Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
He closed his eyes, let out a deep breath, shook his head, opened his lids again…and shrugged. “I’m not going, Gage. Obviously, I’m not. The second you called me last night changed everything. The moment I said I’d stay this morning reinforced it. I couldn’t hurt you that way, not after seeing you last night.”
My feet moved, took me to him. I cupped his face, pressed my forehead to his, the way we used to do. “Why is it like this with us?”
“I don’t know, but it won’t go away.” His hands found their way to my waist. “Say it again…your name for me.”
“Jojo,” I whispered. “Jojo, Jojo, Jojo, Jojo.” I pressed my lips to his, a closemouthed kiss. “Jojo.” I still held his face. Kissed him again. Walked backward toward the bed. “Jojo.” Kiss. Another step. “Jojo.” Over and over. The whole time I knew what would happen, just as clearly as I knew we weren’t in a good place for it to happen right now. We were broken, so damn broken in ways I maybe always had been but never him. Jojo was optimism and happiness and light, while I’d always had some darkness inside me. Now he did too, and our darkness would clash, but I needed him, needed him so damn much, I could hardly breathe from the want.
His nails dug into my sides, making a tremble run down my spine. Each time our mouths touched, it was like an electric current ran the length of me, like we were flashes of old Jojo and Gage with the new Jojo and Gage, the excitement of our first kiss, our first touch, a caress against my skin.
The backs of my legs hit the bed, stopping us.
“Will you kiss me, Gage? Like you used to?” His voice was broken down to its bare-boned honesty. Those questions became a time machine, transporting us back to the boys we used to be. I swiped my tongue against his lips. Joey opened up, let me in, let me take over as I tasted the inside of his mouth again. He whimpered into the kiss, fingers pushing harder into my hips. His body, more firm and muscular than it had been when we were kids, pressed tight against mine.
We let our tongues wrestle one another, giving and taking, slow dancing and urgent. His beard was rough, and I welcomed its scratchiness against my face.
My lips trailed down his neck. I licked his collarbone, wanting to taste him everywhere. There wasn’t anything I didn’t want to do to him, nothing I wouldn’t give him. Please last. I need this to last.
Joey’s nails trailed up my back, digging in, sharp bites I knew would leave their journey on my skin. I’d tattoo them there if I could, just to have permanent evidence of what it was like to have him again.
I leaned back, watched my fingers draw circles on his cheeks, a flash of what those hands had done forever in my brain.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t think about anything else but this moment. We deserve that, don’t we? After everything?”
He was right, Christ, he was right. Our mouths were pulled together, a magnetic force we couldn’t deny. We became a collision of lips and tongues and hands. I fell backward on the bed, pulling Joey with me. My hands tangled in his hair as I tugged him even closer, although that seemed impossible. I wouldn’t be satisfied until we were one again, connected physically the way we’d always been in my brain and heart, in my soul.
Jojo’s mouth left mine, and I missed it immediately. Still, he was touching me, kissing his way down my throat, my chest, nibbling and licking until he was on the floor between my legs. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of my shorts, yanked those and my underwear off.
I was aching, harder than I’d ever been. I pushed up on my elbows so I looked down at him, at Joey, as he pressed his face tight into my groin and inhaled.
Goose bumps scurried along my skin, the length of my whole body.
“Goddamn, I missed you.” His breath ghosted over my balls.
“I missed you too.”
His cheek was against my thigh, his faced angled toward my groin. Jojo spit in his hand and stroked me. He leaned in, lapped at my balls with slow, hot licks that nearly melted my bones.
I threaded my fingers through the strands of his hair as he languidly licked and stroked me. I felt this urgency but also wanted nothing more than to draw this out, wanted the night to last forever because I didn’t know what would come with the rising sun.
Soon, though, his cheek left my thigh. Our eyes locked, my hand still in his hair as he angled my cock toward his mouth and took me deep.