Chapter 25 #2
Aiden blinks, breaking his blank stare before he nods, lips tipping into one of those warm smiles that unravel me.
“Y-Yeah,” he says, fumbling over his words as nerves get the best of him. “I do.”
“Really?”
“Really, Jewels,” he promises, sliding a hand around my waist to pull me close.
“You have no idea how much I want you—want to complete this bond. I’ve wanted to for a while, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up, with us both being guys and alphas.
” I chuckle and he cracks a smile. “I thought you’d freak out about bottoming for the first time, but—”
“Bottoming?” I cut in, my brows draw tight over my smile. “What’s that?”
His grin wavers and soon disappears altogether as he suddenly pales.
“What?” I ask, straightening. “Is it something I should know?”
Sure, my sexual experience was limited to what I’d done with Aiden, but I liked to think my sexual knowledge was far better. I thought I knew everything I should, but perhaps not because I’d never heard the term ‘bottoming’ before, and now Aiden’s looking at me like he’s eaten something sour.
“No, no,” he dismisses, before he pauses and scratches the back of his head. “Actually, yes it is. I just never thought I’d have to explain it to you, or anyone I guess.”
“Is it that serious?” My nerves start to mount.
“No,” he insists, but he doesn’t give me anything else.
Was it a position we have to perform? I doubted it because, as far as I knew, there was no required sexual position to take when mating. As long as we could both bite one another … But Aiden said it was something I was supposed to do, so was it something I was had to perform beforehand?
Whatever it is, speaking about it scares Aiden because he keeps glancing at me with the type of fear I haven’t seen from him in years.
“Just tell me, Aiden,” I sigh when the seconds tick on and agitation replaces my anxiety.
“Well,” he starts very slowly, frowning until an idea seems to take root and his eyes suddenly light up. “When two people like each other very much, they have sex. More often than not, it’s a man and a woman. The man has a penis which he—”
“I know how sex works, Aiden,” I snap, putting a curt stop to his abhorrent version of a sex-ed talk.
Aiden’s frown returns, but this time, it’s more of a pout. “I’m trying to explain it nicely.”
“You’re treating me like a child,” I correct, folding my arms over my chest. “I don’t know what bottoming is, and that’s fine. What’s not fine is you beating around the bush as if I’m incapable of understanding the concept. So, stop wasting both our time and tell me plainly what it is.”
“Okay, fine,” he says, as he too folds his arms over his chest. “The bottom takes it up the ass, Julian.”
It’s terrifying how quickly my confidence withers away. It shrivels like an unwatered plant and reaches the point of no return as his words echo in my head.
Logically, I knew that when two men had sex, the roles had to be decided, and if we were going to do the same, it’d be no different for us.
But for some reason, I’d never considered that fact where Aiden and I were concerned until now.
I’d been excited about the prospect without even entertaining the logistics.
“Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best way to say that,” he says behind a grimace. I hardly hear him.
Roles. In bed. One on the bottom and the other on the top. And Aiden expected me to be the one on the bottom.
Letting Aiden on top of me when we were intimate was one thing, letting him control my body, another, but letting him inside of me? That was … it was …
“You okay, Jewels?” he asks carefully.
“Is that why you always squeeze my ass?”
“No!” he declares fiercely, but he’s blushing, and it’s not all that convincing. “I don’t think so?”
“You don’t think so?” I echo, and as his cheeks pinken, I feel mine doing the same.
“Oh Goddess,” I groan as I scramble back, and it’s like the movement triggers the rest of it.
His words finally register, and I’m soon marching back to put extra space between my body and Aiden’s lewd mind. “I don’t want to!”
“Julian,” he chides, like I’m being silly.
“No!” I shout, taking two steps back for the one he takes towards me. “You want to put your dick in my ass! My ass, Aiden!”
“I don’t want to!” he protests, but when my brows furrow, he groans. “I mean, I want to, obviously! I want to have sex with you.”
“You want to put your dick in my ass,” I accuse and he throws his hands up in exasperation.
“It has to go somewhere, Julian!”
“Okay, so why can’t you bottom?!” I exclaim as I try to cover myself, but I only have two hands. “Why can’t mine go somewhere?!”
Aiden’s exasperation takes a back seat as he snorts a laugh. He laughs and laughs and only stops when he realises that I’m not laughing with him. Then he sobers all at once.
“Julian, please,” he deadpans. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am very serious,” I say, as I look him over. “Why can’t you do it?”
“Because,” he says as if that’s explanation enough.
“Because what?”
“Because!” he groans again, “Julian, you just—”
“I just what?” I snap. When he doesn’t answer, irritation morphs into anger, and then hurt. “I’m supposed to do it because I always submit to you?”
Aiden’s expression drops, turning fearful as he raises a hand. “No, Julian,” he says gently. “Of course that’s not it.”
He inches forward, but stops when I stiffen. His face crumples, turning mournful, as he looks at me like he did that night in the drive-in, only now I hate it because it feels pitying.
“We spoke about that, Julian,” he continues with his hand still lifted like I’m a wild horse he’s afraid of spooking. “You know that doesn’t matter.”
“But it does, otherwise why would you think that I am the one meant to bottom?” I argue, resisting the urge to yell. I want to. I want to yell and run, but what good would that do? “I submit all the time, so I’m supposed to let you have me like that.”
“You say it like it’s a bad thing,” Aiden whispers, and the hurt in his voice makes my chest tighten. It bleeds into the bond and suddenly, it’s so much harder to swallow.
“It’s not,” I mumble as I watch his arm drop. “It’s not, but how else am I supposed to react, Aiden?”
“I get the shock,” he allows, nodding slightly. “I get the fear too. What I don’t get is why you hate the thought of it so much.”
“I don’t,” I protest, because this isn’t hatred.
“Then what is it?” he asks, and I hate how unsure he sounds. “Is it something else?”
Yes. No. Maybe.
I like when you take control, but do I give in to you because I’m supposed to be your Luna? Is that why you think I should submit to you like this? Can’t I submit without being the one on the bottom? Do I have to submit to you in every single way?
Am I the one in heat?
The questions swarm, but I don’t dare voice them.
“No,” I lie. It tastes bitter, but I swallow it. “I just don’t see why it has to be me.”
“It doesn’t have to be you,” Aiden says as he risks a step forward. When I don’t retreat, he takes another. “It doesn’t have to be you, but… I guess I assumed you would want to, and I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have.”
He hooks his finger in one of mine, tugging my arms down with a touch that’s small, but massively comforting. It does more for me than he can ever know.
“When I thought about us mating, that’s where my mind went,” he admits, holding my gaze. “I thought about how we are when it’s just us.”
Those words remind me of the first time he’d said them.
Intimacy with Aiden doesn’t scares me the way it once did. Kissing him is natural now, so much so that we do it all the time, and these days, even those innocent kisses usually end with us doing a little more.
The first time we’d done ‘a little more’ Aiden had made me come just playing with my nipples, and that had been horrifying, yes, but also good. Today was no different. If anything, it was better when he splayed me over the table and took what he wanted, and I … I’d given it to him.
I sigh, carding my fingers through my hair as my entire body slumps.
“What?” Aiden asks, immediately in panic mode.
“I see why you’d assume I’d be the one to be on the bottom,” I manage around the lump in my throat.
“And realising that made you sigh like you just died on this inside?” he counters with an offended frown. “I know it’s not what you expected, but it’s not that bad, Julian.”
“Not that bad?” I counter with a huff. “Try saying that when you’re the one who’s supposed to get fucked by a guy when you weren’t even gay a month ago!”
That makes him straighten all at once as his expression hardens.
“First off, I’m not any guy,” he says as he takes my face in his hands so I can’t look away. “I’m yours and you are mine.”
I swallow past something warm and stupid that erupts in my chest. I try to pull away, but he tightens his grip on me, his gaze like steel.
“And I won’t be fucking you,” his voice drops lower, making me shiver as his eyes slide between mine. “I’ll be making love to you.”
“What … what’s the difference?” I ask, edging back, but for every step I take, he closes the distance until I’m pressed against the column between the kitchen and the living room.
Reacquainting his hand with my waist, he presses me into the wall and his body follows to keep me there.
My breath hitches as he slides a leg between mine, and all too quickly, I’m liquid heat, ready to mould into whatever he wishes.
Instead, he lowers his head to my ear, the rushed breaths that slip past his lips tickling.
“Well, for one, I’m going to pay attention to every single part of you,” he whispers, fingers lifting to brush up the length of my neck. It’s feather light, so gentle that I barely feel it, but the sensation—it makes me feel as if he’s touching me all over.
“I’ll make sure you feel better than you’ve ever felt before, make you feel things you’ve never felt before,” he vows as his lips slide over my ear before he tugs it with his teeth. I bite my lip to stifle a moan.
“I’ll show you exactly how you make me feel,” he continues as he shifts lower to kiss my cheek lightly.
“How much you mean to me.” He moves my shirt aside to press another maddening kiss to my shoulder.
“How badly I want you …” His leg presses harder against my cock and his grip tightens gradually. “… need you—”
He lavishes every inch of my skin he can with devoted kisses, making his way up my neck and across my jaw until finally his eyes find mine. He lets his lips brush against mine, then he looks straight through me, stares into my soul.
“I’m going to make love to you, Julian. And when we’re done, if you want more … then … then I’ll fuck you.”