Chapter 15
Before
It hurts this time.
I knew I should have prepped before. He never takes the time to do it properly. But I was running late, and I knew he would be angry and now—
Here I am.
I thought I could power through it. It’s not that bad at first, a little bit more pressure than I’m used to. But when he speeds up, it starts to hurt in a way I can’t ignore anymore. “Jason, wait. Please stop. It hurts.”
He doesn’t stop. If anything, he fucks me harder, on his knees behind me, squeezing my ass. “Jason—”
“I’m fucking you, giving you what you need, are you seriously complaining?” He growls, punctuating his sentence with a sharp thrust.
I press my lips together, holding back tears, but I know he’s right. So I dig my fingers into the cold truck bed, and I don’t say another word.
Now
I make it home in the late morning, my backpack of clothes on one shoulder and my keys still in my hand. I’m reaching back to push the door shut when Mike appears out of nowhere.
His arms are around my neck, and his mouth is on mine before I even see him.
My hands find his waist automatically, dropping everything to pull him in, and he makes a sound against my mouth that I’ve been missing desperately.
He melts into the kiss like he’s starving for it, groaning when I thread my fingers through his hair and pull on the strands.
When we finally break apart, he stays close. “You were gone for too long.”
I look down at him, taking him in for the first time. He’s in my shirt, and his eyes are more blue than I remember and very close. “I missed you,” I say, even though I know it’s too much.
But apparently it’s not, because he lights up, his eyes sparkling and his mouth spreading into a bright smile. “Good,” he says, and kisses me again, pulling me toward the stairs behind him.
“Hang on,” I say, pulling back from his mouth.
“No, I’ve waited long enough.” He tries to pull me with him, but I don’t let him.
“Just give me a second.”
His eyes narrow. “Why?”
“No reason.” I pick my bag up off the floor, heavier than it was when I left with all of the things I bought on the way back to campus. “Just wait down here. I’ll yell for you when I’m ready.”
“Why are you being weird?”
“Mike. Please.”
He stares at me for a long moment, but then he turns with a sigh and goes to flop down onto the couch with the energy of someone who hates being told to wait.
When I’m locked in my bedroom, I unzip my bag and take out the candles. I bought four on the way home on the off chance that Nate wasn’t screwing with me.
Candles could be nice.
They go around the room, the end table, the dresser, my desk. I check to make sure nothing is around them to start a fire.
Once the candles are lit, I take out my phone and open the playlist I spent way too long on last night. Full of songs I think Mike would enjoy, judging by the stuff I hear coming from his speakers and the music his band plays. All slower and more appropriate for the mood.
It looks good, I think. The light is soft, the music is low, and the room smells like warm vanilla.
I hope he likes it.
When he comes upstairs, he stands in the doorway with an expression I’ve never seen on him before. I cross my arms. “Don’t make fun of me.”
He opens his mouth to say something, but then he closes it. And I think I’ve read his reaction completely wrong when his eyes do the thing where they get a little too watery.
He looks around the room, at the candles and the music, and then back at me to ask softly, “Did you make a playlist for me?”
I nod, and he crosses the room, kissing me with more affection than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I walk him back to the bed, not breaking the kiss until the back of his knees hit the mattress and he sits down, looking up at me in the candlelight, his eyes still wet.
Looking up at me like that, he almost looks vulnerable.
I reach for the hem of his shirt. My shirt, technically, but I don’t say anything about it this time. He reaches for mine next, and I help him take it off. He spreads his hands flat against my torso, appreciating my abs with fingers cold from the rings he wears.
This feels different.
We’ve been in this bed a hundred times, sleeping together, coming together, but it’s never been like this. Slow, quiet, romantic.
He slides up the bed when he’s had enough, and I follow, hovering over him to kiss his lips before I move down to his neck. His collarbone. His chest. He tilts his head back and sighs when I kiss his pointed nipple, his hands sliding into my hair, resting there.
I work my way down to the skin below his ribs that makes him inhale when my lips brush him there. His stomach. His waistband.
His hands tighten in my hair.
I get his jeans undone, and he lifts his hips.
He’s not wearing anything underneath, and his cock has been hard the entire time. I take him in my hand, stroking him once, and then I pause, looking up at him.
His eyes are on my face. Heavy-lidded, watching me with this soft look that he doesn’t try to hide. I press my lips to the tip of his cock, a single kiss, and he makes a broken sound in response. “Fuck me, Alex. Come on.”
I nod, the only thing I can do right now as I try not to come in my pants at the sight of him so undone already. My finger finds his hole while I squeeze his cock, pumping up and down the way I’ve learned he likes.
My finger slides inside of him, up to the first knuckle, without resistance. “I already prepped myself,” Mike says, pushing back on my finger.
I meet his eyes as I slide one finger in all the way, and he’s right. He’s already open, soft and slick and ready for me. But I reach for the lube I left on the bed anyway, wanting to be sure. I would never forgive myself if I hurt him.
“No, I’m ready—”
“Please. Let me,” I say, and he exhales in response, dropping his head back onto the pillow as I add a second finger. It goes in easily, too.
The third is tighter, but his hips shift, chasing the feeling. I take my hand off his dick to press on his stomach. “Be still,” I tell him, curling my fingers to hit that spot inside of him that makes him jump.
“Oh, fuck, Alex,” he moans when I keep pressing on his prostate.
By the time I’ve added a fourth finger, he’s breathing hard, his hands twisted in the sheets, his cock flushed and leaking, even though I’ve stopped touching it. This is exactly why I did this. My cock is bigger than our fingers and I have to make sure he’s really ready.
“You okay?” I ask, spreading my fingers.
“So okay,” he babbles, his voice going high-pitched at the end. “So, so okay. Please. More.”
“Why don’t you do this more often?” His face screws up in pleasure when my finger brushes his prostate.
“What?”
“You seem to enjoy it,” I say, and that’s an understatement by the look of him. I pick up the pace to see him react.
“Oh my god—” He squeezes his eyes shut. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy it.”
“So why—”
“Because,” he starts, and has to stop before he can continue. “Because I like making people feel—” another pause, another broken moan. “Like this. Out of their mind. You’d be so hot like this.”
I look at him. His head pressed back into the pillow, his cock, red and desperate. I wish I could give him the same thing he’s giving me right now. But I can’t linger on that for long because he’s fucking himself on my fingers and I don’t think I can wait anymore.
“Alex. Please. I’m dying.”
I pull my fingers out to shove my sweatpants down, making him groan at the empty feeling, but I replace them quickly with my cock, bracing it against his hole.
But then I stop.
Mike is laid out on my bed, looking up at me, so trusting, his hair spread across my pillow, and I could hurt him and— “What’s wrong?” he asks, reaching for me.
“Nothing, I just… I don’t want to hurt you.”
He sits up, reaching for my face. “You’re not going to hurt me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You’ve had four fingers inside me for the last ten minutes, even though I was ready to fuck as soon as you got here. You’re not going to hurt me.”
“I’ve never done this before.”
He strokes his thumb across my cheekbone. “Hey. I’m right here. Sexpert, remember?” I nod, reluctantly, and he lies back down, pulling me with him.
I line myself back up and press forward, just the tip at first, but when his eyebrows pull together, I stop immediately. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he breathes out. “Keep going.”
I go slow, inch by inch, watching his face for every shift of expression. He whimpers when I accidentally push in too quickly, but every time I check in, he says keep going, please.
When I’m fully inside, I pause.
Mike’s hands are on my back, his chest rising and falling too fast, and it feels so fucking good, so hot and tight around me, I can hardly stay still. But I wait until he exhales and his body settles to move.
“Still okay?” I whisper.
“Fuck baby, you’re so big.” He shifts beneath me with a roll of his hips, and I have to drop my head to his shoulder.
Pulling back, as gentle as I can be, with one braced beside his head, my other hand slides down to his hips, pulling his leg up for a better angle.
The first thrust takes everything in me not to come inside him before we’ve even started, but I find a rhythm, slow enough not to hurt him, and he takes it with his eyes closed and his fingers clutching my back.
His nails drag down my spine the first time I hit his prostate head-on, making me shudder.
“Faster,” he moans. I pick up the pace only a little and he shakes his head.
“No, faster than that.” His legs wrap around my waist, pulling me even deeper, and I can’t do anything but listen to every word he says.
I thrust into him, harder this time.
He gasps, but I do it again before I can think too hard about it. And again, different than before, harder and faster, the way he asked for. “Yes,” he breathes out. “That, more.”
He feels so fucking good around my cock. My nerves are the only thing keeping me together right now, trying to make sure he’s okay.
I remember what Nate said, don’t be selfish, and reach between us, wrapping a hand around his cock, and he cries out.
“Alex!”
I stroke him in time with my thrusts, watching his face, the sweat sliding down his temple, his stomach rising and falling. And the moment his body goes tense. “Close,” he gasps. “I’m so close—”
I fuck him even faster.
He comes apart with my name on his lips, nails cutting into my arms, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s beautiful, he’s always been, but right now with his face open and undone in a way I haven’t seen, I know in that moment that I will never see anything better than this.
My orgasm rolls through me before I can process that thought.
The playlist I made is still going, a song I picked because the lyrics reminded me of Mike. His hands are still on my back, moving in lazy circles, almost lulling me to sleep.
I lift my head eventually to check on him.
His eyes are closed, but there’s a small smile on his lips that I haven’t seen before. His eyes flutter open like he can sense that I’m watching him. “The playlist was good,” he says with a giggle bordering on hysterical.
I laugh along with him. “I’m glad you think so.”
When I finally drag myself out of bed long enough to go to the bathroom and grab a towel to clean us up the way I always do, Mike reaches for it.
“I’ll do it.”
I sit on the edge of the bed beside him. “Let me.”
He does, lying still while I clean him up, watching me. That’s new. He’s not usually this still. And that makes anxiety spike in my chest. “Does anything hurt?”
He shakes his head, still looking at me in a way that I haven’t seen before, so I push. “Are you sure? Because if I hurt you, you have to tell me—”
“Hey.” He catches my wrist where I’ve been wiping the come off of his stomach for longer than necessary. “I’m okay. Great. Are you okay?”
“I’m… yeah. I’m okay.” I think I really am.
He tugs my wrist until I lie down beside him where he curls into me, his head on my chest, his arm around my waist. I wrap my arm around him and try to relax.
But when I look down at him, his eyes are wet.
I’ve noticed it before. The glassy look he gets sometimes when we fuck. I’ve let it go every time because he always says he’s fine, and it seems like he is, and I didn’t want to push. But after tonight, I can’t let it go anymore.
“Mike.”
“Hm?”
“What’s wrong?”
He shakes his head against my chest, not looking up at me when he responds. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s stupid.”
I run my fingers through his hair, down to his bare shoulder. “Tell me anyway.”
He’s quiet for long enough that I think he’s not going to tell me. But then he exhales, and I can feel some of the tension leaving his body.
“No one has ever made me feel like you do,” he says quietly, tracing the lines of my stomach with his fingers. “Like they actually care. Not since my parents died. And we’ve only known each other for a few months, and I know what this is,” he pauses, taking a deep breath.
“But sometimes when we’re like this, and you’re being—” He gestures toward me. “I feel like you care about me, like, genuinely care,” he finishes. “And I forgot what that felt like.”
The room is very quiet.
I think about a younger version of Mike losing his parents and having no one. And this version too, thinking no one cares about him, even though he has so many friends and people who love his band and—
Me.
“I know how you feel.”
He lifts his head to look at me, making no effort to hide his teary eyes this time.
“My mom died,” I say. “When I was born.” I keep my eyes on the ceiling because it’s easier to talk about that way. “My dad blamed me for it. Still does.”
Mike’s hand finds mine. “It’s not your fault.”
I shrug, because I’m not sure I believe that. “Nate raised me. He gave up his whole life for me. Sports, relationships, all of it, for a long time. But he’s happy now. Iris is the best thing that ever happened to him, and I love her. I do.”
My voice cracks, but I keep going. “But they’re building a life together, and I’m—”
I’m the kid brother. The baggage. The one everybody has to worry about.
“I’m not part of that.”
Mike squeezes my hand.
“The only place I don’t feel like that,” I say, quiet enough that he might not be able to hear me, but I know he does. “Is here with you.”
He pushes himself up on one elbow and looks down at me, his hair falling forward, his eyes more serious than I’ve ever seen them. “You’re never on the outside with me.”
I pull him down and kiss him, needing to be close, and he comes easily, kissing me back in a way that I can’t lie to myself and call casual.
Mike falls asleep with his head on my chest and his hand over my heart. I stay awake a little longer, listening to him breathe, letting myself feel the full extent of my feelings, just for a little while.