Chapter Twenty #2
My eyes open and I see him standing above me, head thrown back, eyes closed and a look of pure bliss on his face.
His chest heaves with each breath he takes and he keeps on saying my name, low and husky and dreamily, almost like it’s a mantra.
Again and again and again until I don’t think I can take anymore.
I swallow and then move back, taking him out of my mouth. Bringing a hand to his base, I look at his dick and go about licking up traces of him I spot.
“Oh, fuck, oh.” He trembles and falls back on the bed, forcing his cock out of my hand.
“You okay?” I ask, wiping at my chin and the corners of my mouth.
He finally gives me his eye contact. And a great big goofy grin.
“Fuck, yes. I am more than okay. That was… that was… very good.”
Sitting back on my heels, I smile back at him. “I enjoyed it too.”
“Really?” Marcello straightens up. “I wasn’t too rough?”
I shake my head. “I like it rough.”
His eyebrow arches. “You do?”
I look down at the floor. “I mean, I like it… not rough too.”
“I’m learning a lot about you,” he says and that pulls my gaze back up to him. He’s smiling gently, his eyes still shining but his lids are a little lower than they were before.
“And did you… did you learn anything about… yourself?”
“You mean, am I queer?”
Hearing him say it out loud makes me realise how intrusive it is of me to want to know that, to even hint at asking him that. “You don’t have to answer that. You don’t have to tell me anything, in fact.”
“Honestly, I’m not sure I could even spell my own name at this moment in time.” Marcello rubs a hand across his forehead. “I haven’t come like that in a long, long time.”
Pride makes my chest swell and I look down again so I can hide the smile on my face but Marcello’s hand is quick to grip my chin.
“You don’t need to act coy,” he tells me. “You deserve to feel very proud of what you just did to me.”
It’s funny hearing him say that because even though I am still fully erect, still feeling desire pump through my veins, it feels like he just did something to me.
Still, I know exactly what I’m going to think about later when I can finally get myself off.
I know exactly what noises I’m going to replay, how heavy and thick he felt on my tongue, what those meandering veins felt like on my lips.
“I’m just happy you’re happy,” I tell him honestly and yet it still feels like a lie. Likely because I’m holding so much back.
“I should…” Marcello looks around my room. “I should go clean up.”
“Right, yeah,” I say, finally getting up off the floor. I spare only a fleeting thought at what my crotch looks like with my hard-on stubbornly refusing to go anywhere. “Bathroom is the first door on the right.”
“Great, thanks.” Marcello leans forward, gathers his jeans and boxers and then walks out of the room.
Despite everything I’m feeling, I’m glad for this distance. With Marcello in the bathroom, I can just feel what I feel without worrying about what it’s revealing on my face or in my body. Because I am feeling a lot and hiding it from Marcello is getting harder and harder.
He may have embarked on this to find out if he’s sexually attracted to men, but I agreed to do it because I wanted to confirm that I was attracted to him.
Which is so laughably idiotic. I already knew I was attracted to him.
I knew it like I knew my name. I knew it like I know the protein content of any given food and how to do weight maths.
But now, now I feel it. Now I’ve given it space to not only root itself inside my body, inside my fucking heart, but to start to grow wild and unrestricted.
I close my eyes. “I am such a fucking idiot.” I groan.
Maybe, I think with equal amounts of dread and hope, Marcello will walk in here and tell me that he doesn’t think that he’s queer after all.
Maybe he will simply decide all he needed was a blow job and a little intimacy and now he’s scratched that itch, he’s good to go back to his hetero ways.
Maybe this was our first and last lesson and we can put this whole episode behind us and just return to being gym buddies.
And yet I know deep down nothing will change for me. Marcello may be able to move on now but I won’t. At least not without a struggle. I guess the first step has to be stopping his sex lessons.
“Are you alive?” Marcello’s voice opens my eyes. He’s standing in the open doorway, fully dressed, looking down at me with a smile that is half-concern, half-amusement.
“I think so,” I say and push up on my elbows.
“Well, one part of you certainly is.” He nods at my crotch and my eyes follow the gesture.
“Nope. That’s definitely very alive.” I sigh but then sit up further and put my hands on my knees ready to push up and stand.
“Want me to help you do something about it?” Marcello asks.
I turn to look at him again. “Pardon?”
He takes a few steps into the room. “I could… you know. Help out.”
“Oh, no, it’s okay.”
“I mean, I may not have your oral skills but I have years and years of being great friends with my fist and he’s served me well so far.”
Oh, great, a pity hand job. My favourite.
I shake my head as much to refuse his offer as to try and shake off some of the unwarranted bitterness.
“You really don’t have to. I’m sure you have better things to be doing.” I stand up and turn to face him.
Marcello’s face falls. “Actually, I don’t. I kind of… I thought I’d be here for the rest of the day.”
“Oh,” I say, stunned into not having any other words.
“But if you’re busy, I can go.” He sticks his thumb out and down the corridor behind him.
“I’m not busy, I just…” I begin, ready to tell him how this isn’t going to work. That I’ve changed my mind. That this really isn’t a good idea at all.
“We could watch a film?” Marcello suggests and I couldn’t have been more surprised even if he asked me if I wanted to knit a jumper with him.
“A film?”
“Yeah, you know long-form moving pictures that last around an hour or two, sometimes made with huge budgets and sometimes done on an indie scale.”
When I smile at him, although it’s deliberately disingenuous, it feels like a relief to move my face in that way.
“I am aware, but more I’m surprised you want to watch a film with me.”
“Well, you won’t let me wank you off so…” Marcello shrugs with all his trademark physicality.
“It’s not that I won’t let you…” I begin.
“You don’t want me to,” he holds his hands up, “I get it. I’m a rookie. It would probably be awful.”
“I don’t think it would be—” I stop myself before revealing too much. “I just… I’m just feeling a bit weird.”
“About blowing me?”
“No,” I lie.
“About not coming?”
“Maybe,” I say unsure how true it is.
“Well, obviously that will be lesson two,” Marcello says with a confident smile. “Which can be whenever you want it to be, by the way.”
The ball couldn’t be more in my court if he’d thrown a basketball right at me. Now is exactly the time I need to tell Marcello that this isn’t going to happen again. That I can’t give him these sex lessons. That I need to stop so I can hold onto whatever sanity I have left.
“Okay, I’ll let you know,” I say instead.
“And now? Movie time?” he asks hopefully.
I feel my shoulders sag in something like defeat but it also feels good, like surrender. “Yes, I would like to watch a film with you. I could… I could even make some popcorn?”
“Now you’re talking!” Marcello rubs his hands together. “In the living room?”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer. He turns on his heel and walks out, leaving me standing in the middle of my bedroom feeling like a fool. A fool who still has a very big hard-on.