By the time Rick’s orgasm slowed, Ash was breathless. He pulled away with a wet pop, spit and cum dripping from his chin. His eyelids were heavy, his smile drowsy. Something warm fizzed through his veins—a rush like sweet liquor or the first drag of a cigarette on an empty stomach. His body buzzed. His skin felt too tight for the heat inside him. His pulse throbbed in his fingertips, behind his lids. Euphoria swelled in his chest, soft and golden, rippling outward in slow, delicious waves. It made him feel lit from the inside, like every nerve had been kissed awake. He could still taste Rick on his tongue—salty, earthy, alive—and it only deepened the bliss, like some strange chemical he hadn’t known he craved. Whatever Rick had just given him, Ash wanted more.
“Well,” he said, licking his lips. “That was fun.”
Rick towered above him, chest heaving, pants tangled at his feet, cock still rigid and glistening. Without warning, he grabbed Ash by the arms and hauled him up, crashing their lips together in a kiss that was more filth than finesse, wet, sticky. Their mouths slid and smeared, sharing breath, spit, and the taste of Rick’s cum between them. Ash moaned low in his throat, drunk on it. The kiss left his knees weak, and for a second, he thought he might actually float if not for Rick’s hands keeping him moored.
When they finally pulled apart, panting, Rick fixed him with that wolfish stare, the one that promised danger and delight in equal measure. “You think we’re done?” he rasped, eyes burning. “Not even close.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
(2:11 a.m.)
Rick kicked off his shoes one after the other, toeing them away across the floor. His pants were bunched around his ankles, briefs twisted and half-stuck, and he shoved both down with an impatient grunt, stepping free just as Ash yanked off his hoodie and flung it toward the wall. He was still in his boots, and the sight of him hopping on one foot, flushed and giggling as he tried to peel them off, almost undid Rick on the spot. For a second, he simply stood there, stripped down to his socks, heart thundering, breath frayed, every nerve blazing for more of him. Then he surged forward and grabbed at Ash’s waistband.
“Hold still,” he croaked, all control gone. He tore the button open, ripped the fly, and jerked the jeans downward in one rough motion, cursing when they stuck around Ash’s thighs, then letting out a raw sound as he realized there was nothing underneath.
“Jesus,” Ash gasped, half-laughing, bracing a hand on Rick’s shoulder for balance.
“Lift,” Rick ordered, voice ragged.
Ash obeyed, still teetering, and Rick crouched low to drag the jeans over his feet. He had to fight them off, wrestling the tight fabric until it gave with a rip near the cuff. Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting him naked. Bared.His.
He ran his hands up the backs of Ash’s thighs as he rose, palms gliding over warm skin, and he scooped him up in his arms. Ash’s legs wrapped around his waist, his arms looped tight around Rick’s neck, and Rick carried him across the loft,their mouths crashing together in a kiss—messy, breathless, all tongue and heat.
When they reached the giant bed at the far wall, Rick didn’t hesitate. He flung Ash onto the silk sheets like he weighed nothing, and followed at once, a predator set loose. The mattress bounced under them as he crawled over him, slow and heavy, his body caging Ash’s like a beast preparing to devour.
Ash sprawled out across the dark bedding, limbs lax, eyes locked on his, hair in disarray. The soft spill of city lights from the high windows painted his skin in a gilded sheen, every muscle and hollow made luminous. His lips were parted, wet and swollen from Rick’s kisses, pupils blown so wide they eclipsed the violet. He was ruinously, breathtakingly gorgeous.
“All this, only for me…” Rick murmured, sounding almost incredulous. He couldn’t think. Could barely breathe. Instinct had taken the wheel—raw, ravenous—and Ash was a sacrament laid out before him. A feast.
He bent without thought and latched onto his throat, biting hard enough to bruise. Ash let out a shocked noise, half-moan, half-laugh, and Rick soothed it with his tongue, licking a slow stripe along the sharp ridge of his collarbone. The skin was hot and slick, tasting of sweat and desire. He pressed open-mouthed kisses across his chest, rough and claiming, before taking a nipple between his lips and sucking, slow at first, then faster, until Ash writhed beneath him with a ragged gasp.
“Fuck—Rick—” he gasped, arching up into him, fingers scrabbling for purchase on Rick’s shoulders.
Rick growled low, the sound guttural, inhuman, and switched to the other side, dragging his teeth across the soft nub until Ash arched again, spine bowing up off the bed. “God, you taste…” Rick muttered against his skin, too far gone to finish the thought.
He moved lower, kissing down the slope of Ash’s ribs, across the ridges of his abs, slick with sweat and flexing subtly with every breath. His mouth followed the lines carved into his torso, over the sharp V of his hips, where the skin was thin and sensitive. He grazed his teeth along one of those oblique lines and felt the jolt it sent through Ash—a subtle twitch, a stifled gasp.
Rick rubbed his face over the firm plane of his abdomen, breathing him in, deep and greedy. There was a fine trail of hair leading south, and he traced it with his tongue, drunk on the scent of him. Sweat. Skin. Sex. And something else, wild and unplaceable, something that made the animal in him claw against its cage.
Ash’s thighs flexed on either side of his head, tensing around him. “You gonna keep sniffing around down there,” he purred, “or are you gonna do something useful with that mouth?”
Rick’s head snapped up, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Oh, you’re gonna regret that.”
Growling, he grabbed Ash by the hips and flipped him over in one fluid motion, rough but careful, a caveman handling something sacred. Ash gasped, a sharp, breathless moan punched from his lungs as he landed on his stomach, legs spread wide, ass high, presenting without shame.
Rick’s breath caught. He didn’t even try to play it cool. His hands clutched those perfect, muscular mounds—firm, round, smooth as marble under his palms, but warm, alive,flawless. The kind of ass that haunted dreams and ruined lives. Every inch of him was sculpted like a sin made flesh, but this? This was something else.
At the center of it all, Ash’s hole pulsed open and shut, slick and flushed, a glistening pink that looked impossibly soft. Not puckered or dry like others Rick had seen, but plush, almost glossy, faintly swollen, already wet from within. It remindedRick of lips; not metaphorically, but literally:kissable. Inviting. Made to be ravaged. It was pornographic. Divine.
His cock jerked with a painful throb. “Fuck,” he breathed.
He circled that perfect ring with his thumb once, just to see it twitch and clench. The skin felt like silk, slick with no sign of lube. Pliant. It wasready. Welcoming.
He didn’t waste time.
Rick buried his face between Ash’s cheeks with a broken sound—half moan, half roar—andconsumedhim.
There was no preamble. No teasing flicks or featherlight kisses. He dove in like a starving man in front of a treat, possessive, sloppy, licking into the slick crevice and curling against the opening, tasting him. Fuck—hetasted.Rick groaned low in his throat, nose pressed into the cleft, licking stronger, deeper, lewd sounds echoing across the loft.
