t bother being ashamed.

There’ll never be a time in my life I’ll smell another scent that lights me up like his.

I kiss him slow. His mouth is soft and still a little swollen like mine, and he opens under me without a fight, lets me set the angle and the pace, lets me sink into it.

He tastes faintly like the whiskey from hours back. His jaw’s smooth, clean-shaven even now, and mine drags over it. I take my time learning the shape of his lips.

He makes a sound into my mouth and it runs straight down my spine and pools hot and low in me.

“Levi,” he breathes.

I never thought I’d hear him say my name that way.

My palms are rough with string calluses I’ve worn since I was a kid, and his skin is smooth under them. I feel every place they catch. I slide one hand down the side of his neck, over the jump of his pulse, out across the round of his shoulder, down that strong arm to his wrist and back. I take that slow too, because I can, because there’s not one part of this I want to skip over. He shivers when my thumb crosses his collarbone. I tuck that away.

Then I put my mouth where my hands have been.

First, his jaw and the soft skin under his ear that makes his breath catch. His throat, where the pulse comes up hard and quick against my lips. I press my mouth there to just feel it hammer a while. I’ve wanted my mouth on his pulse since I saw it throbbing when I was standing in a towel in the kitchen. Now I’ve got it and there’s no clock on it.

Then I move down to his chest. The heat comes off him like he’s running a fever, the smooth skin gone slick under my mouth, the muscle firm beneath. I tongue the two hard points of him that draw up tight when my tongue crosses them. He arches when I do it and lets out a sound he tries to swallow and doesn’t manage. I do it again just to feel him move under me.

Down lower, his stomach jumps under my mouth, the muscle flinching every place I set my lips like it can’t hold still. I lay my palm flat there to feel it go, and take my time crossing it, all of it warm and smelling like him.

He’s breathing hard now. His hand’s found my hair and it’s just resting there, curled loose, not pushing. He’s letting me get there on my own.

He’s hard under me, has been since he pulled me in. I wrap my hand around him. He sucks a sharp breath in through his teeth and his hips lift up off the bed chasing my grip.

Mine to touch. He said so.

I’ve wanted this all my life and never let myself have it. Now I’ve got him in my hand, heavy and real, and I’m not wasting a second of it.

I go down easy, mouth close, and drag my lips up the side of him first, just to feel him, just to breathe him in, the smell of him all skin and salt. He shakes and that dead stops me. To know I can make Dante tremble with my mouth.

I want more.

I set my tongue to the underside of him and taste him proper, the first bead gone clean and bitter on my tongue, and his body goes tight.

Then I take him in my mouth.