Work for it, p.19
Work for It, page 19
The hot grip of his body chokes the first two inches of my shaft, and I can barely breathe. Griff shudders beneath me, his hand digging into my hip so hard I know it’ll bruise.
“Move,” he rasps, and I think it’s an order. He arches his back, working my cock deeper inside him, while I hold my breath and try not to come after thirty fucking seconds—which really shouldn’t be so difficult. But he’s deliciously hungry for me, so unexpectedly, openly eager, and so fucking strong. This is almost painfully good.
He impales himself on me with a low, satisfied moan that hits me like a drug. It’s a miracle I can still think coherently, never mind speak, but I manage to choke out, “You’re not supposed to top from the bottom.”
Griff gives me a wicked smile I barely recognise. “Who said you were topping right now? They lied.”
I’ve never laughed while fucking someone before.
“Behave,” I order, and grab a handful of his silky hair. Then I drag his head back, exposing the straining tendons in his throat, arching his body like a bow as I finally give him a hard thrust. He grunts, his incredible eyes on me as if he can’t look away. His gaze is burning me from the outside while my own feelings burn me from within. When I turn to ash, I hope he smears me all over himself.
I drive into him again and again, slow and thorough because if I go too fast—if I pound into his hot, sweet body the way I want to—I’m absolutely fucked. Of course, I might be absolutely fucked either way. I’m drowning in him and it’s divine. When Griff’s eyes flutter shut, I tug on his hair and growl, “Look at me. Look at me while I fuck you.”
He gives me what I need, his gaze holding me captive again, his skin flushed. “God, you’re so fucking hot.”
“Oh, really?” I’m not the only one. Pleasure attacks my best intentions and I feel the last of my control slipping away. My fingers move between our bodies to circle the place where we’re connected, his tight hole spread wide for me, stretched out and desperate for my dick. “Do you feel this?” I grit out, shoving hard into him.
“Fuck, yes.” The words are a hiss.
“Do you know you’re mine?” I must have lost my mind. But when he drags me down for a hot, frantic kiss, I have no regrets or concerns.
“You know I’m yours,” Griff whispers against my mouth. “You do.”
It doesn’t sound like mindless sex shit; it sounds like the truth. Maybe that’s why something shifts in me—or maybe it’s just the wild pleasure of being with him. Either way, my mind shrinks to a pinpoint of consciousness that revolves around fucking Griff. Touching Griff. Anything Griff. He’s so tight I’m surprised I’m even moving. I’m surprised he isn’t pushing me off and saying it’s too much. I’m surprised I haven’t disgraced myself and come seventeen times. I feel like I could. I feel, as I plunge into him with aching slowness, like I’m more myself than I’ve ever been. And myself, it turns out, is an animal.
He lowers a hand to his swollen cock, but I growl a warning. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“Fuck, Olu, please—”
“No,” I hiss, my balls slapping against his arse. “We both know you’re going to come without it. I want you to understand how bad you needed this.”
“Ungh.” His eyes roll back in his head for a moment and he bites his fist. Then he looks at me like he knows everything. Things I’m only just learning. “Is this what you need?” he asks, spreading his thighs even wider for me.
“Yes.” I rise up, putting my hands on his knees to hold him open, using him for leverage as I pound harder. “Yes.” I barely recognise my voice.
“Oh, Christ,” Griff moans, his hips shifting. “Do that again—what the fuck, what the fuck—” I hit his sweet spot and his voice cuts out, his whole body jerking. A short spurt of his own come hits his stomach, and my satisfaction is almost violent.
“I’ve got you,” I say as I fuck him through it, holding him down through sheer force of will while his come spills steadily. The sight of him dishevelled and flushed and losing it beneath me sends dizzy sensation glittering up my spine, but I grit my teeth to hold off the inevitable.
“Olu,” Griff chokes out, “I don’t know if I’m coming or…”
“Don’t worry, love.” I pause for a moment, leaning down to kiss him, and his uncertainty fades as his lips touch mine.
“More,” he murmurs, arching his back, and I smile. Then I straighten up and rut into him like an animal. My eyes devour the way he’s spread out under me, mindless and shameless and free.
“I told you,” I pant. “You’re losing it without a hand on your dick, because you love me pounding you into the mattress. Don’t you?”
“Oh my God oh my God oh my God Jesus Christ.” Griff grabs the sheets, twists them in his mammoth fists, bites his bottom lip. Then he grabs me, a hand around my nape, and drags me down and slides his tongue into my mouth. His muscles are tense and quivering, his come spurting hot against my skin as he rides out his climax. I wrap my arms around him and bury myself in him with a groan that feels like sheer peace. Sensation shatters into a thousand uncontrollable splinters, and I’m coming into the condom with shudders and moans and sweet, dizzying pleasure.
Griff holds me tight against his chest, nothing but stickiness and comfort between us. I am officially and utterly exhausted. He kisses my forehead and mutters, “Jesus, babe.”
I laugh, or attempt to, anyway.
“If I knew I could have that, I would’ve tried years ago.” A pause. “Then again, I suppose I would’ve had to wait for you.”
There’s something warm and soft inside me now, like a melting marshmallow. I suppose I’ve never had a melting marshmallow before, and I am suspicious by nature, so I study it for a moment. The hateful, insidious voice in my head tells me I should destroy it.
I tell the voice to fuck off.
For now.
Olu
My orgasm knocks me out, but I wake an hour or so later and stare at the darkened ceiling, sorting through my tangled feelings. I didn’t expect to regret Griffin, but I’ll be honest – I did expect to feel the way I always used to, after this: a little out of my own skin, a tad too naked. It’s not a feeling I can describe accurately, but it existed even before the disgust.
Not with Griff, though. No; apparently all Griff causes is bone-deep satisfaction and near-giddy contentment. I’m like a child too high on birthday cake to go to sleep. The feel of his big body curving around me brings the strangest smile to my face—until I realise that his slow breathing and stillness don’t mean he’s actually asleep.
“You okay?” he murmurs, his voice a rumble against my spine. His fingers trace absent circles over my hip and my smile widens. I don’t know why I get like this with him when I have always disliked being needlessly touched.
I hope he never stops.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. Then I correct myself. “I’m—great. I feel great.”
“That’s good, baby.” I can hear the smile in his voice, and my feelings for him, whatever they are, tangle further. He nuzzles the back of my neck, and I shiver.
“Keep that up,” I say lightly, “and you’ll get me up.”
“Oh no.” Griff’s utterly deadpan.
I snort and roll over to face him, poking him in the stomach. He grabs my finger with one hand, pokes me back with the other, and for some reason we both find that hilariously funny. By the time our laughter fades, we’re wrapped in each other’s arms again, foreheads touching, noses touching, mouths grazing in a way that sends butterflies flocking to my belly.
“I want to tell you something.” It’s only after I’ve spoken that I realise the words came from me.
“So tell me.”
“You were right. I lied about why I’m here.” I wait for Griff to stiffen, to draw back in suspicion, to assume the worst of me. But he doesn’t move. His body remains utterly relaxed against mine, and I feel the kiss of his eyelashes against my skin every time he blinks.
“Go on,” he says.
Well, alright then. A hint of the tension I’m carrying trickles away. “I’m not a writer.” Of all the lies, that seems the most grievous, because it’s a title I don’t deserve to claim and one that feels so good to steal.
“For someone who’s not a writer,” Griff says, “you sure do write a lot.”
I make an awkward hedging noise. “It’s habit, the journal. You know I used to travel. Alone. But it’s not—” Before I can say it’s not real writing, he interrupts in that same calm, steady voice.
“And you talk about books a lot. And publishing. And passive voices.”
“Voice,” I correct automatically. “I only know about publishing because I used to work for my brother-in-law. He needed help dealing with a firm he… acquired, so I took it upon myself to learn.”
I hear amusement in Griff’s voice. “Acquired?”
It’s not exactly a funny story, but my lips curve too. “Acquired, took by force with the aid of my legal training—tomato tomato. Actually,” I realise, “it’s all part of the same story. It’s all part of why I’m here.”
Griff’s hand curves around my hip. “Go on.”
I must be high on my own orgasm, because I do indeed go on. “There was a man. Jean-Pierre. I cared for him, which made me happy. I thought that maybe—though it had never happened before—maybe I was falling in love. I’d always secretly wanted to, you see.” I should feel like a fool, admitting that aloud, but Griff’s thumb strokes back and forth over my hip and all I feel is safe. Completely, overwhelmingly safe. “There’s a lot I would’ve done for him. Apparently, the feeling was not mutual. He sort of… disappeared on me, and then a month or so later, I discovered that he’d photographed me during sex and sold the pictures to a rather prolific blackmailer.”
The hand on my hip tightens, quick and hard, then relaxes in jagged degrees. As if Griff’s forcing himself to calm down. But I can still hear the ragged tempo of his breaths, feel the drumbeat of his heart pounding against my chest.
“The blackmailer used those pictures to manipulate my sister, rather than me. My Lizzie.” I wonder if Griffin fully understands how much it destroys me, even now, that it was Lizzie who suffered, Lizzie who dealt with that pressure alone for far too long until she came to me for help.
I think he might.
“You see,” I continue, as if this is all a story rather than the worst thing that ever happened to me, “my brother-in-law is Isaac Montgomery.”
It takes a moment for Griff to recognise the name. “Isaac… not the bloke who killed—?”
“Yes.”
“And then he wrote those books about—”
“Yes.”
“And then he bought out his own publisher?”
“He didn’t buy out his publisher. The publishing house was owned and run by the aforementioned blackmailer, who was up to his eyeballs in debt and devised some convoluted plan involving my sister, seduction, and Isaac—”
“Hold on,” Griff says suddenly, pulling back to look at me. “Does that mean your sister was the woman in the papers with all the—”
“Shut up if you want to live.”
“Hair!” he splutters. “I was going to say hair. Jesus, Olu.”
I scowl at him anyway, just on principle. “Yes, that was Elizabeth. May I continue?”
His slight smile says he knows I’m not nearly as annoyed as I seem. He kisses me on the forehead, which should infuriate me, since I’m trying to be intimidating, and then he cuddles me close again. Any irritation I did hold abruptly vanishes.
“Go on,” he says. “Tell me.”
“Before she saw those pictures, even Lizzie had no idea that I was gay. You see, our family—our family was not a good one,” I say quietly, which might be the understatement of the century. “My father owns an oil company; my mother is of the English aristocracy…” I trail off and start again, this time with the parts that matter. “They are awful. Almost comically so; like caricatures of hateful wealth. Elizabeth is much younger than me, and I always knew that when I was old enough, I would take over her upbringing and get her away from Mother. But if our parents found out about me, they’d never have allowed it. So, from the moment Lizzie was born, my life revolved around making sure no-one found out. I suppose, even after she reached adulthood, it became a habit. An anxious, fearful habit. Something I hid for so long, I eventually forgot how to stop.”
He squeezes my hip again, gently this time, purposefully, and I know what he’s saying without words. I don’t need to explain myself, not here and not to him. In fact, not to anyone.
“I wanted to choose how I came out, obviously. But in the end, I didn’t get a choice—because Jean sold those pictures, and Lizzie found out, and then when she couldn’t handle things on her own—she came to me, and we needed help, and so all of our friends found out, and… well.” I clear my throat. “It wasn’t exactly how I would’ve done things, that’s all. It turned out fine in the end, I suppose—my friends still care for me. I was forced to come out to my parents and was promptly cut off. And, in the end, we got the blackmailer back and took control of his company by wonderfully questionable means, which I quite enjoyed. But…”
“But,” Griff says, “that’s still a monumentally shitty way to get to a happy ending.”
“Yes,” I murmur. Yes. God, yes. Then I realise that what should have been a confession of my purpose here has become an emotional trip down shit-hole memory lane. “Anyway,” I say quickly. “The truth is, I came to Fernley to take part in the elderflower harvest, because I needed some time to think. Alone. Away from home. But that sounds so bizarre, and then I bumped into Henry—which really was a coincidence, you know—and I felt as if I needed a normal explanation, so I said—”
“I know what you said, sweetheart. And I get it.”
Hearing those words is like sinking into a warm bath of sheer relief. I realise that a tiny part of me worried Griff would hate me for the lie. Or else, that he’d hate me for the sad, aimless man hiding behind that lie. Yet he doesn’t seem to care in the slightest.
“I love how you just… go places,” he says, his fingers gliding over my hair now. “You just go places and do stuff. You want something, you want to be happy, so you go and look for it. Even if you think you’ll find it in something as ordinary as elderflower.”
I blink. I have only just decided to see that part of myself as positive rather than negative, and now, here Griff is saying exactly the same. Perhaps I’m not an entirely poor judge of my own character. And perhaps I’d do awful things to hear him say love again, so rough and tender.
“Thank you,” I manage faintly.
We’re quiet for a moment. Then he speaks again. “So. That Jean-whatever guy. He’s why you were so nervous, isn’t he?” For a moment, I’m not sure what Griff means. Then he kisses me softly, a loving nuzzle of his mouth against mine, and says, “What that bastard did. It shook you.” And it clicks.
“He took me away,” I say, a truth I haven’t been able to articulate tumbling free. “He took me away from… me.” That sounds so ridiculous, I should be embarrassed, but I’m not. I’m something else. Something that feels slightly defiant, actually, rather than sad and ruined. That’s a surprise.
Griff kisses me again and whispers, “Do you really believe that, sweetheart? That he took you away?”
And I realise all at once, with slow, breathless relief: “…No. I don’t. I worried about it, for a long time, but now I think—”
“What?” he prompts softly.
“Now I know there isn’t a man on earth who could take me away like that.” It’s been a slow, painful lesson to learn. But it’s one thing I’m certain of.
“Good,” Griff says. Then he pushes me onto my back and rolls slowly on top me. His weight is balanced on his forearms, either side of my head, as if he wants to make sure I don’t feel trapped—as if I ever could with him. I understand him now, from his silences to his impenetrable looks. Griff’s stony gaze is the iridescent kind, and when the light hits him just right, I see a rainbow of emotions. He bends his head and kisses me so slow, so deep, so true, that I’m caught halfway between wanting to crawl inside his skin and wanting to throw myself out of the window. I can’t quite believe all the things I’ve just told him. I can’t believe I want to tell him more when I already feel too much, when I’m in danger of overflowing. This can’t be right; surely it can’t be right.
As soon as he pulls back, I hear myself say roughly, “I have to go.”
He doesn’t miss a beat, blinking lazily down at me as if to say, I know what you’re up to. My skin tingles and I’m not sure if it’s leftover arousal or panic. I want him to ask me why I’m leaving, so I can snap at him and we can argue. But he doesn’t do anything like that, because he’s a certified bastard.
He just says, “Okay, love,” and then he lets me go.
14
Griff
I’m being weak with Olu and I know it. I’m letting him keep one last bit of distance between us, because I don’t want to push and have him turn away from me. That’ll bite me on the arse soon—I know it will, the way I sometimes feel thunderstorms hours before they arrive. But the rest of the week is so perfect that I don’t give a shit.
In the day, I oversee the harvest and he swings between helping and writing in his journal. In the evenings, he comes home with me and fucks my brains out—which is my new favourite thing—then lies around looking good and writing in a different journal. Yeah; there’s two. In fact, I get the feeling there’s more than two. Ever since he told me the truth about his work, I’ve been dying to know what’s in these little leather books. If he’s not plotting some boring nonfiction thing in them, what is he doing? Being himself, probably. It turns out that’s exactly what I’m hungry for, but he never lets me read the damn things.
