9. Theo
THEO
His hand is on my throat.
His hand is on my throat, he said come here, I came, and now we're a foot apart in a rented room above Water Street. A lamp on a cheap table. A duvet the color of nothing. His hand on my throat. I'm shaking.
I'm shaking hard.
I'm shaking the way I haven't shaken since I was twelve and Paul left me on a lake with a fishing rod and no jacket. My hands shake at my sides. My knees shake inside my jeans. My teeth would shake if my teeth weren't clenched so hard I can taste the enamel.
I'm terrified.
I'm terrified and I'm not leaving. Those two facts are in my body at the same time.
My skin is hot where his palm is on my throat and cold everywhere else.
My chest hurts. My mouth is dry and wet at the same time.
My hands want to be on him. My hands have never wanted to be on anyone and they want to be on him.
I don't know what this wanting is. The not-knowing is worse than the fear.
His thumb moves.
Half an inch along the line of my jaw. Very slow. A test.
I make a sound.
I didn't mean to. It's a small sound, a half-breath, a half-word.
He hears it. His pupils do a thing. The green-brown of his eyes goes almost black around the edge of the brown.
His mouth opens a little. I watch the shape of his mouth open because I've been watching the shape of his mouth for a week without letting myself call it watching.
“Laurent.”
“Maddox.”
“Look at me.”
I am looking at him.
“Good boy.”
My stomach drops how stomachs aren't supposed to drop.
A drop like the top of a hill on a bike.
A drop like missing a step on a staircase.
A drop and a pull at the same time. The pull is in a place I didn't know was a place, low in my belly.
My hands make fists at my sides because my hands have to do something.
He sees the fists.
He looks down at them. He looks back up at me.
“Hands,” he says.
“What?”
“Give me.”
I lift them. He takes both my wrists in one of his, not hard, just holding. The hand on my throat moves to my jaw. He tilts my head back an inch.
He kisses me.
I haven't been kissed.
I've read about kissing. I've seen it in hockey girlfriends' tagged photos and late-night movies my father doesn't know I watch.
I got told by a girl in tenth grade named Brianna that she wanted to kiss me, and I told her no, politely, and I was grateful for the hand Paul had on the back of my life that gave me a reason to say no.
I haven't been kissed.
Maddox Creed kisses me.
His mouth is warm. His lips aren't soft.
A day of stubble on his jaw catches the corner of my mouth.
The touch is a small fire. My knees do a thing my knees have never done.
He's very close. He smells like gym sink water and soap and something underneath that's a man who's worked a day. He tastes like nothing and like heat.
I make the sound again.
He smiles against my mouth.
He pulls back half an inch.
“There it is,” he says.
“What?”
“That sound.”
His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth.
“I'm sorry.”
“Don't be sorry.”
“I didn't mean to.”
He tilts his forehead into mine.
“I know you didn't mean to. That's why I want it.”
He lets go of my wrists. He puts both hands on my face. He looks at me.
He looks at me like he can't believe I'm in front of him. The look isn't soft. It isn't cruel. It's a look I'll think about for ten years.
“Tell me what you want,” he says.
“I—” My mouth has gone dry. My tongue is too big. I've had precisely one kiss in my life, fifteen seconds ago, and Maddox Creed has asked me to tell him what I want.
He waits.
“Laurent.”
“I don't know.”
“Try.”
I close my eyes. I open them.
“I want to be here.”
“Good.”
“I want you to—”
His hands on my face don't move.
“Yes?”
“I don't know what the thing is called.”
His mouth does something that's almost a laugh but isn't a laugh. He doesn't laugh at me. He's decided not to let me hear it yet.
“That's okay,” he says.
“It is?”
“Yes.”
His forehead comes down to mine.
“You have to tell me what to do.”
“I will.”
“I don't know how.”
His palm warms against my cheek.
“I know you don't. That's the whole point.”
He takes a breath.
He lets it out.
His voice changes. Quieter. Slower. A weight in it that wasn't there on the pier or in the hall or at the door. Something he's been holding back. He's not holding it anymore.
“I've been at a run since the second you walked into the Guild Arena,” he says. “Do you understand what I'm telling you?”
“No.”
His jaw works.
“I've been furious since your dad put you on the ice.”
“I know—”
“Not at you. At him. At what he's doing. At the fact of you. The fact of you is a thing that's been eating me all week, Theo, and I'm done pretending it isn't. I've got one way to put it down tonight. Do you understand?”
His thumb stills against my jaw.
“Tell me.”
“I want to put my cock in your mouth.”
My knees do the thing again.
I'm standing in the middle of a rug the color of a bad hotel, and Maddox Creed has just told me, in a voice I've never heard any man use on another person, that he wants to put his cock in my mouth.
The word he used was cock.
Not a soft word. Not a medical word. No sentence built around the thing he meant. He said it flat. He looked at me when he said it. He looked at me to see what my face would do.
My face does something.
I don't know what my face does. I can feel heat on my cheeks. Heat at the back of my neck. Heat at a place low inside me that's new and not new, the place where the pull is.
“Okay.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
His hand finds my hip and settles there.
“Say it out loud, Theo.”
“Yes.”
“Say the sentence.”
I breathe four in. Seven hold. Eight out.
I say it.
“You can put it in my mouth.”
He closes his eyes for one second.
Just one second.
When he opens them, his hand goes to his belt.
He unbuckles the belt.
He does it slow. He's not performing. He's doing it slow because he knows I haven't seen this before and he's giving me the time to watch.
I watch.
The buckle. The leather tongue out of the frame. The click of metal. He leaves the belt in the loops and opens the top button of his shorts. The black elastic of his compression layer is just under the shorts. He puts his thumb in the elastic and stops.
He looks at me.
“On your knees, sweetheart.”
The word does a thing to me that words aren't supposed to do.
I go to my knees.
I go down on the rug in front of him. The rug is cheap. My knees feel the hard wood of the floor through it. The rug smells like carpet cleaner and not enough of it. My hands are shaking on my thighs. My breath isn't four-seven-eight anymore. My breath is nothing. My breath is gone.
He looks down at me.
His whole face softens for half a second when he sees me on my knees. Just half a second. I see the soft thing before he puts it away. Then his jaw is set and his mouth is a line and his hand is back at the waistband.
He pushes his shorts down.
He pushes the compression shorts down.
His cock is hard.
I'm looking at a cock that isn't mine for the first time in my life.
It's hard because of me. The fact of it doesn't fit inside my head all at once.
I have to look at it in pieces. The length.
The curve. The vein along the underside.
The foreskin partly back and the flushed head.
The dark hair at the base. The heavy weight of it jutting at me from his hips.
His hand comes into my hair.
His hand is big. His fingers slide up the back of my head. His palm settles. He doesn't pull. He just holds.
“Look at me, sweetheart.”
I look up.
His face is above me. Green-brown eyes. Mouth a hard line. Hair damp at the temples.
“Open your mouth.”
“Okay.”
His hand in my hair flexes once.
“Relax your jaw. I'm going to use it.”
“Okay.”
His eyes hold mine.
“One rule. If you actually need me to stop, you tap my leg twice. Twice. Hard. Hear me.”
“I hear you.”
His grip in my hair tightens.
“Otherwise I'm not stopping.”
“Okay.”
His palm settles against the back of my skull.
“Say back the tap.”
“Two taps.”
“Good boy.”
My stomach does the drop again.
He guides me with the hand in my hair.
I open my mouth.
He slides himself through my lips. The taste doesn't match anything I've ever had in my mouth before.
Skin. Heat. A small salt. The weight of him on my tongue is a weight I don't have a word for.
His hand tightens in my hair one degree.
He makes a sound that isn't a word. The sound goes through me from the crown of my head to the place low in my belly where the pull is.
I do what he said.
My mouth. My tongue. My hand on the base.
I do it badly for about ten seconds.
I do it less badly after that.
He tells me.
“Good.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, there.”
His hand tightens in my hair.
“Use your tongue.”
“Flatter.”
“Fuck.”
I'm kneeling on a bad rug in a rented room with Maddox Creed's cock in my mouth.
He's saying fuck. He's saying good. He's saying there.
Every word is a small instruction. I'm following every instruction.
Every time I follow an instruction his hand in my hair goes half a degree tighter.
My jaw is open and wet. My chin is wet. I have never been more turned on in my life.
I'm achingly hard.
Hard in my jeans in a way I haven't been hard before.
I've been hard alone in my bed thinking about the sentence the only person who fucks Theo is me for an entire night.
I've been hard alone in my bed thinking about Maddox Creed's hands on a bar stool.
I've been hard. I've handled myself. None of it is this.
This is a different kind of hard. A hard that has nowhere to go and I don't want it to go anywhere.
I don't want this to end. My jaw is starting to ache.
My eyes are starting to water at the corners.
He pulls me off him by the hair.
I gasp.
“Breathe,” he says.