Chapter 13 #2
He listened in the way he listened to everything that mattered.
Bent his head. Mouth at my hip first. Then the soft inside of my thigh.
Then the base of me, his lips closing around skin only, his breath warm.
He worked his way up to the head slow, the way I’d told him, his eyes finding mine for every check-in.
His mouth was soft and hot and a little wet, his lips dragging against the brown of my shaft, his tongue running shy up the underside vein.
Pre-cum kept coming. He licked it off without lifting his head.
“Good?”
“So good.”
“The metal. Now?”
“Yeah. Tongue first. Don’t.” My voice broke. “Don’t lead with teeth.”
He nodded. His tongue found the ring slowly, traced it to the way you’d trace a word in another language, learning the shape before you tried to say it.
The wet of his mouth warmed the steel. His tongue dipped between the bead and the head of me, finding the spot where the bar passed through.
I exhaled, and the exhale broke. My hand found his hair without my permission.
“Like that,” I murmured the words like instructions to a careful student. “Just like that. Yeah.”
He hummed. The vibration around the metal sent a pulse up my spine that landed in the back of my throat.
“Now,” I said, hoarse. “Mouth. Slow. Let your tongue catch the bottom of it on the way down.”
He took me into his mouth. Slow. The drag of his tongue against the underside of the metal pulled a sound out of me I didn’t bother quieting.
His free hand spread on my thigh, holding me steady.
His other hand stayed flat over my heart.
The wet of his mouth, the warmth, the way his lips dragged against the steel and the slick at my tip and the brown of my shaft, the way he took me a little deeper on every pass.
The choreography of a man who’d been thinking about this on the subway and at his desk and in the shower for weeks.
“Teeth okay?” He pulled off enough to ask. His mouth was wet. His lips a deeper pink.
“Light. Just the metal. Not the skin.”
He took me back in and tested it. Light catch of teeth on the ring, a gentle tug as he pulled back. The metal moved against the head and the head of me kicked against the roof of his mouth and my head fell against the duvet. My voice cracked.
“Christ. Ellis.”
“Good?”
“Don’t stop. Don’t stop, don’t stop.”
He didn’t stop. He worked me with the careful precision he brought to a sprint review and the quiet hunger he never showed.
Tongue, then teeth, then tongue again. He kept his eyes on my face.
I kept my hand in his hair. The amber from the candle moved across his cheekbone every time he breathed.
Spit and pre-cum slicked his lips, ran wet down my shaft, pooled at the base where his free hand had moved to hold me steady.
The wet sounds of his mouth on me were the loudest things in the room.
“Tell me what you’re feeling.” He pulled off a beat to say it. The head of my cock bumped his chin.
“I love you.”
It wasn’t a sex line. Wasn’t a punctuation. It came out of me whole and small, half a confession, half a thank-you for being patient on a thing that had taken me three years to let anyone touch.
He dropped his forehead against my hip and breathed.
“I love you, too.” Quiet. Into the skin at my hip. “Stay with me.”
“I’m here.”
He took me back into his mouth and I came apart in pieces.
Not the choreographed kind. The other kind.
My hand fisted in his hair, my thighs locked around his shoulders, my voice went thin.
He kept his rhythm steady and his eyes open and let me have it the whole way through.
The first spill landed thick at the back of his throat.
The second made him cough small and keep going.
He swallowed what he could and the rest ran down my shaft and over his fist.
When I could move again, I tugged him up.
He came up sticky, pink-mouthed, and a little dazed, my cum still wet at the corner of his lips, and I caught his face in both hands and kissed him hard, tasted myself on his mouth, didn’t let him pull back.
The salt of me on his tongue. The wet on his chin.
I dragged my thumb through it and licked the pad of my thumb clean while he watched me with his eyes blown.
“My turn.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’ve been wanting to.”
I’d been the one giving the directions for an hour. The one mapping his pace. Now I traded it. I tugged him by the hips and laid him back into the pillows where I’d been. I knelt between his thighs and put my hands flat on his hip bones and just looked at him.
He was beautiful like this. Long pale body laid out on the duvet, the geometric sleeve dark against the white sheets, the barbells at his nipples catching the candle.
His cock stood against his stomach, longer than mine, leaner, the curve up clean and clear in the candlelight.
The head of him was a deep pink, slick at the slit, the vein on the underside running visibly all the way down.
His thighs were spread enough for me to fit between, the soft place where his hip met his thigh shadowed by the angle of the light.
“Stop staring.” His voice came hoarse.
“I’m doing my own research.”
He laughed, and the laugh broke when I lowered my mouth to him.
First time on him with my mouth. He was all warmth with the clean smell of his soap.
I worked him slow because I’d been on the receiving end ten minutes ago and I knew what slow could do.
I started where I’d told him to start. Skin first. Mouth at the base of him, lips closing around the soft skin where his shaft met his body, breath warm against him.
Then up. Tongue along the underside vein.
The taste of him was salt and clean skin and the faint metallic bite of pre-cum at the tip.
His hand found my hair. Light. Not directing. Just there.
“Jett.”
“Mm.”
“Look at me.”
I looked up the line of his stomach to his face. The barbells caught the candlelight as he breathed. The sight of him with his mouth open and pink and his hand soft in my hair did something to me I’d only just learned to let happen.
“Tell me again,” he whispered.
I lifted my mouth long enough to say it.
“I love you.”
I said it against the inside of his thigh. The skin there was soft and pale, and I left a small bite mark as proof I’d been there.
And then I took him back into my mouth and let the words finish themselves there, in pressure and rhythm, in the small noises I let out around him, in the way I kept his hand in my hair so he’d know I wasn’t going anywhere.
He was longer than I was used to, and I had to learn his angle.
The curve up meant the head of him kept dragging against the roof of my mouth.
The slick of him kept building. I let spit run because I didn’t have a free hand to be careful with, and the wet of it slicked his whole shaft and pooled at the base, and my chin caught some of it. He watched.
“You look.” His voice cracked. “Jett. The way you look right now.”
I hummed around him in answer. His hand tightened in my hair.
He came with a broken sound and my name.
His hand tightened in my hair, then loosened, then opened entirely, palm flat against my scalp like a benediction.
I stayed where I was through the last of it.
The first spill hit the back of my tongue and I swallowed it without thinking.
The second I let pool because I wanted to taste him.
Salt. Skin. Him. The third was a slower pulse that ran wet over my lower lip and down my chin. I didn’t move until he tugged me up.
I crawled up the line of him and collapsed half on top of his chest. His heart was going fast under my ear. His breath was wet and uneven. The tears at his temples had soaked into the pillow.
“I love you,” he murmured. “Like, really. The frightening amount.”
“The frightening amount.”
“Yeah.”
We didn’t move for a long time. His breath hot at my collarbone.
My hand somewhere in his hair. The candle wick popped once and went quiet.
The light from the blinds had shifted to the wall and bled into something close to lavender, the slow turn from sunset to evening.
The scent of the sandalwood candle had thickened in the room until it felt like something solid.
The cum on my chest where his cock had rested for a moment was still warm.
Eventually, he laughed. Quiet. A little surprised at himself.
“What.”
“I forgot we were making dinner.”
“Yeah. We abandoned the dinner.”
“Was it the I love yous, or the kissing?”
“Both. Team effort.”
He pressed his face into my shoulder.
“Hey.” I tipped his chin up. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “I’m so okay.”
I kissed his forehead. The bridge of his nose. The corner of his mouth, where the salt of his own cum and mine had mixed and dried.
He pulled on a pair of soft cotton shorts and tossed me one of his t-shirts. It smelled like his detergent and the basil he’d been chopping an hour ago. I tugged it on over my head and followed him barefoot back down the hall.
The pasta was overcooked by the time we got back to it. Ellis reheated it with the disappointed precision of someone who cared deeply about al dente, and I sat across from him at his tiny kitchen table with my knees touching his and ate every bite like it was the best thing I’d ever tasted.
The food might have been transcendent. Hard to separate dinner from the feeling underneath it.
He twirled linguine around his fork. “What happens now?”
“What do you mean?”
“We said it. The big thing. What comes after?”
I considered this. “More pasta.”
“Jett.”
“I don’t know. The same stuff, probably. Gym. Wednesdays. Your plants. Except now I get to say it whenever I want, and you can’t stop me.”
“I wouldn’t stop you.”
“Good. Because I’m going to be insufferable about it.”
“You’re already insufferable.”
“But now I’m insufferable and in love. Much worse.”