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“Flip around,” he whispers, hand leaving my crease where it had wandered once more to tap my hip. Sitting back, I spin around and flip my leg over him, glancing back to make sure I’m positioned right. He licks the head of my dick as it bobs past, making me groan.

“Good boy,” he praises.

I’m grateful his mouth will be too busy to talk here in a minute. If he says that too many times, I’ll just come on command. He scoots down the bed a little bit, hands reaching up to cup my thighs as he nudges me into position. Grateful that he’s competent enough to make even someone as inexperienced as me feel comfortable, I lean down to kiss his hip. He makes a soft noise when the head of his dick brushes against me. Smiling, I do it again.

I rock forward involuntarily when he puts his mouth on my balls. Everything is so damn sensitive. Add in the fact that I can’t see what he’s doing, and I start to wonder just how long I’ll be able to hold back from coming. Making a conscious effort to even my breathing, I close my eyes and work to keep my hips still. The only time I move is when he angles my cock down into the heat of his mouth, gripping my hip and pulling me lower.

Embarrassingly, it takes me a minute to remember that in this position, I can reciprocate. Leaning down carefully so as not to disturb his ministrations, I lick a stripe down his dick. He moans, and I clench my teeth together, feeling like I felt that noise in my bones.

I like sucking dick, but I realize very quickly that in this position, I am at a disadvantage. Oliver’s mouth moves up and down my length, tongue teasing places I hadn’t realized he could reach from that position, hands doing their own playing as he adjusts his grip. It’s not the first time he’s done this to me, but it is the first time where we haven’t gone one at a time, the first time where his mouth was too busy to give me instructions.

Although I quite like the angle, I realize, hollowing my cheeks and doing my best to take all of him in my mouth. I can’t, just yet, but I’ve been enjoying the practicing. Judging by the way Oliver makes that growling noise again, he’s enjoying it as well.

He keeps at it, moaning and gasping for air and making little noises in his throat that vibrate through my entire body. I have to stop and catch my breath, stomach muscles clenched as I hold myself up over him in an effort not to come. I never expected Oliver to be a silent lover, but I hadn’t fully prepared myself for how erotic the noises would be. When I slip his dick back into my mouth, the way he groans makes me shiver.

Oliver pulls down on my hips, fingers spread wide, like he wants me to lower. I can’t. Not unless he wants me to smother him. But he persists, fingers pressing into my skin as he slurps and sucks and makes obscene noises, gently trying to tug me into motion. When I roll my hips a little bit, he groans again, his own rising off the bed. I relax my jaw and let him fuck upward into my mouth.

I come first, which is no surprise, but Oliver doesn’t stop. If anything, he yanks me down harder, throat convulsingaround my cock as he swallows. I squeeze my eyes shut, hips twitching as my body mindlessly tries to pull away from the overstimulation. Oliver doesn’t let me, hands keeping me in place, throat working, moans tumbling from him and vibrating straight into my pelvis. Through it all, he hasn’t stopped rolling his hips upward, using my mouth.

I can tell he’s about to come when his graceful movement becomes a little choppy. He lets my spent dick slide from his mouth, coming with a soft little gasping noise that somehow manages to be more erotic than anything prior. I lick him clean and then drop a few kisses to his hip bones and thighs before rolling off to the side to give my muscles a break. Oliver sits up, adjusting himself so he can lay his head on my stomach as he settles back down. We’re both facing the wrong direction in the bed now. Smiling, I put a hand on his head and thread my fingers through his hair, glinting silver in the dark room.

He puts a hand on my chest, sliding it up until he can touch gentle fingertips to my face. When his thumb presses into my bottom lip, I suck it into my mouth. He makes a small, needful little noise.

“It’s snowing,” he says softly. I turn my head, looking at the window. Sure enough, fat little flakes of white are drifting past the window, the corners fogged. I brush my hand across Oliver’s scalp, pushing his hair back from his forehead. He settles in on my stomach, nuzzling closer and sighing. We’ll have to move here soon, get back under the covers once the adrenaline and heat wear off.

I watch the window, thinking about how much heavierthe snowfall has been this winter and how slow things have been because of it. We always slow down in the winter, but this offseason has been particularly so. Surprisingly, I haven’t minded all that much. In the past, the offseason had sometimes felt like a drag. I like being a lobster fisherman, like the early mornings and the fast pace of the work. I like feeling the burn of a good day in my muscles when I lie down to sleep at night. And I like the proximity to Oliver that is awarded when stuck on the boat together all day.

But now that I don’t have to wait for work to see him, I’m also starting to see the appeal in off days. Without that early morning alarm looming on the horizon, moments like these are easier to enjoy. I can lie here, Oliver’s cheek pressed warm to my belly, body relaxed and mind hazy with postorgasmic bliss. The four months of time off that had felt impossibly long before now stretch out in front of me like a mirage. Even when we begin setting traps in April, there will be more days off than there will be ones spent hauling. More days that lead to nights like this.

He yawns, adjusting his shoulders a bit. Swiping my thumb across his temple, I sit up slowly so as not to dislodge him too quickly. As nice as this is, he’s getting cold, and we can cuddle just as easily under the sheets as we can on top of them. When both of us are sitting, I grasp his face between my palms for a quick kiss before we shuffle back into a normal sleeping position. He laughs softly.

“Easy cleanup,” he jokes quietly. I grin into the dark room. He’s not kidding. We most often stick to blow jobs, which hasbeen fine with me. I like them. Receiving as well as giving. In fact, I think I might like giving a little more because Oliver’s mouth can do just as much damage to my libido off my dick as it can on.

The nights he’s slept here, we’ve naturally done so with our backs to one another, feet occasionally brushing, and spines almost perfectly aligned. After we have sex, though, Oliver sometimes likes to snuggle a little closer—kiss my chest or rub his palm up and down my stomach, slide his leg between mine and tuck his nose under my chin. It’s nice, if not a little bit strange. I’m still unused to another person wanting to be quite so close to me and my own desire for the same. It’s a good thing lobster fishing is so fast-paced, or I might get in trouble at work, unable to keep my hands to myself when Oliver is so near.

He yawns, forehead bumping my jaw as he fidgets, arm a dead weight across my chest and legs tangled with mine. If I’d thought about it, I would have asked him to put his pretty little nightie back on before we got settled once more. I love the way it feels against my skin when he’s wearing them and brushes up against me. I love watching him put them on and take them off. I love seeing his lean, muscular body peeking through fine layers of silk. Turning my face so my nose is pressed to his hair, I inhale. Another thing I love—Oliver fresh from the shower and smelling faintly of lavender. Everything about him is beautiful.

“My parents tried to ambush me with a doctor,” he says, snorting in derision. “They always do that—trot men out in front of me like show dogs. As though it’s just as simple aspicking one out of a lineup. Do yours ever do that?”

“No,” I tell him, sliding my hand down his back and around his hip. My sister would occasionally bring up the topic of dating, but it usually ended up dead in the water pretty quickly. They likely figured out I wasn’t a good bet as far as the production of grandchildren went, and so didn’t bother pushing for any.

“Are you close with them? Your family?”

“Yes,” I agree, even though I doubt my idea of “close” is the same standard as other people.

I see my family on a semi-regular basis—once a month for Sunday brunch, and the occasional visit to help my dad or take my mom to appointments. We get along fine. There hasn’t been a single instance in my life where I’ve gotten into any sort of shouting match with any of them. But I also don’t feel like they know me very well. They don’t give me a hard time for choosing to be a lobster fisherman the way Oliver’s parents do, but neither do they particularly understand it. I know my dad was disappointed that I didn’t want to work with him, even if he never gave me grief for it. Sometimes, I feel like they’re all just waiting for me to get sick of working the boat and come back to their original plan for me.

“We get along fine,” I add. It feels disrespectful to add that I like my privacy, including from my family, so I just leave it at that. I do wonder, though, what they’d make of Oliver during a longer visit, if I brought him over one weekend for family brunch. They’d love him, of course, because how could anyone not? Jasmine, especially, I can see being enamored with him. Shehas a taste for pretty things, just the same as I do, apparently.

“That’s nice. I’m glad,” Oliver says, nestling close enough to kiss my neck before scooting back. “Sleep?”

“Sleep,” I agree, smiling as he rolls to face the opposite direction, wiggling in until his back is pressed against me.

Chapter Twenty

OLIVER

The radio is playing softly in Shiloh’s workshop when the phone rings. I jump, startled. All the times I’ve been in here, I’ve never heard it go off. Hands resting on top of the trap I’m working on repairing, I watch Shiloh snag the handpiece as it starts to ring again, bringing it up to his ear. Peeking back over my shoulder, I look at Nils. He shrugs, eyes flicking to Shiloh before dropping back to his hands. I do the same, going back to work and humming under my breath in an effort not to eavesdrop on Shiloh’s conversation.