Chapter Eighteen
Harper
“Only one way to find out, Harp...”
Banks lay atop the pillows, black curls damp against the white fabric beneath his head. Harper rasped his fingertips across his lover’s nipples, so thick and puffy beneath his touch. Banks shivered, a rare moment of helplessness from his cocky lover.
Harper’s heart was still pounding from the intensity of his orgasm, to say nothing of the raw, unadulterated curiosity of tasting his own jizz on his lover’s tongue. Jesus, he’d just had his first blow job. With Banks Principle, of all people.
And now? In a few moments? He was going to give his first blowjob.
To Banks Principle, of all people. He drizzled his hands down his lover’s belly, taut and defined, fingertips tracing the subtle crest and fall of his tensed abs, just above the wispy happy trail that led down into his sweaty boxers.
“I can’t wait, Banks,” Harper murmured, wriggling lower down the bed as his fingertips drifted across the waistband of his boxers.
Banks gave him a doubtful scowl. “Why do I hear a ‘but’ in there somewhere, Harp?”
“I mean,” Harper murmured, dragging the waistband this way and that and admiring the way the outline of his lover’s cock followed suit, left, then right, then back again.
Each time Banks made a face, the bittersweet expression of a lover dancing on the edge between desire and anticipation.
“You promised to tell me about the guy you slept with before me, Banks.”
“I didn’t sleep with him,” Banks grunted as, inch by inch, Harper tugged his boxer shorts down the length of his shapely, if compact, cock. “And ... can we talk about this later?”
Harper couldn’t stop staring at his old classmate’s dick, so perfectly shaped, so silken and smooth, so veiny and tender as the waistband trickled down until his gently furred balls emerged, thick and aching to be relieved. “I mean, you said we’d talk about it after you sucked me off, so...”
“Harp, I would have said anything to have your cock in my mouth!”
Harper chuckled, half-flattered, half-teasing. “Well, good. Let’s see what you’ll say to have your cock in my mouth, Banks.”
“God, you are one teasing motherfucker, you know that, Harp?”
“I’m not, actually.” Harper grunted, doing a little bit of gymnastics to tug his grumpy roommate’s boxer shorts down his lean, athletic legs and off, one slim ankle at a time.
“I’m different with you, Banks. Different than I’ve ever been with anyone else.
Different, even, than I’ve ever been with my own self. I can’t describe it.”
“You don’t have to, Harp,” Banks said, body shifting gently as Harper knelt between his legs. “I ... I feel the same way you do.”
Harper scoffed. “You’re just saying that so I’ll blow you, Banks.”
Banks reached out, big hands cuffing him by the shoulders. “Don’t say that, Harper. Don’t ever say that. I’d never lie to you, never. If I tell you I feel a way, I feel that way. Don’t cheapen what this is just because I want to get off.”
Harper nodded, thrilled by the passion in his lover’s voice, to say nothing of the strength in his vicelike grip. “You really mean that?”
“I’m lost, Harper,” Banks gushed, as if unable to control himself.
“You’ve upended my whole life. Turned everything upside down.
I was one person until I saw you there yesterday, alone in the bleachers, and now I’m someone else.
I don’t know who I am without you anymore, and I’m afraid because . .. because...”
Harper smiled. Heart pounding, blood rushing past his ears, body sweaty and cock limp, he smiled. Banks frowned. “Why are you grinning like that? I’m pouring out my heart to you and you’re ... you’re...”
“Because, Banks.” Harper placed a hand on each knee, feeling his lover’s skin, warm and wet beneath his outstretched palms. “As long as I’ve known you, or thought I’ve known you, I didn’t know you even could feel fear.”
“I never did, before. Now? It’s all I feel.”
Harper ran his hands higher up his lover’s thighs, watching Banks’s balls twitch the higher they rose. “What could you possibly be afraid of, Banks?”
“This is my first time, too, remember? What if I screw it up and you end up hating me forever?”
Harper laughed, squeezing both thighs in the process. “Hate you? I could never hate the man who’s made me come twice in the same day!”
Banks shook his head, as if that wasn’t quite enough. “I want to be more than just the guy who does sexy things to you, Harper.”
“You already are, Banks. Jesus, can’t you see that? I’m here, in your bed, naked and the only thing it feels is right. Even if you dumped me tomorrow, Banks, you’d still have given me the best gift I could have asked for.”
“What’s that?”
“Freedom, Banks,” Harper insisted. “The freedom to be myself. To trust myself with another man. To let myself indulge in something other than fear and shame and self-loathing. That’s more important to me than you’ll ever know.”
Banks nodded, wriggling under Harper’s gentle, teasing touch.
“You ... you’re important to me too, Harper.
All of this...” Banks waved his strong, sinewy arms, shaking the bed beneath them as Harper used the moment to slither both legs beneath his lover’s damp, sticky thighs.
“Is important to me, too. No matter what happens, I want you to know that.”
“I’d know it more,” Harper murmured, thighs beneath Banks’s and hands over the top of them. “If you told me about your Mystery Man.”
“Jesus, persistent much?” All the same, Banks lay back against the pillows, wriggling until his thighs sank atop Harper’s own. “And he wasn’t a man, by any means. I mean, he was legal, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not into some daddy kink, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I mean, for a minute there,” Harper teased, gently inching closer until his sticky, sweaty sack was almost touching his bedmate’s. “But do tell.” He thought he’d be jealous, listening to Banks talk about another man but suddenly? He was all ears.
“He was the busboy. At Burger Barn, I mean. Liked to think of himself as a bad boy. He was on work release, staying at a halfway house while on probation for boosting his neighbor’s car.”
“Jesus, Banks,” Harper murmured, wriggling closer and drifting his hands higher up those long, sinewy thighs. “Did he have a name?”
“Spike, of all things.”
“I call bullshit,” Harper muffed, pinching his lover’s right thigh for emphasis. “This sounds like the plot of some gay porn video you’ve memorized from SpunkHub or something.”
“I didn’t think it was real, either. And he certainly didn’t look like a Spike.”
“No?” Harper was suddenly curious as to what, exactly, his former competition looked like.
“He was small, sharp in some places, puffy in others, with spiky hair and chin scruff, not my type at all but he was only there for a few weeks and then he was done with probation and off back to Kansas or wherever he’d boosted the car from.
We worked the late shift together, spent those two weeks pretty much side by side.
He didn’t talk much, but when he did, it was little innuendos.
I thought he was joking at first, but after a while, I realized he was gay. ”
“Gay, gay?”
“Not out, per se, but definitely not shy about it. At least, not with me anyway. Maybe he knew something was up? Maybe he caught me looking as he mopped the floor late at night? Or the way I watched him carry the trays of burger buns in off the delivery truck when they came in?”
“I thought you weren’t into his looks.”
“I wasn’t, but he was there, you know? Like you and the Speedos guy, my desperation was showing. I didn’t want to show up to college with my V-card intact either, you know?”
“But you’re not a virgin, Banks. Far from it.”
“I’m a boy virgin, Harp. At least, mostly anyway.”
“Define mostly,” Harper murmured threateningly, wriggling his sticky sack against Banks’s.
Banks winced with delight, wriggling back until the delicate pressure of their dueling scrotums made them both smile wickedly. “I’m getting to that, okay? Anyway, on Spike’s last night, we all pied him in the face.”
“Wait, Burger Barn serves pie?”
“No, it’s ... tradition, I guess. Whip cream in pie tins, and when they’re least expecting it, you pie a guy on his last night of work.
Anyway, after pie ceremony was over and everyone else went home, it was just Spike and me as usual.
He was wiping the pie off his face, cleaning it off in the sink in the dish pit.
There was no mirror so he asked me to come over and see if it was all gone.
I told him yeah, there was some on his lower lip and he told me to get it off for him.
I told him to fuck off and we both laughed, but I was still standing there and he asked me, dead ass asked me, if I’d kiss it off for him. ”
“For real?” Harper had quit teasing Banks for the moment, enthralled by the vivid imagery of his wordsmith lover.
“I kid you not. I didn’t know what to do, but it was clear he wasn’t kidding. It felt weird, but not weird enough to stop myself.”
“You did it?”
“I did it, yes.” Banks seemed almost giddy at the memory, as if he couldn’t believe it himself.
“It was weird, and quiet, and soft, for a guy named Spike. He tasted like whipped cream and sweat and nicotine. We giggled, afterward, like little boys lighting firecrackers in the backyard, just waiting to get caught, and he seemed almost sweet in that moment. Vulnerable, at least. I wish I’d known that side of him better, before he left. ”
“Like us,” Harper blurted, suddenly romantic.
Banks started to say something, then nodded. “Yeah, almost. But I know what you mean. If only he hadn’t been so crusty most of the time, and I hadn’t tried so hard to act straight, we could have been better friends.”
“But what happened? That night? After your kiss?”