“Ask me,” I say.
“No.”
I slow my hand even more. His thigh muscles are shaking. There’s a sheen of sweat across his chest and his hands are clenched into fists at his sides.
“Ask. Me.”
“Please.” The word sounds like it physically hurts him to say, which makes it all the more satisfying. “Archie, please, I can’t— I need?—”
“That’s all I wanted.”
I take him back into my mouth, and this time, I don’t tease. I give him everything—my tongue, my hand, a rhythm that builds fast and deliberate. His fingers find my hair again, gripping hard, and the sound that escapes him bounces off the walls of this tiny changing room in a way that is deeply inappropriate, given that an hour ago, this space contained a children’s entertainer and a man in a unicorn costume.
I don’t close my eyes. I don’t know why. Usually, I do because it’s easier, less personal, and keeps things in the territory of sensation rather than connection.
But I watch Leo come apart, and his face does something I’ve never seen before. All that control, all that careful composure is just…gone. What’s underneath is open, raw, and almost unbearably trusting.
He trusted me with this. With seeing him like this.
I file the image of his face away somewhere I won’t be able to delete it.
Leo takes a moment to collect himself. Then his eyes drop to me—still on my knees, still hard—and his expression changes.
It’s the look he gets when he’s identified a problem and already has a solution.
He drops to his knees and helps me sit back against the wall, pulling down my pants and spreading my legs. The care he takes with my injured ankle does something to my chest that I’m not prepared for.
Then he settles between my legs, and the sight of Leo Brennan on his knees, still flushed, his hair wrecked from my hands, looking up at me with that focused, deliberate expression… The contrast between the man falling apart under my mouth a minute ago and this version is enough to make my head spin.
“You don’t have to?—”
“Quiet,” he says, and his mouth is on me before I can argue.
And Leo approaches this the way he approaches everything. Methodically. Thoroughly. Like he’s been thinking about exactly how to take me apart and has already drawn up a project plan.
His tongue does something and my brain whites out. My hand flies to his hair, and I hear myself make a sound that would be humiliating if I could access the part of my brain that processes shame right now, which I cannot because Leo has found a rhythm that is—fuck—fuck —
I can’t stop my hips from thrusting to meet his mouth, and he lets me, his hand sliding to my hip, not to hold me back, but to guide the rhythm.
He glances up at me, and the eye contact nearly finishes me on the spot. There’s heat in his gaze, but there’s also something quietly intent, like my reaction matters to him.
His fingers press into the muscle of my thigh and his mouth does that thing again. My hips jerk forward, and I can’t— I’m not going to?—
“Leo, I’m?—”
He doesn’t pull back. He doubles down. Of course he does. Because Leo Brennan has never done anything by half-measures in his life.
It takes an embarrassingly short time before I’m coming, my fingers twisted in his hair, my spine arching off the wall, and I have just enough presence of mind to muffle myself against my own forearm because there is a non-zero chance the cleaning staff has left the building.
Afterward, he slides down the wall so he’s sitting on the floor next to me.
“That was…” He trails off.
“Incredible? Life-changing? The best experience you’ve ever had in a changing room?”
“Unexpected.”
I snort. “You literally said ‘Sparkle says.’ How is any of this unexpected?”
