I pulled back just enough to see his face.Bright eyes.Terrified and certain at the same time.
"What did you just say?"
Nelson swallowed."You heard me."
ChapterTwenty-Five
Nelson
The second his mouth crashed into mine, the adrenaline hit like a match to gasoline.Three hours of holding the world together—three hours of his voice in my ear, his words in my head, his presence the only thing keeping me anchored—and now it all had somewhere to go.
I shoved Jimmy backward.His hips hit the edge of his desk, and a stack of rundowns slid to the floor.Neither of us gave a damn.I pressed him against the wood, my hands gripping his waist hard enough to bruise, and kissed him like I was trying to crawl inside him.
This wasn’t like the dressing room.
The dressing room had been grief and desperation, the breaking of something we’d held too long.This was triumph.This was two men who’d just rewritten history together, who’d operated as a single unit through a crisis that would define their careers.The rush of it was still in our veins, and it was transforming, turning into something feral and hungry and inevitable.
Jimmy’s fingers fumbled with the buttons of my shirt, his breath hot against my neck.“Fuck—Nelson—”
“Lock the door,” I growled against his mouth.
He reached behind me without breaking the kiss, his arm trembling as he turned the deadbolt.The click was obscenely loud in the small office, like a starting gun.
Jimmy yanked his shirt over his head in one motion, no hesitation, no restraint.The man in front of me wasn’t the careful EP who’d sworn this could never happen again.This was the man who’d produced a presidential resignation in real time, who’d held an entire control room together by sheer force of will.His skin was flushed, his chest heaving, and he was vibrating with the same manic energy that had kept me locked behind that anchor desk for three hours.
I ran my hands up his sides, feeling the heat of him, the way his muscles jumped under my touch.Freckles dusted his shoulders, his collarbone, the tops of his arms—constellations I’d memorized a lifetime ago.I bent my head and pressed my mouth to the cluster just below his throat, and Jimmy shivered, his fingers tangling in my hair hard enough to sting.
“The couch,” I said.
Jimmy laughed, breathless.“The couch is terrible.”
“I don’t care.”
We crashed onto it together, the frame groaning under our weight.It would’ve been funny if I’d been capable of laughter.I wasn’t.The only thing I was capable of was getting closer—skin against skin, the full length of his body pressed against mine.When our chests met, bare and sweaty, I made a sound so raw it startled me.
Jimmy pushed me onto my back, his knee wedging between my thighs, his weight pinning me to the cushions.His face was feral, his green eyes dark with desire.“You were incredible tonight,” he said, voice rough.“Do you have any idea what it was like watching you from that control room?”
“Show me.”
His mouth crashed onto mine again, possessively, his tongue sliding against mine like he was trying to consume me.Then he was moving lower—teeth grazing my throat, my collarbone, my chest—and I arched off the couch so hard the frame creaked.My hands fisted in his hair, my breath coming in ragged gasps.I wasn’t trying to be quiet.I hadn’t made sounds like this in years.
Jimmy’s hand slid down my stomach, his fingers working my belt open with a deftness that told me he’d been thinking about this—not just tonight, but during the broadcast, while he was feeding me lines and holding me steady.He’d been producing the show and wanting me at the same time, the way I’d been anchoring the show and wanting him, and the duality of it—professional and carnal, simultaneous and inseparable—made my hips lift, helping him drag my pants down.
He stripped me bare on that secondhand couch, in that cluttered office, with the Peabody bookends watching from the shelf like silent judges.The absurdity of it—Nelson Mackenzie, undone, in this room, on this furniture—would’ve been hilarious if Jimmy’s mouth hadn’t chosen that exact moment to travel lower.
His breath was hot against my skin.My stomach.My hip.I was trembling, aching, already on the edge, and when his mouth finally closed over me, I grabbed the arm of the couch and my whole body went taut like a wire pulled to breaking.
Jimmy was relentless.He took his time, then abandoned all patience, his mouth and hand working my cock together until the pressure built past anything I could hold back.I was gone—arching, shaking, one hand knotted in his hair, the other white-knuckled on the couch frame.
“Jimmy—God—” His name tore out of me as I came, my body seizing, then releasing in wave after wave, and heheld on through all of it, slowing down only when I was too wrecked to take any more and pushed him back.
Jimmy crawled up my body, his mouth finding mine.The taste of what he’d done was still on his lips, and the rawness of it cracked my chest wide open.His green eyes locked onto mine—me, only me—and I flipped him, pinning him to the couch with a breathless oof.
I didn’t have patience left.No finesse.I knelt over him, my hands on his thighs, and stared at him—bare, flushed, breathing hard, wrecked and wanting—and he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Nelson.”My name in his mouth was rough, desperate.“Please.”
I gave him everything.