Darwin's Natural Selection (18 page)

Tom made a gasping groan, his hand moving faster, his gaze still locked on Darwin.

“I’m behind you, my cock buried in your sweet ass,” Darwin continued, his tongue wetting his bottom lip. His mouth had gone dry as he’d watched Tom fucking his own fist. “I can barely stand to move, it’s so hot and tight. I can’t stand
not
moving, though, and I have to shove in and out, deeper than you’ve ever been fucked before, and you’re screaming for me to fuck you harder and faster until I can’t stand it anymore and I come, yelling your name as I shoot your ass so full of cum that you’ll never forget me.”

The sound Tom made was familiar. After all those phonesex sessions, Darwin knew what the other man sounded like when he was getting close. Tom’s fist was flying now, jerking up and down on his shaft, and Darwin focused on the head of the other man’s cock, not wanting to miss the opportunity to watch Tom come.

His voice was so rough now it sounded as if his throat had rusted shut, but Darwin couldn’t stop talking until he’d pushed Tom over the edge. “Sometimes, when I jerk off, I think about how that hard dick of yours would feel shoved up my ass, stretching me, buried so deep all I could think about was your cock ramming into me, just rough enough to make me wild.”

That was all it took. Darwin opened his mouth, ready with more dirty, suggestive words, but Tom was already coming.

Breathing heavily, Darwin watched him explode, trying to burn into his memory the pained bliss of Tom’s expression and the way his hips jammed his cock into his hand.

Tom shuddered and his knees dipped before he caught himself.

“Come here,” Darwin growled, not able to watch passively anymore.

Tom took two steps closer to Darwin’s chair before he hesitated.

“Please.” The word came out sounding more like a command than an entreaty but it did the job. Tom moved close enough to touch if Darwin wasn’t still pretending to be tied. “Sit on my lap.” The bossy commands seemed to be working, so Darwin stuck with them.

After barely a pause, Tom obeyed, straddling Darwin and carefully lowering himself until his weight rested on Darwin’s thighs.

Darwin hissed out a breath. “Now kiss me.”

Leaning closer, Tom paused when their mouths were almost touching. “You’re pretty much a saint, you know that?”

The puff of Tom’s breath against his lips broke Darwin.

“Fucking right I am.” Dropping the pretense of being tied, he grabbed Tom’s head with both hands and yanked him into a rough kiss.

Tom started, grabbing both of Darwin’s wrists. Expecting the other man to pull away at any second, Darwin kissed him harder.

Instead of shoving off Darwin, Tom shuddered and leaned into the kiss, his lips softening, allowing Darwin’s tongue access.

With a groan, Darwin kneaded his fingers against Tom’s scalp, the soft brush of that dark hair against his knuckles almost as intoxicating as the hot depths of Tom’s mouth. Pulling back a little, Darwin closed his teeth gently on the other man’s bottom lip.

Although he was as hard as if he hadn’t climaxed just a short time earlier, Darwin was surprised by a flood of tenderness and affection mixing with the flat-out raw desire coursing through him. Startled, he pulled away.

Tom’s face was only a few inches away, his dilated pupils and parted, swollen lips not helping Darwin settle his churning emotions. His hands cupped both sides of Tom’s face. “Totally worth it.”

A small crease of confusion dented the skin between Tom’s eyebrows. “What’s worth what?”

“You.” Darwin’s thumb stroked the plane of the other man’s cheek. “You were totally worth the wait.” He felt Tom’s skin heat beneath his hands.

“Oh…okay.” Tom looked down, although the corners of his mouth tilted up.

Darwin laughed, circling Tom with his arms and hugging him. Tom allowed the embrace for a few seconds before pushing against Darwin’s chest. Reluctantly, Darwin released his grip, allowing Tom to stand up and move a few feet away.

“Grab the knife in that top left drawer, would you?” Darwin asked, pointing. “This chair isn’t the most comfortable.”

Tom moved over to the drawer and pulled out the folded knife. “So how long were your hands free?” he asked, shoving the drawer closed.

Looking at the other man’s face, Darwin couldn’t tell if Tom was pissed or not. “A while,” he answered vaguely. He didn’t think admitting that he’d been untied almost from the beginning would go over well. “Sorry about grabbing you just now.

Couldn’t really help myself.”

Still standing next to the drawer, folded knife in his hand, Tom looked at him. “Were they too loose? Did you slip your hands free?”

Not able to meet Tom’s gaze, Darwin dropped his eyes to his still-bound ankles.

The thought of coming clean and telling Tom the truth—the entire crazy-sounding truth—crossed his mind for a fleeting second before he dismissed it. He didn’t think he could handle Tom walking out and never coming back.

“Nope,” he said, trying to sound casual.

“They broke. I’ve had those ties for a while.

The plastic’s probably gotten brittle.”

He had no problem reading Tom’s expression now—it was definitely skeptical.

“You broke them?”

Darwin shrugged, keeping a close eye on the other man. “Guess I was a little excited.”

“Still…” Tom hadn’t moved away from the drawer. “You
broke
them? How strong are you? Aren’t these the same type of ties used for handcuffs?”

“’Course not,” Darwin lied. “These are just wimpy little plastic ties. And I think you’re underestimating the power of your hotness.”

Tom didn’t smile. “So you just held your hands behind your back? You could’ve grabbed me at any time?”

“I guess.” Darwin wasn’t sure how to answer, what he could say that would bring back Tom’s smile, move him from his spot next to the drawer and hopefully lead to more kissing.

Tom watched him for a few endless seconds. “Okay.” He walked over to Darwin’s chair and knelt by his feet.

Darwin blinked. “So we’re good?”

There was a tug against the inside of his left ankle and then the tie fell free. The second zip tie dropped away from his right ankle. Tom refolded the knife and handed it to a closely watching Darwin.

“You could’ve grabbed me at any time and you didn’t—okay, so you did at the very end, but still. Even in the middle of,” Tom gestured at Darwin’s cock, “you know, everything, you still didn’t touch me.”

Still unsure of Tom’s mood, Darwin said, “I wanted to. Just didn’t want to scare you.”

“I know.” Placing his hands on Darwin’s knees, Tom pushed to his feet. “Like I said before, you’re a saint.”

Unable to resist, Darwin trailed his fingers down Tom’s unyielding belly. “A dirty-minded saint, maybe.”

Tom covered Darwin’s hand with his own, flattening his fingers against his stomach. “My favorite kind of saint.”

“Stay here tonight.” He was back to bossy orders but Darwin couldn’t hold back the words.

Tom hesitated, his teeth catching the inner edge of his bottom lip. Darwin’s gaze locked on the tiny flash of teeth, air stopping halfway into his lungs. He couldn’t breathe until Tom’s head dipped in the tiniest of nods.

“Yes?” Darwin asked.

“Ah…yes?” The word was raised in question and Tom’s eyes were panicky.

Darwin knew the gentlemanly thing to do would be to ask if Tom were sure, but he didn’t want to be gentlemanly. He wanted Tom to stay over…in his bed…within reaching distance.

Touching distance.

Spooning distance would be even better.

Leaning forward, he touched his lips to Tom’s breastbone and turned his cheek against the other man’s chest. Tom’s heartbeat was flying, the quick thump-thump-thump oddly exciting.

Instead of reassuring Tom or making sure he really was ready to stay or being any sort of gentleman, Darwin just listened to the racing heart beneath his ear and grunted, “Good.”

*

This was a bad idea.

Tom tried to unlock his fingers from around the fistful of sheet but his muscles wouldn’t cooperate. His whole body was locked into a state of terrified, trembling, wanting-to-bolt tension.

Darwin’s bed was huge and he was being ultra-polite, obviously not wanting to freak Tom out by lying too close to him, but the space between them was still much too small. Tom didn’t know if he were imagining things but he swore he could feel Darwin’s radiating body heat prickling his skin from across the enormous bed.

It was as if Tom was five years old again, lying terrified in bed, waiting for the hot breath of the boogeyman to warm the back of his neck. The only problem was that, in this case, Darwin was much more likely to breathe on his neck than the boogeyman, and Tom had no idea why the thought of Darwin putting his breath, body heat, hands, cock or anything else on him was so utterly terrifying.

Tom squeezed his eyes closed and concentrated on his breathing. He focused on the four-in, four-hold, four-out, four-hold that Darwin had taught him in the movie theater bathroom. It was stupid to be afraid of Darwin—Tom’s brain knew that.

Now he just had to convince his pounding heart.

Tom felt warm. It wasn’t the sweaty, uncomfortable kind of warm but a cozy, never-want-to-leave heat. It had taken him forever to fall asleep the night before and he was still tired. His body felt heavy and reluctant to move, so he kept his eyelids closed and snuggled farther into the wondrous heat source behind him.

That creator of warmth gave a satisfied rumbling grunt and wrapped an arm around Tom’s waist.

Tom’s eyes popped open as his heartbeat took off on a wild gallop. Darwin’s body surrounded him, plastered to Tom’s back and down the backs of his legs, the heavy weight of his arm pressing into the suddenly tense muscles of Tom’s side.

He wasn’t sure how long he lay frozen. It felt as if his lungs were stuffed with tube socks and he could only suck in the quickest, most shallow breaths. He couldn’t move and the furnace of a body behind him didn’t move, which somehow, oddly, wasn’t really reassuring.

A rumbling sound emerged from Darwin, making Tom jump.

The sound came again and Tom recognized what it was that time—a snore.

Tom blinked, the sheer homey normalcy of the sound breaking his paralysis. His terror seemed almost silly against the backdrop of the prosaic sound. The rhythm of it, slow and regular, relaxed away his fear and the warmth behind him began to feel more like a comfort than a trap. With Darwin snoring, the sleeping body behind Tom couldn’t feel like a threat. Terror seeped out of his stiff muscles, melting him into the mattress.

He realized he’d forgotten how nice it was to sleep with someone. It wasn’t even the sex part, although that had been very nice in its own right. Tom smiled at the memory and his muscles released the final dregs of tension he hadn’t even realized they’d been holding.

That state of relaxed pleasure had become foreign to Tom over the past six months—longer than that, even, since dating Andrew didn’t exactly breed contentment. It was created by Darwin’s warmth and touch and the sound of his snores, but it was more too. It was the other man’s presence, the relief of not waking up alone, the feeling of comfort and safety and all the other emotions that Darwin caused, just by lying there, unconscious and snoring.

Even the erection poking into his right thigh was comforting rather than terrifying.

With the steady metronome of snores assuring Tom that Darwin continued to sleep, he was tempted to explore the warm playground of skin and muscle and hard cock pressed against him. With Darwin safely snoozing, he wouldn’t be grabbing or taking over or doing anything else that could be potentially terror-inducing.

Tom held his breath as he reached for Darwin’s most accessible body part—the hand he’d thrown over Tom’s side. He played with Darwin’s fingers, noting the hard surface of his skin, which Tom assumed was from working day after day at the construction site.

When Darwin’s fingers closed around his own, Tom jumped, sure that he’d awakened the other man. The snores continued, though, rumbling out behind him, low and even enough to allow Tom to regain his nerve.

He wiggled back, shifting around until Darwin’s erection was nestled hot and hard between the cheeks of Tom’s ass. The power of it, the potential danger of it, stole his breath. He didn’t move away though, as drawn as an insect to the light of a bug zapper. Even as his heartbeat raced, Tom felt his hips moving, stroking the cock behind him with tiny brushes of his ass, up and down the shaft with each twitch of his hips.

Tom knew the second Darwin woke, when the snoring stopped and the relaxed body pressed against Tom tightened into awareness. Plus, had Tom had any doubts whether the other man was asleep, they would’ve been squashed by the lips dropping kisses on the nape of his neck. The hand slung over his side that went from relaxed to roaming in an instant.

Even after awakening the beast, Tom couldn’t hold still. If he allowed himself to think about it he’d be freaked out of his mind, but all he allowed into his head at that instant was pure, hungry lust. Being body to body with a conscious Darwin was intoxicating, overwhelming. There wasn’t room in Tom’s brain for fear.

Darwin’s hand closed around Tom’s cock, causing his hips to buck, shoving his erection into the other man’s fist before slamming back against the cock behind him.

Tom was trapped, but in the very best way. Darwin’s teeth had joined in the action and he bit at the back of Tom’s neck, both his mouth and the hand gripping Tom’s cock growing rougher. A portion of Tom’s brain waited for the terror to return in a rush, to swamp the desire and drown the pleasure, but it hadn’t happened yet. With a gasp of relief, Tom concentrated on his need, on the stone-hard cock rubbing against his ass and the rough hand circling his own erection.

The world spun as Darwin flipped him over onto his stomach. Tom grunted into the pillow as his stiff cock was flattened between his body and the bed. He turned his head so he could breathe and saw Darwin yanking open the nightstand drawer and pulling out a handful of condoms and some lube.

The cooling trickle of fear touched his spine as the other man’s weight covered him like a lead blanket, sinking him into the mattress. Before it could balloon into full-blown panic, Darwin’s weight was gone.