Chapter Nineteen
Marcello
Warm. Soft. Slick. And hairy. Very hairy.
That’s what kissing Giles’ mouth is like and I don’t hate it. Even the coarse tickling of his moustache against my top lip adds something after I’m over the strangeness of it all. And I do move past it pretty quickly, especially when he opens his mouth and starts to kiss me back.
When our tongues touch for the first time, I finally realise what he said is going to be very true.
Sex with a man isn’t going to be that different to sex with a woman.
Skin is still skin. Tongues are still tongues.
And kissing is still pretty nice when somebody meets you in the middle, which is exactly what Giles is doing as he matches the flicks of my tongue with his.
When I suck his bottom lip into my mouth, his warm exhale lands on the tip of my nose.
When I bring a hand up to the side of his face and angle his mouth exactly where I want it, he leans into my touch.
Suddenly a soft but unexpected beeping noise forces me off him.
“Is that your fire alarm?” I ask, looking around us. “Because if it is, you need an upgrade. It is nowhere near loud enough.”
When I look back at Giles, I see pink in his cheeks. “It’s not my fire alarm. It’s… it’s my heart rate monitor.”
He holds his right arm up and I see a heart flashing on the black screen of the device.
“My heartrate went above 120, which it thinks is unusual because I'm not actually moving right now.”
I want to ask if he thinks it’s unusual. Has this ever happened before? With someone else? Or is this kiss special?
Of course it’s not. Of course this probably happens all the time. This kiss is not special. I am not special to Giles.
“I’ll switch it off,” he says. “The volume, I mean.”
I smile at him after he’s fiddled with the side of the monitor and I have the horrible thought that this kiss is now over. Because that’s not what I want. I want us to kiss more and more and more and…
He grabs me. His mouth pushes up against mine.
I feel the heat of him everywhere – on my chest, on the tip of my nose as he sucks on my bottom lip, and on my waist where he has a hold of me.
It’s like we pick up exactly where we left off.
Our heads move, our tongues touch, our lips don’t want to be apart.
He hums into my mouth and I swallow the sound down.
I moan as his hands lower, gripping my backside…
It's then that I become acutely aware of where our bodies are touching. Chest to chest, his hard stomach to my soft belly, and our dicks mere centimetres apart. Mine is swelling quickly in my jeans and pressing against Giles’ hip.
And I can feel his, rock hard and pushing up against my thigh.
It’s so there, and so hard and so obviously in need of attention and I…
I jump back, breaking the kiss.
“Shit,” I say. “Sorry.”
Although I’m not sure what I’m apologising for. Giles is certainly clueless that I just freaked out at the idea of touching his penis.
“Are you okay?” he asks as he brings a hand to his mouth and swipes his fingers across his lips.
“Yeah, I…” I bring a hand to the back of my neck. “I’m fine.”
His hand comes to my elbow. “Marcello, this is only going to work if we’re honest with each other.”
“Is that another rule?” I ask, teasingly, grateful for an opportunity to ease the tension between us.
Giles crosses his arms and I think it’s fast becoming my favourite look on him. It emphasises his muscles. It embodies how in control and self-assured he is. It makes me feel… safe.
Yes, Giles makes me feel safe.
Maybe more than his muscles and suits and confidence, that’s what I like about him. He makes me feel safe. The least I can do is try and ensure he feels the same by being honest.
“I freaked out,” I admit.
“Because?” he prompts, gently.
“Because I felt your… erection.” I point down his body.
Giles looks down. “Oh, that.”
“Yeah, I know it’s stupid after I practically begged you to do these queer sex lessons with me, but I felt it against my thigh and my brain just… short-circuited.”
Giles leans back against the counter behind him, his arms still crossed. “You know, you don’t have to touch it.”
“I don’t?”
“No, especially not today. This is your first lesson, after all.”
“But… but I sort of want to?” I only sound half-convincing.
“You do?”
“Yeah, I just… I just don’t know how.” I rub a hand over my face. “Honestly, I feel like it took me a good ten years to learn how to pleasure one kind of genitalia. The idea of putting in another decade of trial and error doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”
Giles laughs softly and unfolds his arms. He reaches for my hands and holds them in the space between us.
“It won’t take ten years,” he tells me.
I look down at our joined hands and feel another wave of reassurance wash over me. Giles actually gives a shit about me. He doesn’t want me to feel uncomfortable. And God knows he’s going out of his way to help me with this strange request of mine. The least I can do is help it feel good for him.
“Will you teach me how to make you come?” I ask.
Giles blinks in rapid succession. “Jesus, Marcello,” he mumbles.
“What? What did I say that was wrong?”
“Nothing.” He swings our hands. “You said nothing wrong. What you said was very… right.”
“But will you? Teach me?” I ask and I step a bit closer.
“Let’s just start at the beginning. How about today we focus on you, on how you like to be touched?”
“But then I’m not learning anything,” I protest.
“Well, you’d learn if you like being touched by a man?” Giles offers.
How can I tell him that I’m pretty certain I already know the answer to that. If the man in question is him, then yes, I think I’d very much like to be touched by him.
“I guess,” I say, and it sounds like a lie.
“Let’s go to my bedroom,” he says and he releases one of my hands but squeezes the other tighter. He then leads me out of his kitchen and down a short corridor to his bedroom.
*****
While I’ve spent many an hour thinking about what Giles looks like naked and imagining what kind of sounds he makes when he comes, what he looks like sleeping, I’d not given much thought to what his bedroom would look like.
As soon as I stepped into his flat, I recognised Giles everywhere.
Neat, orderly and a minimalist monochrome design, it screamed success and composure.
But his bedroom is not the same. Yes, it’s still tidy and it’s organised and it’s certainly not crowded or overbearing but there’s more colour, there’s more character, and there’s a huge tartan blanket spread over the foot of his bed.
“So you really are Scottish?” I point to it.
“Yes, I really am,” he says with a new softness in his voice. “Dad was from the Highlands and Mum from Edinburgh. Dad took me up to the village he was from a few times before he died, but weirdly, I’ve still never been to Edinburgh.”
“And I thought it was just because you look good in tartan suits.”
“That’s just a happy coincidence.” He smiles as he sits on the bed, leaving me to look around his room. I step closer to a high chest of drawers and pick up a silver photo frame.
“Are these your parents?” I ask.
“Yes, my mum’s pregnant with me in that photo,” he tells me, still soft but now also a little proud.
“She’s beautiful,” I tell him.
“Yes, she was.”
“And you look like your dad,” I point out. Even though the photo is black and white and his father doesn’t have Giles’ moustache, I can see the same high brow, the same short nose and commanding jaw line.
“Who is a little less beautiful,” he adds.
“Not at all. He’s a handsome man, just like you,” I say and put the frame down. “For the record, I’ve always been able to say when a man is handsome or not. But I’ve never questioned that as being a sign I was queer.”
“I don’t think it is,” Giles says. “But I guess others would say it could be.”
I move to sit next to him, suddenly a lot more nervous than I was when I arrived at his place.
All morning I’d been buzzing with energy, with focus.
It was like my ADHD meds had gone on overdrive and I’d had much more than the fitful five hours of sleep I’d had tossing and turning in my bed last night.
I felt alive and ready and eager. I wanted to get all the answers I felt I was missing.
I wanted to find out if what I felt for Giles was a fluke.
I wanted to fuck. I wanted to do it all.
But now… Now that we’ve kissed and I know I like that. Now that Giles has emphasised again and again that I don’t have to do anything I’m uncomfortable with. Now that he’s suggested we make today about my pleasure… I am a bundle of nerves.
“Did you… Did you like our kiss?” he asks, turning his head towards me but not all the way.
“Yes, very much.”
“Well, that’s a good start.”
“Are you going to give me marks out of ten? Gold star stickers when I do well?” I nudge his shoulder with mine.
“Would you like that?”
“I mean, it worked now and then in school for me… Stickers are a huge dopamine hit. Until it didn’t.”
“How about orgasms?
“Teachers weren’t exactly dishing those out at my school.
He nudges me back. “You know what I mean. Would you find them a better reward?”
“Is there a better reward?
Giles laughs lightly and then he gets up. He moves to stand in front of me
“Remember to tell me to stop if something doesn’t feel good.
“Okay, but Giles, what are you…” I stop talking when I see him drop to his knees between my legs.
“I’ll go slow,” he tells me as he coasts his hands up my thighs and towards the fly of my jeans.
And he does. He moves agonisingly slow as his palms warm my inner thighs and his fingers fumble with the button on the fly of my jeans. When he’s finally pulling the zip down, I swear time has stopped, but then I realise it’s not time that has come to a halt, but my breath.