The lift stops at our floor and we make our way out past the couple without incident, laughing because we can’t help it. It’s a great stress breaker. Dizzy with pleasure, I follow him down the corridor along plush carpets to his room.
Inside the room—yes, it’s a room and not a suite, but a generous double especially for the heart of London—we pause long enough to wash our hands and faces from the grime of travel and down some water. Then, we pick up where we started in the lift.
Right now, I’m doing my best to shut off my brain.
I try not to think about Blake leaving tonight for L.A. and the audition of a lifetime. Or next week when Blake leaves for good. When I’ll be alone, again.
That’s the part of me that wants to stay guarded, keep safe, keep the walls fortified and gated. But they’ve come down with an epic crash after our trip north and Blake’s song at Euston, putting himself on the line like that. For me. To prove to me that I matter, even in front of strangers. That he’s not embarrassed by me, but proud. Maybe it’s an act, because he’s an actor after all, but even actors don’t kiss like this, I’m fairly certain.
It’s one of the last coherent things I manage to think before Blake’s pulled me onto the bed with him. We manage to take off our shoes and immediately lose ourselves in each other. His hands are on my back as I lie half sprawled on him, kissing him back just as passionately. Blake tugs off my hat, peels my shirt off, and I return the favor.
We pause long enough to gaze at each other, bare-chested.
“You…you think we should do this?” I ask, breathless. I’m already hard, my body more than willing. My brain is unfortunately more reluctant, damn thing. Why can’t it be quiet, even for one day?
“You don’t want to?” Blake frowns with concern, tracing my indigo dragon.
“Of course Iwantto,but don’t you think it’ll just make things harder?” A line of goose bumps appears after his touch.
A struggle crosses his face. “Don’t you want me?”
“God, Blake. I want you more than anything. I just…” I reach out to trace his lips, and he catches my finger between his teeth, giving a tentative nip.
“Just?”
“I don’t want to be thoroughly devastated when you leave, is all.” I whisper my guilty confession as he runs a hand along my jaw and throat, along my chest, and skims my ribs till I shudder. “But I think I’m going to be regardless. So maybe…maybe we just need to make the best of things right now.”
He gazes at me and nods, serious as he considers me. “You’re important to me, Aubrey. Even in this short time. Sometimes, I think, life brings us people we’re supposed to meet. Like there’s something we’re supposed to learn. And I guess, having been through what I’ve been through, the only thing I’ve learned is that it’s better to take a chance than not. Even if it hurts after. Because not knowing would hurt worst of all, I think. At least this way we might have something to remember.”
“Or maybe I just end up with another ghost,” I murmur, words catching in my throat and staying there. And another broken heart. Then, I kiss him reverently, and he pulls me down on the bed.
“I won’t ghost you,” he breathes, kissing a path down my chest as my fingers grip his hair.
I shudder. “That’s not what I mean…”
Blake gazes up at me, eyes soft. “I know, gorgeous.” He kisses my belly. “I—”
“Don’t stop. What you’re doing,” I beg finally, unable to bear his stop-and-start fitful teasing any longer, arching into him. Like my body belongs to him, even after such a short time. “Please.”
And he resumes with his mouth and his tongue and his fingers, pulling me out of my boxers before long, giving me a blowjob that leaves me seeing the stars and the moon and the entire galaxy, and quite possibly the next galaxy over, till I balance on the point of coming, but then I beg again, this time to stop.
“I need you to fuck me,” I manage, reaching for Blake. He’s still decent in his jeans, while I’m the one in an entirely compromised state, hanging out of my boxers and jeans. I wriggle out of them.
He chuckles and stands, stripping down to reveal an athletic body, tanned and sculpted and…oh. Those abs. Seriously, though. I just stare openly at him, because really, a body like that is purely made for gawping.
“I love the way you look at me.” Blake grins, sliding out of his boxers at last, his cock already eager. “It’s so fucking hot.”
“I want you right now…” I growl desperately, fumbling for my wallet. Without ceremony or hesitation, I fling a condom at him.
He laughs at my eagerness, taking moment to put the condom on before drawing me close.
“Is this what you do with all of the Hollywood starlets?” I say between increasingly ragged kisses. “Ravish them?”
Blake laughs with delight. “There’re no Hollywood starlets! Or stars. And you—well, you’re the only one I want to ravish.” He bites my shoulder for good measure and I groan with pleasure. He’s rubbing his cock against my thigh in a way that’s only making mine harder and me more nonsensical.
“Stop. Teasing.” I gasp. “Fuck.”
He laughs, reaching for lube. And then a moment later, he catches me tight, drawing my legs up, and he’s rubbing and then presses in deep as I cry out with the sensation of him, even wanting him as badly as I do.
