Ascension by Bailey Bradford (desktop ebook reader txt) 📕

in Conner’s chest. Conner didn’t want Ro to be ashamed. All he’d done was have sex with someone. It wasn’t like Conner hadn’t done the same with anonymous men before he’d hooked up with Laine. It was stupid of him to get his undies in a knot because Ro had sought out an escape from his pain with another man. Then. Now, he’s mine. Conner didn’t think Ro would mind, either.

Conner tipped Ro’s chin up, having to tug a little harder than he’d hoped to get Ro to meet his gaze. When he did, Conner spoke. “I don’t care who you’ve been with. It doesn’t matter now. This is a new start for us. It embarrassed me to admit that I hadn’t bothered to get off in so long. I honestly had no desire, until I looked at you one day.” Conner forced himself to continue, pushing past his discomfort at making himself vulnerable. “I saw you, it was after your twenty-first birthday, maybe a year or two later. I’m bad with time.” He gave Ro a kiss on the tip of his pert nose. “I remember thinking you’d grown into yourself and admiring your determination to stay in McKinton with your family when they needed you. Not many children do that once they grow up. They just leave their parents behind and go on with their lives, you know. Then I noticed how attractive you were, the way your hair glinted under the light in your room, or the way the wind lifted it and spread it out behind you.”

Conner dipped his head and took another kiss, this one from Ro’s parted lips. He sighed afterwards and smoothed a hand down to cup Ro’s butt. “I knew there was something about you, something that fascinated me and soothed me at the same time that it stirred me up. I wasn’t ready to think about sex, not when it came to myself, though. Understand, the fucker who killed me, he beat off while he did it. More than once.” Conner couldn’t repress the sick feeling it gave him still.

Ro gasped before sucking his lips in, sealing them tight. Then he opened his mouth and licked those swollen lips as he pressed a hand over Conner’s heart. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. It didn’t mention it in the reports I read. I didn’t mean to make light of it before, when you, uh, came.”

“It wasn’t in the reports because he came into his handkerchief, and I guess he burned it or something. I don’t know because he was doing it again when I died.” Conner’s stomach turned, and if he’d thought it would have helped purge the memory, he’d have rolled on over and puked. Time had taught him that such an easy riddance wasn’t possible, so he kept talking past the tensing and rolling of his belly. “I never told Sev. I didn’t want anyone to know.” Conner looked in Ro’s dark eyes, so big and framed with such thick long lashes he could happily lose himself in the depths of those peepers. “I understand feeling dirty, Ro. Somehow, him doing that was worse than him killing me. It made me feel less human, less valuable, like a cum dump for the sick fucker. And that’s how I died, feeling hurt and nasty.”

“Conner,” Ro began, only to stop and sob quietly. He nestled right against Conner, stroking Conner from thigh to shoulder then back down, over and over until a tension Conner hadn’t been aware of left his body, loosening his muscles and taking with it the anger and shame that had cropped up in him.

It was enough—Ro’s touch and that relief from emotions he didn’t want to feel. Conner leaned over and pushed Ro onto his back, Ro’s arms going around his neck to embrace him as he lowered his mouth to Ro’s.

The slick warmth and sweet taste of Ro zinged through Conner, settling firmly in his groin. His cock sprang up, hard and eager, his balls drawing tight to his body.

Oh no you don’t. Not again. I’ll last long enough to make love to Ro one way or another. He grabbed his cock at the base, squeezing firmly. When that didn’t help, he added a pinch. Pain flared but he got himself under control. Conner rubbed his hand up, over Ro’s flat belly, over his ribs, willing Ro’s clothes away as he went. It didn’t take more than a thought for Conner to be naked as well, then it was fire and need as they were skin on skin, their incorporeal forms every bit as sensitive to each other’s touch as living beings would have been to one another.

Ro’s body was exquisite, felt exquisite beneath Conner’s larger one. Conner pinched a nipple at the same time that he sucked on Ro’s tongue. Ro arched and moaned for him. Ro’s cock poked at Conner’s thigh. Conner felt the pre-cum leaking from Ro’s tip, smelled it in the air.

“Fuck,” he rasped as he dragged his lips along Ro’s jaw to his neck. He sucked the tender spot under Ro’s ear as Ro undulated and panted beneath him. Ro grabbed Conner’s ass with both hands and pulled, urging him forward, parting Conner’s cheeks and exposing his hole to the night breeze. Whether Conner really felt it or only imagined it didn’t matter. It was as factual a sensation in his brain as any other erotic experience had ever been.

Conner rolled them over, putting Ro on top then, because a memory sparked in his mind, one of him and Laine. It wasn’t a turn-on, more of a warning from his subconscious, he figured, reminding him that even when he’d been alive, he’d been the one getting fucked. Laine had always topped, and Conner wasn’t sure he could trust himself to go slow if he tried to take Ro now.

Ro raised his head, confusion puckering his brow. “You want me to ride you?”

Conner shook his head even as his cock twitched at that