Page 31 of Crown of Ash

"God, baby-"

Baby. Six years and the man went straight to it, no run-up, like the word had been sitting in his mouth the whole time waiting for the moment it could escape.

Marcus took him in his mouth.

He did not build to it. He took him deep on the first pass, all the way down, lips stretched wide, jaw aching open, until his nose pressed into coarse hair and Andre's thick cock was seated fully in his throat, the head of him nudging past the tight resistance there. His eyes watered. His throat closed, fought, opened around him. Andre made a sound like he'd been hit in the chest, a punched-out grunt, and his hips snapped forward, an inch deeper, involuntary. Marcus held him there by the backs of the thighs, hands spread wide, and let him. Swallowed deliberately around the head of him. Felt Andre's whole body seize.

He knew this. Had never forgotten a single detail of this sexy man. The thick vein running the length of him that Marcus could feel pressed flat against his tongue. The exact place on the underside, two inches down, where if he pressed his tongue and held it Andre's grammar collapsed entirely, where sentences… became single syllables… became nothing at all. He found it now. Pressed. Held.

Andre's left hand scrabbled at the desk's edge, found nothing, ended up back in his hair, gripping with both hands now, not guiding, just holding on.

"Marcus. Marcus, sweetheart, I'm not going to last, I haven't, God, I haven't since-"

Marcus pulled off just enough to speak, lips dragging over the head of him, wet and swollen and dark, his own spit cooling on his chin.

"Neither have I."

Then he took him again and stopped being careful. He worked him in long pulls, cheeks hollowed, taking him deep and backing off and taking him deep again, setting a pace that had no mercy in it, his tongue moving constantly, the flat of it, then the point, finding every place he remembered and some he'd apparently forgotten he'd memorized. Andre's breathing went ragged and high. His thighs were shaking under Marcus's hands.

"I'm… Marcus, I'm going to…"

Marcus sealed his lips at the base and swallowed.

Andre's strength quit on him and took them both over. They ended up on the gray carpet in a mess of Marcus's shirt and Andre's open belt, Marcus over him, Andre's hands working at buttons, giving up, just tearing, one of them skittering off under the desk. Andre was still half-undone, still catching his breath, and Marcus was already moving down his throat with his mouth, tasting the salt at his collarbone, the hollow of his sternum.

"The door," Andre said, against his neck.

"Locked."

"You didn't lock it."

"I locked it." Marcus got his teeth on the cord of muscle running up into Andre's shoulder, bit down, felt him shudder. "I locked it when I shut it. I've locked that door behind you in my head four hundred times."

"Jesus, Marcus."

There was lube in the desk drawer. It had been in that drawer for years, because getting privacy around here wasn't simple. When Andre saw what it was, he laughed once, cracked and astonished.

"In your office?"

"Shut up."

"In your public facing office, Marcus Whitfield-"

Marcus’s office was a fucking powder keg, and the fuse had been lit the second Andre walked through that door. Six years of pent-up desire, six years of living in purgatory, and now here they were, Marcus’s hand gripping the back of Andre’s thigh like it was the only thing keeping him from drowning. Andre’s laughter died in his throat, replaced by a raw, needy silence that screamed louder than any words ever could.

“You wanna go through my drawers,” Marcus growled, his voice thick with want, “or you want me inside you?”

Andre didn’t hesitate. He stared Marcus down, his dark eyes burning with a hunger that could’ve lit the whole fucking city on fire. “Inside me,” he said, his voice cracking like a whip. “Now. Right fucking now. Don’t you dare be careful with me, Marcus. I’ve waited six goddamn years-”

Marcus was careful anyway, for about ninety seconds, because he wasn’t a complete fucking animal. Andre was thirty-eight, and it had been a long fucking time since anyone had touched him like this. Marcus wasn’t about to hurt him, not for all the money in the world. Two fingers, slow and deliberate, working him open, watching every twitch of Andre’s face like it was gospel. His other hand flattened against Andre’s chest, feeling the rapid-fire rhythm of his heart as it threatened to punch its way through his ribcage.

Andre cursed him the whole time, his voice dripping with frustration and need. “Fucking coward,” he spat, pushing back onto Marcus’s hand, his hips grinding in tight, desperate circles. “Quit teasing me and-”

Then Marcus stopped being careful.

He lined himself up, the slick, swollen head of his cock pressing against Andre’s tight, trembling entrance. He pushed in, slow at first, then deeper, until Andre’s body gave way and swallowed him whole. The heat, the grip, it was fucking divine. Andre let out a low, broken moan, his lips brushing the side of Marcus’s jaw, his breath hot and ragged. His heel hooked over Marcus’s thigh, pulling him closer, deeper, until there wasn’t an inch left to give.

Marcus’s office vanished around them. The fluorescent lights, the fucking desk, the certificate on the wall, it all blurred into nothingness until it was just the two of them, raw and fucking real, at the center of the goddamn universe.