Needing (23 page)

Squirting lube into his palm, he curled his hand around Langham’s cock, drawing upwards then smothering it all over with fluid. Langham’s cock vein thudded against Oliver’s skin, the shaft pulsing, and he brushed his thumb over the tip, unsure whether lube or pre-cum was the source of the extra wetness there.

“You enjoying that?” Langham asked, hands flat on the bed beside him. “You loving the way it feels?”

“Are you?”

“Fuck, yeah.”

Two words. That was all Langham had to say to make Oliver turn the man’s hand over and squeeze a glob of lube onto his fingertips. Oliver released Langham’s cock and repositioned himself, still straddling, facing the door with his legs spread wider than before, his arsehole on show within Langham’s reach.

“Finger-fuck me,” Oliver said, pleased with the way the words had come out—an order with a razor edge that wasn’t quite sharp enough to cut.

He expected Langham to tease, to make him wait, and the immediate pressure at his arsehole surprised him. He relaxed his hole, a finger sliding in without effort, the tip brushing his prostrate with enough force to elicit a gasp but not enough to make a groan. He reared back, pushing into that finger, wanting more.

“Another,” he said.

Oliver looked into space, seeing nothing but the image of how Langham might appear if he turned around to check. Smile on his lips. One eyebrow raised. Eyes wide with his surprise. Was he licking his lips? Was his heart pattering at the same speed as Oliver’s?

Langham withdrew his finger then pushed up with two, the extra thickness a glorious burn on Oliver’s rim. He surged back again, seating the fingers as far as they would go, feeling knuckles against the cleft. Langham scissored his fingers, widening then closing, loosening Oliver’s channel and easing away the burn as his tight pucker loosened. He was almost ready, he knew that—ready to take more fingers or Langham’s cock. Oliver waited while Langham played, closed his eyes to better feel the emotion and pleasure rippling through him.

God, that man knew how to work an arse.

Oliver’s balls retracted as Langham began an incessant, mind-and-cock-numbing set of strokes on Oliver’s prostrate. He’d shoot if he didn’t regain control, if he let himself be carried away by the moment. With a touch of regret, he moved forward, fingers leaving him with a soft squelch of lube. That sound turned him on even more, and he retook his former position, although this time settled his arse on Langham’s belly, the man’s cock resting in Oliver’s crease. Placing his hands on Langham’s chest, he looked down at him while lifting up slowly until Langham’s cock slid down his cleft and the head came to rest at his entrance. Without warning or saying a word, his breaths hitching and excitement building, Oliver sank down.

He tried not to close his eyes as Langham’s cock eased inside, but with it halfway there he couldn’t resist. In the darkness behind his closed lids, he could better feel the stretch, concentrate fully on being filled so wholly. He released a moan, long and drawn out, and clutched at Langham’s chest. He realised then that Langham wasn’t touching him, and he opened his eyes.

Langham had his closed, and he gripped the sheets in tight fists, teeth biting down on his lower lip. His chest inflated and deflated with such speed it told Oliver his lover was finding it difficult to control his emotions.

“Open your eyes and touch my cock,” Oliver said, his stomach bunching, balls doing the same. “Put lube on my dick and enjoy what it feels like all wet.”

Langham opened his eyes, one fist unclenching, hand then patting the bed in search of the tube. He found it, squirting liquid onto Oliver’s cock, which jolted at the coldness even though he’d been expecting it. With a hot hand, Langham grasped him at the same time that Oliver sank down as far as he could go, and he thought for a split second it would be all over too soon.

He wasn’t wrong. The newness of command, the fullness in his arse and that hand gliding wetly up and down his cock along with Langham groaning and fighting to keep his eyes open proved too much for Oliver to handle. A forceful throb in his balls travelled to the base of his dick, pounding without mercy. It was going to spread right up his length, and there would be no stopping the cum.

“Ah, shit. It’s too late, I can’t stop it,” he said, lifting up then shoving back down on Langham’s cock.

He rose and fell again, in time with Langham’s hand, and a blast of euphoria swept through him, swiftly followed by a series of cum-shots jetting out of him. He scrunched his eyes shut, listening to his heavy breathing, Langham’s heavy breathing and the strangled noises coming out of his lover. They served to heighten his experience, to force even more cum past his cock hole. It was agony yet wonderful, too many things happening at once. His arse channel exploding with bliss and burn, Langham’s cock exploding with an orgasm that jolted his hips and thrust his dick deeper.

The next few seconds passed with Oliver’s sight blurred and his mind off in some place he couldn’t define. Some other world where nothing existed except him slowing on Langham, the detective reaching out to smooth his hands over Oliver’s shoulders and down his arms and the feeling that he wished this moment would stretch on forever. One massive yawn of time that had no end, where real life didn’t exist. No spirits, no cases, nothing.

As is usual, though, reality made its appearance known with a bone-jarring thump as the sound of a police siren wailed, one that belonged to a police vehicle that screeched down the street right outside. He sighed, lifted from Langham and immediately nestled beside him, ignoring the remains of the siren echoing through his mind. His head, resting on Langham’s chest, rose and fell with the man’s breathing, and Langham held him close with one arm about his back, linking his fingers to form a tight embrace.

This was the life, wasn’t it? One Oliver had wanted, one he would fight to keep. Being in bed with Langham like this, as though he had the real right to be here, was the ultimate dream come true.

“We’ve got this thing, haven’t we?” Oliver murmured. “A real thing?”

“Too fucking right.” Langham squeezed him tighter, closer.

Tired out from their fuck, the alcohol and the sheer enormity of emotions he’d been dealing with tonight, Oliver felt sleep’s fingers caressing him. He smiled, drifting on a current of security, of knowing that no matter what life threw at him now, he could cope with anything if his man was by his side.

As he reached the point where he’d drop off any second, Oliver jolted. Whispers, so very faint, filled his mind, growing louder by the second.

“Help me. Please! Oh, God, please help me…”

He shot upright, wide awake, adrenaline speeding through him.

“What the fuck?” Langham said, sitting up himself. He looked at Oliver. “Oh, shit. Not tonight. Please don’t say someone’s got hold of you tonight.”

Oliver held up one hand. “Who are you, man? What’s happened?”

“I’m floating. Can see myself down there. Some guy, he’s… Oh my God. He’s—”

“He’s what? Where are you?”
Please answer me. Please…

Langham’s phone rang. Oliver sighed at the lost connection between him and the spirit, getting out of bed to have a very quick shower then dress. Under the hot spray, Oliver watched an image form in his mind, of a derelict warehouse on the outskirts of the city. He rinsed off and dried as fast as he could, racing out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom.

“The warehouses!” they both said at the same time, Langham snapping his phone shut.

Langham closed his eyes briefly then opened them with a nod. “So we have the same case then. That’s what the sirens were about just now. Guy murdered. It’s apparently a messy one.”

“Aren’t they all, in one way or another?” Oliver said, throwing Langham some clean clothes from his closet.

Their
closet now.

Also available from Total-E-Bound Publishing:

Always

Sarah Masters

Excerpt

Chapter One

There was a part of me that wished he wouldn’t look at me that way. You know, with brown eyes that showed everything he was feeling—good things like love and adoration and that I was his whole world. A broad smile on his face—a face I’d once thought sexy as fuck with its strong jaw, Roman nose and a chin with a dimple just off centre. Still did, although his looks were tainted now, a mask he was hiding his real feelings behind. I’d found that out in one of the most shocking ways.

Eavesdropping. Never bodes well.

“We’re not working, Christopher,” I said quickly, sitting forward on the sofa, wanting the words out of my mouth so I didn’t have a chance to convince myself I shouldn’t say them. I’d done that too many times already, holding off, thinking that things would change by themselves. That fate would deal with it all so I wouldn’t have to.

Breaks like that didn’t happen, though, did they? Not to me.

He stared at me from the chair opposite, mouth slightly open, his eyes wide and watering, eyebrows raised. I couldn’t deal with tears—didn’t
want
to deal with them because then it would mean I’d hurt him. I’d crushed
him like his words had crushed me. I wasn’t stupid, I’d known my words would wound, knew I’d have the aftermath to deal with. Devastation. The why, why, why? The what-can-I-do-to-make-it-better scenario—then again, from what I’d heard he wanted this, so he shouldn’t be too fussed about it. I was doing what he didn’t have the balls to do.

Was I selfish in needing him to just accept it, so I could fuck off into the sunset and try to mend the broken shit inside me?

How had I ever thought things were fine when they weren’t?

I’d have to open up, try to tell him how I felt, what he’d made me feel. That yes, although I loved him it wasn’t enough. That I had to be
in love
with him at the same time in order for it to work. And I wasn’t. In love with him, I mean. I just fucking wasn’t. Not anymore. A fortnight ago my world had been an amazing place to be, yet now… Now everything had been turned upside down.

While he continued to stare, mouth working, no wails or words coming out, I tried to think about when things had changed. About when being in love had morphed into feeling trapped, the need to run away so strong it had confused me. I’d had a chance to examine how I’d felt the past couple of weeks, to know that just loving him wasn’t adequate—I needed to forgive him if he still wanted to be together, and I wasn’t sure I could. This, me saying what I had, was all news to him, a bolt from the blue. Words he’d told me he’d never wanted to hear coming from me. Words I’d once thought I’d never say. You did that, didn’t you, because you meant it at the time, really believed in what you said? Yet I’d spoken them and I couldn’t take them back. I hadn’t meant them, but he wouldn’t know that. They were floating between us, a dark cloud of boiling hurt, and the sunshine wouldn’t be arriving any time soon, or a gentle breeze, to make them go away.

“What?” he managed.

His voice had cracked mid-word, and a tear trickled down his cheek. He wasn’t prone to tears, had always held them back before, so the sight of that tear told me I’d cut him deep. He didn’t bother to dash it away, and it was as though all the energy had been sucked out of him, that just making that one movement would have been too much. He shifted forward to sit on the edge of his seat, too, then folded in on himself, a body without bones.

I felt for him, I really did, but the need to escape, to turn my back on him and just…leave was more overwhelming. I was a bastard for wanting that, but self-preservation urged me on. I should have wanted to sit down and discuss it, to ask him what was going on—what had
been
going on behind my back—tell him that it wasn’t him, it was me if I had to, and wasn’t that the ultimate, lazy-arsed way of doing things? But in this case it wasn’t true. It
wasn’t
me. I’d done nothing but love him, support him, and there he’d been, throwing it all back in my face and expecting me to take it, to accept it without a murmur of complaint when he deigned to let me know how he really felt.

Yet I couldn’t call myself an arsehole for ending it because I didn’t feel like one—couldn’t even begin to express how I felt because I didn’t fucking know all the ins and outs of it myself. I just knew I had to get away from him. Get away from…this.

‘This’ was a relationship, one that had quickly gone from burgeoning friendship to lust, to the giddy heights of passion-fuelled nights where the thought of being without him had sent me into panic mode and I’d made myself frightened at the idea of him not being there. I suppose you could say I was a coward, not facing things, but shit, wasn’t that a natural thing, to want to run? Didn’t everyone in my situation wish they could just drop the bomb then dive for cover? Was that why he hadn’t broached this subject himself before now?

“We’re not working,” I said again, the words burning, more bitter than last time.

Another tear followed the first one down his face and anchored on his stubbled jawline. Hung there for a bit then dropped off onto the hem of his red T-shirt. It made a ragged circle and reminded me of a splat of rain on a sun-baked pavement. A storm was on its way, a torrential downpour that would leave me soaked, seeking shelter, running from the thunder, from lightning that had a mind to strike me down if only I’d keep still long enough for it to hit me. Was I prepared to sit still? To let him rage until he was spent?