When Liam reached for my waistband again, he dragged the zipper down, and I bit back a moan. He paused when he realized I was bare beneath my clothes, his eyes locked on the trail of dark brown hair that pointed south, and then with shaking hands, reached into my jeans and touched my cock for the first time.

I dropped my head back and hissed when his big, warm hand cupped my balls and squeezed. I rolled my hips and had to stop myself from thrusting against him until my cum leaked through his fingers, reminding myself this wasn’t about me getting off.

This moment belonged to Liam; it was his opportunity to explore his wants and desires. To uncover his need and explore his boundaries.

But I had needs too.

Like that fact that I needed him to touch me everywhere, and to keep on touching me and never stop.

I grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked it over my head. “Touch me.”

“I am touching you,” he chuckled.

“Not there,” I breathed out. “I mean, don’t stop touching me there, but touch my stomach too. My chest. Put your other hand on me.”

“I want to touch you everywhere,” he said, burying his face against my torso and breathing in my scent before sinking his teeth into my skin with a low growl.

Shoving my pants down past my thighs to pool around my boots, he fisted my cock and flexed his fingers around the length of me. With a brutal twist of his wrist, he tugged my cock forward—my hips following—and then pushed back with slow, painstaking ease. The entire time he jacked me off, he watched with rapt, heavy-lidded fascination.

When he finally looked up, his gaze was molten. “I want to taste you.”

“Are you sure?”

I didn’t want him sucking me off because he thought he had to. I didn’t need him to prove anything to me. If he really wanted to cross that line, there was no fucking way I was going to stop him, but I wasn’t going to push him over it either. By his own admission, he’d never done this before. That he wanted to do it with me right here, right now took my breath away.

“Do I look unsure?” he asked before licking a long, wet path over the ridged lines of my six-pack.

And then he brought my cock to his mouth and lapped at the pre-cum beaded on my crown, and my knees buckled. My stomach clenched, and my breathing hitched when he did it again.

Nothing had ever felt as good as this.

It was official. I could die a happy man.

I watched, in awe, as he bathed my cock with his tongue. At first, he was tentative and cautious, as if he was trying to decide if he enjoyed what he was doing. Taking his time, he licked up one side and then down the other. And then, more confidently, he rubbed his cheek against my hard flesh, his whiskers both soft and abrasive at the same time.

And then he looked up at me, uncertainty coloring his beautiful features. “How does that feel?”

I could barely fucking breathe, but this wasn’t about me. “The better question is, how does it feel for you?”

He chuckled and blew a soft breath over my damp cock. “It’s strange, but I feel powerful.” He sucked my crown into his mouth and rolled his tongue around the head. Pulling away, he added, “Like you’re completely at my mercy.”

“I am. At your mercy.” I swallowed deep and counted to ten, barely able to get the words out as he continued his torturous explorations.

“I didn’t know if I would like it, but having your cock in my mouth is one of the hottest fucking things I’ve ever done.” And then he slid his lips all the way down my shaft, taking me to the back of his throat. Liam’s eyes watered, and I felt his gag reflex kick in before he eased his mouth back again.

I brushed his hair out of his face. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to,” he answered, circling my shaft with his tongue and pumping me with a tight fist and an expert flick and roll of his wrist.

For someone so new to doing this, he’d sure caught on quickly. Usually, I had to show a new partner how to touch me, how fast or slow I liked it, the exact right pressure to exert for maximum pleasure.

But not with Liam. It was almost like he knew exactly what I needed, how I needed it.

“Will you …?” he paused, and his eyes darted across the room. For all his innate strength and the sexy swagger, Liam suddenly looked shy.

Will I, what? Whatever it was, didn’t matter. Right then, I would have gladly given him anything he asked for, would have committed any number of sins to make him happy.

“Anything,” I vowed.

“Will you come for me?”

“There’s a pretty strong likelihood of that happening any second now,” I said with a smirk as I flexed my hips in time to the motion of his fist.

With his hand on my cock, Liam captured my gaze and held it, and what I saw there forced the smart-ass quip I’d been about to deliver to the recesses of my brain. This was no time for jokes or banter.

I caressed his cheek and dragged my fingernails through his scruff. “What do you need, Liam?”

“I want …” He trailed off, his desire left unspoken.

“You can tell me,” I said, feeling the beginning of my orgasm bloom at the base of my spine.

“I want you to come down my throat,” he answered gruffly, his cheeks coloring a delicious pink that made me crazy. “I want to taste you on my tongue.”

“Fuck,” I groaned. “I’m going to come all over your hand if you keep talking like that.”

With a heartbreaking moan, his grip loosened and his head dropped forward. Taking my cock into his wet, hot mouth, Liam hollowed out his cheeks and sucked me down.

I fought the impulse to grab him by the back of his head and hold him still while I fucked his mouth to completion. He wasn’t ready for that. And quite frankly, neither was I. At least not like this.

The first time I came down Liam’s throat, it wasn’t going to be in the middle of my kitchen. This wasn’t a quick fuck, something tawdry and illicit. I knew chefs who got off on fucking in their restaurants after hours, but that had never been my thing.

So instead of doing what I’d been fantasizing about since the very first moment Liam had smiled up at me, I slowed my pace and slipped my dick from between his lips.

“What?” he asked, his eyes flashing with insecurity. “Did I do something wrong?”

My stomach clenched, and I felt a twinge of something unfamiliar low in my gut. I suspected the warmth unfurling in my core was something much more than lust, and that terrified me. But instead of wrapping my heart in a protective cocoon where it wouldn’t fall prey to Liam Donnelly’s many charms, I reached for him.

“Come home with me.”

With silent acceptance, he stood and adjusted himself. Unbidden, my eyes followed the movement. I was reasonably well endowed, but I could tell from the bulge pressing against his slacks that Liam was in a class by himself.

He caught me staring and his cheeks colored. “I’m uh …” He ran a hand through his mussed hair, a gesture I secretly loved because it gave me insight into his emotions. And right now, he was nervous.

I stepped forward and cupped him. I didn’t have small hands, but he filled them, and then some. “You’re perfect,” I told him, taking his mouth in a slow, lingering kiss while I caressed him through his trousers. When I tugged his lip between my teeth, he groaned and flexed his hips.

“Look at me.”

When Liam’s hazel eyes fluttered open, his pupils were blown to black orbs. I squeezed his cock in a firm grip. “I know you want to suck me off—and we’ll get to that—but I was hoping for something else.”

“Anything,” he answered, his whispered declaration echoing my earlier one.

“I want you to fuck me.” I slid my palm up. “I want your big cock in my ass.” I swiped my hand down.

Liam’s hips shot forward, and he shuddered, his whole body quaking with his release. I speared my hands through his hair and tugged his face forward, capturing his mouth in a wet, sloppy kiss. I urged him on with lips, tongue, teeth, and words as he fucked my hand through the barrier of his clothes. When his hips slowed, he dropped his face to my shoulder, his back rising and falling in a labored rhythm.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, taking a step away and turning his back to me.

I stepped to him, my hand hovering tentatively over his shoulder. I wanted to comfort him, but I held back, indecision halting my movement. This was why I stayed away from straight boys. They always felt guilty immediately afterward.

My hand dropped to my side. “Don’t apologize.”

“I’m a fucking disgrace,” he huffed, shoving his hands through his hair and pulling at the roots.

I slapped my palm to his bicep and swung him back around. “You are not a disgrace.”

“No? When was the last time you came in your pants just from being touched?”

I laughed. “I almost came with the first pass of your tongue on me,” I told him. “And I thought I was going to pass out when you took me all the way to the back of your throat.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, but it was a near thing. I had to recite ‘God Save the Queen’ in my head to keep from blowing my load.”

Liam chuckled, and the tightness in his eyes eased. But he still looked unsure.

He had nothing to be embarrassed about. My first few times with a man, I’d come in a matter of seconds. And I hadn’t been lying to him; it could have happened this time too. He had that kind of power over me. I needed him to know that.

I gripped my cock and stroked it from root to tip as Liam’s hungry eyes ate me up. “What’s the one thing you’ve dreamed about most? What do you picture when you close your eyes at night and make yourself come?”

“I see …” he began, his eyes trained on my moving fist.

“What do you want?” I asked, letting go of my cock. It bobbed, and his eyes followed the movement. “What’s your fantasy, Liam?”

He cleared his throat, and I heard the swallow. “I want to push you down onto my mattress, lube your ass until it’s nice and slick, and then I want to bury myself in you.” He dragged his eyes up the length of my body, slowly, taking his time. When our eyes met, he continued, “I want to give it to you so hard you buck against me, screaming my name.”

I groaned. God, I wanted the same fucking thing.

But he wasn’t finished sharing. By giving him permission to voice aloud what he’d only ever kept bottled up inside, the floodgates had opened.

When Liam’s breathing picked up, I knew being able to share his fantasies with someone else was as much as turn on as acting them out.

He licked his lips and his chest rose and fell with the strain of long-repressed need. “I want to pound into you over and over until I’m so far inside of you, I don’t know where I end and you begin.”

Holy shit. I felt my orgasm building low in my spine, a warm tingle radiating outward, infusing every cell of my body with liquid heat. I was going to come without him even touching me.

“I want to fuck you so hard, Lach. You have no idea.”

Except, I did. My eyes dropped closed, and I pictured it. Liam’s hips slamming into me, my ass burning with his invasion, my own cock chafing against the sheets, both pain and pleasure as my orgasm mounted.

When I felt Liam’s large hand wrap around my cock, my eyes shot open. He was on his knees with my dick angled toward his mouth.

“And when I’m fucking you,” he said, with a flick of his tongue over my slit, “I want you to come harder than you’ve ever come before.”

And then he circled the head of my cock with his lips and slid down. My balls pulled tight and my vision blurred. He fluttered his tongue against the sensitive underside of my crown, and I saw stars. And then he cupped my balls and tugged, and I exploded, shooting my load down his throat just like he’d asked me to before. He choked on the force of it, and some of my cum dribbled out of his mouth. But then with the same determination he’d used to become a world-class rugby player, he sucked harder and swallowed down every drop I gave him. When my cock quit pulsing, he leaned back on his haunches, and I slipped from his lips. My gaze locked on his swollen mouth, and he thumbed the moisture from his chin and then licked it clean.

I’d just come, but the sight of him licking me from his fingers so greedily made me want to go again. And this time, I wanted to let him do every dirty, filthy thing he’d ever imagined. Let him use my body like he’d never used another man’s before. I wanted him to fill me with his cum, like I’d just filled him.

As if he could read my mind, Liam got to his feet. “Do you still want me to come home with you?”

I tucked my cock back into my jeans and reached for him. “Fuck yes,” I groaned, pulling his face to me for a kiss.

Liam turned away at the last moment, and my lips landed on his cheek. I took a step back. “What the fuck?”

He brought his face back around, a confused expression marring his brow. “I just sucked you off.”

I returned the look. “Yeah?”

“Your cum was in my mouth.”

“And?” I asked, fisting my hand in the back of his hair and tugging him to me.

When his lips were centimeters from mine, he said, “I didn’t think you’d want to taste yourself.”

I laughed. “I want to kiss you, Liam, and I don’t give two fucks where your mouth has been. You could have been eating my ass like it was a goddamn New Year’s Day buffet, and I’d still want to kiss you right now.”

This big, tough man melted into my embrace. “Really?”

“Yes, really. Now shut up and kiss me. And then come home with me. I want to wake up next to you, and then I want you to fuck me all the ways you’ve ever wanted to.”

He kissed me then, hungry and sloppy and without finesse, but it was the single hottest kiss of my life.

Eventually, he pulled away. “Where do you live?”

I smirked. “Upstairs.”

He dropped his head back and roared with laughter. “You’re kidding? We could have been in a nice soft bed, but instead, I’m going to have bruises on my knees for days.”

Shit. That made me feel terrible. I should have taken more care with him this first time. Suddenly, a feeling of immense tenderness swept over me, and I reached for his hand, clasping it in mine.

He glanced down at our linked fingers, and a strange look came over his face. I rubbed my thumb back and forth over his knuckles.

“Is this okay?” I asked, unsure how to interpret that look. “We sort of jumped straight to the fucking, and didn’t talk about everything else.”

Liam dragged his eyes from our entwined hands to my face. “Everything else?”

I swallowed deep, my nerves spiking. I hadn’t stopped thinking about Liam since the night we’d met, and I wanted him with a fierceness I couldn’t recall feeling for anyone, ever before. And while I’d fantasized a million times about how it would be once I got him naked, I’d also imagined what it would be like to go on dates and hold hands. To share soft kisses and whispered confessions.

I’d imagined it, and I’d longed for it. I’d never wanted anything like it before.

But what if that wasn’t what he wanted? What if fucking was all he needed me for? What if he was using me to make up for lost time? What if a relationship was the furthest thing from his mind right now—or ever?

Liam stepped close, and rubbed his thumb over my jaw, pulling my thoughts back to him. “What do you mean by ‘everything else’?”

I took a deep breath and prepared to have my heart flayed. I was usually the one who said, “Gee, that sounds lovely, but I don’t think that’s for me.”

But not this time. With Liam, I was ready to risk my heart.

With him, I wanted it all.

“Intimacy,” I answered, raising our entwined hands and staring at our linked fingers, his soft blonde hairs a stark contrast to my dark ones. “Something more than just fucking,” I clarified nervously.

“Look at me, Lachlan.”

His voice held power. I sometimes forgot that about him. When we were together, he was just a nice guy with full, kissable lips and a smile that could bring me to my knees—literally and figuratively. But he was more than that, too. He was strength and power and authority all rolled up in one beautiful fucking package.

Fuck, just thinking about everything he was had my dick hard all over again.

I wanted a relationship with Liam Donnelly, but I also wanted to be tossed down, held down, roughed up by him too. I wanted to know what it was like to have his full weight on top of me, making it so that I couldn’t move. I wanted our bodies slick with sweat and exertion. I wanted him to mark me the way he marked men on the field. I wanted to bear the scars of going one-on-one with him.

It was with those thoughts that I raised my eyes to his and prayed to a god I didn’t believe in that my feelings weren’t one-sided.

What I saw staring back startled me.

If eyes were the gateway to a man’s soul, then Liam was a marauding crusader, one who stormed the gates and laid waste to everything in sight with two thoughts in mind: Conquer. Claim.

And then there was a flicker of something else, and I understood. Liam’s two halves were warring with one another: the invincible barbarian who broke down everything in his path until he achieved success, and the vulnerable, uncertain man embarking on a journey he never thought he’d undertake. Never knew that he could.

Liam cupped my face and pulled me in close. He rested his forehead against mine, and my heart nearly broke for him. Nearly broke for me, because I was sure he was going to tell me that wasn’t possible. That we could fuck—enjoy each other’s bodies—but we could never be more than that. Could never enjoy each other outside the bedroom. (Or my restaurant, as the case may be.)

I was so sure of it that I hardened my resolve and pushed him back, needing to establish distance between us. I could give him what he needed with my body, but I needed to protect my heart.

The heart that nearly stopped beating a tattoo in my chest when he said, “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing when it comes to relationships. I’ve never had a serious one in my life. But if I’m going to do this, I want to do it with you.”

My eyes flicked between his. “Are you sure?”

He laughed. “I’m not sure of anything except I want you.” He swallowed his nervousness. “And that I want to be with you.”