At you probably think I’m an idiot, El started moving; at I don’t want to try, he knelt in front of Paul, who was hyperventilating and talking as fast as a rabid auctioneer; at I want to do it again, he allowed himself one moment to savor the words, and then he took Paul’s face in his hands and stopped the flow of chatter with a kiss.
It was a sweet kiss, a slow kiss, meant to gentle Paul and possibly get a little air back into his lungs instead of letting it all fall out in a rush of words, but it didn’t stay that way long. Paul whimpered, rested trembling hands on El’s shoulders, and El groaned back, teasing Paul’s lips open to deepen the kiss.
“I’ll stop if you want,” he whispered, sliding his hands down to Paul’s waist. “Just tell me what you want.”
“I don’t know.” Paul leaned hard into El, his body clearly not suffering from indecision. “I just . . . I just . . . I . . .”
El placed a kiss on Paul’s chin. “It’s me. Okay? I’m not going to hurt you, and I’m not going to laugh. Tell me what you want. What you need.” He nuzzled his way back to that sweet, soft mouth. “Let me give it to you.”
Paul’s swallow was audible. “I’m sorry. I feel like a little kid. I probably sound like one. That can’t be attractive.”
“I promise you’re very attractive. And nothing like a kid.” El’s fingers dipped into Paul’s waistband, then paused. “We can just talk, Paul. I don’t want you to feel like I’m pushing you into anything. I’ve done more than enough of that already.”
Paul’s gaze fixed on El, hesitant and heated at once. “Maybe . . . maybe I want to be pushed.”
El allowed himself a moment to drink that in too. Then he pulled Paul onto his lap, nudged the chair aside, and kissed Paul without holding anything back while he pushed him with surety of purpose to the floor.
Paul’s needy gasps and clutching hands spurred him on. “Did you really want me from the moment you saw me?” Paul whispered between heated kisses.
“Yeah.” El couldn’t figure out where he wanted to touch Paul first, so he kept his hands moving, shoving aside clothing, seeking skin. “I want you now. Tell me what’s too far, Paul. Tell me right now.”
“Nothing. I want all of it.”
Remembering the dazed, frightened look he’d been treated to at the bottom of the stairs, El mentally wrote several activities off despite what Paul had said. “I don’t want you to freak out afterward.” His throat threatened to close in self-defense, but he shoved through the blockage and pressed on. “Because I don’t just want to make love to you today. I want to be with you, Paul.” That was as much as he could get out. He went back to making love to Paul’s neck.
Paul arched into him, tilting his head to make the job easier. “Like . . . a boyfriend?”
It took three swallows to get the lump down. “If that’s what you want.” When Paul tensed, El ached. “Or something else. Or nothing. Whatever you want.”
Paul’s breath shuddered out of him. “I— maybe? It’s— I can’t even say it to myself without panicking. I don’t even think I can say what I am—what this means—out loud.” He leaned his forehead against El. “I don’t think I’d be a good one just now.”
But maybe later. The idea terrified and thrilled El at once. He lifted his head to grin at Paul. “You take your time with that.”
“I can’t believe you want me,” Paul said, cheeks staining again.
If El could have purred, he would have. “Let me show you how much I do.”
I was going to have sex.
With a man.
With El.
The thought kept banging around in my head like a ball bearing as he pushed me backward into his bedroom, kissing me all the way there like he could only get air by molesting my mouth. I felt jumbled, wanting to give him whatever he wanted, desperate for it, but panicked too. This was it. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but I was at some kind of crossroads, a big X in the middle of my personal road, going left instead of right in a way I’d never gone before. I was fairly sure we were going to go further than I’d even thought about going with Dean. I wanted to go there. The theme to Star Trek played idiotically in my head: To boldly go where no Paul has gone before.
El might fuck me. El might put his dick in my ass.
The very thought made my limbs shake with want and my insides curdle with fear.
His hands tugged at the hem of my shirt, making my belly cave and quiver. I gasped when his fingers skimmed my skin as he pulled the garment away, looking dizzily into his gaze and finding my own lust mirrored there.
He really wanted me. I reached out to touch his face, half afraid he’d vanish on contact.
Sharp barking broke the spell, and El looked down, laughing before pulling away to crouch and pet MoJo. “Hey, sweetheart. Let Daddy get a little loving, okay?”
MoJo continued to bark eagerly, and enough of my lust faded for logic to rise to the occasion. “Give her a toy she loves, something that will keep her busy.”
El grimaced, then went to his closet, fishing around on the floor. He came back with a beat-up sneaker that had MoJo all but doing cartwheels of joy. After tossing it into the living room and watching MoJo run after it, he shut the bedroom door. “I’m going to have to start buying shoes more often if I want to get laid on a regular basis, I can see that.”
The center of my chest felt funny at laid on a regular basis, but I squelched the joy, cautioning myself it wasn’t just me. “Find her a special toy and let her only have it when you want her to leave you alone.”
El took me back into his arms, sliding a hand over my naked chest while the other teased at the waistband of my jeans. “As often as I’d like to be alone with you, I’m going to need a full armory of special toys.”
I didn’t know what to do with that, so I moved in closer, brushing against his shirt. I wanted it gone, wanted nothing between us, and I tugged at his hem, frustrated to find it tucked into his jeans. Chuckling, he let go of me long enough to peel the shirt away.
Our flesh came together, his dark against my light. I had one moment to appreciate the contrast before lust took over, at which point he could have turned purple and I wouldn’t have cared. I was too busy attacking his mouth and moving us backward onto the bed.
I felt chaotic, swept up and consumed by what we were doing while fearing it at the same time. You’ll be gay if you do this, the chipmunk warned. If you let him fuck you, there’s no going back. You’ll be gay.
I wanted to argue with that assessment because I could see the logic holes from here, but logic had never won over the chipmunk, and the part of me that could have argued was too busy lifting my hips so El could more easily dispose of my jeans. I lay naked on the bed, breath coming hard and fast as I took in the beautiful sight of El hovering over me. He wasn’t hairy, not at all, except for the most delicious treasure trail leading down to his cock, which stood brown and erect and eager to meet me. I smelled him too, a sharp, slightly sweaty male scent that reminded me of locker rooms and sleepovers. I remembered my best friend complaining of the stink, remembered thinking it was actually pretty delicious but that I’d clearly best keep that thought to myself. That smell was back now: a little sweat, a little spice, a little something undefinable that made me dizzy.
El smiled at me, leaned forward, and the smell overwhelmed me enough to make me close my eyes and open my mouth on a silent inhale, tasting him on the air. Only for a second, though, because then his mouth found mine, the intensity of his kiss a jolt sending me into a land of nothing but sensation before he broke away to slide down my body. Propped up on my elbows, I watched in a disoriented haze as his dark head bobbed up and down on me, over and over until finally I caught his hair in a desperate fist.
“Stop or I’m going to come,” I whispered.
He smiled around the tip of my cock, a gesture that nearly put me over the edge by itself. “I thought that was the idea.”
The chipmunk came babbling back in a rush, but I shoved it aside all by
myself this time. “I want more.”
The way El’s gaze darkened made me shiver. “How much more?”
“I told you. All of it.” Gathering up all my courage, I said. “I want you to fuck me.”
Why did he seem surprised? I would have cringed, except he was clearly eager too. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” I reassured him, even though my ass was clenching at the very thought.
He caught the tip of my penis in a quick suckle-kiss before he smiled. “You know, they don’t have a badge for anal sex in the Gay Scouts. It doesn’t make you any more or less.”
“I know that,” I said, but too quickly, because I really didn’t.
The truth must have shown on my face, because he shifted to lie beside me, leaning on his elbow as he spoke. “Some guys live for it. Some refuse to do it ever. Some save it for a kind of rite of passage in a relationship. Some will do it in the back room of a bar.”
“What do you do?”
God, but I loved that wry smile. “A little of everything except the back room of a bar.”
That was good, I decided. As exciting as the back room of a bar was in theory, I wasn’t sure I was up for it in practice. “What do you want to do right now? And don’t say whatever I want to do,” I added quickly, because I knew that’s what he’d tell me if I didn’t disallow it.
He seemed to consider his options for a moment, his hand idly stroking my thigh as he did so. Finally his gaze met mine, those beautiful dark eyes bare and honest, more so than I thought I’d ever seen them. “I want you. I want to fuck you. I want you to fuck me. I want to rim you until you come on my sheets. I want to rub off together in the shower. I want to watch you masturbate. I want you to jack my cock. I want you to blow me. I want to blow you again. I want to do you in a chair. I want to do you in the bed with you facing me. I want to pound into you from behind. I want you to pound into me from behind.”
Forget the blowjob. I was going to spill just listening to him. “That all sounds good,” I whispered.
But El wasn’t done. He kept speaking, and if I thought he’d been naked for the first soliloquy, he peeled back the skin on his chest for what came next.
“I want to lie in bed with you and listen to a rainstorm come in over the mountains. I want to find out what you eat for breakfast. I want you to stop by the shop because you want to see me, not because you have some crap from your ex you want to unload.”
I stared at him, recognizing the quiet terror behind his confession because I felt it in myself, though I didn’t quite get why. “No, you don’t,” I said at last.
He relaxed back into amusement. “Is that so?”
I wasn’t relaxed. I felt even more panicked, in fact. “Why would you want me like that?” When he stiffened up again, I felt compelled to keep talking. “You’re saying you want to date me. Why?”
“I’m trying to decide if you’re insulting yourself or me or both with the assumption that I wouldn’t want to date you. Or is that your way of politely telling me you want to fuck me but not date me?”
Was that what I was saying? I had no idea. I propped myself up further, regarding him soberly, a little desperately. “There’s nothing special about me. And as a boyfriend—I’m bad in general, but I’ve never been with a man. Somebody like you . . .” I trailed off, unsure of how to finish that without sounding completely pathetic.
Crawling over me, El pushed me back into the mattress, rubbing our naked cocks against one another, rousing them back to full life. “Somebody like me wants to fuck you, and he also wants to hang out with you. Like we’ve already been doing, but without excuses, just admitting that we want to because we like it. Think you can handle that?”
My hands had found their way to his shoulders, and I dug my fingernails into his skin as I thrust up against him “Yes. Oh God, El. Please—please, fuck me.”
He laughed. “Since you ask so nicely . . .”
We rubbed together like that a few minutes, kissing harder and harder until we were both panting and on the edge of coming, at which point he turned me over and answered my unasked question about what he’d meant by rimming me. It turned out that meant kneeling behind me, spreading my cheeks open, and alternately licking my hole and fucking it with his tongue. Before we were done, I’d ripped the sheets from his bed down to the mattress pad, wadding them into my fists and coating them in sweat. He kept me from coming, squeezing my balls just enough to keep the edge away, and when I was nothing but jelly-bodied from head to toe, he flipped me over, reached for something at his bedside, and covered my mouth with another kiss.
I hadn’t put anything inside me, ever, so his slicked-up finger came as quite a shock—so much so that I broke the kiss. Our gazes met and held as his single finger pushed carefully but insistently inside me.
His voice was thick and rough as he asked, “Want me to stop?”
Yes. No. I shut my eyes and gripped his shoulders. “Oh God.” His finger stilled, and I chased after it wantonly. “Please,” I whispered.
His mouth found mine again, briefly this time before exploring my chin and neck, distracting me as he continued to push in and out of me. I clutched at him, gasping and babbling, especially when I felt an additional stretch and knew he’d added another finger.
I felt his fingers turning inside me, a sensation so strange and erotic at the same time that I could only lie there absorbing, at best pushing back against his thrusts at times to try to take him deeper. Sometimes he would brush against something deep inside me, sending light waves of pleasure so hard through my system it made my jaw ache. Prostate, I thought absently, then gave over to gasping and moaning, his name, God’s, whoever would listen. The oddness of being penetrated evaporated, and I knew only pleasure, yearning for more.
When we were both hard and desperate, he pulled away and headed for the bathroom. This confused me until I saw him emerge with a small foil packet in his hand, which he held up to his eyes, squinting at it as he flipped it over a few times. Eventually he stopped, shoulders sagging in relief, and came back to me. At my quizzical look, he pursed his lips, looking embarrassed.
“Checking the expiration date,” he confessed.
Why that made me smile, I don’t know. “Are we good?”
“Very,” he replied as he sheathed himself in latex.
Though I’d thought I was accustomed to having something in my ass by now, when I felt his cockhead at my entrance I still paused, holding my breath. El caught my gaze, and I blushed. “Sorry. I feel like a virgin.”
El smiled his sideways smile. “Touched for the very first time,” he sang, then pushed, ever so slightly, inside.
I shut my eyes on a soft gasp, lifting my hips to encourage him deeper. Inch by careful inch he claimed me, until I felt his groin against my skin, his cock fully encased inside me.
I was a virgin no more.
He took me carefully at first, moving slowly, letting me get used to him, bending down at times to kiss me, to tease my nipples. Even before I started to tug at him, though, his control began to slip, and in those moments before I gave in to my own desire, I felt him slide into his: for the first time, really, except that moment when he’d confessed that he wanted to date me. I watched El Rozal give up his cynicism and control and even his niceties and simply lose himself in fucking me, no longer giving me pleasure but taking his own.
Somehow that made me feel safe enough to do the same. I stopped thinking about what was happening and what it meant. I took my cock in my hand, and as El let go, I followed.
I’ve had sex with a man. With El. I smiled to myself as post-sex lethargy seized me.
I couldn’t wait to do it again.
El lay awake in the dark, on his side on top of the covers, as he watched Paul sleep.
They hadn’t done everything on El’s sexual list, but they’d made some serious headway. He’d get hard in the shower for a month just thinking about what they’d done in there, and his recliner was now officially
an erogenous zone. Takeout subs would probably give him a boner for the foreseeable future, as well.
He still felt a well of panic whenever he thought about the other things he’d confessed, and the fact that Paul hadn’t ever exactly said, “Why yes, I’d love to date you, and aren’t you so sweet to ask that way,” or anything remotely Hallmark-like, wasn’t helping his case. Where the fuck that had come from, he didn’t know, but he wished he could stuff the conversation back. He felt too raw, too exposed.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Hadn’t Denver pointed out that he’d thrown his hat into the ring of a game he couldn’t win? Wasn’t this exact situation what he’d always sworn he’d avoid?
A rustle and a brush of hair against his toes was his only warning before something lapped at his feet. “Come here, girl,” El whispered, and MoJo promptly scurried over, trading up to lick his face.
El shut his eyes, settled back into his pillow, and gave himself over to her ministrations.
I’m gay.
The words resonated in my head all the way home late that night, as I went to sleep, and when I woke up the next morning. I woke up early too, so early I decided to walk to the office. I swung by Mocha Springs Eternal and got an egg sandwich and a latte, eating out on the sidewalk tables because it was a beautiful morning. I couldn’t think about that, though. All I could think about was, I’m gay.
I don’t know if I was trying to get used to it or what. I still wasn’t entirely sure that’s what I was—gay, or bi? I didn’t know, and I wasn’t sure it mattered. The idea wasn’t making the pit of my stomach feel like a big hole anymore, but it still felt like my throat was stopped up with my heart, which beat so hard it tried to come out my ears. All I knew was I felt strange, like I’d woken up in new skin. Or with some new door open letting in a breeze that alternately excited me and made me panic.
I’m gay. Or bi. Or something.
I’m gay.
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