Chapter 12 #2
I gave him harder, snapping my hips forward, driving into him deep enough to make the headboard creak. He moaned into the pillow, and I reached down, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and pulled his head back.
"Let me hear you."
The next moan came out loud and unfiltered, and I rewarded him with another deep thrust. His back arched beneath me, the curve of his spine obscene, and I let go of his hair to grip his hips instead, to pull him back onto my cock with every forward stroke.
"Fuck, that's—" He couldn't finish the sentence. His whole body was shaking, his hands white-knuckled in the sheets. "Don't stop, don't—"
"Turn over. I want to see you."
He made a frustrated sound but obeyed, rolling onto his back, and I pushed back inside him before he could catch his breath. The new angle was deeper, his legs wrapped around my waist, his heels digging into my ass to pull me closer.
“Look at me,” I demanded.
His eyes snapped open, and my rhythm faltered. My heart did something stupid in my chest, something it’d never done before. It ached.
His hand found mine where it was braced against the mattress, and he laced his fingers through mine. "Slow down," he said. "I want—just slow down. Okay?"
I didn't know how to do slow. Slow meant thinking, and thinking meant feeling, and if I started feeling there would be nowhere left to hide from what I'd done by inviting him here.
But his hand was still holding mine.
I started moving again, slower this time, long deep strokes that let him feel every inch. His free hand came up to cup my face, and he held me there, held me still while I moved inside him, and I let him because I didn't know how to stop him.
"That's it," he said. "Just like that."
His thumb traced my cheekbone. His eyes never left mine. Every thrust pressed my stomach against his cock, trapped between us, and I could feel him leaking against my skin with every movement.
His fingers found my other hand, the one still braced beside his head. His thumb traced the scar on my palm, the old one from the mirror in Vegas, and I flinched.
"What's this from?"
"Nothing." I pulled my hand away.
But he caught it, brought it to his mouth, and pressed his lips against the raised tissue.
Then he laced his fingers through mine again and held on while I fucked him slow and deep, and that was worse than if he'd demanded answers, because it meant he would wait. It meant he thought I was worth waiting for.
I shifted the angle and his breath caught, his body clenching around me.
"There," he gasped. "Right there, don't stop—"
I kept the angle, kept the slow steady rhythm he'd asked for, even though every instinct was screaming at me to take what I wanted.
I wrapped my free hand around his cock and stroked in time with my hips, and his head fell back against the pillow, his throat bared, the cords of his neck standing out as his body wound tighter.
His body arched off the bed. His hand squeezed mine hard enough to hurt, and he came with a sound that went straight through me, spilling hot and wet over my fist and his stomach, his whole body shuddering through it while I fucked him through every wave.
I lasted three more seconds before I buried myself deep and came with my face pressed against his neck, his name on my lips, his fingers still tangled with mine.
Afterward was worse.
He didn't leave. I'd expected him to leave, the way people always left when we were done. Instead he rolled onto his side and looked at me, his head on my pillow, his body taking up space in my bed like he belonged there.
"So," he said.
I stared at the ceiling. "So."
"Can I ask you something?" he said.
"You've been asking me things all night."
"One more." His knee bumped mine under the sheets. "Have you always known? That you were gay?"
I turned my head to look at him. "Yes."
"Like, always always?"
"I knew I was different when I was seven. I knew what it meant when I was twelve." I watched his face. "Why?"
"Just curious." But he wasn't meeting my eyes now.
"What about you?"
He was quiet for a long time, and I didn't push because I was starting to understand that Red would tell me things if I gave him enough silence to find the words.
"I tried not to know," he said finally. "For a long time.
Had girlfriends in high school. Slept with a few of them.
Told myself everyone felt like this, like they were going through the motions, like they were watching themselves from somewhere outside their own body.
" He laughed. "Took me until I was nineteen to stop lying to myself. By then…” He stopped.
"It was too late to start over. That's what I told myself. "
"I've never been with a woman," I said.
Red turned to look at me. "Never?"
"Never wanted to."
He was quiet again, and his hand found mine under the sheets. Not holding, not exactly, just touching, his fingers resting against my palm where the scar was. Like he wanted to ask about it again, but knew I wouldn't answer.
I should pull away. I should tell him to get dressed.
"I'm moving to Colorado Springs," I said.
His fingers stilled. "What?"
"After Nationals. My coach thinks it makes more sense to train at the Olympic Center. Better facilities, better access to the federation." The words came out flat because I'd been practicing them for weeks. "It's more practical."
Red pulled his hand back. The warmth went with it.
"When did you decide this?"
"A few weeks ago."
He sat up, the sheet pooling around his waist, his back to me.
"Cool,” he said coldly. "Good for you."
"Red—"
"No, seriously. The Olympic Center. That's a big deal." He swung his legs over the side of the bed and grabbed his boxers from the floor. "You could have just kept it in the truck. You didn't have to—" He gestured at the room, at the bed, at me. "All of this."
"I know."
"So why did you?"
I didn't have an answer. Or I had one, but it was stuck somewhere in my chest, tangled up with the training schedule on the fridge and my favorite color and the way his hand had fit in mine.
"That's what I thought." He pulled on his jeans without looking at me. "Look, it's fine. We fucked around for a while; you're leaving. I get it."
"Red."
"What?" He turned to face me.
"I'm not good at this," I said.
"No shit."
He pulled his shirt over his head, and when his face emerged he looked different, his expression smoothed out, his jaw tight. He grabbed his jacket from the living room floor and shrugged into it like he was putting on armor.
"I'll call you an Uber," I said.
"Don't bother." He was at the door now, his hand on the knob. "I've got it."
"It's cold. Let me—"
"I said I've got it." He opened the door and stood there for a second, not looking at me. "Good luck at Nationals. I mean that."
The door closed behind him. His footsteps faded down the hall.
I sat there in the dark with the sheets still warm where he'd been, the smell of him still on my skin, the ghost of his fingers still pressed against my palm.
Wonton jumped onto the bed and walked across my lap. He settled against my hip and started purring, oblivious to everything except his own comfort.
After a while, I picked up my phone and stared at the screen. His number was there. I could text him. Tell him to come back. Tell him the real reason I'd invited him here instead of meeting in his truck, the reason I'd let him hold my hand.
I put the phone face-down on the nightstand.
In three weeks I'd be in Colorado and this would be something that had happened, a body in a city I used to live in. That was easier. That was what I knew how to do.
Wonton purred against my hip. The sheets still smelled like Red, like sweat and sex and that cheap soap he used, the kind that came in bulk packs at the grocery store.
I should strip the bed. Wash everything. Put the room back the way it was before he'd seen it.
I pulled the covers up to my chest instead and turned my face into the pillow where his head had been and breathed in the scent of him.