Page 24 of Praised
Fresh in the forefront of my head, all naked and writhing with my cock shoved so far up his ass he could have probably tasted it if he’d tried hard enough. Flynn, with his rules and his casual games, and his honorifics that I hadn’t earned the right to use. Not that I even wanted to use them. Not that I wanted to give him anything more from me than he’d already had. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say the whole idea of it had at least piqued my interest a little bit.
“I’m not going to stand here all day with you,” I told Cody, giving the toe of his sneaker a kick with my bare foot. “So you can stand here as long as you want, but I’m done.”
I knew the chain would hold him and I knew he wasn’t crazy enough to try and break the door down, so I walked away. I went back to my macaroni and my TV, and I flipped on Netflix and clicked onto the next episode of the series. From outside of the apartment, Cody continued to protest, his voice growing louder before sliding down into a hushed tone that almost sounded sincere.
But he’d sounded pretty sincere with his dick in his roommate’s ass too.
The macaroni and cheese had already started to congeal, and I swallowed down a goopy bite of it, not anywhere close enough to giving Cody the ability to get another look at me by heading back into the kitchen to get something else to eat. I suffered through the quickly cooling meal and ten minutes later, before the first real scene break in the show, he’d given up and shuffled off.
Finishing off my lunch, I got up and closed the door, latching the deadbolt and the door lock. The episode ended and my apartment lapsed into a painfully loud silence. I didn’t do my best work when I was left to my own thoughts for too long, which was why Drake had come over and dragged me out to Rapture the weekend before. When I was alone, I tended to overthink things, and without anyone to talk to, I oftentimes talked myself in circles.
Circles that turned into spirals.
Drake had ended up going home with that dark-haired man the night I’d gone back to the hotel with Flynn. They’d spent two days in bed together and then the man had departed without so much as leaving a phone number. Or a name, I later found out. After Drake shared the story with me, I’d been absolutely horrified at the idea. I wouldn’t ever judge him—or anyone else for that matter—on the things they wanted to do sexually, but it just felt so impersonal to me.
I wasn’t a romantic or anything. I didn’t go into relationships thinking they would all last forever. Statistically, every relationship had a one out of two chance of ending, and those weren’t the best odds. But I’d always figured the more you made things count, the less likely an ending would be. If you put in the work and learned about a person, understood their likes and their dislikes, their goals, their dreams. Even their fantasies. That was the key to beating the odds.
Drake didn’t share an interest in doing that kind of work, and I loved him for that. Sometimes, I was envious of the way other people were able to move from partner to partner. And on the tail of my most recent breakup, I’d really started to see the appeal. Good sex and no drama…
What wasn’t to like about that?
Again my thoughts went to Flynn.
And like most other times I’d thought of him over the week, my dick took notice, pushing up insistently against my underwear and my sweats.
I didn’t have to work for another couple hours, so there wasn’t any harm in having another wank about him before I started to get ready.
Lifting my hips, I pushed my sweats down and cupped my hand over the lacy bulge between my legs. A moan tumbled out of my mouth, and I reached around the material to get more direct skin against skin. I tipped my head back against the wall, and almost immediately I was fully hard. With my free hand, I covered my throat, calling back the memory of how Flynn had held me there while he tested my gag reflex over the edge of the bed in the hotel room.
My balls ached for release, even though I’d come in the shower earlier in the day. I licked my palm and made a tight fist around my dick, not interested in dragging out the session like I sometimes enjoyed. I wanted to come fast and hard, and it was thoughts of Flynn fuckingmethat sent me over the edge this time.
He was a conundrum of a man, that I knew.
Clearly more money than sense, if the hotel room he’d reserved for us was any indicator, and if he didn’t think I recognized the red soles of his shiny black dress shoes, he was mistaken. I’d found in my life there were only two kinds of rich men in the world—the ones who wanted you to know and the ones who didn’t care if you did. Flynn was easily the latter, and I wasn’t a gold digger, but there was something really fucking hot about that.
I called up the memory of the first time he kissed me at Rapture. The way he’d lifted me against the wall and claimed my mouth like he had a right to it. The way the swirl of his tongue and the heat of his body had convinced me in under a minute that he might be worth breaking some of my own rules for. That if it had been another time, maybebeforeCody, the night and the morning after could have gone very differently.
But there were his lips and his fingers and his gorgeous and smooth asshole, and that was enough for me then and enough for me again.
My orgasm came on quick, but it wasn’t rough or hard. It was soft, like a slowly rising tide. Up over the ankles, then the calves, and the knees, and then cum pooled in the webs of my fingers, a few stray splatters against my stomach. The wave of pleasure left me breathless, and for the first time all week, I cursed myself for not taking his phone number for myself.
I’d labeled him a rebound, and I didn’t think one taste of him would be enough, but I’d spent a handful of hours with him and I was already obsessively attached. I couldn’t go to bed with him a second time without more understanding of who I was and what I wanted from a partner. I wanted to believe what he’d said to me at the hotel was more than lip service, but…
There it was again.
The doubt that always snuck in after the orgasms. The insecurities and the worry that wrapped around me when my brain got quiet.
“You’re an idiot,” I muttered to myself, swiping my quickly drying cum against the thigh of my sweat pants. “At this rate, I’m going to need another rebound to get over my rebound.”
I stripped out of my clothes and took another shower, hoping the water would be enough to clear my mind. It wasn’t, but I got ready for work anyway, finally checking my phone as I pulled it off the charger on my nightstand when I was ready to leave for work.
I had one unread message, and it was enough to catch all of my breath—and my hope—in my throat.
Unknown: I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you and I’m not sure how to be the kind of man you want me to be, but whenever I figure it out, I promise you’ll be the first to know.
CHAPTER9
FLYNN
