Chapter Eight - Asher
CHAPTER EIGHT
Asher
I DIDN’T WANT to wake him, so I wait until he stirs in my arms before I close my eyes.
Paul makes a soft groan, his leg and arm strewn across me, stretching. I do my best to be still and even out my breathing. He peels away from me, he yawns, and there’s quiet. Then a kiss to my forehead, sweet, soft. Then he’s up. A few seconds later, I hear the shower running.
I open my eyes. I reach for my pack, light one up, and lie there, bluish smoke exhaling up toward the ceiling.
I think about how disorienting it is to wake up in the bed you won’t be sleeping in that night.
It presents itself with an urgency and a dread.
Except I’ve been awake all night. I feel as if I could stay up for days. Here. Just running on fumes.
My mind idles and wanders right into what would happen if I didn’t show up tomorrow. Absolutely nothing. I’m all caught up. There’s no one to look for me. No one to miss me.
Except for the guy in the shower. I let myself warm to that thought—as much as I want to fear it.
But if I were to get him back late, his aunt might be upset with me. I shift with the discomfort of that thought, about how I’ve taken her nephew off into the wilderness and fucked him, but that honestly was not my plan.
It really wasn’t.
I just wanted to be alone with him. Really alone. Completely. Somehow I thought I’d feel better. My head would clear out here, and it did, until now. Until last night. Why must I complicate things? It’s like I go through life just handing out invitations to trouble. And it always RSVPs.
I hear the shower cut off, and I stub out my cigarette. I lie back down and close my eyes. A second later I hear his bare feet on the rug, feel the bed sink beside me. He lies up against me, his skin clean and cool, and a feeling deep in my chest expands.
I feel the lightest touch on one eyelid. Then on the other. His lips. I pretend like I’m waking up, but I keep my eyes closed. He presses his hard chest to me and his hard dick. I turn over, make a great show of resisting, but there’s no way he can miss the smile on my face.
He cuddles up to me, long limbs wrapping around me, and wet hair brushing over my shoulder.
I grunt.
He kisses the back of my neck.
I sigh.
And then we’re still for a few minutes.
I rub my eyes and turn to him slightly. “Good morning.”
He peeks at me from over my shoulder, shakes his head.
“It’s not a good morning?”
“It’s not morning,” he says. “It’s noon.”
“Ah.”
I turn so we’re facing each other. I like seeing him in the daylight, all naked. His slim body, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, and my thumb tracing a trail of dark hair from his navel to his crotch—where his dick waits in anticipation. I make it keep waiting.
His eyes blink slow and sleepy, head resting on his elbow.
If I was some kind of Rembrandt, I’d paint him like this.
Life-sized. People paint all kinds of stupid shit, like bowls of fruit and flowers, but what about this?
I run a finger in a slow path from his cut jaw to his taut thighs. What about this?
Is there a way to capture it? In paint, in measures, in clay. Is there a way to put it all into a medium, translate what I see and how it makes me feel? Because I feel…
My heart stutters. Yes. Yes, if I were any kind of artist, I’d memorialize him this way, to remember him on the afternoon after, and I’d never have to lose this moment. It’ll be mine forever. It would be the only thing I’d let myself keep.
Without thinking, I pull him up against me, as close as I can possibly get him, as if he might vanish into thin air. He’s gazing at me in that steady way he does sometimes, so serious. In the way he looked at me out by the lake, when I promised him I wouldn’t let him go.
I won’t let you go…
The part of me he touched last night with those words seems to open up like arms for an embrace.
“I’m not sore anymore,” he whispers against my lips.
And that, when he does that, when he says those things to me or when he gazes at me with those soft green eyes, like I’m the best thing.
Like there’s nothing else or no one else he’d rather see.
I love it and I can’t stand it. I get this kick, this jab, that I’d do anything for him.
I kiss him so deep I’m near drowning. Fuck, I’d do anything.
His fingers wrap around my cock, getting me more aroused than I already was. I grab his ass, he groans in my mouth, and tries to get underneath me.
But, I don’t know. My senses come back. The spell breaks like a glass knocked off the table. I slow our hungry kiss, pull away from him.
“We need to get back,” I say.
The disappointment on his face is obvious.
“It’s not that I don’t want to, pal….it’s just…”
“Just that it wouldn’t be quick.” He tilts his head a little.
“Would you want it to be?”
“No.”
I run my fingers through his damp hair. “We’ll save it then. For when it doesn’t need to be quick.”
He gives me a small smile, then he’s up, getting dressed.
And my painting is ruined.
One thing is for sure: I will never be able to escape.
Months from now, years from now, I’ll still be held captive.
I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, aching and sweating, and I’ll chain smoke until my lungs give out.
I’ll desperately search in one of those joints in the city for someone to fill the void.
I might even fuck some guy like he’s never been fucked before, but it won’t be enough.
I’ll be an empty shell afterward and then I’ll find myself just going along — riding, walking, talking — and suddenly, like a flash of lightning, I’ll be struck with a memory.
Sight, sound, scent. And I’ll be shackled and caged, unable to get away from the sound of his voice, the light of desire in his eyes, and the feel of him in my arms.
And the thing is, he’s got no idea.
Not a clue.
He even says to me, when I get us back that afternoon, standing in front of me with those big doe eyes, his thick hair neat as a pin, and his clothes all neat too, like he’s stepped out of a catalog—and it’s amazing, just fucking amazing that he can look that way— and so he’s standing there, right in front of me, and he says,
“Don’t worry. I won’t start bothering you or anything.
Just because…” He stops there, pushes up those glasses and that, that makes me want to grab him like a bandit with a sack of money, run back to the cabin with him, and take his body, his heart, claim it all for my very own.
Mine, mine, mine. The greed inside me, it’s the deadliest of the sins, so I might as well choose my own coffin.
But he says that to me.
Bother. What kind of shit is that?
But I say, as smooth and cool as I can manage, I say, “It’s okay, pal. I’m not bothered.” I wait until those soft green irises meet my own. “Not at all.”
His expression lightens, and he leans toward me like a flower toward the sun.
I look around us, wary. “Next weekend, huh?”
He nods, a private smile on his lips. “Can I come by before that? I promise I won’t stay long. Just to say hi…or…?”
What I want to say is yes. I want to say that I want him in my bed every single night.
I want to say that I can’t wait. I don’t want to go even an hour without feeling his lips on mine, hearing his voice.
Getting that slim hard body beneath me, those long limbs wrapped around me, making him come like he’s never come before, watch those eyes look up at me like shining emeralds, begging me for more, pleading with me to need him and want him like air and water and the still summer nights.
I’m tumbling down a hole and there is nothing to catch me. Can’t he see it? I feel as if it’s radiating from me like molten lava. I feel as if this storm he has so effortlessly whipped up within me is right in front of his face.
But he doesn’t know, that’s the thing of it. He’s got no idea.
And I don’t think I’m that smooth.
So, while the still and stony place he’s awakened inside me roils and tosses in choppy waters, aches and yearns, begs and pleads, old habits still refuse to die.
Old wishes refuse to be put aside. And so, with considerable effort, I say, “Might be good if you spent some time with your aunt this week, pal.”
The hurt that flickers over his face just about tears my heart in two.
“Yeah,” he says. Pushes up the glasses. “I should.”
“It doesn’t mean that —”
“No, I know.” He steps away. “I understand. I guess I’ll see you.”
And then he gets the pastel purple suitcase and he’s gone.
On Tuesday, when I get home from the garage, I take a shower.
I attempt to jerk off in the heated steam, but I fail. Twice. I sit on my bed after in a state that I can’t define. It’s like when I’ve gone too long without a smoke. I get jittery, irritated, and there’s an ache in the back of my throat.
And now I have another kind of ache.
Propelled by an unseen force, I get dressed. I walk out of my apartment. I walk across the alley. I walk over to the gate. I open it. I walk across the yard. I walk around the house to the front door. I knock.
Paul answers almost immediately.
“Hey,” I say, surprised.
“Hey,” he says.
“Are you busy?”
There’s a wariness in his eyes. “No.”
“Cool.” I pause there and feel the jitter of nerves. “Want to do something?”
He nods. “Okay.”
I nod. “All right.”
He calls inside to his aunt, and then he follows me to my apartment, his hands in his pockets, eyes cast down. When we get inside, and I’ve got the door shut, he’s still standing that way by the coffee table.
“Gets kind of boring around here,” I say lightly.
He nods, keeps his eyes on his feet.
“Something wrong?”
Head shake.
“You sure?”
He looks up finally. “I didn’t think I’d see you. Not until Friday.”
“Well.” I shrug and glance around at anything but him. “I suppose I missed you.”
He presses his lips together, stands a little straighter.
I stare at him. “What?”
“Please don’t mess with me. Okay?”
“What?”