Fen opened his eyes. His cobalt gaze took me prisoner. Held me hostage. He smiled, the fucker, as if he sensed the volcanic inferno I was trying to suppress. “Can I kiss you again?”
“You don’t need to ask.”
“No?”
“No.” I took matters into my own hands and sealed my mouth to his, claiming his lips.
I had sweet intentions, but my tongue had other ideas. It slipped into his mouth of its own accord, and he didn’t fight me. He brought his strong arms around me like a cage and kissed me back, cupping the nape of my neck with one big hand while the other gripped my hip.
I groaned against his lips. Christ, was he trying to kill me? If he was, it wasn’t a bad way to go. Kissing him was everything, and the sensation of his broad torso crushed against me was the icing on a cake I’d eat every day if I could.
Fen backed us up until we reached his bed. We tumbled down, but before I could land on him and amp things up to a level I lacked the strength to resist, I angled my fall to lie next to him.
It worked, kind of, if I counted grinding my hard cock into his leg any kind of restraint.
We kissed for hours. Fen explored every inch of my skin with his big, calloused hands, and I let my lips travel down his throat and to his chest, all the while fighting to keep my dick to myself.
It didn’t help that the bulge in his underwear was probably visible from space. I ached to touch it, to trail a finger from root to tip, to grip it, to squeeze and taste it. Like, literally ached. Could a man get cramp in his cock? It sure fucking felt like it.
Either way, I didn’t touch his dick. I kissed him for as long as we could stay awake, then I fell asleep with him wrapped around me from behind like the dream fantasy I’d described to him on the way home. It wasn’t the all night fuck I’d imagined when my attraction to him had manifested so long ago, but if it was the end of our story, I could take it.
Perfection was hard to discount.
* * *
Woodstock by Joni Mitchell woke me. At first, I thought I was still dreaming, helped along by the sensation of Fen’s big body behind me, but as the gentle melody and lyrics seeped into me, his bedroom solidified and I realised it was the alarm on his phone.
Cute. I shut it off, half convinced I’d sleepwalked into a Tardis and woken in the wrong decade, and I wasn’t sad about it. My mum had told me once I’d been born with an old soul, and I could dig it.
Fen’s chest pressed to my back?
Yeah. I could digthatsometime until forever, and so I didn’t move, not for a long while until it occurred to me that his alarm had been set for a reason.
Sighing, I forced myself to roll over. Fen let me go, his arms loose and clumsy. He was dead asleep, and fuck me if he wasn’t the most beautiful sight. His ashy hair was a riot, his face relaxed and boyish, and though I missed his sparkly gaze, without it, I almost forgot that Fen Hawthorne was such a complex creature.
Huh. Maybe I was about the simple life after all.
Whatever. Waking him felt like a sin. The bad kind. Not the kind that was still making my balls ache. The only upside was I’d get to see him smile. Maybe. If he was pleased to wake up and find me in his bed, and not perplexed by a beer-fuelled mistake.
It wasn’t a mistake.My gut and my heart knew it, but I was nervous all the same.
I raised a shaky hand and cupped his jaw, revelling in the feel of his velvety beard against my palm. It was just the right length—like thick, lush scruff. I let my thumb stroke one cheekbone and softly kissed the other. “Fen?”
Nothing. Not even a flicker. I tried again, a slow grin building on my face, splitting it in half.
Still nothing.
I moved to shake him, but a new sound from his phone made me jump out of my skin, a different song, this time—Sleigh Ride by Ella Fitzgerald at seventeen times the volume of Joni Mitchell. “Jesus fucking Christ!”
Fen’s eyes flew open. He seized my wrists and bolted upright, taking me with him. “What? What is it?”
“Your alarm,” I said dryly. “It’s louder than Satan’s Saturday night lock-in.”
“Oh.” Fen blinked hard, clearing sleep from his brain. “Damn. Sorry. Where’s my phone?”
“Here.” I wrestled a hand free and passed it to him, half amused at his rude awakening, and half endeared by his reaction to it. “Sorry if I made you jump. It scared the hell out of me.”
Fen swiped at the screen. “I thought I turned it off.”
