CHAPTER 3
He didn’t taste like cigarettes; he tasted like oranges.
It took a moment for my mind to catch up, but my body needed no such reflection period. I pressed him against the wall and kissed him back.
He had a practiced mouth, a talent for applying just the right pressure to make mine open. He tilted my jaw and made sparks shoot down my spine with the stroke of his tongue over my lower lip.
He broke away too soon and said, “I don’t smoke either. I just wanted to kiss you.”
“I gathered.” My voice sounded rougher than usual. It was my grandfather’s wake, and perhaps it was disrespectful to get off with a stranger when I ought to be mourning him.
But I felt as though I’d already mourned everybody here; nine years of estrangement will do that to a person. Instead, I found myself mourning an unrealized future. A series of what-if’s that would never come to pass.
I was never around long enough for anyone to stick, and given what I was running from, that was probably for the best, but loneliness, for all its familiarity, had never gotten easier.
Kessian pulled back, his breath a butterfly’s kiss against my lips. I drank in his sea-blue eyes and a mouth shaped perfectly for wrapping around—
Hell. I really needed to get laid more often.
I couldn’t recall if it had been two months or three since I’d last been to bed with anyone.
If flesh had memory, mine often forgot the warmth of a body lying next to mine.
Once upon a time, I’d lived in a big house with many people who hugged me goodnight, patted me on the back for passing exams, punched my arm when I said something insensitive.
Incidental, platonic touches that let me know I was not alone.
Now I was an unfortunate contradiction who at once hated touch and craved it. More precisely, I craved connection, no matter how brief, if only to indulge the fantasy of being loved again. Given the abrasive first impressions I gave off, opportunities for those connections were rare.
I kissed him again. He invited me, with a subtle tilt of his head and arch of his back, to press him against the wall. His breath drew short when I did, a little gasp of satisfaction when he felt my cock stiffening against his stomach.
I shouldn’t risk sleeping with anyone this close to home, even if home was like a stranger wearing a family member’s old clothes. But I wouldn’t be staying long. In the morning, I’d be gone.
Kessian drew back. “Want to blow this popsicle stand?”
My frankness didn’t always serve me well, but it did now. “I’d rather blow you.”
“Ohoho, love that, but, er. You should know— Not possible in the traditional sense of the word.”
“Why?”
“I’m transgender.”
Kessian had taken a humorless day and made me laugh. Plus, he looked like a man who liked having his hair pulled.
“Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to. Hole is hole.”
I kicked myself. My frankness had gone too far. The only thing getting blown now was this situation. Up. Blown up.
Kessian stared at me for a solid five seconds (I started counting) before, to my surprise, erupting into laughter.
“Well, that’s— The first I’ve heard that one. I like it. Very inclusive.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s about a thousand percent sexier than the things most people tell me.”
“Really?”
“Oh, you know. ‘Have you had the surgery?’ Or, ‘I’m bi so you’re the best of both worlds!’ Or my personal favorite, ‘You have titties? Show me.’ You know, treating me like I’m half a man, an exotic fetish or a circus freak. Now, ‘Hole is hole’? Refreshing. Revolutionary. A promising start.”
“I haven’t fucked you yet. It could be tragic.”
“Spoken like someone who’s aware of his faults and listens well to instructions.”
It was rare to find someone who put me so at ease, made banter feel easy, turned the curse of my bluntness into a blessing.
Playing along, I said, “What are my instructions, Your Highness?”
“Hmm.” Kessian tapped his lower lip. He took my chin in his hands, examining me with eyes hungry as the ocean. “Every king needs a throne, and your face looks pretty enough to sit on.”
Heat swelled low in my belly. “My place or yours?”
“Mine isn’t far. C’mon, I’ll drive.”
Mine was in the car park, but then I’d have to introduce him to Lunaris, which always invited awkward questions. I followed him.
Normally, a drive of any length between agreeing to hook up and the sex itself would be an agony of social awkwardness, but Kessian’s old Volvo had a medley of dashboard decorations for conversation starters, and Kessian himself could hold a conversation on his own.
He pointed to George Carvermory’s ramshackle cottage with the bathtub in the garden and nattered about how the man drank a bit too much but played a mean game of backgammon.
He regaled me with a misadventure he’d had in the play park when he’d realized his arse had gotten too fat for the children’s swings and nearly had to call someone to cut him out of it.
He rambled about how good the battered sausage was at the local chippy, Hot Piece of Bass, and joked we could share a conciliatory one if my sausage didn’t go down so well.
I listened along and did not mention that all these places were familiar to me, because through Kessian’s eyes they were all new.
I used to see George Carvermory at Mass every Sunday.
I’d chipped a tooth on that seesaw next to the swings.
I’d eaten fish and chips from Hot Piece of Bass with my family every Friday.
But as we got closer to his home, a stone of dread calcified in my heart.
His was a park home near enough the strid I could hear its water whispering in the trees beyond.
If you listened for long enough, the “babble” of a brook lived up to the name, sounding like many voices all clamoring to be heard from the deep.
It raised the hair on the back of my neck, memories flooding through me just as its icy water once had.
“You all right?” Kessian asked.
His fingers knotted with mine—a warming counterpoint to the cold memory.
I said, “Is this one your house?”
Usually, if you’d seen one park home, you’d seen them all. Not so with Kessian’s.
His had a garden of wildflowers, a sun catcher in every window, and every door painted a different hue. He led me through one the color of baked cherries into a bedroom with so many rich, dark textiles I felt cocooned in his personality.
He turned and untangled our fingers to knot his in my hair instead. The subtle scrape of his nails against my scalp was luxurious, the citrus taste of his kiss exquisite.
His other hand guided mine to his belt. I had to stop kissing to focus on wrenching open the clasp, and his mouth found the precise spot between jaw and ear that sent a cascade of shivers down my back. The heat, which had cooled on our walk, stoked anew.
I’d never been with a trans man, which perhaps should have been something I’d said initially, but my inexperience hadn’t occurred to me as an obstacle.
I said, “What are the rules?”
Kessian paused in kissing my neck to throw his head back and sigh as if I’d said something erotic. “Music to my ears.”
“I like rules. Structure.”
“Pussy’s a yes, anal’s a no.”
“Words like pussy are …?”
“Good. I like pussy. Cunt is best. Rolls off the tongue, has the same oomph as cock, right?” He arched against my hand as I slipped it into the waistband of his boxer briefs. It was gratifying to hear his voice catch. “Never got on with clit, though. That’s my cock, now.”
I slid two fingers between the wet lips of his cunt and stroked along until he shuddered and bucked into my hand. “Here?”
“Yes!” he gasped, murmuring directions into my ear. “Wait. Wet your fingers.”
I took my hand out to suck on them. He watched me, pupils blown wide. I stuck my slick fingers between his legs. He whimpered.
“Better?”
“Yes. That’s good— Wait, slow down a bit. Firmer. Try circular motions—fuck! Yeah. Like that.”
I was grateful for the direction, otherwise lost as to what I was doing, but far too turned on to feel anxious about it. Kessian moaned with his lips dragging hot breath against my neck, which very effectively drowned out the voices in my head and informed me I was doing a good job.
“Still want to sit on my face?” I asked when he seemed warmed up.
He groaned lewdly into my shoulder. “Nope. No. Changed my mind.”
With effort, he pulled away, wiggling out of his trousers and boxer briefs, stripping his shirt off, and rifling through his bedside drawer. I only had a second to admire his figure before he turned, took my hand, and slapped a condom into it.
“I take it you don’t need instructions for this part,” he said as he got onto the bed on all fours.
Both my face and my cock heated to the surface temperature of the sun. Figuratively, not literally.
If not for the fact my clothes made me feel too hot all of a sudden, I wouldn’t have been able to resist unzipping, donning the condom, and jumping him right away.
As things stood, I had to clumsily wrestle out of everything to ensure the sweaty, sensory nightmare of clothes didn’t impede my enjoyment of his body.
Which was a very, very nice body. The heart shape his arse made while bent over was marked at the top by two dimples on either side of his spine, like imprints for my thumbs.
I grasped his hips and positioned myself at his entrance.
He gave his hips a wiggle until his lips enfolded the head of my cock.
“Stop teasing,” he said.
I thrust in. The slap of my hips against him and the pleased cry he let out were both gratifyingly loud, but much as I wanted to hear him make that noise again, I had to pause.
I gripped his hips so he couldn’t move and I could get a hold of myself, bent over him like I was about to bow down in prayer.
The thought had never occurred to me that pussy would feel different from anal, and the sensation of Kessian wetly engulfing my cock made my mind go blank.
A rare accomplishment, given how prone I was to overthinking.
“You all right back there?”