Upside Down (Breaking the Rules #3) - A.M. Madden Page 0,57

refused to, I took control of the situation and said, “We’re going to your place to talk.” He smartly didn’t argue, and I spent the short drive to his condo rehearsing all I wanted to say.

Once back in his apartment, he grabbed us two beers while the tension continued to roil between us. We sat on opposite ends of his couch, and again he remained silent, making it clear he wasn’t going to start the conversation. So… I did.

“Can we pick up where we left off?”

“With another hand job?” He kept his eyes on mine as he tilted the bottle to take a long swig. When I looked away, focusing on the scruff covering his neck, his Adam’s apple bobbing with each swallow, he fucking smirked.

“No… with you admitting to something like being shell-shocked and fucking screwed.” His smirk instantly faded at my mentioning that. “How so, exactly?”

He ran a hand over the back of his neck, a habit I now recognized as nerves. “I don’t know.” At the sign of my brows rising in exasperation, he rushed on, “I mean, I know, but I don’t know how to explain it. I guess I wasn’t expecting to be so invested.”

“In what?”

“Getting you off,” he snapped. “I expected you to freak out, recoil in your denial. Like you’d been doing since the day I insinuated you were gay.” His pale-blue eyes drilled angrily into mine. “With every drag of my hand over your cock, I grew harder. That never happened to me before.” He paused, I assumed, to let his words sink in… and they were doing just that. The memory of his hand pumping me into a frenzy took hold of my lower region.

Whether he predicted it would or not wasn’t clear in the way he continued to glare at me. “It took every bit of restraint I had to stop from taking your virginity right then and there… and that’s the second time I felt that way.”

My mind tripped up on his admission. The implication should’ve scared me to death. Virgin. But it didn’t, and that particular scenario played vividly in my imagination as he went on.

“On my balcony, after you kissed me, I told you that night how badly I wanted to fuck you, Cooper.” His frankness continued to speak to my libido, and just like that my annoyance began to morph into desire. “And then when I did get my hands on you, you accepted every lick, every touch, every stroke, while never once cowering away from me. I marked you, gave you a fucking hickey, and you never flinched. And once you came, I fought very hard to end it there and walk away, all while I waited for you to finally freak out. But you never did.”

“That’s obviously a problem for you?”

“Yes, goddamn it. It’s a huge problem!” He flew off the couch and began pacing. “You literally went from fiercely negating the possibility you liked men to seducing me at my own game.”

“I seduced you?” I asked incredulously. “Okay, I kissed you first, but then I sat on this very spot and let you milk my cock until I came all over myself. So how exactly did I seduce you?”

“With your responding moans, your back arching, your hips rising with each pump…” He pointed an accusatory finger at me and was dead serious. “You turned the tables and made me hornier than I’d ever been in my fucking life!” I had to suppress the urge to grin, and his laser focus landed on my mouth. “I’m so glad you’re amused by all this,” he said with a sigh.

Whether he wanted to accept it or not, the way Mr. Cocky-and-Always-Confident didn’t like losing control put us on an equal playing field. I may have been confused and in denial coming into this thing we had going, but he was insecure and apprehensive. Which one of us was worse off would remain to be seen.

As he dragged in deep breaths, his nostrils flaring with each one, I slowly rose from the couch and sauntered over to where he stood. Even as I purposely kept some distance between us, he took a step back.

“Besides the obvious, do you know what you did to me?” I asked, allowing my own insecurities to reveal themselves through my expression. The way he studied me only caused my heart to pound harder. Every one of his dirty promises did the opposite of scaring me. “You managed to have me quivering before