Falling (17 page)

“I love you,” she says to him, and I know that’s what he needs to hear.

“I love you too, Mum. Try not to worry about me. I’m going to leave you a note about when I’m coming to see you tomorrow, okay?”

His voice is hoarse, and I know he’s trying not to cry.

Eleanor nods, but at the mention of us leaving, even though it is with a promise of return, her expression grows serious and morose.

“Josh?”

She beckons me closer, and Angus stands up and backs away, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. Her arms come around me, and she hugs me too.

“Don’t work too hard,” she murmurs, making me feel guilty that I haven’t been to see her for a few days. I think Angus was right to lie and tell her I was working overtime—if she knew I was sick, she would worry about him all the more. She would worry I wasn’t watching over him. Sometimes, perhaps such deception is necessary.

She touches my cheek and frowns. “You look tired.”

So often she has cared for me in the ways my own mother failed. All I want is for her to be okay, to be able to live the life she wants without every day being a battle for her to get through. Because I know that’s what it’s like when life falters and nothing is simple.

I stroke her hair back. “I’m okay. I’m looking out for him,” I mouth, not wanting Angus to hear what I’m saying.

“I’m happy for you two,” she whispers a little drowsily.

I turn and give Angus a brief quizzical look before leaning closer to hear her continue.

“You’ve taken good care of me, Josh. I know you will take good care of my son.” Even though she is whispering, I am sure Angus can hear every word.

Though neither of us has said or done anything in particular to make Eleanor think there is something going on between us, it feels strangely like being given her blessing.

A
NGUS
IS
much happier on the way home. Not quite carefree, but every so often he glances at me and grins.

“What?” I ask as we speed through the blackness of South London.

Angus shakes his head, smiling to himself.

“You’re distracting me,” I tell him, thinking how beautiful he looks, how lit up inside he becomes every time he smiles.

“It’s going to be okay,” he says cryptically.

“Well, I’m glad we got that sorted out, then.” I pull a wry face at him and turn into our street.

“I mean it,” Angus says once I’ve pulled over and turned the engine off. “I’ve got this feeling everything’s going to be okay.”

Without giving me a chance to contemplate what on earth he’s going on about, Angus pushes his hair out of his eyes, leans across the gear stick, and kisses me.
I guess he decided to ignore Oskar’s advice, after all
is the only thought that enters my mind before I am drowning in the velvet crush of his lips, the slick heat of his mouth and tongue. He lifts one of his hands to cup my ear, stroking the skin around it with such gentle tenderness and reverence, I am undone. He touches me and kisses openmouthed as though this is his one and only chance to pull me away from oblivion, from the emptiness that has so often threatened to surround me, inside and out. He kisses me as though this is what he was always meant to do. And I am burning up for him, star bright. I cover his hand with my own and let the sensation of his tongue lapping against mine cancel out any other thought.

I am lost. I long to pull him into my lap so I can lock our bodies together. I want him so much that I have no doubt we could get each other off like this. But we’re in my car, parked outside our house on a residential South London street, and I have to pull away. Though I don’t pull back far, I knock my forehead against his, our hands still gripping tightly.

“I think—” I take a deep breath, suddenly realizing I need air as much as the next human. “—we need to go somewhere more private, so we can do things that require a lot less clothing.”

Angus groans. His breath as erratic as mine. Breathing is such a forgettable task in the face of blazing desire, and bigger, deeper feelings I cannot name, only surrender to.

He kisses the corner of my mouth, and everything else is forgotten
—
we can’t seem to stop searching for each other’s lips, tasting, exploring. His hands are in my hair, stroking the back of my neck. His touch so light, it makes me weak, makes me desperate for more.

“Angus—” The word comes out halfway between a gasp and a moan. “—come on.”

We exit the car, slam the doors—I barely remember to lock them—and cling tightly to each other’s hands as we hurry up the path. We barely make it to the stairs before Angus’s hand cups the back of my head and his mouth finds mine again. We’re right outside his flat, so I tug him with me and we stumble the rest of the way upstairs.

I can’t find the right key for my door. There is only a choice of three—car key, communal front door key, flat key—but I am so distracted. Angus has pushed open my coat and lifted my jumper, and his hand is now ghosting across my hip, his fingers tracing swirls across my bare skin. I lean against the door, pull him into my arms, and give up. How the hell can he turn me into such a boneless mass of want? He’s never even done this before.

We could kiss like this for hours—I want to kiss like this for hours—but I’m not taking it further on the stairs. We need privacy for that. Leaning his forehead against mine, he takes the keys out of my hand and stares at them for a minute, frowning.

“Which key?” he asks, and it pleases me to hear the desperate edge to his voice.

“Your fault I can’t think straight,” I tell him, grabbing back the keys and taking a deep breath to concentrate on putting the right one in the lock. It’s really not so fucking hard to do when my dick isn’t blindly driving every single thought and impulse.

We fall through the doorway. I push Angus up hard against the wall, thinking there’s no way we’re going to make it to bed—not this time. I capture his mouth with mine, kissing him desperately while my fingers work the buttons of his jeans and he struggles out of his coat. The way we’re both trying to frantically rid each other of our clothes strikes me as funny, and breaking the kiss, I laugh breathlessly. Angus grins at my amusement. The tension between us changing, slowing, but only a little.

“God we’re pathetically desperate for each other, aren’t we?” I say, cupping his face and looking deep into the dark of his eyes.

“I want to tell you something. I need you to know,” Angus whispers, searching my eyes and straining up to kiss me lightly.

The whole of my body presses tight against his. The tiny rocking movement of our hips causes sensations at once desperately sweet and wonderfully achy.

“Maybe I already know,” I whisper back, before licking his lower lip and sucking it into my mouth. Words will only make me think, reevaluate, and I don’t want to stop.

Still kissing him, I one-handedly push his jeans and pants down and take the warm, hard length of his cock in my hand. Gently I sweep my thumb across the head, slicking precome across his skin. With a cut-off gasp, Angus sucks my tongue deep into his mouth, and I begin to lose control. I shove my own trousers down, needing to feel my cock against his, hot skin to hot skin.

I pull away, wanting eye contact as I stroke us together. The feel of him against me, the reality of it, is making it hard to breathe. We’re still mostly fully clothed—tops, jumpers, our trousers around our knees—but this moment is so pure and so intimate, I feel utterly naked, utterly without anything to hide behind, and I don’t think I want to hide any longer.

Not from him.

“Come in my mouth,” I groan, dropping to my knees as I feel him beginning to tense like he did in the back of the car.

I take him as deep as I can, cupping his tightening balls with one hand and pumping the base of his cock with the other. He thrusts his hips once, throws his head back, and comes, liquid warmth filling my mouth. I pull off slightly to taste him, sucking and licking until he’s fully spent. I want to hold his cock in my mouth until his orgasm fades completely, but his legs begin to tremble, then buckle, and I guide him down onto my lap, listening to his breathing slow.

“Did you come?” he asks after a moment, blinking at me, his face and neck still flushed.

I raise my eyebrows, my arms completely full of this unbelievably sexy, half-naked young man.

“I’ve wanted to… to suck you off for forever,” he carries on, stumbling over the words but saying them all the same.

“We’ve got all night,” I whisper before kissing his neck.

With the greatest of care, I help him out of his T-shirt and jumper and then his shoes and trousers. Angus sits on the floor naked, and for a moment he looks a little awkward and shy, but his cock is already plumping up, ready for round two. I forget how many times you can go at eighteen, when your recovery time is counted in minutes rather than hours. Well, we can work around that.

“I love your cock.” I smile, staring at it, watching him harden, his foreskin stretching as the head colors and swells. “Really turns me on seeing you getting turned on again.”

I know those words will make him blush—it’s entirely why I say them.

I run my finger up from the base, watching how his stomach muscles tighten and his cock straightens rapidly.

“Help me out of my clothes,” I say breathlessly.

I can’t remember the last time I was completely naked with someone. Hookups are all about getting off. There is no tenderness, no need to strip off completely. It’s funny that I thought that would ever be enough—funny, because as Angus slowly pulls my T-shirt off over my head, his expression so vulnerable and intent and so full of desire, I know only this will ever be enough.

Only this. Only him.

I take his hand and lead him to the bedroom.

M
Y
DESIRE
is a slow burn, a slow movement of my hips, my cock rubbing a wet trail against the hard muscles of Angus’s stomach or battling with his much thicker cock for the tight spot between our hips. We kiss deep and slow, our fingers stroking one another, touching everywhere. I can barely hold back my excitement as Angus strokes down between my buttocks, blindly seeking that sensitive ring of muscle, mirroring what I did to him in the car. He is hesitant, and I haven’t always enjoyed being touched like this in the past, but when Angus’s finger presses against me, I push my hips back to meet him, to welcome his invasion, wanting something of him inside me, and our kisses become much deeper and more desperate than before. I want him to bring me off like that, one finger deep within me, his mouth making a delicious mess of my cock as I come.

“Please suck my cock,” I gasp, breaking the kiss.

Angus grabs my hand as he licks down my stomach and tangles our fingers together in his hair.

“Show me what to do,” he whispers, looking up at me with wide darkened eyes, rubbing his smooth cheek against my cock. Gripping my hand tighter in his hair, I guide his mouth, lifting my hips so that I slide between his lips, enveloped in wet heat. I can feel his tongue dancing, exploring. His breath heavy against my skin. I love the way he’s letting me do this, letting me guide him and control the movement. I love the wet sounds he makes as he sucks. But most of all, it’s watching him—seeing my dick disappear between his swollen lips and watching him jerk off as he does it.

It doesn’t take long to bring me to the edge. I don’t hold back.

“Angus,” I groan, though I’m almost too late with my warning, my hips jerking already. I try and loosen my grip on his hair so he doesn’t choke and can pull back if he wants to—not everyone likes to swallow—but he doesn’t pull back, instead he opens his mouth and lets me watch as I spill all over his tongue. It’s perhaps the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. Especially when he squeezes his eyes shut a second later and grunts as he comes over his fist.

“I like the way you taste,” he says, crawling up the bed.

I push away the thick sheaf of hair that falls in front of his eyes, wanting, needing to see him clearly.

“So what do I taste of?” I want to encourage his boldness, even though his shyness turns me on.

But Angus closes his eyes and instead presses his tongue against mine.

We lose ourselves in each other. At some point we take a shower together, and I bring him off slow and intense, with my tongue laving a thick path from the base of his spine to his balls as he crouches on his hands and knees, offering himself up to me. He asks me to fuck him. But what we’re doing is just as intimate. I want him to know there is more to sex than some guy’s dick inside you.

When he whispers he loves me, I pretend not to hear. It’s too soon. But I know I have never felt closer to anyone, and every little touch my body makes against his holds more truth than any words.

S
UNLIGHT
WAKES
me.

I am curled beside him, my arms wound around his naked chest, pulling him close. I love the silky feel of his chest hair. Even after last night, his body is a wonder to me. My erection presses in the smooth crease of his backside, but I don’t want to do anything about it other than hold him, locked in this moment I somehow know I will remember until the end.

But it doesn’t last. How can it?

I’m scared as I lie there, and I don’t know how not to be. I’m scared that this is temporary and I will lose him, because ultimately I know that it is, and I will. Surely there can be no name for what I feel. No word enough to describe this exhilaration and disbelief. My heart swelled, wanting to share itself, give itself, to him.

But I don’t know how to deal with the fear these feelings bring—the terror and the emptiness that threaten should this all disintegrate and I find myself holding tight to nothing.

Sleepily, he blinks and reaches for me, presses his closed lips against mine, and smiles—a sweet hello. I pull away and stroke his wild brown hair, the ends turning gold in the morning light.