Finding North (11 page)

“Do you know?” he demands.

“Yes,” I say, in a gravel rough voice so full of anger that I want to hit him for even suggesting I wouldn’t have felt his loss as keenly as he felt mine.

“How long?” he asks.

“Too fucking long. Too goddamn long, Will.”

His hand slips around the front of my jeans and cups my bulging cock. I jerk inside my pants. I want to feel his rough fingers sliding over the tip, down the shaft, and I want him sucking my balls into his mouth. I want my cock inside him. A part of me hates him for making me want him the way I do.

Will finds my zipper and yanks it open. He unfastens the button on my jeans and pushes the worn denim down my hips. “Jesus. I forgot how much you hate boxers.”

Reaching around, he grabs my throbbing cock softly at first, stroking from base to tip, but then he grips me harder, taking hold of my balls with his other hand and squeezing. “Spread your legs.”

I freeze. Not that I haven’t spent years thinking about all the things I would have liked to have done, and all my regrets—we just never really went there. I gave; Will received. That was the way it worked with us. I just assumed that was the way it would be now.

“I want top,” I say, and Will slams his forearm into my back, holding me in place.

“No. You want this; you want me? I top. And you’ll like it.”

I can’t deny the bolt of desire I feel at his words. When did my best friend become so fucking domineering?

In the twelve years you abandoned him
, my brain supplies helpfully. Nothing like growing a conscience to ruin the moment.

“Will—”

“Spread your fucking legs, North, or get out,” he says. I swallow hard. Slowly, I step away from the door and turn toward him. I toe off my boots, remove my jeans and shirt, and I glance at his face. It’s pinched; his eyes are dark, and he looks pissed.

That makes fucking two of us
.

I’m pissed at him for driving me fucking wild and for wanting to top. For taking that power away from me, and for forcing me to choose this. And I am fucking livid that the memory of his touch, his taste, has haunted me for the last twelve goddamn years.

Will removes his belt and shoves his pants down his hips. His shirt joins mine on the floor, and he sneers, “Turn around.”

“No.” I take a step closer and reach out my hand toward his face, but he knocks it away. I drop it back to my side. “What? Only you get to touch?”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much how this goes.”

“Why are you acting like such a dick?”

“Why are you here?” he challenges.

Is he fucking kidding me?

“Don’t be a cunt.”

“Me be a cunt?” he asks, shoving me toward the kitchen. I put my hands up to block him, but the truth is I’m only growing more and more turned on. And so is he. “Let’s get something straight—this is fucking. That’s all it is. We are not friends. I don’t give a shit about your mid-life identity crisis because Cindy, or Tammy, or whatever fucking flavour-of-the-month bimbo isn’t meeting your needs. You’ve been hanging around my bar because you can’t stop thinking about my dick.”

I take another step and feel the cold laminate of the breakfast bar against my back. Will doesn’t let up though. He’s relentless at tearing me down, and it’s working. “I don’t need your hetero head-fuck, so if you want to get fucked without any strings, without anyone asking you to come clean about who you really are, then turn the fuck around and spread your goddamn legs. If you don’t want that, then we have nothing more to say to one another.”

For a moment, I just stand there.

Who the fuck is this guy
?

Part of me wants to beat the shit outta him, but only because everything he just said is true. On trembling limbs, I very slowly turn around and brace my forearms against the counter. Will grunts his approval. He withdraws, and the seconds that I stand alone, exposed and at his mercy with his body heat gone from my back, feel like minutes. I hear the unmistakable sound of the condom packet tearing, the squirt of liquid from a bottle, the sharp snap of the lid closing—all of it deafening in the silence. All of it setting my nerve endings alight.

He wraps his hand around the back of my neck and shoves me down, pinning my torso to the bench. Slick flesh butts up against my arse. My whole body stills with the exception of my dick, which gives an excited little bob of anticipation. Will slides his cock along my seam. I press my forehead against the cool bench and widen my stance, wishing he’d just fucking do it already.
Prick tease
. His body pushes closer to mine and when he separates my arse cheeks and his fingertips circle my puckered hole, my hips involuntarily thrust backward into his hands.

He chuckles, and anger swells within me, but then his wet fingers glide along my perineum and back again. The fucker is toying with me, and all I can do is bend to his will because I’ve waited so long to feel this. With a little more pressure, he pushes his finger against my opening and slips inside, causing me to gasp and clench around him.

“You need to relax, or I’m going to lose a digit.” I concentrate on breathing as he whispers, “This is only my finger; imagine what my cock will feel like.” He pauses, his hands giving me the respite to clear my head, at least for a second. “
Have
you imagined that? Me shoving inside you?”

“Yes,” I groan.

“How often?” he asks, pulling his finger all the way out and easing two back in. My hips lurch forward, as if I could escape the sensations his touch produces, but Will grasps my waist with his free hand and holds me steady as he moves inside me, separating his fingers, stretching me.

It’s too much.

“Ah. Jesus, fuck.”

“Answer me.”

“All the fucking time. Every time,” I admit, and I rue the words because not only are they true, but they also give him power. I think about him every time I fuck a woman. And now he knows.

I wait for the witty retort that I’m certain is on the tip of his tongue, but it doesn’t come. Instead, he runs his stubbled jaw along my shoulder. It soothes as much as it grazes, and my whole body breaks out in goosebumps.

“Show me,” he whispers.

I don’t understand. How do I show him twelve years worth of longing? “How?”

“Let me inside,” he says, rubbing his length against me. He pulls his fingers from my body, grabs hold of his thick cock and pushes against my entrance, sliding across the too sensitive flesh. I buck my hips, attempting to get closer.

“Fuck me,” I groan. “Fuck me, Will. Please?”

“Don’t beg.” He pulls me upright and catches my earlobe between his teeth, biting down hard. While I’m focused on that pain, he sinks inside me, not all the way, but far enough for me to gasp and rock my hips back for more. His voice is thick with desire when he says, “It makes you sound pathetic.”

“Jesus … you’re an arsehole.” I pant.

“Nah, I’m not an arsehole, but I am
in
your arsehole.” He thrusts his hips forward, seating himself inside me completely. I groan and arch my back, pushing against him, seeking more pleasure, more pain. “Does it feel good? Is it just like you imagined?”

“Better.” I grab my cock, unable to believe how turned on I am, how close I am to coming and I’ve barely even been touched.
Why hadn’t I ever let him do this before
? “Oh fuck, Will. Go slow.”

“No.” Will pounds into me, punishing, no doubt making me pay for all those years that I denied him this. No, that I denied
us
this. But if his fucking is savage my response is equally so, and as much as he gives, I take.

“You never should have left me, North.”

He’s right. I wish I could tell him why I did, but my ability to form words is completely gone. All I have is wild, animal groans and my body’s primal instinct to rock my hips in order to meet his equally mad thrusts.

Will leans back and grabs my shoulder for leverage. “Fuck, you’re tight.”

I take some satisfaction in the fact that I’m making it just as hard for him to hold on, because I am barely keeping my shit together. He pulls me closer, one tattooed hand wrapping around my throat and squeezing gently as he whispers in my ear, “Come for me, North. Fucking come all over my floor. Leave me something so I know that this isn’t all just in my goddamn head.”

“It’s not in your head. I’m—”

“Shut up and fucking come,” Will growls into my ear. He kisses my neck, nipping along my jaw. I grab my cock and he covers my hand. Together we jerk, and I come all over the floor, just like he wanted me to. A beat later, I feel him sink into me one last time as his own orgasm rocks through him. He moans my name and shoves me back down against the counter. I close my eyes, lean my cheek against the cool surface and breathe him in.

T
wo days. I’ve given him two days grace to wrap his head around what we’ve done, and then I go in search of him because I know he is too much of a pussy to come to me. I walk down to the jetty, knowing that he’ll be there because he helps out his dad with repainting boats on the slip after school.

After searching the graveyard—the boat yard on North’s property where we’d built a million forts as kids, putting up sheets and sleeping in the rusted-out skeletal remains of old boats with nothing but a blanket of stars above us—I find North spraying down the hull of a fishing boat on the slip. He’s clearly deep in thought, either that or he’s really giving this cold-shoulder treatment a workout. He glances at me, and then goes back to spraying down the fibreglass a little more vigorously.

“Hey,” I say, jamming my hands in my pockets and looking down at the water run-off as it trails over the sand to meet with the bay.

“Hey.”

“So, I haven’t seen you for a couple of days,” I say, kicking a rock in my path.

“Been busy.”

“Yeah, busy avoiding me.” I lean against the boat so he’ll look at me. He grins and shakes his head. “What’s so funny?”

“Dude. I just sprayed that boat down with bleach.” He laughs, and I leap back, checking my black jeans and shirt. Sure enough, there’s a bright orange stripe down the side of my clothes. Goddamn it.

“You cunt-munch. This is my favourite shirt.” I punch his arm and practically bounce right off the fucker. It wasn’t a girly hit, and my knuckles sting like hell, but North just laughs.

“Hey.” He shrugs. “I didn’t tell you to lean there.”

Arsehole
.

“You didn’t come to school today,” I say, because even though it’s nice to see him laugh, that isn’t why I came here.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Because I had shit to do here. Dad’s behind on a couple repairs, so I helped out a little.”

I nod like I believe it. Not the part about North’s dad not delivering, that doesn’t surprise me at all, but the fact that he thought that was more important than school. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why he didn’t come.

“Where’s your dad now?”

“Gone to get beer and food so we can work a little later tonight,” he says, “You know how he is—can’t function properly without a stubby in his hand. Won’t be long and he’ll be back.”

We both know that’s not true. North’s dad likely won’t be back until the early hours of the morning. He’ll see his buddies at the pub and stay for one drink, which will run into several more until he stumbles home.