Forty-two years old, and I’d never woken up beside a man before.
I’d had sex with men in my bachelor days, and I’d broken my wedding vows with as many men as I had with women, so it wasn’t like I was new to hooking up with guys.
Every one of those encounters had been discreet for obvious reasons, though, and we’d never stayed in bed once we’d caught our breath. That was assuming we even got near a bed. It was usually men’s rooms, back alleys, and the occasional hard-to-find nook on a ship, and once on a deserted stretch of beach on Guam. When it was over, we’d go our separate ways and hope no one had seen us.
So to say the least, it was novel as hell to wake up in my own bed with the morning sun pouring in through the windows and spilling over Diego’s naked sleeping form. That along with all the twinges and aches in my tired body proved without a doubt that last night hadn’t been a long, vivid, incredibly pornographic dream.
I squirmed under the covers as goose bumps sprang up all over my skin.
He was completely still, his chest rising and falling with the slow breathing of deep, peaceful sleep. And since he was asleep, I didn’t have to worry about him being self-conscious while I drank in the sight of him.
I’d noticed the scars by his eye and his temple at the bar, but now that the light was better, I could see more of them on the side of his face. A lot more. He had some heavy five-o’clock shadow, and the smaller scars stood out like flecks of white hair in his dark beard. Thin, silvery lines, none more than three-quarters of an inch long, were scattered along the left side of his face. Some disappeared into his hair. There was a second one near his eye, cutting a dramatic slash through his eyebrow. Some were razor-straight. Others had the distinct scalloping of a cut that had been stitched, including the two most prominent ones next to his eye.
There were more sprinkled down the side of his neck and toward his collarbone, and that was where the more dramatic damage started. A broad scar that had to be from a serious burn covered his left shoulder and upper arm and down to almost halfway across his pec. Most of it had a texture like a fine net had been put over it, and I was pretty sure that was the telltale mark of a skin graft.
On his pec, the scar had partially consumed a tattoo. Most of the ink was badly distorted, but the remaining curves made up a profile I’d seen plenty of times in my career—a swallow. The traditional tattoo of a Sailor who’d logged five thousand miles at sea.
I chewed my lip as I watched him sleep. If not for the swallow and his hackles going up over the Navy, I might’ve thought he’d been in a car crash or something, but no. He was definitely a combat veteran. One who wanted nothing to do with the military that had, according to his comment last night, fucked him.
I traced my gaze over the smaller scars on his face and neck, and the pattern made more sense now. Shrapnel. Like he’d been lucky and far enough away from a blast to survive, but close enough to be fragged and burned.
Tilting my head a bit, I looked at the underside of his forearm. Sure enough—more scars. A smaller burn on his elbow. More thin white lines all the way up to his wrist. I thought there was even a gouge in the heel of his hand, but I couldn’t see for sure.
In my mind, I could see him throwing up his arm to protect his face, catching some of the pieces but not all of them. A chill prickled through me as I pushed away an image of him bloody, burned, in pain, and afraid. Instead, I gazed at the man he was now.
There was no way I could tell him the scars didn’t make him less attractive. It would just sound patronizing, but it was true. If anything, they made me curious about him. I’d immediately wondered what the story was behind the two scars I’d noticed on his face, and that curiosity ran far deeper now. Where had he been? What had happened between his five thousandth mile at sea and now? Was that why he didn’t date military men? Or was there something else? He was old enough to have been kicked out when DADT had still been in effect. And I’d met plenty of people who swore off active-duty partners because there was too much separation and too much chance of a flag-draped casket.
Any one of those sounded like a perfectly valid reason to me. That was part of the reason I hadn’t tried to push him when he’d said my active-duty status was a deal breaker.
But damn, after spending the night with him? While I understood if he wouldn’t or couldn’t date me, he was going to be a tough act to follow.
Still asleep, but grumbling like he might be coming around, Diego rolled onto his stomach and burrowed into my pillow, disheveling his hair even more. I smiled to myself. He was fucking adorable when he slept.
I couldn’t resist, and leaned in to kiss the side of his neck. He tensed like I’d startled him, and I almost drew back, but then he arched against me and gave a soft, sleepy moan. So, I did it again. I kept nibbling on his neck, and as he squirmed, I ran my hand down his side and under the covers. When I snaked it toward his belly, he pressed back against me. His cock was almost fully hard. A couple of gentle strokes, and it was all the way there, rock-solid in my hand as he rubbed his ass against my own erection.
“Fuck,” he moaned.
“Roll onto your back,” I whispered in his ear.
He did, and before he’d even settled, I was kissing his neck again. He still smelled faintly of the soap we’d both used in the shower a few hours ago, and that made me even hotter. It was almost like I’d marked him with my scent, and it tickled some primal, territorial side of me. Like I wanted to claim him somehow. It was ridiculous, but so was any thought that ever crossed my mind before I’d had coffee.
Under the covers, I stroked him with one hand, using his foreskin the way he seemed to enjoy. His groans said I was doing it right, so I kept going.
Then I started kissing my way down. He arched and squirmed as I trailed kisses along his chest and his belly, and when I licked around the head of his cock, he rewarded me with a throaty moan.
Before last night, it had been ages since I’d given a blowjob, and the ones I’d given in the last twenty years had always been hurried, hidden, and guilty. A quickie that was overshadowed by the fear of getting caught and, later, the shame when I’d gotten away with it. I’d gone down on him last night to wind him up, but this? This was the main attraction, and this . . . this . . . Oh God.
My body was still heavy with sleep after I’d spent the whole night beside him, and he was sprawled in the middle of my bed with the late-morning sun sliding over his planes and contours. There was no hurry to get him to an orgasm—just slowly, lazily sucking his dick and enjoying the salt of his skin and the sting of his fingers tugging at my hair.
And I was pretty sure it was the hottest thing I’d ever experienced.
While I stroked him and sucked him, he was murmuring in Spanish, gripping my hair in both hands as his hips rocked just enough to push his dick into my mouth. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry either, but after a while, his breaths started getting faster and sharper. He held my hair tighter, and some more Spanish tumbled off his lips before, “I’m gonna come. Fuck . . .”
I groaned around his cock, he shuddered hard, and his hips jerked just as he came, filling my mouth with cum and the air with curses in two languages.
As I returned to the pillows, he wiped a hand over his face and exhaled. “If I’d known this is how you start the day,” he murmured, his accent thicker than usual, “I wouldn’t have said no the first time.”
“If I tell you I do this every day, will that convince you to come back?”
Diego laughed. “If you promise another night like last night, you definitely won’t have to twist my arm to get me to come back.”
I chuckled. “Guess I better stock up on condoms.”
“Mm-hmm.” The featherlight brush of his fingertips down my side made me gasp. “I work nights, but as long as you don’t mind me showing up in the middle of the night . . .”
“Not at all.” I laughed again. “Hell, we could christen every room in my house. Then I won’t have to worry about having a housewarming party.”
Diego trailed a fingertip along the edge of my jaw as his lips pulled into a sleepy, sexy grin. “Well, if you want me to come back and help you defile your house tonight, I’m off at two thirty.”
“You better believe I do. Any chance I can talk you into staying long enough to have breakfast?”
“Breakfast?” His eyebrows quirked. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Forgetting—”
Diego pressed me back with a hand in the middle of my chest. With a grin, he started downward toward my cock.
Well, I wasn’t forgetting it now.
Neither was he.