The Tinder Stories Page 9

  Chris managed to stay upright as he came, though his knees threatened to buckle when he felt the tremors. His hips snapped forward when he shot, and Morgan took it like a pro, reaching out a hand to Chris’s thigh to steady him as he swallowed. Chris shuddered and forced his eyes to stay open and watch, and goddamn if Morgan didn’t pull off and lick the corner of his mouth with pleasure.

  “God,” Chris groaned, dropping to the floor and scrabbling at the front of Morgan’s pants. “Open. Jeez. Gimme.”

  It was truly a testament to Morgan’s control when Chris noticed Morgan’s fingers shaking as he tried to get his pants down. If he hadn’t been looking, Chris would have thought the man nearly impervious to what he’d just done. Nearly.

  Chris shoved a hand into Morgan’s tight pants and got it around the steel shaft inside. “Christ, you’re hard,” Chris murmured to him, and then only had to give him three good, strong strokes before Morgan was biting back a gasp and coming all over Chris’s hand.

  They knelt together, panting and clutching at each other’s jackets, before Chris put his head down on Morgan’s shoulder and started to laugh. Morgan joined him a moment later, and Chris liked the sound of the low chuckle. He turned his head and kissed the side of Morgan’s neck, ending with a light nip and making Morgan’s skin rise with goose bumps.

  “Okay,” Chris said, raising his head to grin at him. “Now we’re even.”

  “Oh, do you think so?” Morgan asked. He steadied himself before rising carefully to his feet, bringing Chris up with him and reaching for paper towels. “I think you still owe me a few.”

  “Ha,” Chris said easily, accepting the wet towels and wiping himself up. “Sure. I’ll buy you lunch. That should bring my score up.”

  “A little.” Morgan laughed. “You’ve got a long way to go.”

  THE RIDE back was no less good than it had been on the way there, and when Chris and Morgan finally pulled their bikes into Morgan’s driveway, Chris’s heart was pounding from the exhilaration of a really fucking good cruise.

  He stayed on his bike, watching as Morgan walked his own into the garage and parked it in the usual corner. “Thanks,” Chris called, ready to pull back out and head home alone. “For the ride, and the… rest.” He ended on a huge smile that probably looked stupid, but he couldn’t help himself.

  Morgan strolled back out, slapping his gloves against his palm. “You’re going?”

  Chris’s brows drew together. “Uh… yeah, I was going to, I guess.” It occurred to him that he didn’t really want to go home to the empty house that was waiting for him. Maybe he’d head to the station and see if C shift would set an extra place for him at their table.

  “Or you could stay,” Morgan said, intently examining his gloves.

  Chris watched him pick at a tiny hole on the palm of a glove until Morgan finally looked up at the silence. “I could stay,” Chris said then, still sitting on his bike.

  Morgan crossed his arms and gave him an inscrutable look. “Would you like me to ask you to stay?”

  Chris nodded and waited.

  A muscle jumped in his jaw before Morgan took a deep breath and visibly relaxed. “Chris,” he snapped, “just fucking stay.”

  He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to hide a smile as he got off his bike and walked forward, stopping when he was within inches of Morgan’s scowl. “You didn’t ask,” he chided, and dropped a kiss on Morgan’s mouth. “But I’ll stay anyway.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “THERE. TAKE it now.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not? The sun’s going down, and you can see all the colors in the clouds. Take it now.”

  “Not yet.” Chris laughed, standing with his camera in one hand and the other one on his hip. He glanced behind him where Morgan lay sprawled on the blanket they’d brought to spread on the sand. “The light has to be right for a sunset shot, otherwise you get too much of a glare. And besides, you want it to reflect off the water. I’m bracketing so I can see which exposure works best.”

  “If I ask you what bracketing is, are you going to launch into a long, boring explanation?”

  “Shooting the same picture at multiple exposures. Short enough?”

  Morgan lay back with a put-upon sigh and crossed his arms behind his head. “If we miss our reservation, it won’t be my fault.”

  Chris grinned and took a minute to appreciate the strip of skin he could see where Morgan’s sweater had ridden up. “If we miss our reservation, it will be your fault. Since you only chose to mention we were going to dinner two hours ago, after I’d already said I wanted to come down to the beach.” He turned back to the sinking sun and raised his camera, snapping off a few practice shots.

  Morgan muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like “ungrateful fireman,” but Chris wasn’t sure.

  “Next time, ask me out like a normal human being,” he said, camera still to his eye. “Throwing the shirt I should wear at me is not asking me out. Especially when I didn’t even know you were coming by.”

  “You gave me a whole pissing and moaning act last week about how we don’t go anywhere!” Morgan protested behind him.

  He laughed out loud and turned to look over his shoulder again. “If you think that was pissing and moaning, you’re in for a real treat when I start complaining you never bring me flowers.”

  Morgan eyed him, clearly trying to decide if Chris was serious. “Christ,” he muttered, lying back again and flinging an arm over his eyes. “How the hell did I wind up in the middle of an actual relationship?”

  Chris stood very still, facing the ocean but not seeing anything through the window of his camera. Relationship? For the third time, Chris turned around to look at Morgan.

  “Yes, I said ‘relationship,’” Morgan snapped, not taking his arm off his eyes. “Stop staring.”

  He didn’t say anything at all, just stood there and waited. Eventually, Morgan lifted his arm enough to peer at Chris from under it. “Yes?”

  “Is this where you want to be?” Chris asked, striving for a neutral tone. “In the middle of a relationship?”

  Morgan flopped both arms down to lace his fingers together over his stomach and stared at the sky. “I guess if I didn’t want to be here,” he said carefully, “I wouldn’t be.”

  Chris took two steps forward until he was at the edge of the blanket. Morgan shifted his gaze from the pinkening clouds to Chris’s face. “No,” Chris said, just loud enough to be heard over the crash of the tide, “I guess you wouldn’t be.”

  He got it together enough to set his camera down gently on the corner of the blanket before dropping to his knees and straddling Morgan, bracing his weight on his hands next to Morgan’s shoulders. “Say it again,” he demanded, starting to smile.

  Morgan rolled his eyes, but Chris could see the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth too. “Relationship,” he said, enunciating each syllable. “The way grown-ups relate to each other.”

  “I’m thirty,” Chris reminded him, lowering his body enough to brush their crotches together. “A grown-up. Not as grown-up as you, though. Or maybe you’re just old.”

  Then, quick as anything, Morgan had rolled him. Chris lay blinking up at him in surprise while Morgan loomed above him, a dangerous spark in his eye. “Fuck you,” he said, but it held no heat. “Old. Jesus.”

  “Old,” Chris said again, trying to wiggle around enough to get Morgan to put some weight down on him. “Old man.”

  Morgan dropped his head and brushed warm lips across Chris’s. “You know what, Mr. Matthews?”

  Chris closed his eyes and chased Morgan’s mouth with his own when Morgan pulled away. “What?”

  “I think we’ll be missing our reservation.”

  “YOU TAKE that?” Tucker asked him, nodding at the beach picture Chris had taped to the inside of his locker.

  Chris looked up from where he sat on his bunk, polishing his spare pair of boots. The picture he’d taken a few weeks ag
o had turned out better than he’d expected, considering Morgan had been hassling him the entire time Chris was trying to catch the sunset. The entire sky had turned orangey-pink in one quick moment, and a seagull had darted into the frame just as Chris snapped the picture. It was still an amateur shot, but pretty decent. “Yeah,” he answered, swiping at his boots.

  “Cool,” Tucker said softly, studying it. “Chance’d like it.”

  Chris snorted as an automatic habit before he thought better of it. “I have a double print. He can have one. Just don’t tell him where you got it.”

  Tucker turned around and looked at him. “He wouldn’t care.”

  Chris laughed out loud and dropped his polish rag on the floor, leaning back on his bed and crossing his arms behind his head. “You telling me that all the time doesn’t make it true. He would care. He cares about every second we spend together, whether he says so or not. Come on, McBride. The guy hates me.”

  Tucker’s expression grew thoughtful. “He kinda does,” he conceded. “’Cept how come it still bugs you?”

  Chris blinked. “How come? Because… because….” He trailed off uncertainly, not sure of either why it bothered him or even if it still bothered him at all. Truth be told, Chris hadn’t much thought about Chancellor Shanahan or Tucker McBride outside of work in months. Several months, to be exact. Ever since Morgan had strode pompously into his life with his briefcase and tie and proceeded to turn Chris’s life inside out. “I guess it doesn’t,” he finally said, looking up at Tucker.

  Tucker chuckled, both dimples making an appearance. “Course it don’t,” he said with a reasonable shrug. “Seems to me like it ain’t mattered for a while. How’s Daniels?” He ended with a grin so charming that Chris couldn’t be annoyed at him. Chris figured that was usually most people’s reaction to Tucker anyway.

  “Stubborn,” he answered, his mouth curving up at the corners. “And arrogant and obnoxious.”

  “And?” Tucker prompted.

  “And… he let me get pineapple on our pizza the other night, even though he says that anyone who eats pineapple on their pizza needs to have their taste buds surgically removed as punishment.”

  “So, sounds like love to me.” Tucker grinned. “Like when Cap lets me watch CSI instead of the new surf DVD Bonnie gave him for his birthday. Which looks ’zactly like the last damn DVD he got, but whatever. He still lets me.” Tucker’s eyes went soft as he talked, and Chris normally would have tried to hide his own eye roll, but his mind was stuck on something else.

  “Love?” he asked, sitting up. “No. It’s cool, I mean, we like each other and shit. But love? No way, Tuck. Uh-uh.” Chris shook his head emphatically and frowned.

  Tucker refocused after a second and blinked. “No? Oh, hey. Yeah, I didn’t mean y’all were in love, love. I guess. Uh, if you don’t think so.” He backtracked some more until Chris held up a hand to stop him.

  “Okay, whoa. Don’t hurt yourself. We’re just… not there. It’s not like that. Fuck, it took us long enough to even admit we could stand to be around each other. There is no way this is love.”

  “Been in love before, huh?” Tucker asked, then looked up at the intercom in the ceiling as their alarm sounded.

  Chris shook his head and followed him out the door, listening to the soft automated female voice from dispatch inform Engine Nineteen that they would be on their way to a patient who’d reported chest pain. “No,” he said. “I haven’t.”

  “Yeah,” Tucker said as he swung up into his seat on the engine. “So I could see how you’d know.”

  TUCKER’S WORDS rang in Chris’s ears for days afterward, no matter how hard Chris tried to ignore them. Jesus Christ, he and Morgan weren’t in love. That was for… well, other people. Not the two of them. He’d told Tucker the truth; he’d never been in love, but goddamn. Chris was pretty sure love was not bickering and snapping at each other and disagreeing on every subject under the sun, including which brand of boxer briefs were better, Hanes or Fruit of the Loom.

  He was still trying to ignore the subject altogether as he heard Morgan use his key at Chris’s front door. See, there was no damn way this was love, if they were still using their keys at each other’s houses instead of living together.

  Right?

  Chris didn’t have time to answer his own question before he felt Morgan at his back, pressing Chris into the sink where he was peeling potatoes. “Well, look what we’ve got,” Morgan said, dropping a kiss on Chris’s neck just below his hairline. “Barefoot in the kitchen with a potato peeler in his hands. I like it.”

  Chris grinned as he felt a hard cock against his ass. “Look what we’ve got,” he echoed. “Ready to go as soon as he walks in the door. I like it.”

  He could feel the smile against his skin. “So?” Morgan asked. “Why aren’t we going?” He reached around and put a brown paper bag on the cutting board next to Chris’s elbow.

  Chris craned his neck to peer inside, but the top of the bag was rolled down. “The hell is that? More condoms?”

  “Lube, actually,” Morgan said, pressing himself more insistently into the crack of Chris’s ass. “You need more in the shower. Hair conditioner didn’t do it for me last time.”

  Chris laughed and dropped the peeler in the sink, reaching for the bag and looking inside. “Hey,” he said, finding more than just lube in the contents. Chris reached in and drew out a package of familiar neon-colored snack cakes. “Sno Balls! You found Sno Balls?” His grin grew wider as he looked at the package. They’d been his favorite treat as a kid and were not so easy to find anymore.

  “Do not tell a single solitary soul that I paid money for those disgusting things. And don’t eat them in front of me.” Morgan looked with distaste at the bright pink coconut balls. “They just happened to be at the convenience store.”

  “Aw,” Chris said, tearing into the cellophane with eagerness and turning around to face Morgan, pink Sno Ball in hand. “If you’ve never had a Sno Ball, do not mock the delicacy.” He took a big bite of the soft cake, not caring if he got coconut and chocolate and cream filling on his face.

  Morgan pulled back slightly to watch him eat, but continued to roll his hips gently into Chris’s crotch. “You’re revolting,” he commented.

  “Your dick doesn’t think so,” Chris pointed out, swallowing his mouthful and taking another bite of sugar heaven. “Heh. You bought me Sno Balls.”

  “And lube,” Morgan reminded him, pushing a little more forcefully. “I want to use it.”

  Chris twinkled at him. “Take a bite of this.” He held up the remainder of the snack cake and waved it around.

  “I’d rather eat something else.”

  “You can. After you eat this.” He wasn’t expecting Morgan to really do it; Morgan had made it perfectly clear in the past what he thought of Chris’s addiction to junk food.

  But Morgan surprised him. “I’ll eat it,” he said casually. “If you let me nail you into the table afterward.”

  Chris’s mouth went dry. “If you eat that, I’ll let you nail me wherever you want.”

  At once Morgan reached over and plucked the remaining bite of cake out of Chris’s hand. “Famous last words,” he whispered, and put the cake in his mouth.

  Chris watched him chew and swallow. “I thought you hated those,” he said, suddenly aware again of how hard both of their pricks were as they stood pressed together against the sink.

  “I didn’t say I hated them. I said they were disgusting.”

  Chris had no time to puzzle out that logic before Morgan was kissing him, mouth urgent and hot and tasting of sweet, sweet coconut with a hint of chocolate beneath it. “Table?” Chris gasped, reaching around to Morgan’s ass and pulling him in tight.

  “Table.”

  He found himself bent over his kitchen table, the chair shoved aside and his shorts around his hips. “God, hurry,” Chris panted, everything becoming urgent as he heard the rip of the condom wrapper and the pop of the new lube top. “Christ
, Morgan.”

  Chris was ready to feel the head of Morgan’s cock at his ass, but something softer and wetter probed him instead. Chris slammed a closed fist down on the table and sucked in a sudden breath when he realized Morgan had gone to his knees and was licking a smooth path across his asscheeks, pausing on his way to taste Chris’s small opening before moving on again.

  He didn’t know he was holding his breath until Morgan’s tongue found its way back to the center. Chris exhaled in a rush when Morgan licked him and started to explore. The man blew cool air across wet skin and then plunged a pointed tongue in as far as he could. Chris pushed his hips back with each pass of Morgan’s mouth over his hole, fingers flexing and scraping on his table as he tried to coax Morgan deeper. His cock was pressed hard into the wood, rubbing against the smooth top in a way that should have been painful but was just the opposite. He could come this way, Chris realized, his hands nowhere near his prick but Morgan’s tongue in his ass more than enough stimulation.

  But Morgan knew, somehow, and almost before Chris could register the change, Morgan rose to his feet and with one easy push thrust inside. “Fuck,” they both gasped out together, each one of them holding perfectly still. Chris bit down hard on the inside of his cheek as he concentrated on the feel of Morgan’s cock right up against his prostate. Morgan didn’t push or stroke or do anything but stay right where he was, and Chris thought he might cry if one of them didn’t move.

  Morgan did, finally, pulling out nearly all the way and then easing back inside as slow as molasses. Chris dropped his forehead to the table and braced himself, trying to spread his legs despite the shorts that still hung off his hips. “More,” he gasped, pushing himself back as best he could and seeking the pressure he needed. “Please. More.”

  He felt Morgan’s head come down to rest between Chris’s shoulder blades, and then Morgan’s entire angle changed, his prick stabbing Chris’s gland over and over until Chris had no choice but to just strain and reach for his release, unable to move. He couldn’t have touched his cock if he’d wanted to; Morgan had him tightly pinned to the table and was panting harshly in his ear.