Heartbeat Repeating - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,30
he spent thirty long minutes standing under the spray feeling both luxurious and guilty for wasting that much water.
When he saw Alejandro next, he glared at him across the table and said primly over their baked mushroom appetizer, “Don’t do that again.”
Alejandro didn’t acknowledge him, but he also didn’t cross that line again, even when there was a massive leak under his kitchen sink, and it flooded everything and ruined his cabinets. Avery spent an entire night bitching about the work it was going to take to fix it, but Alejandro had kept his distance, and he let Avery make all the calls.
He appreciates the shower more than ever now. He lays his hand on the warm tiles, and he props one of his knees on the sitting bench. All of his soaps are high end, and they arrive once every other month in small bottles full of fancy ingredients and essential oils. They make him feel pretty and delicate because most of them are soft and floral, and he wants to feel that way all the time, even if it doesn’t always fit.
He’s not a tiny guy. The apartment has a home-gym so he works out a lot, and he’s defined. But he likes to decorate himself in subtle ways. Like his back tattoo and his nipple piercings and tongue ring. He keeps his hair just below his ears, long enough to tie it back if he wants to, but it has a gentle wave that he used to hate as a kid but has since embraced.
And he likes to wear clothes that hug his body and show off his curves and his lines and his edges, and he knows that Alejandro sees them because he’s been caught staring. The day at the car wash, Avery could see the restraint in his eyes. He just doesn’t understand why he holds back.
He misses sex—because he’s twenty and this is part of his sexual peak. But he has toys galore and frankly, he knows his body better than anyone so it’s hard to complain too much about orgasms. He presses his heel into the bench and grabs the plug and the lube and holds it out of the water. It nestles between his cheeks and grazes the perfect spot every time he moves, then he shampoos his hair and makes a soap mohawk while his dick gets hard and starts leaking.
He wants to stroke himself, but he wants to drag it out. When he’s this touch-starved, it’s too easy to sink into rapid-fire orgasms to fill this void that Alejandro has created with the other rule he’s given to Avery: no fucking anyone else.
At the time, anyone else implied that Avery might be getting some from him, but twelve long months without a graze of their fingers, and he’s lost all hope.
He can quit at any time, of course. There’s no clause that would strip him of money or home if he decides this isn’t worth it anymore. In fact, Alejandro has reminded him of that so many times, he’s starting to wonder if maybe that’s what he wants. Maybe he can’t handle the guilt of tossing Avery to the curb after every date, because even though his end has a clause that allows Avery to get paid out a cool million if Alejandro decides to cancel what they have, he knows the man can afford it.
His company is worth nearly a billion.
So, it has to be something else. It has to be this fucking disaster of a man who is allergic to intimacy, who is petrified of feeling guilt.
With a sigh, he dries off then strolls into his room, ignoring his near desperate urge to check his phone, and he stands in front of his mirror. His floors aren’t being heated right then, but they retained the warmth from earlier, and his toes appreciate it. His bed behind him is a mess, and there’s piles of clothes by the closet, but he has a cleaning person who will be by to gather them up.
He doesn’t like it. She works for Alejandro and Avery thinks maybe she’s the spy making sure he’s not fucking someone every other night, so he lets Alejandro have that one bit of security because it does save him from laundry—which he’s always hated.
But he’s also starting to feel complacent with all these little luxuries, and that terrifies him.
It’s the reason he doesn’t want to indulge in his fantasy of Alejandro breaking through whatever’s holding him back