The Inside Edge, page 12
At least Nate had a really nice shower with great water pressure for Aubrey to not freak out in.
It took five minutes or so to soothe enough of the tension from his body that he could stomach the idea of sliding into bed with Nate. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shared a bed with someone with sex off the table. At a sleepover with Jackson his first year of high school, maybe. It felt like a lifetime ago.
Feeling a very strange urge to be modest, he slipped on a clean pair of boxers and crawled into bed. Nate didn’t move; his breathing was deep and even now, with no trace of that wheezy snore. He was throwing off enough heat to make the whole bed feel cozy and welcoming, which was impressive considering he kept his apartment basically sub-zero when he wasn’t home.
Aubrey closed his eyes. The window was oriented differently than the one in his bedroom, which gave him a start a few times when he began to drift off, only to jerk awake wondering where he was. Then Nate let out a gusty sigh in his sleep and rolled over, flinging his arm around Aubrey’s waist as he did so.
Aubrey’s fight-or-flight instinct said, Fuck this, I’m out. Nate was warm and he smelled nice, and the steady rise and fall of his chest against Aubrey’s shoulder sealed it. Between one moment and the next, Aubrey fell asleep.
Waking up again happened decidedly more gradually.
Sometime in the night Aubrey had shifted onto his side, facing the window. The lightness behind his eyelids coaxed him to consciousness. He must have flailed around a little while he slept, because now only the sheet covered him, and that only halfway up his chest.
But he was warm. Really warm. Especially along his back and across his stomach. A few more breaths into wakefulness, he realized that Nate had crept closer in the night and was now pressed up against him, his stubble scratching at the back of Aubrey’s shoulder.
Aubrey wasn’t sure if Nate was entirely awake, but parts of him definitely were, and they were getting intimately acquainted with Aubrey’s ass.
He was just taking a deep breath to fortify himself to move out of Nate’s embrace when Nate rumbled and rubbed his scruff against the back of Aubrey’s neck. Aubrey’s dick went from Good morning, I guess to Hello, sailor.
“Hey,” Nate said in a register an octave and a half lower than his normal speaking voice. His thumb was making small concentric circles on the sensitive skin of Aubrey’s abdomen.
Aubrey’s body was on a low simmer now, all systems coming online at once. “Hey,” he rasped back, shuddering as Nate nosed against his ear.
“How, ah….” The nuzzling paused. “How do you feel about morning sex?”
Aubrey had never stayed the night with anyone, but this didn’t feel like the right time to mention that. “Strongly in favor.”
Nate kissed the juncture of his shoulder, hot and wet with a scrape of teeth. “Happy to hear that.”
Happy was one word for it. Aubrey’s dick jerked hard enough against his stomach that Nate probably felt the vibration. He swallowed, hot in a way that had nothing to do with body heat. When Aubrey inhaled, Nate’s hand slid lower on his abdomen, his fingertips just shy of Aubrey’s boxers. Aubrey sucked in another breath through his teeth and tried not to buck too obviously into the touch. “You seem like you have a plan in mind.”
Nate nipped his ear and nudged his hips closer. “Maybe. You good if I take the lead?”
Aubrey could not lead his way out of a wet paper bag right then. Every sense was on overload. “Good,” he agreed. Good. Great. Absolutely incredible.
“Good,” Nate repeated, dragging the prickle of his scruff over the side of Aubrey’s neck. He slid his hand around Aubrey’s side, sneaking under the waistband of his boxers. Aubrey wriggled, intent on being helpful in freeing himself, but Nate sank his teeth gently into Aubrey’s earlobe. “Uh-uh. Like this.”
Like this—with his boxers pushed down around his upper thighs and no farther, exposing his ass and his erection without leaving him room to move.
Aubrey took a deep breath, but it felt like inhaling molasses. The air smelled thick with sex already. He swallowed, licked his lips. His tongue felt too big for his mouth, and his cock was drooling. “I, ah. With you so far.”
“Mm-hmm, I can tell.” Nate cupped his balls, then trailed his fingers up to the head of Aubrey’s dick, a featherlight touch that was hardly even a tease. Then his hand disappeared and a familiar click told Aubrey Nate had been optimistic when preparing for bed last night. A second later Nate’s hand nudged between his asscheeks.
Aubrey’s pulse thundered in his ears. It had been a while since someone fucked him, but he wanted it now, bad enough that his brain was lining up words like please and I want.
Nate didn’t even try to push inside him. Instead he slicked Aubrey’s cheeks, sparing only the filthiest flirting caress for Aubrey’s hole.
Then he lined up and slid the head of his cock between Aubrey’s thighs.
Oh fuck.
Aubrey took a shaky breath, biting back a moan. A couple weeks ago he’d fucked Nate six ways from Sunday the filthiest way he knew how, and now Nate was dismantling him with a little casual frottage. His whole chest hitched, and his breathing stuttered when Nate pulled back too far and his cock slid between Aubrey’s asscheeks on the next thrust. It reminded him viscerally that Nate wasn’t fucking him, but he could. Nate exhaled quietly next to Aubrey’s ear and adjusted his dick between Aubrey’s thighs again. The heat seeped into his brain, into his being.
Aubrey parted his lips, hoping to cool himself, but his whole body was burning. Nate’s deliberate, unhurried thrusts had him struggling to stay quiet, afraid any noise might break the spell. The rasp of Nate’s beard on his neck and shoulders and next to his ear set every synapse firing, creating a molten sea of sensation. When Nate pushed forward, his cock nudged Aubrey’s balls and the base of his dick. It was a hot wave that crashed and receded, and Aubrey was adrift on it, was drowning.
When Nate’s hand, still slick with lube, slid lower and wrapped around his cock, Aubrey gave in to it. The pleasure of that firm, slow, knowing touch brought him to the edge and held him there. All he could do was pull the pillow close enough to his face to bite into it, stifling the noises that begged to be released.
Without conscious thought, Aubrey was moving too, clenching his ass and thighs, pushing back against Nate, rolling forward into the grip of his hand. His body was strung to the limits of its tension, vibrating on a precipice, waiting for the slightest change to topple him over. He couldn’t move his hand to curl it around Nate’s and force it tighter, faster. He could barely do more than breathe and hold on.
But even Nate must have had limits, because suddenly he groaned, and his thrusts came quicker, harder. Aubrey pressed his open mouth against the pillow in a silent scream, moisture leaking from the corners of his eyes. He was so close. Just a little more.
Nate sucked his earlobe into his mouth and thumbed the head of his cock, and that was enough. Aubrey came without a sound, half holding his breath, half convinced this was an incredible dream. His orgasm went on and on as Nate rocked between his thighs, teasing out every last drop with his hand, until finally he broke too, his mouth a wet brand on the side of Aubrey’s neck as he came, spurting over the insides of his thighs, his balls, his hole. Aubrey’s cock jerked again in sympathy, producing another pathetic dribble that felt like it was wrung out of him.
Holy fuck.
Holy fuck.
“Mmm,” Nate said, mouthing Aubrey’s skin in what even Aubrey’s addled brain could tell was lazy satisfaction.
All Aubrey could come up with was hnnngh, which seemed stupid and obvious and dangerous. He didn’t say anything.
“That was nice,” Nate murmured, rubbing his beard on Aubrey’s neck again like he was a cat and Aubrey was his scratching post.
Nice. Nice. He’d just taken everything Aubrey thought he knew about sex and turned it upside-down, and he thought it was nice? He’d taken a sex act Aubrey had considered foreplay until twenty minutes ago and turned it into possibly the hottest sex of his life.
Nice?
Aubrey was gathering himself to voice this protest when Nate snuffled happily and then… relaxed.
Aubrey’s protest died on his lips the same as his pleas, this time out of shock rather than self-defense. Had he really—really?
He turned to glance over his shoulder. Sure enough, Nate had fallen asleep.
I cannot believe this. Fuck my life.
But at least this gave Aubrey the chance to fall apart in private. On shaky, reluctant legs, he stood from the bed and wobbled toward the en suite.
On second thought, if he was going to have a full-on breakdown, he wanted to do it far enough away that Nate wouldn’t hear him if he managed to get his mouth to say actual things out loud, like “What the fuck” and “No, seriously, what the fuck.”
This was, he reflected as he walked very awkwardly to the guest bathroom on the other side of the apartment, the sort of situation that people paid their therapists for. But so far, words had not even returned, so Aubrey was—Aubrey was so fucked.
First sex, then romance, and now domesticity. And it turned out domestic sex, at least with Nate, was so blisteringly hot, it broke Aubrey’s entire brain into component parts that couldn’t even speak to each other. He stared at the knobs in the shower for thirty seconds before remembering he should get in. He stared at the little guest shampoo and soap lined up neatly on the shower shelf.
He stared at the water pooling in the drain as a gob of come unstuck from the back of his thigh and landed next to his foot.
That, at least, jolted him out of his stupor. He cupped his hands and scrubbed his face, washing away the salt of sweat. He needed to get clean. Somehow they’d managed to sleep until—Aubrey didn’t actually know, but his internal clock was telling him it was closer to lunch than breakfast time. His flight left from O’Hare at two and he hadn’t packed.
The trouble was, he kept slipping back into thoughts of Nate. Nate’s charm, good humor, and smile, and the way he always seemed to think of Aubrey even if he wasn’t directly talking to him. The stupid notebook was full of examples by now.
His whole life, Aubrey had waited for someone to put him first. He knew that was part of what had kept him from dating anyone seriously—no one had ever done it, and he equally feared finding out no one ever would and having it and then losing it again.
Nate didn’t put him first. Aubrey wasn’t going to romanticize their whatever it was that much. Nate made him feel like he didn’t actually need that. He just needed someone to be considerate.
It was far more dangerous.
I need to make an appointment with my therapist, Aubrey thought grimly as he reached for the shampoo.
He made it through his shower on autopilot, washing his hair, working come out of undignified places. In a few hours, he’d be on a plane and he wouldn’t have to think about Nate again for a whole week. He’d have ample opportunity to find someone in Hawaii with an ass that could compete with Nate’s. It probably existed. If not, maybe Jackson could hook him up later. Either way, he’d be fine. He just needed some perspective.
Clean now, Aubrey shut off the water, realizing belatedly that he’d forgotten to grab a towel. He ran both hands through his hair, shaking out as much water as he could, then squeezing out a little more. There was a linen closet in the hallway. He wouldn’t have to drip for too far.
Aubrey used the bathroom hand towel to dry himself as much as he could, not wanting to damage the nice floors. He carried it with him into the hallway to drop in the laundry once he was done with it. Nobody needed to dry their hands on it now.
Nate had a nice collection of home linens, which amused Aubrey because he didn’t have any other decorating sense to speak of. Look at that deep blue. Aubrey could tell just from looking at it that it would be soft and fluffy. He reached out to grab it and had just closed his hand around an actual absorbent cloud when there was a soft click, and then—
“Surprise, Nate! We changed our flight—”
Instinctively, Aubrey turned around and met wide eyes with a woman in her sixties who, from her sharp nose and high cheekbones, was immediately recognizable as Nate’s mother.
The towel dropped from Aubrey’s suddenly nerveless fingers.
Nate’s mother raised her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God! Oh my God, I’m so sorry—” and she fled the apartment, closing the door behind her.
Aubrey stared at the door. He stared at the tiny hand towel on the floor between his feet. Then back to the door again, which he’d have to leave through in order to escape this waking nightmare. At least, unless he wanted to fling himself out Nate’s fifteenth-story window. He’d never had to meet any of his conquests’ parents before, and now, when he actually wanted to make a good impression, one of them walked in on him naked in her son’s apartment.
“Fuck my actual life,” he sighed, wrapping the towel around his waist, and went to wake up Nate.
Chapter Thirteen
“NATE. NATE, wake up.”
“Mnnn,” Nate grumbled, pulling his pillow closer. There was a reason he didn’t often sleep in, and that was that the longer he did, the less he wanted to get out of bed. That went double after morning sex.
“Nate,” Aubrey hissed again, urgently enough that this time, Nate opened his eyes. Aubrey’s eyes were wild and his cheeks were pale. “Get your ass out of bed right now. Your parents are here.”
Nate’s brain went from warm and fuzzy to cold, almost painful clarity. “They’re not supposed to be here until Wednesday!”
“They got an earlier flight,” Aubrey bit out, scrambling around for the clothes he must’ve brought the night before. “They wanted it to be a surprise. Well, I’m surprised!”
It occurred to Nate as Aubrey frantically tugged on his underwear that he was very naked. “How surprised?” he asked, reaching for clean clothes of his own.
“Fully frontal surprised, Nathan!”
Nate winced. Okay, so that was bad. “Fuck.”
“You might say that!”
At least she seemed to have walked in after Aubrey showered, rather than before. Though considering Aubrey’s mood right now, Nate kept that thought to himself. “All right,” he said, thinking out loud as he hopped into a pair of sweatpants. “This is okay. We can fix this.”
“Fix what?” Aubrey said, throwing a venomous look over his shoulder as he struggled into a cashmere sweater that probably cost half a month’s rent. “I’m pretty sure we can’t go into your mom’s brain and remove the image of my dick!”
“Okay, yes, that’s awkwardness we’re just going to have to live with—”
“We?” Aubrey asked. “We?”
“—but it’s not like they have to know we’re, I don’t know, casually fucking or whatever.”
This gave Aubrey pause. “You want to just pretend I was staying here because of the broken heat upstairs?” His voice came down half a register.
“Oh no, they definitely won’t buy that. They’ve been hinting that they think there’s something going on for weeks. I’ve just pretended not to notice. But we could tell them we’re dating.”
“What!”
But the plan was coming together now, and the pitch of Aubrey’s indignant squawk couldn’t derail Nate’s train of thought. “It’s perfect. The timing is right. They’ve been bugging me to move on. I’ve been stalling them, but that could just as easily be because I wanted to keep the whole dating a coworker thing quiet.”
“Nate—”
Nate loved his parents, and he knew they loved him. But they had certain expectations of their son, and casual hookups with a coworker didn’t fit them. He might be ready to adjust his expectations of himself, but he didn’t know if he was ready for his parents to see him differently.
“Please,” he said. “Hear me out.”
To his surprise, Aubrey sat on the bed and folded his hands in his lap. He looked uncomfortable, and his shoulders were hunched, but he was listening.
“Just for the week,” he pleaded. “If I tell them the truth, they’re going to think I’m having a midlife crisis a few years ahead of schedule.”
“Aren’t you?” He let that hang in the air for a moment and then continued, “Anyway, we work together, remember? You were there when Jess demanded not to change anything.”
“So we tell my parents it has to be a secret!” That was just obvious. “They had a gay son who played hockey. I wasn’t always out. They understand.”
Aubrey spitted him with a flat stare. “You want to have a secret fake relationship. You do know this isn’t a Hallmark Channel Original Movie, right? Besides, I’m supposed to be on a plane to Hawaii in three hours. How do we explain your beloved boyfriend jetting off to a tropical island paradise without you?”
Shit. “Cancel it! I will pay you whatever it cost, okay, just….” He couldn’t articulate why this was so important. “Please.”
Aubrey stared at him, calculating. Nate was wearing him down. He could see it. Finally.
“All right,” he said. “All right! This is the craziest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve never met anyone’s parents. They’re going to hate me or think I’m a gold-digger or—”
Nate exhaled a long breath as relief flooded his system. “No, you’re good. Mom followed your skating career. She knows you have more money than I do.”
“—and we have to get rid of your fugly vase, okay? You can’t be shacking up with a boyfriend when you still have your horrible honeymoon trophy on display.”
That was a fair point. “Thank you,” Nate said.
Aubrey sighed. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. Come on. Let’s go hide the evidence so we can let your parents in. I can’t believe your mom saw me naked.”
“If you thought that was awkward,” Nate said grimly, “wait till she tries to give me a high-five.”
