by Noah Harris
But that wasn’t it at all. It was just waiting. Waiting for us to become who we are now. Helping each other get strong again in the meantime, without needing anything in return.
When you look in my eyes, I wonder, do you see that same perfect version of me? That future husband, mate, father? Is that where we’re climbing? And that man you see, is he whole? I want to meet him. He feels closer than ever.
A tap on my shoulder, and I turn back from the woods. His lips, punch-red and smiling softly. Blue eyes crystalline and shining as ever. Sweat in his dark curls.
“Hey,” Christian says up at me, grin twitching.
“Well hey,” I laugh, hands on his shoulders. We could just be dancing, I think. If this wasn’t meant to be a kiss, if we were only dancing.
But it is. Our second kiss takes place at the edge of a dancefloor with cafe lights crisscrossing overhead, cubs underfoot and burly Texas shifters everywhere you look. We’re alone, in a chattering crowd.
“Are you crying?” Christian asks, concerned.
I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about anything. Just a few more minutes kissing, and we can turn to the dancefloor and watch the festivities and breathe. I can put my arm across your shoulder, and you can hug my hip, and every dream I’ve ever had can simply be true. Easy as that.
“What’s the occasion? I forgot to ask,” Christian murmurs, embarrassed. He likes to bring a gift.
But not this time.
“Christian. Come on. It’s about you. They missed you.”
He stiffens but stays put. After a moment, he slips his hand in mine for a little more bravery.
He says I’m a hurricane and he’s the ocean. One is all energy, and one goes down forever. What I’m learning is that part of the reason he’s so quiet and calm is because if he wasn’t, he’d explode. A whole ocean of feeling inside him, just waiting to come out. Love, desire, anger, fear, sadness, it would burn him up, drown him out.
Maybe that’s why he can’t handle being loved this much. Not because it doesn’t touch him, but because he’s too vulnerable. I can see it now and all it does is make me love him more, for his courage.
“I missed you,” he says, low and close enough his hot breath chases sparks down my neck to my groin. I spent my life wondering exactly what it looks like when Christian Keller wants you.
And now I know. And it’s even hotter than I’d imagined all those times.
My phone’s on vibrate, the fourth call to go to voicemail since he found me on the dancefloor, is almost uncomfortably intense so close to my quickly stiffening dick. Christian looks innocently across the dance floor, nonchalant, while behind the snack table his hand lightly brushes down my length. Once, and then again. I can smell my arousal, and from the sudden hungry smile on his face, I know he can too.
Leaning in close again, this time it’s not even words, just a high, whining grunt in my ear, carried away on the music of the dance floor. Not pain, but not quite a moan. He sounds like he’s getting fucked. That was the sound of someone losing control.
Not fair. He laughs at my reaction and leans back in to do it again. Ecstasy’s halting catch in the breath. This time he ends the triplet with a fast-flicking tongue, and I let loose a groan of my own. Is that the plan? For me to lose control? It’s so close to working already.
“One more surprise,” I say, husky with desire, as the last sun fades and lights come up.
“Oh yeah?” Christian tries to keep a straight face.
“Goodboy and the pack asked if they could babysit. For the night. They want to know the cubs better and since it’s Goodboy, I thought…”
Christian holds very still, thinking his way through it. The trepidation on his face is enough to cool my desire, at least long enough for some amount of blood to get to my brain again.
Finally, he nods. “But I want to say something.”
One hand in his, and then the both of them. Anybody watching would think we were together.
“This is the best present anybody’s ever given me. I feel cherished. And it didn’t cost anything. Which I like too.”
I nod. That was my thinking.
“I feel like we’re learning how to love each other,” I say, hoping he understands.
“Then you’re doing a great job. Let’s go.”
The sun’s just gone down. I thought he’d at least wait until after dinner. But no. It’s in his wild eyes, and the slight unconscious movement in his hips, to the music. It’s in the smell of him. So ready and hot he could be in heat.
“I want you,” I growl, and he thrusts his ass back against my straining dick. Not violently or dramatically, just enough to send a shudder down my legs. We could still be dancing.
He reaches up and back to caress the back of my head as I watch the crowd with my chin on his own. Smelling his hair, the now-familiar scent of him. Sweat and soap and sweetness.
“You want me?” he whispers, grinding back against my dick again, exquisitely slow.
But through the fog of lust and devotion, there is one loose thread.
“I need to say something too,” I mumble, eyes closed so I can focus.
Christian cocks an eyebrow, just a little unsure again as he turns.
“It’s hard,” I begin, and he thinks better of making a joke. His concern is growing.
“Okay,” I breathe. “I came here for a reason. I couldn’t be in L.A. anymore…”
He opens his mouth and shuts it. Whatever I need to say I clearly haven’t said it before.
I’m a little disappointed. I kind of hoped he’d somehow found out and we could just skip all of this. But that’s not how life works. I need to be brave, brave like Christian’s being.
“I didn’t really tell you the details. I think we need to talk about them before anything happens. I want to start on the best foot possible. Clear out the weeds and rocks if we’re going to plant anything.”
His eyebrows knit, pinned to some central point between fear, confusion and joy.
“Tarrant. Spit it out. It’s not possible for you not to trust me enough to…”
“Okay, yeah. Yes, you’re right. I just have shame too.”
Christian’s eyes zero in on it, then. Searching my eyes for it.
I killed your husband. I’m the reason your husband’s dead. I am the “public face” of the reason your husband died. This town is going to catch fire when they find out. I put a target on your back every time I kiss you. I killed your mate.
He nods.
“Whatever it is, we’ll get through it. I promise. Can I not just have one night first? Everything feels perfect. I feel perfect. If you’re going to ruin my night, can I at least have it first? I am…deliriously happy. I know it won’t last. I know it doesn’t matter how much I love you, there are going to be problems. I’m an adult. But please, just give me tonight. Table it or I’m going to be thinking of way worse things all night. I promise, whatever it is can wait.”
It really can’t. But he sees my misery and throws his arms around my neck with a smile. His breath in my ear sounds and feels like making love.
“Dominic. Please.”
Desperate and delicious.
The Feast
The night flies by, dangerous, dark, and fast. There’s a little bite to the wind that makes me want to hang my head out the window and yell at Dominic to drive faster, faster.
Ranch and farm roads, then the frontage road along the interstate. Dry flat roads becoming tarmac, signaling the bounds of Salt Flats. Low beams bouncing off the dust like fog.
“Once I realized you weren’t going anywhere unless I made you, I started wondering why I would make you. I realized I wouldn’t, not on purpose. Just by being afraid you would.”
Dominic smiles. I’m afraid I’ve had a bit a bit of champagne. It makes me feel happy, sexy. Ready for anything, but it also makes the words come out faster than I can edit them.
“I’m familiar with that particular mistake, yeah.”
&nb
sp; “I know. But this is different, it’s scary in a different way. Because it’s about death. Not just sex or fear or being messed up. It’s about the fact that I was married to a man. We lived a full life together. Then he was gone. I thought I would die, too. Just leave my cubs crying in their cribs and hope somebody would treat them better than I could, and lay down, and just die.”
Holding my hand isn’t enough, suddenly. Dominic grabs at me, eyes still glued to the road. Sliding his hand up inside my sleeve to get his full palm on me as if to say, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Neither are you.
“I want to know about him. I want to be able to tell the kids about him. I want to honor that and how strong you were, to survive. Even when you were at the very end of what you could bear. I love what you love. That can include him. Ernest. I think it should.”
I give him my most crooked smile. I am awfully fond of Dominic, in addition to everything else. He’s beautiful, devoted and strong. But he’s also my best friend, and I just like him. I’ve missed that. I didn’t know.
“That’s a very nice thing to say, Dominic.”
“Well, I mean it,” he says in his cowboy voice, and I have to chuckle. It’s surprisingly low in the throat.
“You always do.”
It’s true. His wolf born simplicity, he’s guileless, loyal, and kind. Even with all the layers of scum he acquired since he left me, it’s untarnished and unvarnished. His truest quality is, I think, that he always means it.
Sometimes too much. Sometimes it’s too bright to look at. But it’s there, always.
I trail a hand across his chest, taking full advantage of the fact I’m not the one driving. It feels like discovering a place for the first time. Which it is. I’ve traveled every inch of this body, at some point or another. But tonight it’s become something new. It’s mine.
The deep chuckle becomes a growl. I’m up and out of my safety belt before we really even know what’s happening. Laughing as I devour him, ears, neck, nipples. I’m everywhere and he’s swerving, protesting. Finally he coasts to the side of the street with a sigh, beneath two ancient walnut trees guarding a cul-de-sac corner.
“We can hold off long enough to get home, Christian. It’s just another couple of blocks.”
But I shake my head, laughing. I want him to drive around to the alley, to where it ends. It’s a spot I always thought would be lovely to hook up in, but we never got around to it. There are going to be a million of those, I think with a smile. So many things we get to do together.
“There’s a spot behind the…where the alley dead-ends.”
“Buddy,” he says, pulling out of a gasping kiss. “We have the entire house to ourselves.”
I nod. Not the point.
“Yeah! And you’re going to fuck me there. But right now, this is what I want. I just want to mess around, here in this car, with the smell of you all the way from California. I want to remember wanting you all this time and getting to have you now. Doesn’t that turn you on at all?”
Pointing at his crotch in the dashboard lights with a smirk, I laugh. We have our answer.
Gliding into the dark alley, he pulls to a stop just where I said, a couple houses down from our own. With the engine off, the night feels secretive and exciting. Permissive and soundless in the dark of the moon. Just enough heat from the summer behind us, and a touch of chill from the autumn arriving.
We’re going to learn so much. It’s sweet and sexy to think about it. My Dominic. My comfort, my mind reader. All the ways I can make him feel good. All the satisfaction he wants to give me.
I climb aboard, straddling him in the driver’s seat and popping the seat back with a single release, until he’s nearly prone beneath me.
I look down, holding still. Long enough to memorize him. The scruff of his beard, the careless cowlick of his hair, almost blond in this light. I want to drink him in, streetlights painting ribbons of light and dark across his beautiful, strong face. He looks up at me with such wonder and awe that my cock stiffens in an instant.
“You look…in this light. Smiling like that, with those curls…you’re like a satyr. A faun. Some goat-legged forest god or…”
“Very nice,” I laugh. But I know what he means. I feel it too. Deep magic of the earth in us, bringing us to bloom. Primal, in the depths of me. I want to give all of myself to him.
Grinding slowly and gently against him, I finally have to shift my dick into a more comfortable position. A wink and grin, a click of the tongue, and it’s done. My sigh of relief sets off something under me and I can feel him getting twice as hard at the sound.
Opening his shirt one button at a time, holding his chest down as he stretches up for a kiss. Running hands greedily across the muscles of his deep chest, thick arms. Trailing fingers down across the skin of his stomach, tensing and shivering at my touch. I know I can’t stay in control much longer, he’s at the edge of reason as it is. But teasing him, stoking those flames, I can enjoy this as long as it lasts.
“How many times have you thought about this, Dominic? I can feel how excited you are. I could smell you back at the ranch. Nothing makes me hornier than seeing how hard I make you.”
“Then you should be…pretty horny,” he says between labored breaths, as I slowly speed my grinding ride, fingertips stroking his face. His lips. His yearning stretch, nipping up toward me again, laughing.
“I first thought about you fucking me that morning. At the coffee place. I looked through the crowd and thought, I’m going to ride that guy’s dick. I hadn’t thought that in so, so long that it kind of scared me. But that was my first thought. I just wanted to get close enough to smell you, get a sense of you. Hopefully take you home. Zero to sixty.”
Dominic smiles, giddy and a little unfocused.
“And then it turned out to be me.”
But that’s not the story I’m telling. Thank God it was you, I think. Thank God you can laugh about it.
“And then when you moved in,” I say, gasping a little bit myself now. Mouth back at his neck and chest. “I had so many fantasies about that. Surprising me in the shower or dropping your towel. Or you’d come home from a run all sweaty, and just…”
Dominic surges up against me quick, wrapping those huge arms around me, crushing me to his chest and I gasp, shuddering with pleasure.
“Yep. Just like that.”
I relent and lean down to him for the longest, deepest kiss I can remember. Breathing him in. I want to kiss you forever, I think. Here under the streetlights, by the dark of the moon. I could be happy kissing you until the end of the world.
His hands cupping my ass, slipping between waistband and hip, running lines along that ticklish skin until I’m aching for more.
“I want my hands full of you,” he groans. “My mouth.”
I want to be full of him, too. Overflowing with this skin, this taut, muscled flesh. His head in my hands and rock-hard cock thrusting between us.
My eyes are closed for a moment in bliss as I rock, and he takes the opportunity to slip his hands all the way around to the front, exploring the fly on my trousers. He runs one thumb along the thick shaft, eliciting a surprised groan, as the other pulls the zipper down. When he gets it free, my dick slaps out against Dominic’s chest, slick with desire, pulsing against his skin.
“How long? Every time I’ve done this, that’s how long. Every guy I’ve ever been with, I hated him because he wasn’t you. First base. Second base. Third base…”
Caressing the length of me with feather-light touches, all the way down and back, to the soft skin behind my balls. Cupping them softly.
“I wanted to do everything with you.”
It makes me a little sad, but he just grins and shakes his head.
“And now we’re going to. I have no regrets, Christian. I have what I want. I want everything, I want all of you. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
My back arches as he curls a fist around me, tight and hot, and works me achingly slow, until my
head’s thrown back and I’m bracing myself. One hand on his knee and the other pressing up against the ceiling with all my might.
And then less than a second later, I’m shooting hot jets of cum across his chest. Hitting his chin, spurting out the last of myself right into his hand. We stare at each other for a second, jaws hanging open in shock. I can feel myself blushing so hot it almost hurts.
“Oh my God. I just…it was so good and you’re so hot and I was thinking about you jerking me off and it felt too good. I was too wet, and you were too strong and I just…Oh no.”
I hide my face with a hand, but he laughs and pulls me down onto his chest, to rest against him as he breathes. I can feel the cum cooling on his skin between us, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“We have all night. Trust me, that was hot. Honestly, I think I could probably finish too. If you gave it just a little more wiggle up there.”
I snort, still hiding my face against his chest. But his voice is serious.
“Hey. Hey, Christian, I need you to understand this. That was a turn-on. I know you’re good for another one in what five or ten minutes? All I did was touch you, and you came for me. A dick I never even thought I’d get to see hard and it just shot a load right off the bat. Because of me. That’s hot. That’s how much you wanted me. Like somebody who’s never had sex before! You wanted it so bad that you came! It makes me feel loved. And very horny.”
I laugh, still sniffling, but he’s convincing. His cock, still bouncing against my ass, hard as steel, is more than convincing. Finally I relent and give it a little experimental rock. The instant moan it elicits is reward enough to get me back in the game. First, riding along above him and then, oh, glory, my cock swelling hard again, on his chest. Already.
“Is that normal for you? You’re even hotter than I could’ve…”
I snicker as he groans into my chest, but I’m proud.
“Look at it, Christian. It’s beautiful. Apparently magic. And it’s all mine.”
