Paint It Black

by Amy Lane

  Blake reached out, his fingers shaking again.

  Softer to touch.

  And he couldn’t stop touching. Up, down, drinking in the softness, the flutter of Cheever’s breath as he moved toward his chest.

  His chest was narrow, with light definition—slender, no fat, a little muscle. Blake took a step closer to feel his heat, and kept exploring. At Cheever’s clavicle, prominent, delicate, Blake had to lower his head and nibble. Cheever let out a hiss of breath and skated his fingertips along Blake’s shoulders and down the sides of his back. Blake drew his lips up, along Cheever’s throat, pausing to nuzzle right behind his jaw, to nibble his earlobe, to breathe softly in the whorl of his ear.

  He lowered one hand to Cheever’s hip bone and was surprised when Cheever took it and wrapped it securely around his cock.

  “In a hurry?” Blake asked, stroking that amazing erection. Thick and fat, long and curved upward, Blake had to marvel at it, how he was the first to touch it who knew what a treasure he had in the man behind it.

  “You’re stalling,” Cheever sang breathlessly. “Had we but worlds enough and time….” He reached out with his other hand and pinched Blake’s nipple assertively, hard enough to make Blake’s knees wobble.

  “Nungh!” Blake’s grip on Cheever’s erection tightened, and he stroked boldly. Apparently, Cheever had waited long enough to have caring hands touching him. Blake dropped his head to Cheever’s own nipple and suckled on it, grazing with a hint of teeth.

  “That’s it,” Cheever crooned. “Ah, God, yeah, the other one!”

  Blake moved to that one, nibbling some more, still stroking, and a spurt of precome drenched his fist. Blake pulled away and raised his hand to Cheever’s lips, wondering how bold Cheever was feeling.

  Cheever pulled Blake’s fingers into his mouth, sucking off his precome, then getting them wet, plying his tongue, making Blake shiver.

  He released Blake’s fingers with a pop and whispered, “Lie on the bed. Stretch yourself. I want to explore you before I come.”

  “We don’t have to—” Blake had the speech prepared. Penetration didn’t equal sex. They could pleasure each other without the butt thing. Blake had enjoyed it before, but Cheever might not be all that excited.

  Cheever thrust Blake’s fingers into his own mouth, and Blake shuddered.

  “I….” Cheever leaned forward and nibbled on Blake’s earlobe. “Want….” He trailed his lips down to Blake’s clavicle. “To….” Lower, to suckle on Blake’s nipple again. “Pleasure….” He moved lower, lower, until he was on his knees in front of Blake, pulling down his boxer-briefs, his breath dusting the wet head of Blake’s cock. “You.”

  He stuck out his tongue and licked, and Blake’s knees gave another wobble, and he pulled his fingers out of his mouth to massage Cheever’s scalp through his hair. “C’mere….” He breathed. “Baby, there’s a bed. Let me… let me….”

  Cheever reached behind him, cupped his naked thighs, and walked him back until he felt the bed and sat down.

  And then proceeded to treat Blake’s body like his own personal amusement park. He started by licking Blake’s cockhead, playing with the bell, the ridge, squeezing the shaft, and Blake sat up, fingers tangled in that long curly hair, trying to remember his own damned name.

  “Oh… God, Cheever. I’m gonna come—maybe, you know, let me—”

  Cheever looked up and stuck his tongue out, licking Blake’s cockhead before sucking the precome off his tongue. “If you come,” he murmured, “are you going to just roll over and go to sleep?”

  “No! I’d take care of you, Cheever—I wouldn’t leave you hang—nungh! Gah!”

  Cheever sucked him to the back of his throat. Not all the way, but he was smart, using his fist to squeeze the bottom while his mouth did all the mouth things—lips, tongue, suction, pressure—that made Blake’s balls swell and his nipples tingle and his ass clench and….

  “Oh God, Cheever! You’re good at this!”

  “Been dreaming,” Cheever confessed, sticking out his tongue and licking Blake from base to tip. “You been dreaming about me?”

  “No…,” Blake lied. “It’d be too hard if I didn’t get you—augh! Cheever!” He took Blake even farther this time, until his fist didn’t fit around the base, and he used that hand to tug gently on Blake’s sac.

  Oh God…. Oh God…. Blake fell back on the bed, and he drew his feet up and bent his knees so he could arch his hips. Cheever followed him, shoving gently at his thighs and fondling his balls some more, until Blake could feel the sap boiling in the pit of them.

  “Please!” he begged. “Oh! Oh my God!”

  Cheever let some spit trickle between his cheeks, and while he still had Blake’s cock in his mouth, he parted them. One finger, long and delicate, spread the spit across his taint, and Blake whimpered.

  Cheever sucked harder in response, and Blake almost felt like laughing. He was going to teach Cheever about sex?

  And then Cheever’s finger grew bolder, tapping at his entrance, and Blake arched his hips and tried not to thrash.

  Cheever pulled back from his cock—but kept thrusting with that one finger. “Play with your nipples,” he said, in the same voice Blake used to direct musicians to play a different chord in a song. “I think that’ll get you there.”

  Then Blake did laugh, but he moved his fingers to his bare chest and pinched, just as Cheever drove his finger in deeper and sucked his cock back in again—

  And Blake’s world exploded.

  Everything. Oh damn, everything. Light changed to dark and dark rearranged itself into objects and shadows became true things.

  Cheever became a true thing. A real possibility. Someone who could be in his life for more than just an affair, or a few kisses, or long enough to unbalance the family Blake had worked so hard for.

  Blake blew everything out his cock—come, his safety, his peace of mind.

  Cheever’s mouth worked him, not expertly, but like someone who’d been ready for it, who had mentally prepared himself. Blake stroked his cheek with one hand and threw the other over his eyes, trying to hide his helplessness, his complete submission to what this man had just done to him.

  Cheever moved, letting go of Blake’s cock, pulling away from his private parts altogether and pushing himself on the bed.

  “How was that?” he asked, and Blake made himself look Cheever in the eyes. He sounded so proud.

  “That was real good.” He wanted to smile at the glaze around Cheever’s mouth, the utter debauched look of his messy hair and his swollen lips, but even his voice was broken.

  “Hey, what’s the matter? You… Blake?” It wasn’t until Cheever wiped the dampness trickling down his temple with his thumb that Blake realized moisture had slipped through.

  “It was… just intense,” Blake whispered, undone. He was defenseless, more than naked.

  “Blake… Blake, look at me. Did I do something wrong?”

  Blake shook his head. “You did it exactly right.” He managed a smile. “Just exactly right. Just… when it’s really good like that, I guess, you’re afraid. You’re just….”

  “Vulnerable,” Cheever said, kissing his temple, tasting the tears. “You’re vulnerable.”

  “Yeah.” Blake squeezed his eyes shut, and Cheever kissed him. In the dark, there was just the taste of his own spend in Cheever’s mouth, Cheever’s hands roaming his body again.

  There were scars, Blake knew where. Fights, sports. His knees were a chaos of skin abrasions from riding skateboards, even into his twenties. His collarbone had been broken when he was a kid—one of his mother’s boyfriends had gotten rough—and the bump was still there. A car wreck when he was fourteen had created scars where his wrist had been broken and needed to be reset. Cheever’s whole body had been pale skin and freckles, the only scar the still recent one on his wrist. Blake’s body told a different story, and Blake couldn’t even hide from it in his mind.

  But Cheever kept touching him, mapping
his scars, his imperfections, kissing him, grinding against him. He positioned himself between Blake’s thighs and slid their cocks together, his swollen and dripping pre, Blake’s getting thick again, waking up from the terrible emotional upheaval Blake couldn’t quite put behind him.

  Blake reached down between them and gripped them both, giving Cheever some friction to grind against, and Cheever moaned gratefully. “It’s good,” he said, “but I want more.”

  Blake knew what he wanted—didn’t have the defenses to tell him they didn’t have to. He reached behind him, under his pillow, and pulled out his lubricant.

  “I’m negative,” he panted. “I know you are.” Cheever had been tested twice in the hospital. Blake had been there when he’d gotten the second round of results. “Here—you know what goes where.”

  Cheever chuckled, the sound vibrating where their groins rested together, and Blake felt the first spurt of slickness, cool and sweet, drip on him as Cheever greased his own erection. For a heady moment, he gripped them both together like Blake had, squeezing and stroking until Blake was hard again, shaking with need all over again, stripped bare of pretense, nothing left but wanting.

  “Let me in,” Cheever whispered.

  Blake had no choice. He spread his thighs and lifted his hips up, almost sighing in relief when Cheever fit himself in place and thrust forward.

  Blake pushed out—he knew how to bottom, how to accept, how to take someone’s flesh into his body. But with every inch Cheever slid in, he felt less and less of himself, his worry, his pain. Cheever left no room for anything but Cheever, and when he’d finally thrust all the way in, Blake was floating, happy with the stretch, the ache, thrilled with the pressure, his entire body tingling, waiting for Cheever to make his move.

  “You okay?” Cheever asked, brushing his cheeks with careful lips.

  “Perfect,” Blake breathed. “You good?”

  Cheever gave a little thrust. “I gotta move,” he groaned. “Please tell me I can move.”

  “Yeah, fuck me. However you want. I’m yours.”

  “Oh, thank God.”

  Hard. Cheever pulled back and thrust forward hard, and Blake’s floaty goodwill was replaced with oh my God, wow! Blake cried out, lifting his hips and holding his thighs spread, a blatant invitation to be plundered, which Cheever took him up on.

  “C’mon, baby, more,” Blake heard himself begging, and Cheever gave it to him. Hard. Fast. Deep. Total possession. With no hesitation, no half measures, Cheever took Blake’s body and reshaped it, made it his from the inside out.

  Oh wow. Oh damn, oh hell, oh shit. “Oh fuck!” Blake screamed as Cheever hit his sweet spot, again and again, until the fireworks behind Blake’s eyes were bloodred and his dripping cock splatted on his abdomen with every thrust.

  “I need,” Cheever mewled plaintively. “I… help me! I need… I need, oh please….”

  Blake squeezed as tight as he could, and Cheever groaned again. “More, Blake—yes!”

  And that. The vulnerability. Cheever needed it, like Blake did. Blake could do this for him. He just had to… had to…. He grabbed his cock and stroked, his fist blurring, the sound of fapping and fucking filling the air.

  This orgasm ripped him inside out, with Cheever buried in his ass and coming with him in a scalding rush.

  Blake heard the sound he made, and it was barely human. But Cheever’s groan, his shout of release, that was all Cheever, and it gave Blake a tether so he could pull himself back to his own body when he threatened to float away.

  “Gawd….” Cheever collapsed on top of him, sweaty, as coated in Blake’s spend as Blake was, still twitching. Blake wrapped his arms and legs around that slender, lovely body and clung tightly, another wave of emotion washing over him that he was helpless to control.

  “Hey,” Cheever whispered, as Blake squeezed his eyes shut tight. “Hey. I’m here. Look what we did! Wasn’t that amazing?”

  “Yeah,” Blake told him, needing him not to be afraid, needing him not to regret. “It was so good. I… I….”

  More kisses peppered his face. “Then what’s wrong?”

  “So lost,” Blake whispered. “I was so lost. And everything I needed was right here.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Cheever pushed his hair back from his face. “I’m as surprised as you are. It’s pretty awesome, right?”

  Blake closed his eyes and nodded, comforted by Cheever’s weight, by his joy, by his words. But not comforted, not even a little, by the way his heart settled from chaos to joy with Cheever’s body wedged completely inside his.

  This boy was going to leave him. He was young and bright and so full of promise, and Blake was nobody’s first choice. Cheever would leave him, and Blake would be lost all over again.

  And this time, he’d never find his way home.

  CHEEVER WASN’T a cleaner, and Blake was grateful. He’d had lovers whose first act was to go wipe all traces of sex off of and out of their bodies, and Blake had always felt a little slighted. Cheever slid to the side, and Blake moaned as he pulled out. Blake’s ass felt stretched and used, and the rest of his body was loose, connected to his consciousness in the most tenuous of ways. When Cheever spooned him, stroking his chest, his stomach, nuzzling his neck, Blake melted into him, ignoring the mess and the sweat.

  The shelter of Cheever’s shoulders was the best home he could ever wish for.

  “That was tremendous,” Cheever murmured. “Is it always like that?”

  “No.” Blake dragged his floating brain for words. “Not for me. It’s… sometimes it’s more practical than that.”

  Cheever’s voice seemed to have deepened, and he emitted a low and earthy chuckle. “Practical sex?”

  “It’s a need,” Blake said with scant dignity.

  “Hence the lubricant under the pillow?” Cheever mocked, and Blake buried his face against Cheever’s arm.

  “Better my own hand than someone I don’t care about,” he said.

  “Even better.” Cheever kissed the back of his neck again, and Blake shivered.

  “You are going to get me started all over again,” he cautioned.

  “Good. I’ve waited my whole life for a night like this one. Don’t want it to end so soon.”

  Blake could feel him, hardening against Blake’s backside, and almost unconsciously he thrust back to see if Cheever meant it. Cheever ground against him, their bodies rocking gently, without urgency, but building.

  Cheever draped his leg over Blake’s hip in a proprietary way, and kept rocking. “How about you? You all done with me?”

  “No,” Blake whispered. “Not even close.” Never. This kid—this man—was a part of Blake’s topography now. If he ever had another lover, when they were looking for scars, they’d find Cheever written large across his heart.

  “Good….” Cheever took advantage of Blake’s entrance, dilated, sloppy, still slick, and thrust in again, and Blake rode him, rode the crest of the wave, clutching Cheever’s hand to his chest, his body caught in the surf of another climax, crashing to earth with Cheever’s low grown and a slow, painful orgasm that pretty much wrung him dry.

  Blake slept a little after that, falling asleep with Cheever still inside him. He woke up when Cheever rolled out of bed, and flailed a little. “Going?” he asked fuzzily.

  “No. Turning off the hall light and going to the bathroom.”

  “Oh.” Blake closed his eyes again, and a moment later, he felt Cheever’s warmth behind him and the nubbly invasion of a washcloth that usually signaled the end of sex.

  “Did you want me to go?” Cheever asked.

  “No.” Self-protection was useless now. Artificial boundaries like, “Is it too soon to stay the night?” had been annihilated with Cheever’s spectacular entrance, barreling through Blake’s door and into his bed with single-minded purpose.

  “Good.” Cheever held him tighter, and Blake took the hand lying on top of his chest and kissed the fingertips.

  Then he saw the scars on C
heever’s wrist, pink and straight and still new.

  “Oh my God,” he said in wonder. “I almost lost you. I almost lost you before I even knew who you were.”

  And it was like the quiet after the storm. Because before he knew it was even coming, sobs wracked his body, and Cheever turned him into his chest and was whispering words of comfort in his hair.

  THE HANGOVER he woke up with the next morning was so epic, it put some of his worst drug benders to shame. Someone was pounding on his front door, and then clattering across the hallway downstairs.

  “Blake! Blake! Are you okay? Did your laundry basket explode? Jesus, dude! Get out here and tell us what to do with your fish!”

  Blake shot upright in bed and then clapped his hand across his eyes. “Sunlight!” he croaked. His mouth tasted cummy. He wiped his face and felt the residue, remembered waking up again, late at night, voracious for the taste of Cheever’s skin. He’d licked his chest, sucked his nipples, and when Cheever had tangled his fingers in Blake’s hair, pushing gently, Blake had gone down, starving for the final taste of him.

  His jaw still ached from Cheever’s cock stretching his mouth, and Blake hadn’t been able to swallow all of it, he’d been so overwhelmed.

  He’d fallen asleep again, his face against Cheever’s abdomen, barely conscious of Cheever pulling him up until their heads rested next to each other on the pillows.

  “Oh shit. Ouch! Why is there sun?” And now it felt like twin white-hot spears were trying to ice-pick his brain.

  “Oh, baby.” Cheever stroked his back gently. “You got a crying headache. Those suck.”

  “Your brothers are here,” Blake muttered, not sure about the sympathy and peeling himself off the sheets.

  The despoiled sheets.

  Blake was covered in Cheever Sanders’s come, and his brothers were on their way up the stairs.

  “Oh my fuckin’ God, your brothers are here, and they’re bringing fish!”

  He ran naked to the door and stuck his head out. “Be down in a second!” he called. “Stay there. Right there. Don’t come up.” He slammed the door and winced. “Jesus God, my head hurts. And I’m naked. Shit! Pants!”