Cole’s answering hum reverberated around the room. He clenched his fists. “I’m gonna come, Toby. I’m gonna come so fucking hard.”
No.He couldn’t come. I hadn’t reached around him and jacked his dick yet. But it didn’t seem to matter. Cole wrenched himself upright and twisted his neck. He dragged my face to his for a messy kiss, and I felt him fall over the edge. His body tightened and spasmed around me, and his deep groan flicked a switch inside me. Pressure unfurled in my belly. My sweaty hands slipped on his hips, and I fucked him harder, driving every last sound from him.
Then I came too, emptying into him with a wild yell they probably heard in Devon.
It took a long time for me to return to earth. For protracted, heart-stuttering seconds, I was frozen in place, my face buried in Cole’s neck. Then it occurred to me that I needed to take care of him.
I let my cock slip from him and rubbed his back. Cole moaned, but it was quiet now, without the desperate edge that turned me inside out. I slid from the bed and fetched a warm cloth to clean up, then I drew the covers back from the bed and coaxed him beneath them.
He smiled up at me. “You really do want me to sleep over, huh?”
His voice was lazy, drowsy even, but when I looked at him, his gaze was as sharp as ever, piercing the orgasm haze clouding my own mind. “Of course I do.”
“Why?”
“Because—” Because what? Was I seriously about to tell him how I really felt? How he was the first thing I thought of every morning and the last thing at night whether we slept together or not? I closed my eyes and shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Toby.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
I sighed and forced my heavy eyes open. “Don’t do that thing where I get one step closer to you and you take ten steps back. I can’t handle that. Not tonight.”
“I—”
“Don’t.” I sealed his mouth with my palm. “Don’t say it.”
“But—”
“No. Look, I want to be your person. For everything. But I get you don’t want that, and I’m okay with it. You don’t need to tell me every time we do this.”
Cole peeled my hand from his mouth. “Are you going to let me speak?”
“No.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It doesn’t need to be fair if it’s the truth. We’re friends, right?”
“Of course we are.”
“Well, now I guess we’re friends with, uh, benefits.”
I closed my eyes again. Cole said more words, but my heart made me tune him out, and as a long day of work, a shed load of booze, and a heart full of him caught up with me, I didn’t hear a thing.
20
Cole
Toby knocked out before I could put a finger to his lips and quiet him enough to tell him I felt the same. That I wanted to behisperson if he could handle me sometimes being terrible at it.
I wanted him to fuck me again too. I wanted him to hold me down with his work-hardened hands and throw me all over his bed. Because,damn, that boy was good at it.