Staying Grounded [BXB]

A Step Too Far

CRAIG:

In my mind, I've already crossed the few steps between us and taken hold of him. In reality, however, nerves have fused my spine to the door as I fixate on the rivulets of water trickling down his oh-so-very naked chest.

He's been up here for such a long time; I'd begun to think he had no intention of ever coming back down to me. Not that I could blame him, really, after the way I was behaving, but I all of a sudden didn't feel okay with that.

"Craig?" Sebastian finally manages, blinking.

My ribcage feels unreasonably constricted. I think my legs might buckle if I try to move. I can't breathe, waiting for him to ask what the fuck I think I'm doing here and ordering me to get out.

A full eternity passes between one thundering heartbeat and the next.

Then everything changes all at once.

His advance hasn't even registered before he's on me, drawing up so close that I can pick out each individual water-bead caught in his eyelashes, and the scent of his lemony soap fills my lungs on a sharp inhale. I barely notice the parting of his lips, jarred by the damp press of his hand to my waist. Fingers claw into my shirt; hot breath skates over my face. He tilts his head in silent question. Our eyes lock.

And in the next instant...

In the next instant, his mouth is claiming mine.

I couldn't break away this time even if I wanted to, my body pinned between his and the door. The panicked impulse to push him away dies completely and utterly at the first urgent brush of his tongue.

I want this. My pulse roars. My eyes close. Why else would I have come up here — to his room — if not for this?

Fists uncurling, I reach for him. My hands clasp around the nape of his neck, his jaw rough against my palms, tugging him in and holding him to me. Water drips from his hair to track down my cheek, and his slick torso chills my clothes, and I tingle at a skimming touch across bare flesh.

He bears in, deepening the kiss until I think I might truly drown in it. An intoxicating blaze tears through me as he melds us ever closer, and his towel does nothing to shield the arousal his body's betraying.

I gasp, and it's in that exact same moment we bust apart.

Air slams my lungs with a force I couldn't prepare for when Sebastian abruptly pulls back. My hands slip from his head, but he doesn't release me, his fingertips continuing to gouge into my sides.

"You can tell me to stop," he says, voice ragged.

Too soon, the world around us begins to filter back into focus. I'm not ready for it yet. Bright flecks of gold and green and brown anchor my stare — a sun-touched woodland haven.I swallow thickly. "Don't stop."

He hesitates only one moment further before wrenching me away from the door. His lips graze my neck, and I put up no resistance as I'm bodily turned and backed into the middle of the room...

Onto his bed.

"You're sure, Craig?" He stands over me, his pupils blown wide and his chest heaving. "You have to be sure."

Beyond the wildest imagining I'd've ever dared dream even in sleep: I'm in Sebastian's room, on Sebastian's bed, and every last inch of my body is aching for him.

Maybe I nod, maybe I don't, but it doesn't matter either way. He gets his answer clear enough when I start to remove my shirt. Not for a single second, though, is he willing to let up control. Straddling my lap, he pulls the moistened cotton from my grasp and off over my head, pushing me down into the mattress as he does so. Arms bracketing my head, his lips immediately find mine again, and I groan at the teasing scrape of his teeth.

Hot kisses drift over my jawline. My arms snake around him, my hands sweeping over the smooth skin of his back from shoulder blades to base. He arches into the bold brush of fingers beneath the towel's waistband, and an involuntary shiver runs through me as his mouth dips, nuzzling my throat.

I'm acutely aware of him — the whole of him — flush against me, his pulse a throbbing echo of my own. And I don't feel wrong about it. I refuse to let myself feel wrong about it. Because this right here, right now, this is absolutely the most perfect kind of right.

Tongue tracing my collarbone, he then slides a trail ever further South, and I bite down hard on my lower lip, the building pressure threatening to take me apart.

Seems he's no less aware of me. Pushing himself up to sit, an unyielding weight across my thighs, his gaze rakes over my face. He doesn't speak. He doesn't need to.

My fingers snap to the button of my jeans, popping it free.

But that's as far as he lets me get before he's cuffing my wrist with one hand and unzipping me with the other. Hooking both my jeans and my boxers, I obligingly raise my hips as he backs off my legs to stand and tugs. "Move up the bed," I'm told.

There's not a beat of hesitation. Shuffling backwards away from him, I resituate myself against his mound of pillows. And clawing fistfuls of the thick duvet, I watch his wet towel join my clothes on the floor.

He crawls back over me, copper hair tickling my cheek as he leans in close. "Don't let me go too far," he murmurs.

Don't stop before you've gone far enough, my body pleads.

It's been a long-ass while since I've been touched by anyone for pleasure — the last, some random girl at one of Steph's parties more than a year ago, a drunken mistake. But I've never been touched in the unsparing way Sebastian does over the next I-don't-even-care-how-many-minutes-hours-days. Every demand he makes of me curls heat through my veins until my thoughts fracture to incoherency and time disappears.

Entangled in an all-consuming press of lips and play of hands, he pushes me inexorably to the brink, and we free-fall over it together.