by A. J. Downey
I wrapped my fingers around his cock and massaged him gently to keep him erect, afraid our conversation would sideline things if it continued much longer.
“What about me?” I asked, stroking him. He closed his eyes and moaned, softly grunting as he tore open the condom packet eagerly. He fumbled a moment with the slick rubber, getting it lined up over the head of his dick, and I let him go, writhing a bit eagerly at his side, wanting him so badly.
“You’re unlike anyone I’ve ever met before,” he said, voice shaking with his nerves. His concentration on that borderline edge of loss.
“Oh?”
He got the condom on and got between my legs, kissing me, stroking over my skin with his strong hands, his fingers sure, his palms slightly rough. It was a tantalizing sensation that stoked the flame of my desire for him even higher.
“You’re amazing,” he murmured against my lips.
I smiled, warmed to a steady glow by both his touch and his words. I lay back and pulled him down over the top of me.
He slid his body against mine, thrusting blindly for purchase. It didn’t take but one or two to find my opening. His cock slipped into my pussy and it was like we somehow completed one another, both of us losing ourselves in the moment.
I arched up to meet him, he bowed his head, hissing between gritted teeth, his lips pressing against my skin at the cap of my shoulder.
We danced. Bodies mingling, breathing harsh and clashing, moans following a delightful cadence, rising in pitch the closer I came to yet another orgasm.
He felt incredible moving in and out of me, and I relished holding him in my center. He folded over me, pressing my body into the mattress, and I swear to God, I’d never been closer to a man. I’d never felt so completed by another person, I’d never been so insanely attracted to any other man and “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! Yes!”
I pressed my body against his as I was wracked by another storm surge of pleasure, the waves cresting well above my head and crashing into me mercilessly, cruelly, and leaving nothing but the most wonderful and beautiful devastation in their wake. It was as if Poe’s touch erased every other touch that had come before and as the waves of orgasm carried me to shore, they put me right back in his arms, which curved around my back and shoulders, holding me off the bed as he panted against the side of my neck.
It took me a few seconds to realize he wasn’t moving anymore either. A few seconds more to even realize that he’d come too, with me…
I’d never done that before. Come in unison with someone. It had always been me, then him, or him and me not at all… never together like this.
We both lay quivering in each other’s embrace, panting, incapable of words and that was alright. It wasn’t like I really had the words to describe what it was I was feeling right now anyway.
“God, you feel so good,” he breathed against my ear, capturing the lobe gently between his teeth.
I gasped and laughed at the shower of pleasing sparks that cascaded from the erogenous zone down the side of my neck to curl through my breast and down through my fingertips on that arm.
“So do you,” I murmured, turning my mouth into his. We kissed languidly, and descended from our mutual height slowly, lazily, riding the thermals of our pleasure in a lazy spiral into the river of afterglow.
He searched my face from inches away, smoothing my hair back absently with his hand with such a look of wonder painted on his own features that I had to ask,
“What? What is it?”
“You,” he said steadily as if that alone should answer my question and not just increase my confusion.
“What about me?” I answered almost automatically.
Color creeped up his neck and flooded his face and I laughed.
“What?” I cried playfully. “You can’t leave me hanging now.”
“I know! I know, that…” he trailed off and smoothed fingertips across my cheek as if he were trying to commit this moment to memory before he lost it forever.
“What is it?” I pushed and my tone had grown serious, losing all of its teasing edge, my laughter fled at how serious he’d grown.
“I don’t want to freak you out,” he murmured.
I cocked my head. “It takes quite a bit to do that,” I told him truthfully.
He smiled and it held an almost shyness.
“Can you just trust me that it’s good and not make me actually say it?” he asked.
I giggled and shook my head, biting my bottom lip saying, “No. Just tell me already!” Truthfully, my anxiety was trying to sound the alarm. Preparing me for something awful. Something that was going to wreck me, devastate my heart and I was starting to worry that maybe this had been a really bad idea.
“It’s cheesy,” he warned, and I fought not to smack him and demand he just tell me already.
I lost half that battle and gripping his upper arms where he held himself above me cried, “Will you just spit it out?”
“Fine,” he said. He took a deep breath and I could see all over his face the fear and what he said wasn’t at all what I had expected to come out of his mouth when he blurted, “I never believed love at first sight was a thing until I laid eyes on you.”
I froze and blinked up at him, bewildered.
“What?” I sounded far away, even to myself.
“Shit,” he muttered. “See, I told you I should have just kept it to myself. Now I’ve gone and scared you and I never meant to do that – not in a million yea –”
“Stop,” I ordered him and refused to let go when he went to climb off of me. I wanted him here. Desperately.
“Just, stop,” I echoed and to his credit, he did, staring at me apprehensively.
“I just don’t know what to say, that’s all,” I murmured. His stiff posture eased and he came over me again, smoothing the fingers of his right hand through the hair at my temple in a soft caress.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said.
“Well, maybe I want to,” I said frowning. “Maybe I want to tell you that you didn’t freak me out. That I don’t know quite how I feel yet enough to express it in words but that I feel something deeply for you too. It’s like this leviathan, deep, rising slowly, and I don’t know what it is but it’s not bad. It’s just a mix of a lot of things…” I trailed off and heaved a heavy sigh. “I’m not always good at expressing myself,” I complained. “Not just talking it out like this… but you make me want to try which is a lot more than I can say about anyone else.”
He smiled at me then and said, “Saylor Grace, it may not feel like it, but you did a wonderful job just right there.”
I smiled back and raised my head and neck off the bed and put my lips against his, kissing him slowly.
I fully confess my caginess was borne of habits learned on the street. There were a lot of situations I’d found myself in that you just couldn’t show how much things affected you. To the degree that you never quite felt safe ever letting on how you really felt. Even when you felt the safest you had known in a very long time, if ever.
Poe laid his ear over my heart and listened, eyes closed, while I ran my fingers through his soft hair, stroking the soft strands while we simply silently soaked each other in, and I loved him for it. Loved that he seemed to get it, that he didn’t hold it against me, and that he was satisfied to simply exist in one another’s proximity with no more words for now.
Although, at some point, I felt I would need to come up with the right ones, I didn’t have to for now, and I knew deep down that next time I would have them. Of course, I was really hoping there would be a next time.
I never took things like that for granted. It was one of the quickest ways to get your heart broken.
I’d learned that on the street, too.
13
Poe…
Having her nude body curled against mine as she slept made me feel like all was finally right in my world. Like everything had finally clicked into place and the puzzle was complete.
I’d never been so fucking content in my life, and I wanted to hold on to this feeling forever. I wanted to hold her, love her, and protect her, forever and the cognitive dissonance that these thoughts and feelings were causing was completely out of sorts with the rest of the feel good I had going on which was why I was still awake.
On the one hand, the feelings I had for her were so intense, so real, and they were coming from a place of only my very best intentions. That didn’t stop me from knowing, or second guessing myself to death based on all my training and how things were societally.
I had this driving need to keep her right here, in my arms, and for all the right reasons but I still couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling that anybody from the outside would look at the situation and point out the wrongness of it.
The apprehension that caused was real and for some reason, right this moment, stifling and I felt the pressure, even though nothing had happened yet to warrant it. Just my mind, going off on its own fucking program.
Something it’d done since I realized just how fucking badly I’d fucked up as a kid when it came to that pedophile pastor.
“Poe?” Saylor’s musical voice was thick with sleep as she pushed herself up to look at me groggily.
“Yeah, what’s up, babe?” I asked her and her lips twitched with a smile.
“I could ask you the same thing,” she murmured, and I loved how the glow of her nightlight caressed the side of her face.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’re the one lying awake muttering to yourself,” she said.
“I am?” I asked.
“You were,” she said.
“Sorry, beautiful.” I kissed her mouth, darting forward, a quick press of lips, laying my head back down but the feel of her mouth on mine felt like it could and would linger for days.
“Look, I would never do anything to risk your job,” she whispered and I reached up and caressed the side of her face.
“I know you wouldn’t, it’s not you I’m worried about – well, it is but not in that way,” I said.
“Talk to me,” she begged, her face crumbling into an expression of deep worry.
I hesitated and finally sighed out.
“It’s Karma I’m worried about,” I confessed, finally, and already it was as if a marginal amount of weight, of the burden I carried, lessened.
“Karma? But why?” she asked, pushing herself up into a sitting position. “Seriously, I can’t imagine you doing anything that would warrant Karma to come knocking that hard on your life.”
“That’s just it,” I said, knowing this would definitely be a make-or-break moment but needing it off my chest in the worst way possible.
“What is?” she asked and swallowed hard, the first stirrings of apprehension creeping into those glorious mismatched eyes of hers.
“It’s what I didn’t do,” I said, swallowing equally as hard.
“Talk to me,” she whispered and laid a hand on my chest, over my heart.
I told her the story. Of how I wasn’t one of the kids that’d been molested but of how I liked Pastor Mike, and how looking back now, yeah, I was groomed, and I’d come damn close but as a kid – how I’d lied for him. How I had covered for him and called the boys he had touched liars. How I was afraid everyone would look at me like I’d been molested too and how I hadn’t wanted that. How, no son of my dad’s was that kind of a weakling. How I’d never told the truth and how Pastor Mike had gotten a slap on the wrist in part because of my testimony and how that made it my fault when Bryan McAdams, one of Pastor Mike’s favorite boys, had committed suicide.
“You were just a kid,” Saylor said, and the pain that went through her eyes went right through my heart.
“A cop’s son,” I amended. “A cop’s son, who didn’t do the right thing when the right thing was so obvious and right in front of me! The one thing that might have spared another kid his life if I had only spoken up and told the truth, but because I was afraid of what people might think of me, I didn’t.”
Saylor sat back on her heels in the middle of my bed and asked, “So why did you become a cop then? Because it was expected of you or because you wanted to fix it? Make up for it somehow… did you become a cop for atonement?”
I thought about it, but the truth was right there. I nodded, mutely, but she was right. I had become a cop to make it up to Bryan – even though I knew it was too late for that. That, I’d betrayed my friend and he’d died because of it – all because I was a lying sack of shit.
“That’s something a good person does when they make a mistake,” she whispered and I bit my bottom lip and nodded, afraid that if I said anything more, I was going to lose my shit.
I had never told anyone, not even one of the guys, what I’d done – or hadn’t done, as the case may be.
“Why did you tell me this?” she asked and I swallowed hard.
“Because I don’t deserve nice things,” I said and she smiled down at me sadly.
“Yes, you do, Jeremy Poe. You deserve all of the very best things…” She settled down and laid her ear over the center of my chest. Holding to me tightly.
It was a cathartic conversation, for me, but I couldn’t help but worry that I’d ruined things with Saylor before they had even had a chance to begin. Which I also couldn’t help but feel like if that were the case, I’d earned it… She held to me as I quietly wept into the dark and didn’t have the fucking words to tell her how scared I was to lose her but also just how much I had needed that type of shit off my chest.
It was confusing. Overwhelming. A dark night of the soul… and there would be nothing I could do until each of us had time to process things in our own way. There would be nothing I could do until the chips fell as they may.
When I woke, it was to sizzling and the smells of cooking. I frowned and dragged myself into a sitting position to the sight of Saylor standing in my kitchen in my tee from the night before, smiling over at me as she asked, “How do you like your eggs?”
“You’re still here,” I muttered, scowling, wondering if my mental and emotional overload of the night before had really happened, or if it was just a dream.
Saylor cocked her head and asked, “Because of what you told me?”
Not a dream, but it definitely was going to bear some further conversation.
“Scrambled,” I said, and she smiled and stirred whatever she had going on in the pan.
“No changing the subject,” she said and smiled serenely at me. “What brought that up for you last night?”
I swallowed and sat there thinking about it. Finally, I told the truth which was, “I’m afraid that –” I stopped, even saying it out loud was dicey. Like what if what I was thinking was the truth and I had taken advantage of her? What if they only reason she’d fucked me last night was because she felt like she had to…
“I’m afraid that I’ve misread things and that what I did to you last night –”
“With me,” she said curtly. “You didn’t do anything to me that I didn’t want you to,” she said.
She fixed me with a look and as though she read my mind stated clearly, “What we did last night wasn’t rape.” It was her turn to swallow hard then she added, “I’ve been there, from a cop no less, but you aren’t him. You’re everything and then some of what he’s not and could never be.”
She dropped her eyes and I got up, out of bed and went around into the kitchen – not even caring that I was still butt-assed naked. There wasn’t any way I was going to get hard after what had just come out of her mouth.
“I want to touch you,” I said evenly and she brought her eyes up to mine. “I want to pull you into my arms and hold you tight and promise you that nothing like that is ever going to happen to you again. Not while I’m still breathing.” There was a long pause as we stared at each other in my kitchen and I finally broke it with, “Can I do that? Can I touch you right now?”
Her expression softened, tears glimmering in her eyes as she
took the pan off of the working eye of the stove and set it on a non-working burner before she practically dove into my open arms.
She held me tight, sniffing, and said, “Thank you, for asking.”
“I don’t want to be that guy,” I told her. “I’m actually pretty fucking terrified of being that guy.”
“You could never be that guy, Poe. Not with the way that you are.”
“You want to talk about it?” I asked.
She sniffed and said, “Maybe another time. Right now, I just want you to hold me, then I want to feed your face and then I want you to kiss me goodbye before you leave for work like I’m a regular June Cleaver or some shit.”
I laughed and held her closer, tighter, and rocked her back and forth, twisting from side to side gently.
“The amount of feelings I have for you are insane, and I don’t know where they come from, but it’s like I feel like I’ve known you forever. It’s all so damn intense and real and I’m afraid I’m going to fuck things up but at the same time, I don’t want you to think I’m something that I’m not and I know that’s just as likely to fuck shit up. It’s hella fucking confusing, you know?”
“I think, as apparently the voice of reason between the two of us,” she teased and we both laughed, “that we both need to slow down just a little.”
“What like no more of this?” I asked, gently tipping her face up to mine. I kissed her softly just in case it was going to be my last for the time being.
“Mm, no, definitely more of that,” she said. “I mean that we need to not worry about what anyone else thinks about us when we are both still so worried about what the other thinks.”
“You’re worried about what I think of you?” I asked.
“Well, yeah.”
I chuckled and smoothed some of her blonde beach waves behind the shell of her delicate ear.
“I think the world of you, Saylor Grace. Beautiful, strong, resourceful… You’re the total package for me.”
She rested her chin on my chest and looked up at me and it was both adorable and starting to make my cock stir.
