of him. He drank in Fredric’s groans and shuddering breaths like he needed them to live. Every pass of his hand over their dicks was to make Fredric arch upward against him, to make him want more. To need it.
He was painfully hard now, remembering those moments, and he bit his lip.
“Are you thinking about it right now?” Fredric asked in a low voice.
Ilan cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said.
“Do you want me?” Fredric released his wrist only to drag his hand down the center of Ilan’s chest. His fingers moved in his thick chest hair, scraping the skin with blunt nails as they circled his nipples, then moved down toward his stomach. He was naked still, with Fredric clothed, and the juxtaposition was somehow even more sexy than he thought possible. “Can I touch you?”
“You don’t ever have to ask,” Ilan told him, breathless as Fredric peeled the blanket down just a bit farther—though not far enough. “I want you all the time.”
“Is that so?” Fredric’s hand slipped beneath the covers, and his fingers just barely grazed the length of him.
Ilan groaned and thumped his head back against the headboard. “Papa.” The word slipped out, and he blazed searing hot with a blush.
Fredric stilled at the sound, then moved onto his knees and leaned forward, one hand braced on the center of Ilan’s chest. “That,” he said, speaking against the edge of his jaw, “should not be so sexy.”
Ilan laughed. He felt for a moment like his life before this—the childhood filled with angry promises of revenge on his best friend’s behalf—existed in one of Archer’s bubble universes. It was another him, another life, another path.
And this was a gift he didn’t deserve, but he was willing to take anyway, because he was a selfish prick.
Fredric’s hand moved the blanket down, but instead of taking his cock, his hands trailed a path up his arms and then to his face where his fingers and thumbs pinched the arms of his glasses. Fredric removed them with a long, slow tug, and Ilan closed his eyes as he heard them clatter onto the nightstand.
Weight hit his thighs, a cloth-covered erection pressing against his, and then his mouth was claimed. He groaned, his head tipping backward as Fredric took command of the kiss in ways he hadn’t done the night before. He was powerful, beautiful, strong. He was someone who knew what he wanted, and whatever fear he’d harbored about taking before, that was gone.
Ilan dared himself to look, to watch the flush rising over Fredric’s neck, spreading to the apples of his cheeks. He dared himself to lean in and run lips over his sharp stubble and feel it before he moved into another kiss.
“Will you let me,” Fredric mumbled against Ilan’s mouth, forcing himself back a fraction so he could speak. “Will you let me taste you?”
If Ilan had been a man with less control, he would have come right then. As it was, he had to curl one hand into the sheets and hold on so tight his knuckles hurt. “You can taste and touch and fuck whatever you want. I’m yours.”
Fredric’s head tipped forward, and his breath came out in a stuttered rush. His body gave a single, violent tremble, and then his open mouth brushed against Ilan’s collarbone before he slid down. There was no finesse with it—though Ilan didn’t expect any. There was just a man and his purpose and his hot, waiting mouth that closed around the tip of Ilan’s leaking cock as fingers held him steady by the base.
It was the most unskilled mouth on his dick he’d ever experienced, and it was also the best. It eclipsed any moment he had ever shared with any stranger before. Fredric’s mouth was perfection itself as it sank low, as his free hand dragged curled fingers around the inside of his thigh, up his groin, over his twitching stomach.
He fought the urge to thrust as Fredric moved down to cup his balls, rolling them in his palm, then moving his fingers to the small space where his ass met the mattress. There wasn’t much room to touch, but a single finger pressed upward and grazed his hole, and Ilan couldn’t hold back a punched-out groan.
He felt Fredric smile around him, so he looked down and the sight of this man—who was quite possibly the love of his life—with his lips stretched wide around him was too fucking much. His eyes were closed, but his face was