0215543001348293036 vaughn piper oshea m.j. (24 page)

“Erik, I told you, it never meant… look, I’m not proud—”

“Don’t. It’s okay. Y-you don’t have to be ashamed of anything you’ve done.” I drew back far enough to look into Rue’s face. He was still crying, but the tears had slowed considerably since I’d first come into the room, and his breathing was a bit calmer. “It w-wasn’t fair of me to say those things to you. I… it means a lot to know you trust me enough to let me be inside you, that you… love me.”

“I do. So much.”

I reached up to cup his cheeks and draw his face down to mine. I kissed him softly, tasting the salt from his tears as he trembled against me. “Please don’t cry anymore.” He nodded, and I released him to lean down and grab the papers I’d set aside before. “Will you r-read this for me?”

Rue looked confused, but he accepted the papers I handed him. I watched as his eyes skimmed over some of the top page. “This is your book?” he asked, glancing at me in surprise.

“Part of it.”

“Why are you showing me now?”

I could tell Rue was puzzled from his tone and expression, but I knew if he didn’t read it, I’d never be able to fully explain. “J-just read it. Please.”

“Okay,” Rue said hesitantly. He swiped at his face with one hand, rubbing at the moisture on his cheeks.

“I’ll get you some tissue.”

I left him long enough to grab a box of tissues from the bathroom.

Rue was working on the second page when I got back. I placed the box within reach on the nightstand and settled next to him on the bed. The

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scene I’d printed was fairly short, and I didn’t think it would take him more than a few minutes to finish. But when he got to the last page and just sat there in silence, I started to worry. Had he not understood? Had I not been clear enough?

“Is this,” Rue started, his voice breaking midway through the second word. He stopped and cleared his throat. “Is this about me?” He turned to look at me then. The splotchiness had mostly faded from his skin, and his green eyes were wide in his porcelain-pale face.

“Yes,” I answered, hoping against hope that my words wouldn’t fail me when I needed them most. “Sometimes I have to write things down when I c-can’t figure out how to say them aloud. It took me a while to notice, but by the time I reached the end of the book, I realized that I’d written it about you. I didn’t mean to do it, but somehow, over time, Merrick became you. And the way Zurik feels for him… is the way I feel for you.”

Rue’s lower lip quivered. His eyes were wet and dark with emotion. “You love me?”

“Yes.” I cupped the side of his face, and he leaned into my touch, his eyelids sliding shut. “I wish I could’ve told you sooner, but… I’ve never b-been in love before. It took me a while to read the signs. But then one day I looked at you, and I realized I want you with me all the time. I want to kiss you every day, a thousand times a day. I want to wake up to your face every m-morning and hold you every night. I l-love you, Rue. I don’t want anyone else but you, not ever.” I felt moisture on my palm and realized Rue was crying again.

For a second I thought I’d somehow botched it all, despite my best intentions. But then he opened his eyes and looked at me, and that look was so many things at once—love, joy, longing, relief. I think my heart might have stalled in the face of it.

“I love you,” he said, and then he was in my arms. He pressed me back onto the bed, his mouth locked to mine, his hands on my skin, and the pages he’d been holding fell to the floor, forgotten.

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HE KISSED me until I was a breathless, quivery mess. I couldn’t think of anything but his lips on mine, his taste, still somewhat salty from his tears, the feel of his fingertips skimming up my flanks as he pushed my T-shirt up. We pulled apart long enough for him to remove it, and I stripped him of his just as quickly. Our mouths reconnected, and we shifted and tugged on clothing until we were both naked, our pelvises grinding together, his smooth legs between my parted thighs.

I wanted him so desperately, wanted to keep breathing him in, tasting him, feeling his skin. It was even stronger than the night he let me touch him for the first time, which I hadn’t thought was possible. It felt different, though, with those words in the open between us. Love. I never thought it would happen for me, never thought I needed it, but now that I’d experienced it, I knew I couldn’t live without it again.

“Rue, I want you. I w-want you inside.”

Rue pulled back a little. His eyes were surprised when he looked at me, but there was something else there too. My words had sparked a heat in him, a want I realized he’d been denying these last couple of months. For me. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I whispered, my skin warming under the intensity of his gaze. “I want to feel you.”

Rue kissed me again. “God, Erik. I want to feel you like that too.” He ran his hands from my shoulders to my waist, then leaned down to press a nibbly kiss to the center of my chest. “I’ll make it good.” I grinned down at him. I was nervous, but I wasn’t scared at all. I knew he would take care of me. “I trust you.” Rue gave me a tremulous smile in return and dipped his head to nip at one of my hipbones. I loved the way he touched me, the way he kissed and caressed. Craved it, even. It was kind of shocking, really. I’d never liked being touched and shied away from it whenever I could.

With Dusty and Rue, especially Rue, I’d never minded, even at the very beginning. I couldn’t understand why. Maybe it was just because my body knew what they—what
he
—would eventually come to mean to me, even if it took my head a while to catch up.

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My spine arched up off the mattress when he took my cock into his mouth. He sucked lightly on the tip, then dragged the underside across his lips. He knew I liked the feel of the rings in his lower lip when they brushed that delicate spot. The sensation sent a shiver through me.

“You like that,” Rue whispered, his warm breath moving across my damp flesh.

I shivered again. “Yeah….”

“How about this?” He nuzzled at my balls and sucked one into his mouth, rolling it on his tongue.

My eyelids fluttered shut, and a soft moan broke free. “Y-yes.” Rue gave the other one the same treatment and released it to press a kiss to my inner thigh. His hands gripped the backs of my knees and drew my legs up. “And this?” he asked. Then I felt the slickness of his tongue
there
.

I choked, and my entire body went rigid, the way it had when I’d wrapped one of my father’s guitar strings around my hand and stuck it into the electric socket in my bedroom when I was a kid. Except this time it didn’t hurt. It felt good. So good, pre-come started to leak from my cock, and I thought I might come from that small touch alone. “G-God,
yes
.”

I trembled as Rue continued, his tongue flicking over that hypersensitive flesh, poking and prodding, sucking and licking. I had to bite my fist to keep from shouting. It felt like nothing I’d ever experienced before, different from even the feel of his mouth on my cock, which I’d previously thought was my favorite thing. Not anymore.

“I’m gonna put a finger in, okay?” Rue said, his eyes meeting mine over the length of my torso.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, and watched as he sucked on one of his slender fingers. In the next second it was teasing my entrance, and he nudged it carefully inside. I couldn’t help tensing up—

it didn’t hurt exactly, but it was strange, an odd combination of

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discomfort and pressure. I knew it would get better, though. Rue always went crazy when my fingers were inside him, when I found his spot and rubbed it. I’d made him come like that before, more than once, and I loved to watch his face when he lost control. He was so beautiful in those moments, with his skin flushed pink and his eyes half-shut, his lips swollen and glistening from our kisses. And he made the most delicious noises, sounds that made me grind down against the mattress for a little bit of friction.

It didn’t take me very long to figure out why Rue liked it so much. His fingers brushed something inside me, and the result felt like a fever moving over my skin, slow and burning. My body quaked and I moaned around the flesh of my palm. My teeth dug in, hard enough to leave a bruise behind, but none of that mattered because he was touching it again, and it was agony and it was bliss. It was heat starting deep in my veins and flowing outward so the cool air in the room made my skin grow taut. Raw. Elemental. And it made me come apart at the seams.

Rue put his mouth on my cock when my orgasm started, took me in to the root and sucked, drinking me down.
Oh God. Too much.
The intensity of it ripped a deep, primal sound from my gut.

When it was over and the tremors had finally stopped, I pulled him on top of me. “In. In me n-now.”

“Shh,” he whispered against my lips. “In a second, baby. Kiss me.”

He didn’t have to ask me twice. I leaned up and covered his mouth with mine, sliding my tongue inside as his fingers skimmed my sides, tasting him, tasting me. We kissed for a long time, languorous and slow, until my cock was hard again and I was writhing beneath him, mindless and desperate to feel him inside.

It was only then that Rue leaned over to the nightstand and yanked open the drawer, searching for the tube of lube we kept there.

Once it was in his hand, he didn’t waste any time. He squeezed a puddle into his palm and slicked his cock. The rest he pushed into me

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with two fingers, twisting and stretching and teasing until I was ready to break down and beg, please, oh, please.

He spread my legs even farther apart and kneeled upright between them. I felt the tip of his cock nudge my entrance. There wasn’t any time to get nervous again. He held himself in place with one hand and pushed slowly into me, his eyes locked on mine. This time it did hurt, and whatever he saw on my face made him pause.

“Okay?” Rue asked. “Want me to stop?” He was only halfway inside, and I knew it had to be hard to keep from moving—I’d been in his position before. But I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted him to have that part of me, the part no one else had ever touched and no one else ever would. The last of my firsts. And it belonged to him.

“D-don’t stop.”

Rue’s eyes slid closed. He gripped my hips and pressed on until he was all the way inside. I could hear the ragged sound of my breathing, but it seemed far away. Every cell in my body was focused on that one point of contact, that sharp, burning stretch.

Rue was trembling, his eyes still shut tight. Even, white teeth were digging into his lower lip and sweat shone on his skin. After a moment, he pulled slowly back, then thrust forward with equal care.

His breathing sped up with each movement, back and forth, back and forth, until he’d found a deep, steady rhythm that made us both groan.

Some of the pain faded as he moved. My body accepted his, relaxed and opened for him. Soon my hands were on his hips, urging him on, and he braced his arms on either side of my shoulders so he could lean down and kiss me. Our tongues twined, stroking, sinuous.

Heat crept up my back to my neck, leaving behind a hot, desperate need I knew only Rue could fulfill.

He tore his mouth from mine and licked a path from my jaw to my ear. “You feel so good, Erik,” he whispered. “Tell me you like it.” The growly demand, so unlike his normal tone, sent a rush of pleasure down my spine. “Y-yes.” I tilted my head to give him more access to my throat, and he bit me there, just above the frantic beat of my pulse. “I l-love it.”

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Rue sat back long enough to grab my wrists and pin my arms to the bed. He held me down and pounded into me, his breathing harsh and unsteady. The change in position allowed his cock to brush over my prostate on every downward stroke. If I’d thought I was losing my mind before, it was nothing compared to this. Seeing him so aggressive, feeling him move inside me, his eyes fixed on mine, it was like touching heaven and falling back to earth, beautiful and overwhelming.

“Rue, I—”

But whatever I was about to say was lost as he brushed over my spot one last time, and my orgasm rose so quickly I didn’t even have time to draw a breath before I was coming again. My body bucked under his, and I heard him cry out above me, felt his fingers tightening around my wrists. He thrust once, twice, then froze and held himself perfectly still.

I watched his face as he spilled into me. I knew by his anguished expression it had been as intense for him as it had for me. His body slipped from mine, and he collapsed down onto my chest and buried his face against my throat.

“I love you,” he whispered. I had to strain to hear him over the sound of my breathing. “I love you, I love you….”

“Rue….” I trailed a hand up his back to his nape and threaded my fingers into the baby-soft hair there. “I love you too.”

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