Page 39 of Lifeline

“As enticing as this is,” I said slowly, gesturing toward the door near me. “You are going to stink if you don’t wash.”

“True,” he said, and I heard the click as he locked the door behind him and then the thump as his boots were kicked off and he bent down to yank his socks off. I didn’t see the socks as he walked around the table, his thumbs hooked into his pants, slowly pulling them down. I watched, amused. The version of him I had always wanted to see, but because of his…problems, I had never glimpsed.

They were off and kicked away as he reached the door, turning on the light, and though I couldn’t see it, I heard the shower come on. I sat there, wondering what he was going to do next when he appeared in the doorway, naked as the day he was born. There was still the shimmering evidence of the sweat he had worked up on his body, and my eyes lingered before meeting his.

“I’ll just take a minute,” he said with a grin. “We’re probably both going to need a shower after this, though, so I’ll be quick.”

“Aren’t we confident?” I said, and he chuckled as he disappeared, and I heard the spray of the shower hitting his body.

He knew as well as I did that there was no way I was going to sit there and wait for him to emerge. I made my way to the corner of the large table that took up the center of the room. I could lean against it and look into the bathroom, having a straight view of the shower. I wasn’t all that surprised to see the shower door had been left open, and I watched as he soaped himself up.

Aidan had clearly seen my movement and looked up, smirking when he saw me standing there. I raised a brow, still amazed and amused by his sexual desire. “You know…I remember you telling me there was a deeply sexual creature inside you, and how much it frustrated you to feel like some part of you that you couldn’t control was keeping it caged.”

His movements slowed, and he gave me a curious look. “I remember that conversation. I remember being pissed because you didn’t look like you believed me.”

“I doubted it,” I admitted. “After all, someone can say something a million times, but that doesn’t make it reality. Not for me, anyway.”

He thought about that for a moment, bending down to soap his legs, carefully balancing to get his feet as well. “That’s…fair. I guess there’s a reason people say seeing is believing.”

“And I didn’t see much of it back then,” I admitted, and then felt my focus on the conversation waver when he began washing his ass. Of course, he couldn’t just wash it and move on, he had to turn around so I could watch the entire thing, forced to watch the suds form on the cheeks of an ass that had always been delightful in my eyes, but delightfully bounced more than before. Also, it looked like there was something between his⁠—

“And now?” he asked, looking over his shoulder and turning so I could see his side profile but not confirm if I had seen something.

“There are…indicators that something might have changed,” I said, not sure if I was hedging my bets or just…taken aback.

“It’s funny,” he began, and then stood under the spray and let it sluice down his body to wash the soap away. When he emerged, free of soap, he continued, “to see you so…cautious. You were always so direct about sex.”

I watched him turn off the water and begin drying himself so he didn’t drip everywhere. “Some things change.”

“And some don’t,” he recited dutifully.

“Are you trying to tell me that’s changed?” I asked, trying not to let the flash of annoyance on his face get to me.

“I’m trying…to show you,” he said as he bent over to dry his feet. “Like you said, telling is one thing, but showing is another.”

I bit back the question, ‘And when does it go away?’ and instead decided to just give in. It would be painfully easy to talk myself out of the situation and kill the entire mood. Part of me, the fearful part, demanded to know the answer to that question, but…like we’d already established, he could tell me either way, and what would that matter in the face of proof. That I would believe it would eventually fade if he told me that wasn’t really a mark in my favor, but that was a thought for another time.

By the time he was dry enough not to leave a path of water along the floor, I was down to my underwear. He advanced on me, and there was something delightfully funny and arousing about watching someone who came up to just above my chin stalking me. His confidence didn’t waver as he reached me, taking hold and kissing me fiercely. In the early days, one thing I loved about him was how fierce and passionate he could be when he was aroused, but it was the third time he had kissed me, and it was just as fierce and heated as before.

I reached down to take him in my hand, stroking him and making him moan into my mouth. We had more privacy than we had the first couple of times we’d fooled around, but as much as I wanted to hear his noises; I hoped he remembered we were still technically in a building where we could be easily overheard if someone was nearby.

He broke the kiss, but only so he could kneel, pressing his mouth against the outline of my cock as it strained against the fabric of my boxer briefs. The warmth of his mouth was intense even through the fabric, and I ran my nails through his hair, along his scalp as he pulled my underwear down and freed my dick. His lips pressed into the side and I watched him open his mouth, coax the head into his mouth and take me in so his tongue slid along the underside and drew a groan out of me as he sucked me deep.

He used to gag at the slightest thing. He used to complain about it, grousing that he had the gag reflex of the straightest man alive rather than someone who liked sucking dick. I hadn’t seen much evidence of that, and I certainly hadn’t seen him try to do anything about his gag reflex to match his frustration either. I didn’t know what had changed over the years, but he clearly had put in the work to take care of his little ‘issue,’ and I wondered what had inspired it…or who.

That…was an unpleasant thought that I needed to push away, which was easy when I had a good-looking man deep-throating my dick like it was the last one he was ever going to see. I was prepared to stay there while he fucked his mouth on my dick, right until he pulled off, his mouth shining from spit and my dick left to bob helplessly in front of him.

“As fun as this is,” he said, getting up, grabbing the clothes he’d left on the table and moving what I could see was a pair of shorts. Under it was a bottle of lube, and my heart picked up its pace again. “I was thinking⁠—”

“Damn,” I said as I picked it up and raised a brow. “You realize how…freelance I can be while single, right?”

“I remember you were a bit of a slut before we met, and I expect you were after,” he chuckled. “But I also assumed that if either of us had caught something between then and now, we would have said something.”

“Would we? We don’t have the best history of honesty with each other,” I admitted, although I wanted to take that bottle from his hands and fuck him right then and there.

“I know. But we never did or hid anything that would have risked the other’s safety or health,” he said. “And while I know some things change…I hope that’s not one of them.”

“It’s not,” I said, and despite my wary distrust of just about everything sexual between him and me, there was no mistrust in this particular aspect. “Now I have to ask. Are you advocating for bareback because it’s a turn-on or because you didn’t have any condoms?”