Laurie gripped his shins tighter and fought for breath. “Ed. Please.”
Ed kissed Laurie's thigh, still looking him dead in the eye. “Please what? Kiss you?”
“Fuck me,” Laurie whispered. “Fuck me, Ed.” He cried out when the fingers began to move, pushing deeper and deeper inside him, but it only took a minute of this to drive him crazy. Enough. Enough teasing. Enough chasing, enough everything. He let his feet fall back down to the mattress and pushed up on his elbows.
“Fuck me with your cock,” he said, not in a whisper, then watched, thrilled and terrified as Ed's eyes went dark, and he pulled his fingers away.
Laurie could feel himself open as Ed shed his clothes, as his own erection bobbed into view. His own penis quivered over his stomach, hard and aching and red with the blood of arousal, jerking with Laurie's movements and the flexing of his groin muscles as he watched Ed sheathe himself in latex and smear the condom with lube. His lover's cock suddenly seemed so big, so fat, so full, but Laurie thought about that fat fullness spreading him, filling him, moving inside his heat, and his elbows wouldn't support him anymore. Inside me. Ed, Ed's cock inside me.
He trembled just a little when Ed pulled his feet up and rested them on his own shoulders. This was a new one on Laurie, who had always taken it up the ass on all fours or with his face buried in a pillow, enduring. But yes, Ed would want to watch. Ed would want him to watch too.
And so he did. He lifted his head and looked down as Ed lined himself up, reaching down with one hand to guide the head to Laurie's hole. Laurie got caught up in the fixation on Ed's face, his focus on breaching Laurie—and then he was gasping and pushing down as Ed's cockhead thrust against his muscle.
It was like dancing, in a strange way, and he was following once again. It was his body, his muscles straining and stretching, his tightness, his bowels turned host to Ed's cock, but it was Ed who led, Ed who pushed, Ed who squeezed his calves and held him in place as he gasped and arched against the mattress, Ed who kept on pushing in until Laurie's body swallowed him. It was Ed who led with shallow thrusts until Laurie was moaning and trying to push him deeper; it was Ed who buried himself to the hilt, filling him, Ed who grazed against his prostate, Ed whose hard, full balls nestled up against the flesh of Laurie's backside, Ed who reached down and stroked Laurie's cock gently as he clenched around the welcome invader.
“You ready?” Ed asked, still milking Laurie's shaft.
Laurie slid his hands up his own legs, focusing on the feeling between them, inside him. “Yes.”
And Ed began to move. Slow, smooth, steady—his thrusts were long and deep, but he was moving his hips in a way that was driving Laurie out of his mind, rubbing against his balls, against his perineum, against his insides until he was gasping and crying out with each thrust. When he looked up at Ed with passion-glazed eyes, Ed just grinned.
“Cuban motion,” he said and continued his thrusts.
Laurie had never made so much noise during sex. He watched Ed thrust, and he moaned; he shut his eyes and focused on the feeling inside himself, on the ache of his own erection, and he moaned again. He moaned high, like a whine, like dirty porn on the Internet, his call broken by the increasing thrusts of Ed's fucking. He moaned low on a gasp and grunt, drawing his knees back again and pulling himself wantonly open. He undulated with Ed's movements, dancing again, the oldest dance of all.
When Ed pulled out, Laurie felt bereft, but when Ed turned him over onto his stomach, drawing him to his knees, he went quickly, compliant. When Ed entered him again, he took him easily, moaning like his whore, pushing back to take him deeper. When Ed wrapped his arm around Laurie's waist and leaned forward to growl against the back of Laurie's neck, Laurie gave over. He mewed, he keened, he purred, he shouted, luring Ed deeper, urging him harder, faster, harder with words and with sound and with his soul. And he might as well have been a virgin, because this was sex, sex he had never had, proper animal lust of the kind Laurie Parker had never even dreamed of.
He was anchored.
He could do anything.
And in Ed's arms, Laurie let go, and he flew. He sailed across the Mississippi River, across the hills and plains, over oceans and mountains and up to the stars and comets, and then came back again. He thrust into the sleeve of Ed's hand and cried out as he came, convulsing and milking Ed's cock inside him until Ed too was shouting and bucking, and then, except for breathing hot and heavy against Laurie's neck, he fell silent.
After several minutes, Ed said, his voice raspy and spent, “You okay, Laur?”
Laurie, his bones melted, his muscles slack, his heart pounding like a happy caged beast against the wall of his chest, his backside throbbing and still half-full of Ed, let out his breath. With great effort, he nodded.
Ed kissed his ear, then moved higher so he could give another to Laurie's cheek. “Be right back.”
Laurie lay there, feeling the relief and the loss at the same time as Ed pulled out, lay with his palms pressed to the quilt, to Ed's quilt, lay in the sticky mess of his own semen as the hot fire of his backside, swollen and still open, leaked lube. This was the part he had resented, he remembered now. The mess. The slight squickiness of sex, the sometimes serious squickiness. The awkward part where everyone cleaned up, where he'd stand and find himself involuntarily expelling the air that had gone in with his partner's cock and then, inevitably, had to come back out. His first time with anal sex had seen him padding across the plush carpet of another dancer's bedroom floor, face flaming as he farted his way to the toilet. This was the messy part of sex, and it was, he admitted, the reason he'd worked to avoid it.
Except he didn't care about it so much as he lay there now. He felt the pressure inside him, but he barely glanced to see where Ed was before he let the air out with a soft pop. His face still flamed, but he was so sated he couldn't do much else.
And then he felt Ed's hand on his lower back, felt the soft, warm touch of a washcloth against his skin, and he felt himself sliding under Ed all over again.
Ed cleaned him carefully, thoroughly. He bathed Laurie's cheeks, then his hole, then the sides of his thighs where lube had spread. He turned Laurie over onto his back and wiped up the semen that had sprayed over his stomach, then dabbed at the congealing pool of white on the quilt itself. His eyes met Laurie's, and he smiled.
And Laurie looked back at him and thought, I love you.
Ed bent and brushed a kiss against his lips. “Still okay?”
I love you. Laurie nodded.
Ed lifted an eyebrow. “Can you still speak?”
Laurie opened his mouth, faltered on a breath, then gave up. “I love you.”
He watched the surprise on Ed's face but watched it soften too. He bent again for another kiss, but once their lips had brushed, he nuzzled Laurie's ear.
“Love you too.”
That night Laurie slept naked in Ed's arms, and he dreamed they danced across the clouds, dressed in glittering suits that glinted as they spun across the heavens, and as they passed by, all the angels clapped and cried out in joy.
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* * *
Chapter Fifteen
drop and recover: a modern dance step where a dancer drops to the floor in a controlled fall from a dance position.
Ed had his last checkup three days before Christmas.
Dr. Linnet turned Ed's head to one side, then the other. He ran his hand down the length of Ed's damaged muscle, paying special attention to the area around the spine. Linnet nodded in approval. “Swelling's way down. That's good.” He felt around some more. “How's the pain?”
“Nothing more than a four for the past four days.” Ed kept his eyes fixed on the Ansel Adams portrait across from the exam table, losing himself in the black-and-white mountains. “Just a little sore, really.”
“And you've been keeping up with your exercises?” When Ed nodded, the doctor kept his fingers on the muscle, testing it as Ed moved his head. “How's day-to-day pai
n? Have you been able to resume all normal activity?”
Having lots of sex, yeah. “Far as I can tell.”
The doctor smiled and pulled his hand away. “Very good. Are you still considering the hydrotherapy?”
Tim had been telling tales, apparently. “It doesn't fit with my schedule well.”
“Then you should consider changing your schedule.” He gave Ed a long look. “And you need to get away from that desk job. Keep moving. Get up as much as you can. If you need a note, I'll get you a note. Or how about that speech-to-text software?” Ed made a face, and the doctor sighed. “All right. But I'm telling you, it's the desk job doing it to you, not the Saturday cleaning or the dancing. You're really not that far from disability-level injury, Ed. You say the word, and I'll get the papers started.”
Ed chose to ignore that. “So am I off the hook now for appointments with you or what?”
Linnet grinned. “For now. Go with your body. If you listen, it'll let you know.” He patted Ed on the shoulder as he moved back so he could rise. “Wean yourself back off the pain meds. Take the Vicodin only when you need to, but the rest is up to you. Nothing wrong with feeling it a little, though, as you get moving. That'll help you know when to ease up. And you still have the TENS unit too. That will help you get off the meds as well.”
Ed saluted. “Okay.”
“Take it easy at work so I don't have to see you again until your next physical.”
Hydrotherapy, though, turned out to be not so bad. He had his first session on Christmas Eve, and when Ed had come out of the locker room and seen the incredible collection of old ladies gabbing at the rope, he'd been leery, but he wasn't ten minutes in the water with the therapist before he realized that while those women were gossiping, they were also working out as hard as he did in the weight room. He couldn't believe how much it wore him out to push and pull a foam paddle back and forth under the water, or how his calves would hurt once he got done “bicycling” in the deep water with a float belt on.
“Water has three times the resistance of air,” the therapist told him when he expressed his surprise. “And it displaces gravity, so there's no strain. You'll be wanting some pasta and red meat for supper, as hard as you worked today.”
“And this is helping my neck?” Ed asked dubiously. “I mean, I don't feel it at all there or anything.”
“You're dealing with more subtle tissue here. No, the pool isn't going to give you guns and flat abs. But it will strengthen your core, and it will strengthen the smaller, connective muscles. Just because they're small and don't turn heads when they're pumped doesn't mean they aren't important. For you, Ed, these are your lifelines, especially now. Treat them accordingly.”
Ed felt a sudden rise of, if not panic, at least acute unhappiness. “Are you telling me I can't even do weights anymore? But I teach a class!”
“So teach, but lay off them personally awhile. You can do them, but I want you to work with Tim on what and how and when.”
“But I don't see Tim until you release me back to him!” Ed complained.
Sandy grinned. “Exactly. So we'll see you Thursday?”
Ed bit back his angry retort and said, his jaw half-clenched, “Tim said I could dance.” When she looked at him in confusion, he went on. “Ballroom dancing. My boyfriend is an instructor, and... I mean, he's teaching me, and I—” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I'm not giving it up.”
“You can dance. Just tell your boyfriend no head snaps. And I'd like you to not lift him over your head or anything until middle of January or so. Let's give you a chance to heal up well this time, huh?” Sandy smiled at him. “So do you guys compete?”
Ed blinked. “What? God no.” But then he paused. He remembered that Laurie said there were same-sex competitions. “I mean, we haven't.”
“You should consider it.” She motioned to the water. “Let's do another set.”
When Ed finally got to Laurie's St. Paul studio that night, he was feeling good but kind of jumbled. He kept thinking of what Sandy had told him about the little muscles, and he was thinking about dancing, and he was oddly hung up on the idea of dancing in a competition with Laurie. It was probably a long shot, because Ed really wasn't that good...but Laurie was a good teacher. And if he trained, if he worked hard... Well, if he could get even half as good as Laurie, or got good enough people could see Laurie, he knew they would win. And that would kick ass.
The thought of bending Laurie in a dip while people cheered and judges held up “10” signs like in the movies filled Ed's head, and that was why he was grinning when he rounded the corner to the front door of the building and ran into Laurie's teaching partner, Maggie.
Who absolutely did not grin back.
At first it didn't even register to Ed that it was odd to see Maggie there. It was a dance studio after all. But right about the time he realized she shouldn't be at this dance studio was also when he realized she was mad, so he ended up stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and staring at her in confusion.
She walked right up to him, her heels clicking on the concrete and her coat swinging, and she slapped him.
“You!” she shouted as Ed's hand came up to his stinging cheek. Her face was twisted up in fury, and she aimed a gloved finger at him. “It's all your fault!”
She looked like she might hit him again, so Ed took a few steps backward toward the curb as he held up his hands. “Hey, Maggie, I don't know what's going on, but—”
Her nostrils flared as she cut him off, her breath making bursts of cloud in the cold air. “First he dumped the classes on me because you were sick or hurt or whatever. Which was fine. I got why he had to do it. I didn't like it, but that I understood. But now, this nonsense about quitting our studio to work in this hellhole—this is your doing.” She stormed up to Ed and shoved hard at his chest, nearly pushing him into traffic. “He's throwing away his career! His work! He has talent, real talent, and he's just going to waste it on those stupid hoodlums!”
Ed managed to angle himself back off the street and cast a sidelong glance at the door as he aimed himself toward it. “Right. I'm going to go wait in the studio for Laurie.”
“Maggie? Ed?”
Laurie's voice cut across the cold air from farther down the sidewalk. Ed turned and saw him half a block away, his long coat drifting around him as he hurried forward. His cheeks were flushed red with cold; he'd walked some way to get here. A shopping bag hung from his hand and a cardboard coffee cup from a local gas station in the other, though it had a tea bag hanging off the side. His steps had hurried as he spied them, but as he approached and saw Maggie's face, he slowed, then stopped.
He looked chagrined. And guilty.
Maggie aimed her finger at him now. “You didn't even tell me! You let me find out from your mother!”
Ed waited for Laurie to shout back, but if anything, he shrank. “I know. I'm sorry.” Ed bristled and stepped toward him, but Laurie caught the movement, met his eyes, and shook his head. “It's okay, Ed. I need to talk to her. I should have talked to her before.” He held up the shopping bag in his hand. “Would you take this inside for me?”
Ed took the bag with a nod, hesitating only a moment before he fished in his pocket for his key to the studio and let himself inside. He set the bag down on the counter, but he didn't turn on the lights. Instead he positioned himself in the corner near the window, where the dark-shrouded figures on the street couldn't see him but where he could see them.
He tucked his cold fingers into the pockets of his jacket, leaned against the wall, and watched.
Laurie had walked three blocks and back again, and despite the hot tea in the mug in his hand, his fingers were threatening to fall off inside his gloves because of the cold. But the air temperature was nothing to the frigidity he saw on his teaching partner's face.
“I'm sorry,” he said to Maggie, and he meant it. “I'm sorry you had to find out secondhand. You deserve better than that.”
Maggie shook her
head, still angry, but bewilderment threatened to take over. “I don't understand. Is it something I did? Something I said? I thought—” Her eyes were glassy for a second, and she blinked rapidly before wiping them with a gloved finger. “I thought you liked the way I managed things! You never said otherwise!”
“This isn't about your management, Maggie. This isn't about you at all.” He took a few careful steps toward her. “It's about me. I want a change. I want to do something different. So I am.”
“But you can't just leave me!” She wiped at her eyes again, her voice rising. “What about the spring recital? What about the specialized classes? You can't just leave us in the lurch!”
“I'm not, Maggie,” he said, trying to gentle her. “I'm not giving up all my classes, and I'm not bailing out on the recital.”
“But why do you want to leave at all?” Her expression went angry again as she pointed at the door Ed had gone through. “It's him. Isn't it. It's that big oaf you dance with. This is all his doing, I know it.”
“I'm leaving because it's time, Maggie. Where I'm going and what I'm doing don't figure into this discussion. I won't leave you in the lurch, despite what your dramatics are suggesting, but neither will I stand here and listen to you insult Ed and make ridiculous accusations about this being his fault.”
“But it is! It is his fault! You've been different since the first time you came home from the center. Even when you hated him, you were different.” Her rage had bubbled over, and now the tears flowed freely down her face, her tone going soft and wounded now. “I thought we were partners, Laurie. I thought we were partners.”
For a moment Laurie didn't know what to say. He was still angry, but the look on Maggie's face, the edges of her tone—well, he was stunned. Worst was that he realized that, like he hadn't until just now, she didn't realize how her words sounded. Didn't realize exactly what she meant by “partner.” No, she didn't want to date him. That wasn't it. But she wanted to own him. Until this second, she'd thought she had.
God, his mother was right. He was her trophy wife after all. He wished, desperately, he wasn't here with Maggie, watching his friend of so many years crack away and reveal...this.
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