Page 56 of Heart Over Heels

We stood for a while longer, looking at the shorn wires, the Strip, anything but each other. I wasn’t sure what we were waiting for. When he offered once more to walk me to the dressing room, I agreed, though a large part of me wanted to linger.

He dropped me off at the door, then left for the night while I pondered and craved something I couldn’t yet name.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

Mercer

With my shift at the Dollhouse cut short, I found myself at loose ends.

After helping Colette secure the building, I rode home, but after puttering around in my garage for over an hour, my thoughts remained at the club. The power would be restored soon enough, and things would return to business as usual, but I couldn’t shake the sense of panic that had gripped me when the building went dark, people started scurrying, and I couldn’t find Darby.

By the time he made it downstairs, he looked shaken, and that shook me too. It stirred instincts that had gone dormant since my time in the service—the protective kind.

Touching him had felt necessary, and it had become an impulse I could no longer quash. It was about more than checking his temperature or pulse. I wanted tofeelhim. His smooth skin and silky hair. His warmth. The dips and curves of his thighs, hips, and waist…

My cock kicked alive, fueled by a rush of blood heading south. I stopped where I’d been organizing the drawers ofmy rolling cabinet and adjusted myself, but the erection was persistent. Tools were suddenly far less interesting than the slideshow of mental images I’d amassed over my weeks of employment at the Dollhouse.

All Darby.

Always Darby.

Under the stage lights, on his knees, arching, crawling, his eyes like embers in a dying fire.

By the time I realized how far gone I was, my attempt to manage the swelling in my boxers had shifted into something else. Something more deliberate.

My belt buckle clicked as I unfastened it, and my zipper fly rasped down in the quiet of the garage. My hand slid inside and closed around the hot, swollen length of my cock. The contact tore a groan from my throat, and the sound echoed off the concrete floor.

I pumped once, twice—savoring it—but restraint was a lost cause. Weeks of stolen looks and half-starved fantasies poured into the rhythm of my fist. I could almost smell Darby’s perfume, feel the puff of his breath against my neck.

My thumb skimmed the bead of precum at my crown, then smeared it down my length while my hips jerked into my grip, chasing more, chasinghim. I wantedhisthighs clamped around my waist,hisback bowed,hisvoice breaking as he moaned my name.

This wasn’t the first time I’d touched myself to thoughts of Darby. I’d run this reel a dozen times, maybe more. And still, it never dulled. If anything, it sharpened.

It had become habit to lie in bed in the small hours, wide awake with leftover vigilance I couldn’t shake, grinding it down the only way I knew how—by closing my eyes and fisting over my cock until I came with Darby’s face behind my lids.

My hand worked faster with fresh spurts of precum slicking the glide. Each stroke dragged me closer to the edge, the rhythm building with the pulse in my cock. My jaw clenched, and my breath escaped in harsh bursts, every sound loud in the empty garage.

What would he feel like beneath me? Trembling. Writhing. Mindlessly lost to pleasure while I buried myself in his heat.

“Fuck…” The word tore from me as my pace slowed then sped again.

I braced myself against the workbench as my balls tightened.

I wanted that. Wantedhim. Knowing it would be different than anything I’d done before and realizing how desperately I needed that. How willing I was to accept him if he would accept me too.

In seconds, I shattered, and cum spilled over my knuckles and onto the floor. My body strained with the force of it, muscles taut and breath ragged as my release wrung me out.

When it ebbed, I sagged against the workbench with my cock twitching in my hand and my chest heaving. The garage smelled of oil and steel, but all I could sense was Darby, lingering like the ghost of a kiss I hadn’t yet claimed.

I stood a moment longer as the tremors faded and the cum between my fingers became sticky. I grabbed a rag from the workbench and used it to wipe myself down before tucking my cock and balls back into my boxers and zipping my fly.

Lastly, I crouched and mopped the mess from the floor then tossed the rag aside.

In the wake of my orgasm, my body complained. Rest had been an elusive thing since my discharge, but even more so lately. With days spent at the Basilica and nights at the Dollhouse, I was lucky to scrape together three or four hours in between.

It was catching up to me.