By the Book Read online

  I opened my eyes, and his cocky, oh-so-full-of-himself grin had faded to a confident smirk, a mere twitch at the corners of his mouth. “I thought I’d just do my bit to help you come to terms with your sexuality.” He winked.

  “You’re all—fuck—heart, aren’t you?” I gulped.

  “Sorry, was I interrupting? You were about to say something, weren’t you?” Now propped up on one elbow, resting his head on his cupped palm, he grinned, so infuriatingly confident I could have smacked him. I could have kissed him. I could have fucked him till he…

  “You’re doing a damn good job of distracting me.”

  Daniel’s palm stroked the underside of my cock all the way to the head, twisted, came down again, tighter, with a flick of his wrist, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe. “Am I?”

  “You know you are.” I let myself fall back against the mattress again, though my back arched off it every time Daniel moved his hand. He’d wait for me to relax, then give a quiet laugh that screamed show me what I do to you and stroke me just fast or slow enough to turn me on even more. Tight enough to make me gasp, loose enough to make me think he was going to go easy on me.

  “You were going to say something, I assume?” He bowed his head, let his fingers run back through his mussed-up hair, the laughter in his voice threatening to curve his lips again. “Hmm. I bet I know what you’re thinking.” He leaned over me, and the hand that had seconds before run through his hair now ran through mine. “You’re thinking, I’m twenty-eight years old. If I’m attracted to men, why didn’t I know before now? Aren’t you?”

  Gulping, I nodded. “Something like that.” It was pretty damn difficult to concentrate with his hand on my cock and his breath on my jaw as he whispered in my ear.

  “You hadn’t met me yet, had you?”

  “Arrogant bastard.”

  “Arrogant bastard who knows how to make you come like you never have before.”

  His words sent a jolt of electricity through me, shocking in the truest sense of the word.

  He’s right. He’s fucking right. And I don’t know if it’s because he’s the only man I’ve ever been with or if he really is the one.

  “Reece.” My name. On his lips. I’d never heard anything like it. He sounded like he was the one so turned on he couldn’t think straight. “You want to know what it feels like?”

  I froze.

  And he felt it, because his face lifted away from mine and he stared at me, a frown of concern furrowing his brow. “Oh.” A short burst of nervous laughter. “You thought…? No, God, no.” He dipped his head to kiss me and touched his forehead to mine. “I didn’t mean that.”

  I swallowed hard, and when he pulled back enough for me to focus, I met his gaze with my own. “What did you mean?”

  “Something different.” His lips touched my jaw. “I’d love to, but I’m not gonna fuck you. I promise.” The words came as a growl from the back of his throat. “Not until…” You’re ready went unsaid, but we both still heard the words. “I want to try something.”

  Gulping back air polluted by a knot of nerves, I closed my eyes, vowing that when I opened them again, I’d be okay with this. Whatever “this” was.

  “I think you’ll like it.”

  I said nothing.

  “A little trick I learned years back.”

  “From?”

  “From my ex.”

  “The first one?”

  “The first one. Liam. It felt fucking amazing when he did it to me. I’d love you to…” He took a deep, shuddering breath, and it felt like he was sucking the heat away from the surface of my skin. “Wait and see, this’ll feel…”

  And my eyes flew open. I turned to look at him again, and his lazy, confident smirk was gone. His eyes still had their focus, but barely, and what little remained was on me.

  “Have I ever done anything to you that didn’t feel good?” he whispered.

  I opened my mouth to speak. Couldn’t say a word. Tried again. Managed a quiet “no.”

  “Then turn onto your side.”

  My eyebrows lifted.

  “Trust me. As soon as you want me to, I stop. I’m not gonna fuck you, I promise. I just want to show you what it feels like to be closer to someone than just having their fingers on you.”

  My jaw tightened against the automatic we can’t that sprang to my lips. The desire, the curiosity, was far stronger than my sense of what I was. Reece “Strictly Heterosexual” Hutton had long since left the building. After fucking another man, I could hardly tell Daniel I didn’t do that sort of thing.

  He wouldn’t pressure me if he had the slightest hint I felt uncomfortable or nervous or scared. And maybe I did. But my overriding emotion then was curiosity. I wanted to know what it felt like. I wanted to experience what he promised, which was why I said not a thing as I moved onto my side and Daniel’s weight shifted behind me.

  The bedside table drawer opened and closed; I heard the flip of the lube bottle cap opening. Seconds later, Daniel’s weight shifted again, and we rolled toward one another.

  He kissed my shoulder, and I shuddered. “Trust me; this’ll feel like nothing else,” he whispered.

  “I have no doubt about that.”

  A breath of laughter whispered across my skin at the same moment something cold touched me, and I jerked away from him.

  “Steady,” Daniel murmured. “It’s just a little something to make it easier.”

  I wanted this. I was curious enough to let Daniel do what he was doing, but still couldn’t relax completely, not with his fingertips easing their way between my legs.

  I wriggled, not out of discomfort, just from the new sensation, the fact I’d never been touched there before, the sheer—

  “Jesus.”

  “You okay?” Behind me, he stopped. Didn’t move a muscle.

  “Yeah. Yeah, it’s just…”

  “You’re not used to this? Don’t worry. I know you’re tense. Just rel—try to relax.” Daniel laughed quietly against my shoulder. “Is this uncomfortable?” He moved his fingertip in a slow circle. “Bend your knee a little. Move it up the bed toward you.”

  Shivering, I did as he suggested.

  “Nervous?”

  “Cold. It’s just the…” Say the word, Hutton. Say the word. “The lube’s cold.”

  “Sorry, I thought I’d warmed it against my hands enough before I touched you. You want me to stop?”

  “No.” My vehemence surprised even me, so God knew what it did to Daniel.

  “Good. Good.” His voice was back to a low growl, confident in his ability to seduce, less concerned now that he knew I was as okay with this as I could be.

  “Fuck.” The sheet bunched under my hands as I clawed at it, trying to get used to the sensation of Daniel’s fingertip inside me.

  He must have known it was a breathy exclamation of surprise, not pain, because he withdrew slowly but pushed back in, farther this time. Daniel only used one finger, but even so it felt as if he was hitting nerve endings that sparked off others, trailing all the way up my spine. Something tingled at the back of my neck, and it wasn’t just his kiss; it came from inside me. “God, that’s…”

  “You like that?”

  “Jesus, Daniel.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t want me to stop, then?”

  “No, you—”

  Then he wasn’t inside me anymore.

  “Daniel?” I propped myself up on shaking arms, looked over my shoulder.

  “Don’t worry. We’re not finished yet.” He winked. He winked at me, the impossibly sexy, cocky, seductive bastard. “Move over to the edge of the bed. Come on.” Daniel patted the covers before bundling them, pushing the duvet to the end of the bed to make it easier to slide over. “Feet on the floor.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Trust me. Feet on the floor. But stay sitting on the bed. No, lying actually…” He reached for the lube bottle again and slid to the fl
oor on his knees. “I can’t wait.”

  His back was turned, and the way a shudder rippled his back muscles made my heart skip a beat. No way was I lying down just yet. Not when I could prop myself up on both arms and look at his ink, remembering how it looked when I—

  “Enjoying the view?” he asked with a smirk, glancing over his shoulder.

  “Well, with wings like those…”

  Daniel held his hands together. A lesson learned. They’d be warm this time, less of a shock to the system, although how much more Daniel could have in the tank to surprise me, God alone knew.

  “Lie back,” he said. “You have to lie back or the angle’s all wrong. I won’t be able to touch you the way I want to.”

  His voice weakened me. His voice and the way his eyebrow lifted when he looked at me. Spine-melting in his intent to seduce, he made me fall back on the bed with a look.

  One cool hand slid under me, and I wriggled my hips, lifting them slightly—just as his lips slid over the head of my cock.

  “Fuck.” Breath caught in my throat and I wanted to beg him not to stop, but I couldn’t speak.

  And he didn’t.

  Slow enough for me to stay relaxed, enough for me to want more, he eased one finger inside as he covered more of me with his mouth.

  “Oh. God.” The words came out of me in one breathy groan. It sounded like my voice telling him “yes yes yes.” It felt like my hand in his hair while the other clawed at the bed sheets, bunching the covers more tightly with every dip of his head. “What… Oh God, that’s…” I was only capable of fragmented sentences, monosyllabic pleas, but no matter. Daniel Cross had the translation skills of a man who knew exactly what he was doing, exactly how I felt, exactly what I wanted him to do.

  He moaned as he sucked me in deeper, a low trembling from the back of his throat that reverberated along the underside of my cock as his tongue teased the first shudder of orgasm out of me. As his fingers crooked just right to—

  “Oh fuck—” My spine arched clean off the bed, and the corners of my vision clouded over, the sensation from his gently probing fingers intense enough to be just this side of painful. He didn’t hurt, but any more, any deeper, any faster and it might have. It was as if I had a line Daniel couldn’t step over—yet—and he knew exactly where it was. He danced back and forth, circling with his fingertips inside me in tandem with his tongue’s teasing strokes against the head of my cock, but the line remained. He knew.

  “God, that’s just…” The question What are you doing to me? formed somewhere in the back of my mind but failed to complete the journey to my mouth. “I’m—You’ll make me…” There was no point telling him. He knew.

  Daniel laid his free hand across my hip bone, not to restrain me but just, I thought, for the pleasure of touching me. As if his fingers inside me weren’t enough. As if the way his mouth covered me, tongue flicking along my cock, wasn’t enough. He had to touch more of me with more of him.

  I dropped both my hands back on the bed on either side of my head; a millisecond later the power of my orgasm lifted my back off the bed again, but Daniel’s hand did nothing to hold me down. No restraint, just contact. And he kept sucking even as he eased his fingers out of me a little more with each wave of eye-watering pleasure.

  Rapid breaths became more steady over time—I didn’t know how long—and I realized Daniel had relinquished all contact but that hand on my hip.

  “Fuck. That was…” It sounded like my voice. So it must have been my words that rent the silence.

  A quiet laugh. “Intense?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, sweat-soaked hair rasping against the sheet beneath me.

  Daniel shifted on the floor, joined me on the bed, and looked down at me, smiling. God—and Daniel—knew what I must have looked like, but at that moment I didn’t care.

  “Kiss?” He didn’t wait for an answer, took what he wanted anyway, and the vague taste of semen on his tongue made me shudder, as if his fingers were still inside me, making me come again.

  “I have no idea what you’re doing to me, Daniel Cross,” I said as he broke the kiss and drew away, just far enough so that we could bring each other into focus again.

  His expression was clear, neutral even; then he blinked, and his smile reappeared, confident and seductive and secure in the knowledge of what he did to me.

  Whatever that was.

  But he knew.

  Chapter Twelve

  The following Friday, I hung out at Daniel’s place to bleach out the awkwardness of a recent telephone conversation with Georgia. We’d arranged to meet up in a few days’ time, and though it was what I wanted, it also made me nervous. So nervous only one man could calm me down, and that man was Daniel. I needed something to remind me why I was putting myself through all this. Probably if I left him well enough alone, I could persuade Georgia to give things another go. But I couldn’t. Daniel had been right. Greed was good, and I was greedy enough to want them both.

  But how to convince Georgia my feelings for both of them were equal and did not detract from the other?

  Still. I went to Daniel.

  “Fuck off, will you?” He growled something else too, something indecipherable, from the back of his throat, spitting anger at the computer screen as I walked into the office carrying two mugs of coffee.

  “I hope you were talking to a bunch of people who don’t exist and not me,” I joked, approaching tentatively, holding out one of the mugs as an offering to a vengeful god.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” His words were almost a grunt as he took the mug. When he gulped back a mouthful of caffeine, I wondered if it was enough to drown the resentment at that which irked him. “Bunch of disobedient bastards.”

  Obviously not.

  We’d already discussed his recalcitrant characters and the chasm between what they were meant to do and what they actually did.

  “I’m supposed to be the god of this fucking universe.” He shook his head slowly. Groaned.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He slumped back in the chair, and the leather protested. “It’s like word dentistry at the moment.”

  I studied him over the rim of my mug as I took a sip.

  “Pulling teeth.”

  “Ah,” I said, lowering the mug. “I see.”

  “I know what needs to be written, but every time I type a paragraph, it comes out completely shit and I think ‘come on, man, you’re Daniel Fucking Cross; you can do better than that,’ but no, it’s like my damn brain’s gone on strike.” He drained the mug and slammed it down in front of him.

  “What did that desk ever do to you?”

  He shot me a sideways glance, and I wondered what thoughts ran through his mind. Nothing in his heavy-lidded eyes told me. When Daniel didn’t want to be read, I couldn’t read him.

  “Fuck this; I’ve had enough.” He hit the Off button, and the screen went black.

  My eyebrows shot up, and I gave myself a few seconds to absorb the shock and decide what to say. “Haven’t you just lost everything?”

  “Autosave,” he said, sitting back again, running a hand through his hair. “And anyway,” he added with a shrug, “even if it doesn’t work, it was all shit anyway. I just can’t…” Daniel rolled his shoulders, twisted his neck to work out any muscular stiffness, and leaned against the headrest, facing me, and I realized those heavy-lidded eyes, drowning in frustration and anger…weren’t. They were thick with something else, which either he didn’t want me to see yet or I refused to translate. “Can’t be bothered.” Elbow on the chair arm, he beckoned me with one hand, fingers curved back to the palm.

  I drained my coffee mug and set it beside his, gentler than he had, having no reason to hate the laptop or the desk on which it sat. This is so domestic. I took his hand and stood behind his chair, and our entwined fingers rested on his left shoulder, my other hand on his right. Falling into these gestures like we’re meant to be together. I stiffened then, momentarily startled by this easy slide into do
mesticity, a comforting partnership where all Daniel needed to relax after a hard day at work was my hand on him.

  “This isn’t working,” he muttered, and my heart leaped, sending a pulse of iced water through my veins.

  “What?”

  “I can’t get that fucking chapter finished, not with my head refusing to cooperate. I’ll see to it tomorrow.”

  “Oh.” The iced water warmed slightly, though I still shivered. “Right.”

  “You sound disappointed.” He tilted his head for a moment, trying to catch my eye, but I hung back, not wanting him to see the relief that must have been evident on my face.

  “Looking forward to reading it. That was all,” I lied. “I’m your number one fan, remember?”

  “Christ, don’t go all Annie Wilkes on me.” When he relaxed again, I had to fight the temptation to run my fingers through his hair.

  A fight I only believed I stood a chance of winning for a moment.

  He groaned when I dragged my free hand through his hair, disturbing what was already a carefully arranged bed-head style. “You’ll send me to sleep if you keep doing that. It’s like an Indian head massage.”

  “Just me trying to stop you from getting a headache.”

  “Well it’s working, whatever it is.”

  “You can’t fall asleep here. Cinema, remember? It’s Friday night,” I reminded him. “You usually go. I thought we…” I cleared my throat. An easy approach, a hand in his, stroking his hair, and I began speaking for both of us.

  “I dunno if I can be bothered.”

  “It’s a sacred ritual. Friday. Cinema.”

  “I’m not sure if I like you telling me what to do.”

  “You love it.”

  He chuckled and held my fingers to his mouth, touching them to his lips but not kissing, warming my skin with his breath and the promise of deeper contact. “Why don’t we stay in tonight?” he murmured, and I barely heard him. Only just.

  “Get your coat on; it’ll blow the cobwebs away. Help you think straight.”

  “I was hoping for something else to make me feel better.”

  “Later, Cross.” I, too, laughed then, but it was nervous laughter, uncomfortable, and the area between my shoulder blades tingled, like the threat of a shiver. There wasn’t much else we could do that we hadn’t already done, but while physical contact, easy banter, feeling at home here, were all dangerously close to normal, the physical side of our relationship took some getting used to. As if the more we jumped into bed with each other, the harder it would be to deny that not only was I—Christ, Hutton, say the word: bisexual. Not only was I bisexual, but I couldn’t restrict my emotional attachment to Daniel or Georgia either. My body wanted them both and so did my heart.