Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 60487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Carl cupped his face, pulled him close, and brushed a sigh along his lips.
Grayson moved in and out of him in a perfectly lazy rhythm that quickly had Carl on the brink and screwing up handfuls of the sheets. He flexed around Grayson and uttered a whine.
Grayson drew all the way out and surged back inside him. “Hear you, Carl.”
He thrust with mounting speed and passion and Carl had never felt so understood and taken care of. Grayson’s sweat-slickened abs rubbing against him was deliciously unbearable. “Gray . . .”
The shortened name moaned into his ear had Grayson pinning Carl’s hands to the mattress. He threaded their fingers together and plunged into him, and—
Too much. Too good.
Every inch of his body came alive with sensation, from his fingers and toes to his ears and the backs of his knees.
Carl unravelled.
Grayson did too, their gasps mingling as he pushed deep inside a final time. Pulsing and spilling, Carl wrapped his arms around Grayson, clinging to him. And when finally, finally the waves ebbed, Carl closed his eyes against a firm shoulder.
That was . . . intense.
Grayson’s weight sank atop him for a few moments before he pushed up on his elbows. “How’re you doing?”
“You mean, do I have you out of my system yet?”
A shadow passed over Grayson’s face. He quietly pulled out and turned his back as he dealt with things. “Let me grab you a cloth.”
But Carl was already swinging off the bed. His body—and his mind—were thrumming and it was too much. “I’ve got it.”
He grabbed his clothes and dashed to the bathroom, where he stared hard at his reflection and shook his head. Feelings that were supposed to have vanished, or at least dissipated, were bubbling—boiling—under the surface and . . . he couldn’t breathe. He tapped the mirror. “All you know is how to get in trouble.”
He redressed, frowning, and checked his phone. His stomach sank again and he clicked away the calendar reminder it was Pete’s rehearsal dinner. These were the feelings he should have been confused about tonight. His childhood friend, his ex sweetheart, was getting married soon.
Right now, they’d be at the restaurant, possibly about to deliver speeches.
Shaky, guilty fingers prodded his phone and Carl’s voice cracked when Jason answered. “Ah, Jase. Guess you’re about to head to the rehearsal dinner?”
A floorboard creaked outside the bathroom and Carl screwed his eyes tight. “Look, I know this is . . . would you . . . keep me on the phone during the toasts? Secretly? I . . . I just want . . .”
“To torture yourself?”
Except, that wasn’t quite it. He swallowed thickly. “To be there. From a distance.”
A soft knock came at the bathroom door, and Grayson murmured from the other side, “What’s going on, Carl. Talk to me.”
Carl pressed the phone so hard against his ear, he could feel the beat of his racing pulse through it.
He shuffled to the door, caught and released his breath, and opened, flashing an upbeat smile.
Grayson stood in the hallway in his big fluffy dressing gown, holding two cups of steaming tea. He eyed Carl’s smile suspiciously. “Shall we sit?”
Carl followed him back to the dining table, where they sat opposite one another and sipped. Grayson looked questioningly from Carl to the phone he held.
“I-I’m facing things,” Carl stammered. And he was, yet . . . something inside him was yelling that he wasn’t facing the right things.
He shoved the voice away. “It’s my ex’s rehearsal dinner. I’ve asked my brother to keep his phone on.”
Grayson nodded slowly, shoulders slumping slightly. He stared at his tea. “You can hear everything?”
“There’s a lot of background noise, but I can hear when Jason speaks.” Carl’s stomach twisted.
They sipped silently for some minutes, Carl swapping his phone from ear to ear. He could hear parts of conversations and general chatter, but he was only half focused. The other half of himself was viscerally aware of Grayson and the taut air of unspoken things between them. The goosebumps rumbling over his arms and prickling the back of his neck—
They were all due to him.
He swallowed thickly.
Grayson looked over at the same time, gaze hooking at Carl’s throat before climbing up to his eyes. “You haven’t got those feelings out of your system, have you?”
Carl swiped a nervous tongue over his bottom lip, crunched his face in concentration, as if Jason had said something worth paying attention to.
Grayson murmured, “What if . . . I don’t want you to?”
The words slammed painfully into Carl’s chest, sending it into a fluttering ruckus. He swallowed, and swallowed, and his voice was lost, trapped under the heart beating up his throat. “I . . . I . . .”
Almost simultaneously, another ruckus happened down the line. The crisp sound of piano keys. Whirling music. It blasted through the phone, close. So close, it could only be Jason playing. And if Jason was playing in front of everyone at the rehearsal dinner—