Hearing Augie thank me for the second time in a row for basic human decency set off all my warning bells. It made me fucking crazy. Clearly, no one had treated him well enough in his life for him to expect that as his due. And that needed to change.

Once we got showered and dried, I led him back to bed, pulling back the thick stack of covers to let him slide between the soft sheets in front of me. I moved in beside him and pulled him around until we were lying on our sides, face-to-face. A slice of bright daylight landed across his shoulder from a nearby window, reminding me it was still morning.

His dark hair was wet, and a few thick strands were sticking up like a rooster’s comb from where I’d rubbed a dry towel through it in the bathroom. His clean face looked young and smooth despite the two-day beard on his cheeks. I reached a finger out to brush across the softening stubble.

“You’re beautiful,” I said softly. “If I haven’t told you that already, I’m an idiot.”

Augie’s eyes widened and his throat bobbed with a swallow. Before he could say anything, I continued.

“You deserve to be cared for. You deserve to be looked after and protected, Augie. When you thank me for caring for you, it hurts my heart. Everyone should care for you. Everyone should treat you with kindness, tenderness, respect.” My voice was coming out rougher than I’d intended. “I don’t want you to ever think for a minute you don’t deserve the best.”

His chin wobbled a bit so I moved my hand to cup it and leaned in to kiss the corner edge of his lips. “You deserve to be adored,” I whispered against his dark whiskers. “To be pampered…” More kisses along the edge of his jaw to his earlobe. “To feel like the center of the universe.”

A small whimper escaped his lips as he turned to brush his lips against my own face. “Why are you saying these things?” he asked. “You don’t need to… I don’t need…”

I distracted him with nibbles to his earlobe, causing him to suck in a breath and arch into me.

“You do need,” I grumbled against his ear. I wanted him to feel amazing, to know how incredibly lucky I felt to be naked in bed with him. “Let me show you.”

“No.”

I pulled back to study him. It had been a long time since someone had rejected my offer to give them physical pleasure, and it had certainly never pinched in my gut the way it did coming from him.

“I… I mean, can I… can I show you?” Augie stammered. “I want to touch you. Explore.”

His hazel eyes met mine with an unspoken plea. This was important to him for some reason. I lay back, kicking the covers down until I was spread out bare for his perusal.

“Anything you want, handsome. I’m yours.”

Augie licked his lips before scraping his bottom one with his top teeth as if trying to decide where to begin. His eyes skittered down my naked body before glancing back to my face.

“Anything?”

My cock went from semi to fully erect at the catalog of options available to him.

“Mm-hmm… anything at all.”

Augie’s face turned mischievous, which was cuter than anything. He reached out a ring finger and just barely grazed a nipple before drawing the finger down my sternum to my navel. Every hair on my body stood on end, and my cock bounced. He was playing with fire, and he knew it.

His finger ghosted down my shaft, and we both watched as my eager dick jumped up to meet his touch.

“Hm,” he murmured. “That’s good?”

“Augie…” I warned. “Don’t you dare think about edging me.”

He flashed a fake innocent smile at me. “I would never do that to you. Can you imagine what that would feel like? If I got you harder and harder but didn’t push you over the edge?”

I growled low in my throat as his delicate finger continued to tease me.

“You’re more devious than you appear,” I croaked as he gently cupped and tugged my sac for only the briefest second. I arched up into his grasp searching for more. “Fuck me. Please.”

The words might have even surprised me more than him. Maybe I was desperate to get this show on the road, or maybe I wanted to be at his mercy—to give him power over me and let him take me in every way.

Augie froze above me.

“Is that what you want?” he asked carefully.

“Yes.”

“Me inside of you?”

The words spoken in his tentative voice were even hotter than the image in my head of him pounding his slender body into me.

“Yes,” I repeated, meeting his eyes. They were molten hot with lust but still held a sliver of insecurity. “Please, Augie.”

He cleared his throat and stepped off the bed. “Turn over.”

I did as he said while he grabbed what he needed from the nightstand. A cool hand held one of my ass cheeks as a slick finger teased my hole.

“I’ve never done this. Is it… okay?”

I turned my head to gaze at him, enjoying the sensations of his tentative touch. “Mm-hm. Very okay. Feels good.”

His smile was shy, and a pink bloom washed across his cheeks. “You have the hottest ass of anyone. I kind of want to bite it.”

The sassy words coming out of my shy Augie surprised a bark of laughter out of me. His blush deepened.

“What’s so funny? It’s true.”

“You’re welcome to bite it, sweetheart. Just be gentle about it.”

Instead of biting it, he leaned down and sucked a patch of skin hard enough to leave a mark. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling of him taking ownership of our encounter. His wet mouth moved across my skin, licking, sucking, and nipping as he went. All the while his slick fingers and thumb teased my entrance and drove me fucking crazy.

I thought back to the last time someone had fucked me. It hadn’t happened more than a few times before I’d determined I much preferred topping. But in the beginning, when I’d first started sleeping with men, I’d tried it. One guy in particular had been insistent on topping me, but he’d been aggressive and rough. After that, I’d vowed to give a shit about the person I topped by reading body language cues and being considerate of how they were feeling and what they were experiencing.

Augie was a dream when he took charge of prepping me.

His mouth distracted me while his fingers began to invade. With every stroke of a tongue or finger, his movements became more confident, more demanding. Nothing shocked me more than when Augie’s lust-gruff voice began to command me.

“Put your knees under you. Ass in the air.”

Precum flowed out of me as I did what he said. But then his command turned quickly into adorable babble.

“God, this ass,” Augie muttered, almost to himself. “Can’t believe you’re going to let me do this to you. I’m going to blow as soon as I get inside you.” His hands smoothed over my butt and lower back before he reached for the condom he’d chucked on the bed. “So sexy. You’re blind. You’re crazy. I think you don’t know what you’re doing letting me top you. It’s a pity top. Oh wait, you’re going to top from the bottom. Probably. That makes more sense. But still. I’ll take it. Fuck. This ass. I swear, I—”

“Baby, it’s okay,” I said, biting back a chuckle. “Believe me, I know exactly what I’m doing. I want you to feel good, to feel what it’s like to fuck someone.”

“More muscles than brains,” he said, leaning up and pressing his lips to the back of my neck. “You could be reading me the instruction manual for a lawn mower and I’d feel good right now. I don’t need to put my dick in you to feel good naked in bed with you.”

“You changing your mind?” I asked breathlessly. Augie’s cock slid through the cleft between my cheeks, lighting up the nerves in my entire groin with need. “Because I didn’t figure you for a tease, August Stiel.”

“Mpfh,” he grunted, flexing his hips to grind into me harder. “Definitely not changing my mind.”

He pulled back and maneuvered his cock to my hole. For a split second, I felt like turning around so I could see his face when he entered me. But then I had a strange sense of fear. That it would be too intimate, too close. That I would see things in his eyes I couldn’t fix or needs I couldn’t fulfill. It was better this way. Doing my best to relax my body, I buried my face in the bedding as he pushed into me.

“Oh god. Saint. Oh fuck.” His voice had a hint of sob behind it, which only made me want to turn around more and take him into my arms.

The pinch and burn I felt in my ass was nothing compared to the now-familiar tightening in my chest when I thought about the man in bed with me. Even as he pressed into me, his hands continued their gentle caress of my skin like he wanted to memorize the dips and planes of my body while he had the chance. Every time he touched me, there was tender affection behind it. I wondered if he realized how much emotion he projected with his movements?

I wonder if he realized how much emotion his affection brought up in me?

When he was finally fully inside me and still, I took a deep breath.

“Move, please,” I said. “Want to feel you.”

“Saint,” he croaked, pulling back a little before pushing in again. “Not gonna last. Christ, so tight.”

I reached a hand back to squeeze his hip. My cock throbbed against the bedding beneath me. “’S’okay, baby. Me neither.”

He stroked in and out of me, lighting up my channel while picking up the pace. Suddenly he pulled out with a grunt and tugged at my hip.

“Over. Want to see you.”

I scrambled to my back and pulled my knees up, watching the flushed heat of his face and the giant pupils in his eyes. Augie concentrated on finding his way back inside me before leaning over me and locking eyes.

“Better,” he said softly, searching my eyes with his typical look of vulnerable insecurity. I reached my hands up to hold his face and draw it down to kiss him.

As soon as our bodies were connected from mouth to cock, everything felt perfect and right.

We kissed like we couldn’t get enough. His body slammed into mine like he was frantic to crawl inside me. My arms tightened around his back like thick bands of never fucking leave me.

When I felt the rough hair of his happy trail tug at my cock, it was enough to have me scrambling a hand between us to finish myself. His movements sped up and his eyes widened. We stared at each other until I tumbled first, crying out a curse and arching up as my release shot over my stomach and chest.

I felt myself tighten around him in pulses of pleasure. He thrust into me two more times before calling out my name in a gasp. After he collapsed on top of me, I ran greedy but lazy hands all over every inch of his skin I could reach. He felt perfect against me despite the sweat and fluids between us.

“I need to get up,” he grumbled against my neck. “Can’t move.”

“Do you have to go into work today?” I asked.

“Not till late afternoon. I just have to close.”

“Tell you what,” I said, gently moving him off me. “Let’s shower again and grab the box. We’ll take it to the bank, then I’ll treat you to brunch at the Pinecone.”

Once we were in the shower doing a quick wash, Augie looked up at me bashfully through wet lashes.

“Did we seriously just have sex three times in one morning?”

His cheeks were already pink from the hot water, but they deepened to a darker shade.

“If you don’t stop looking at me like that, I’m going to make it four,” I promised.