7. Elio #2
My first step was heavy, but the second one followed with growing ease. The door shut behind me, and I turned around, reaching for him, taking him by the waist, and pushing him against the door. Without a word, Jaxon huffed and lifted his head, his eyes closing.
Kissing him sober sparked flutters of anxiety deep inside my stomach, but I did it anyway. I pressed my lips against him, no longer reluctant, and gave myself a free pass. Right or wrong, I couldn’t tell for myself. I only knew that it was inevitable and irresistible.
This has to be what Eve felt when she picked up the apple, I thought, then quickly pushed away all the memories of Sunday mass and my parents’ insistence on learning the verses from the Bible.
None of it mattered now. The door was shut, the lights were dim, and the only person witnessing my loss of control was the person who wanted it the most.
Why should I hold back? The whole world had gone mad. Would my resistance matter at all? And how wrong was this after all?
My lips pressed against Jaxon’s harder, forcing a moan from him as I leaned all my weight against his trapped body. His hands went to my shoulders, neither pulling nor pushing, and he parted his lips slightly to let the tip of my tongue explore his mouth.
How wrong could this be when it felt so damned right?
The tip of my tongue moved slowly between his lips, searching and finding his tongue. The contact sent chills down my arms, but I held Jaxon firmer, drinking him in.
His fingernails sank into my shoulders, and he let out a whimper before pushing me away. “El, wait,” he said.
I allowed just enough space between us so I could look into his eyes.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
My head shook once before I could stop it. “I’m here, Jax.”
Jaxon’s hands moved to my chest, wrapping around the crease of my hoodie.
He hesitated, reluctant to ask me the one question he needed answered.
I prayed to God he would move away from it and just let us exist in the moment.
But he couldn’t do that. His neck was stiff and his breaths shallow. “Am I just an experiment, El?”
I winced. What was the answer to that?
“Are you just gonna pretend this didn’t happen when you wake up?” he pressed on.
A long time ago, Jaxon had been my best friend. The only friend, really. I’d been friendly with everyone, but Jaxon had always been the only person who truly knew me. I never would have lied to him, not on purpose.
And I couldn’t tell him what he needed to hear.
I looked around the room. The drawer of his nightstand was half-open, a clean towel was thrown over the back of the chair, paper tissues sat on the nightstand, and his laptop was closed next to them.
My chest tightened as my imagination supplied the idea of whatever I had interrupted tonight.
So I peeled my gaze off his bed and looked him in the eyes. “I don’t know, Jaxon.”
He didn’t seem disappointed by my words. If anything, a steely kind of resolve emerged in his eyes. “Fair enough,” he said, stepping away from the door.
I blew it, but it was what it was. I couldn’t pretend like something had changed—like I would be a devoted lover—when I couldn’t tell my ass from my head.
Jaxon stepped away, his hand shooting back and grabbing my wrist. He held me and looked at me over his shoulder, eyes focused and sharp. “You’ve always been my fantasy, El,” he said in a fateful tone of one who didn’t care what happened tomorrow.
Night was good. It was our friend. What we did here, when gods were asleep, couldn’t haunt us in the light of a new day.
Jaxon led me to his bed, his back turned to me. He faced the bed and the wall as I stepped up behind him, his hand still around my wrist, and I waited. I didn’t want to experiment with Jaxon, but it would have been dishonest to tell him there wasn’t a sliver of truth in his assumptions.
Even so, as he stood still by the bed, I took another step toward him. From that moment on, I didn’t need to think. I didn’t need to worry and wonder. All I had to do was stop.
My chest pressed gently against Jaxon’s upper back, and he let go of my wrist, freeing my hand to move wherever it liked.
It went to his stomach, the tips of my fingers feeling the soft, thin layer of fabric between me and his flesh.
Tingles spread through my hand as I lifted my other arm around his upper chest and held him close to my body.
Leaning my head, I pressed my lips against his neck.
My chest tightened with fright, anxiety running wild.
All this time, I had been looking away from it, ignoring it when it screamed into my face.
I had lied, pretended, and resisted. And for what?
Where was my reward? I’d done the thing.
I’d been good in all the ways I was told, and nothing came from it.
My hand pressed against his abs, his muscles tense and hard, and a deep, shuddering breath left my lips.
The feelings that had swirled through me until a moment ago were just a faint memory, ghosts deep in a fog, and the novelty of touching Jaxon replaced every sliver of sadness and guilt with something far brighter.
I was flaming with these new feelings. I was filled with them to the point of breaking, shattering, and all I could do was tremble as I dragged my hand down his torso to the very edge of his T-shirt.
The fabric was soft and thin, yet it felt like an entire life and universe between my fingers and his body.
My fist closed as Jaxon’s body relaxed, his torso leaning back against my chest and stomach.
I dragged my hand up, clutching his T-shirt.
I had seen him just this morning with nothing but a pair of briefs, and the image had lingered in the back of my mind ever since.
I had been too hungover, too confused, too ashamed of having kissed him to even consider what was offered to me.
“El,” Jaxon whispered. This time, it didn’t sound like a plea to stop but a sigh of pleasure.
“Hush,” I whispered, my heated breath washing over the nape of his neck, the hairs rising. I kissed him, letting my lips trail along his neck, moving to the side of it and feeling, without a shred of doubt, the devastating pace of his heartbeat, his pulse almost audible.
My hand relaxed when the edge of his T-shirt was at the level of his heart.
Opening my palm, I let myself do it intentionally.
This wasn’t an accidental brush of flesh against flesh in my drunken stupor but a determined touch.
My hand pressed hard against his abs, coveting them with every bit of my being.
I felt him, explored him, and memorized him for the rest of my life.
This was Jaxon, after all.
Who would it be if not Jaxon?
Dragging it lower, I reached the waistband of Jaxon’s sweatpants, and I kept going.
Jaxon leaned his head back, resting it on my left shoulder, his full, well-defined lips parting to let out a soft breath of air with only a ghost of a moan. His abs tensed under my hand, and my other arm tightened around his chest.
Just then, I realized something blindingly obvious.
I could do just this and still be happy.
The way our bodies melted together, breaths entering and leaving our lungs in an erratic rhythm, skin on skin and soul to soul, we were like a single monolith standing in the center of a devastated world.
It didn’t matter. The ruin and loss around us were nothing.
The only thing that mattered—the final things left to us—were the years we had shared, the memories, the joys and sorrows we’d given to one another.
“I want you,” I whispered, holding him tighter and sliding my hand lower, crossing the obstacle of his waistband until my fingers found the hard bulge rising from his soft, gray sweatpants.
At first touch, Jaxon let out a whimper, hands shooting up to hold my forearm, which went across his chest. He didn’t touch my other hand; he did nothing to slow me down or discourage me. “Do you really…want me?” Jaxon sighed.
I pressed my lips against his ear, rubbing my body against his, exhaling shortly over his earlobe before hissing a single “Yes.” If I had the strength or courage, I would have told him more.
I was wrong, I would have said. Wrong about you.
Wrong about Easton. Wrong about myself. Wrong about everything.
But I was a coward on top of being wrong, so I took those thoughts and pushed them down—all the way down.
“You sure, El?” he pleaded, leaning back a little more until my body was all that was stopping him from toppling.
I was sure. All else aside, I was sure I wanted him.
So I grunted my assent, and Jaxon let his right hand drop to the back of mine, pressing it hard against his throbbing cock and dragging it back to his stomach. The next thrust of his hand led my fingers under the waistband and inside his briefs.
He tested just how sure I was. He doubted me.
Then again, as my hand moved over the short, trimmed hair and found his thick cock in the tight space of his underwear and sweatpants, I doubted myself, too.
I doubted the wisdom of coming here, but more than anything, I doubted all I had told myself over the years.
Give in or give up, I told myself, inhaling deeply until the scent of pine needles of Jaxon’s cologne filled my lungs.
I had already given him up once. I’d done it quickly and violently, terrified by the things his lips on mine had sparked within me. And I wasn’t making that mistake again.
My hand closed around his dick with ease.
It was a surprisingly familiar gesture with an unfamiliar twist to it.
Moving my hand slightly, I knew exactly what it felt like to Jaxon.
And when he shuddered in my arms, I knew I had been right.
I increased the tension a little more, angling his cock down and into the tightness of his briefs, and Jaxon’s fingernails dug into my forearm.