He let out a soft laugh, completely contrasting with the hooded look in his eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”
My mouth fell open. “I’m not avirgin.”
Is that the vibe I gave off?
How fucking mortifying.
I knew I was bad at this whole flirting thing, but I figured he could at least tell I wasn’t an amateur in the bedroom. I was twenty-eight, for god’s sake. That was plenty of years worth of experience to get to know the in’s and out’s of sexual gratification.
He reached down to cup my jaw, forcing my head back until it was pressed against the back of the couch. He sunk his knee down onto the cushion between my legs, resting all of his weight there and dipping us both while he leaned forward. “Withmen, Blake.”
Thick saliva coated my tongue and throat. “Y-Yeah. Why?”
His brow popped up suddenly. “Really? Before this?”
“Yes.” Okay, that was an even worse assumption that he thought I wasstraightrather than simply being a virgin. “Marlow, I’m not—Iamgay. I run an LBGTQ youth retreat.”
“Didn’t know if that was you being a really good ally or not.”
If I wasn’t currently trying to fight off coming in my shorts from how close he was and how intimate him touching me like this felt, I would’ve reached out and slammed my first right into his shoulder for good measure because what thefuckwas that.
He was lucky he was charming.
“You’re stalling.”
He flashed me a cheeky grin. “You’re right.”
Suddenly, my world flipped on itself, tilting sideways with a hand catching me in the ribs and forcing me flat onto my back lying horizontally on the couch. My legs were kicked apart by a rogue knee, giving Marlow enough room to settle between them while looming over me once again.
His face was shadowed by the way the light fixtures in this room were laid out. His expression going from playful and amused to one that had my toes curling in my shoes. There was an intensity in his eyes that I’d only ever seen once before the last time I’d been in this cabin and on this very same couch.
He pulled me in without a single word, entrancing me by his presence in a way that was so abnormally foreign, I couldn’t help but seek out more. I wanted to know how he ticked, how he was able to break through my years of fog when it came to finding anyone even remotely attractive enough to send me into this near frenzy of want.
“You know what’s funny,” he murmured, surprising me. “You’re the first one to ever do this to me.”
His hand snuck under my t-shirt to run along the outline of my abs like he was tracing the details to commit them to memory. My stomach jumped at the contact, contracting involuntarily while I tried not to squirm from the subtle touches.
I was overly sensitive to a fault. Every graze, every brush of those fingertips over my skin were small shots of adrenaline rocketing through my system. While I wanted to reach down between us and kick my shorts down to my ankles and free my poor erection, the angle Marlow had me twisted in gave little room to move.
“I don’t know how you do it.” He continued to talk, his voice barely above a whisper. “You get me somehow. And that turns me the fuck on.”
I wheezed the second he glided his hand up and pinched one of my nipples. The pain licked through the pleasure perfectly, perking my hips up to grind against whatever was close enough to give me some sort of relief.
Marlow’s hand caught the side of my hip, slamming me back down into the cushion. “Thought we agreed on you letting me take care of this.”
Any more stalling and I was going to come in my shorts. “Hurry up.”
He squeezed my nipple hard enough to hurt. “So demanding.”
A whimpering moan slipped out of me involuntarily then, before I could stop it. The worst part about being a closet masochist was that usually it freaked people out enough to steer clear of it entirely, hence why locking it down before I let myself get carried away was usually the only way I actually got laid without scaring off the other party.
There were only the few rare occasions when I got someone to sleep with me who actually wanted to get rough, and unfortunately, they never tended to last long relationship-wise. Too many disguised as ‘good men’ when in actuality, they were little more than abusers catfishing as ‘doms’.
Thankfully, I had a pretty good sense to weed them out early.
He paused for a second, his eyes focused intently on my face. “Blake.”
Oh my god.
