It was immensely satisfying to hear the hitch in McClane’s voice as he tried to give a coherent reply while blowing some fuses himself.
Wanted to… make you not afraid of me. Give you—give you something good. He twisted sensuously, fucking in, fucking from the inside, every bit of Riley with every bit of himself. Make you like me.
Riley laughed breathlessly. “It’s working.”
Hmmm… no. Not then. Not until we got to know each other for real.
And then McClane made Riley’s body feel as if it was being fucked and licked at the same time, in the same place, every inch of his skin kissed and caressed, and that was it with Riley’s ability to think.
It wasn’t like anything he’d ever done or felt. There was no other body to press against, nobody to touch back, but there was an intimacy to every touch, every moan and sigh, that made Riley’s head spin. There was no end to McClane’s creativity or his enthusiasm. He had a front row seat to Riley’s reactions and he abused the privileged position terribly, driving Riley crazy with the perfect blend of tender and rough. He kept Riley on the brink for what felt like hours, didn’t let them come, pushed them to their limits and beyond until Riley would’ve screamed had he still had the focus to do so.
He didn’t know how McClane experienced pleasure, but it seemed their passion fueled each other’s, because when McClane finally granted Riley release, he ended up howling a lot louder than Riley.
THEY stood braced against the cold tile afterward, sweaty and swaying, Riley’s flanks heaving with his harsh panting. McClane had ridden him hard, in a good way, and he groaned gratefully when McClane nudged up his arm and turned the shower back on. Riley tilted his face into the spray, numb with the afterglow, mind thankfully empty of anything but a sleepy desire to get clean before he fell into bed. He lathered up automatically, washed himself gingerly, his skin still tender, nerves firing randomly in tingly little bursts of residual pleasure. McClane stayed quiet, an exhausted, completely blissed-out presence at the back of his mind.
Drying off and stumbling into the bedroom was a joint effort of coordinating tired limbs until they were safely under the covers. They drifted off wrapped up in each other, tangled in a way that was much more personal than before.
SEVENTEEN
A TASTE of honeysuckle and magnolias hung in the still air, threaded with the cloying smell of rot. It was warm, a wet, suffocating kind of heat that filled a person’s lungs with lead and their head with cotton. Riley was back in New Orleans, walking up the stairs to the first floor of Misha’s Garden District mansion in search of the man. He’d been here before, had done this before, and the realization made him break out in cold sweat. Turn around, he thought, panicked. Walk away. Don’t go up there.