14. Not a Dog Handler #2
Fingertips. That was the next thing Jonathan used, over Connor’s entire chest, light touches and delicate featherings across the easily blushing skin, the slightest scratches of his nails across Connor’s nipples where they peeked from his chest hair.
Such glorious luxury on his chest, and Jonathan couldn’t resist pulling on the golden curls a tiny bit, just sharply enough to make Connor groan and collapse his weight on Jonathan.
He scored his teeth across the thickest part of Connor’s shoulder muscle, trying to guess the pressure that Connor would want. Then he licked the faint pink tell and moved to another spot. And sucked.
Connor’s skin tasted of salt and sweat, the post-exercise tang which Jonathan already recognized and craved. He licked and sucked until there was no salt remaining, only Connor’s skin.
“Please.” Connor groaned and writhed on him. “Please.”
The weight and friction made Jonathan want more, much more, and he nipped the spot he’d just kissed.
“Yes,” Connor groaned. The synthetic shorts had an inner pouch to hold Connor’s cock in place, but neither that fabric nor the sheet stopped the bulge of his erection from pushing against Jonathan’s leg.
Jonathan was completely hard as quickly as Connor. They were rubbing their cocks together with only the flimsiest coverings between them, Connor driving down against him and both of them grinding faster than a car chase.
The sheet was nothing, thin and soft enough that he imagined he could even feel the ridge around Connor’s head thrust at his sensitive inner thigh.
“Fuck. Yes. Fuck.” Connor grunted into his ear while he pushed hard and pushed again.
Jonathan clutched Connor’s shoulders and arched off the mattress. He wanted to wrap his legs around Connor, but sheets blocked him. The sensation of being restrained by fabric and Connor’s weight, while his hands remained free to roam and squeeze, was a confusion that cracked him open.
He couldn’t move his lower body, and Connor pistoned against him like he was chasing lift-off. The friction came through their coverings, the heat of Connor’s skin and the weight of his body making Jonathan’s feel like it was on fire.
It shouldn’t be this easy.
But Connor’s mouth was on Jonathan’s neck, sucking that tendon, Connor’s hands were wrapped around his shoulders holding him, and Connor’s lips were whispering about Jonathan’s hot mouth and smooth chest, begging Jonathan to keep putting his hands on him, babbling nonsense, but delightful nonsense that was one thousand percent about Jonathan, and it was that easy.
He was suddenly hotter and strung tighter and snapping in two. It was that easy.
It was.
He swore his brain flickered as he came, and then Connor stiffened on top of him, every muscle tensing, reaching his orgasm as quickly as Jonathan had.
It took some breathing and some time to get his throat open enough to force air past the giant bubble stuck in his chest, but finally Jonathan felt able to speak. “Did we break land speed records? Do we need to go to the Bonneville Salt Flats if we’re going to do it like that again? I think we do.”
His voice quivered. He was talking too much, and he should definitely shut up. This was not his way.
None of this, picnics in parks and coffee in bed, dry humping through sheets, none of it, was his way.
He squeezed his eyes tightly closed, but he wasn’t strong enough to push Connor off his body so that he could hide in the pillows.
“Shhh.” Connor lifted his hand to lightly graze his fingers over Jonathan’s eyelids, his nose, his mouth, but his face remained buried in Jonathan’s shoulder even though he shifted the bulk of his weight onto his own hip and leg rather than squishing Jonathan.
“No talking. Let’s cuddle for a minute, before we shower.”
Jonathan knew he’d never said ‘let’s cuddle’ out loud, couldn’t recall ever hearing that request said to him, and possibly he’d never even thought the phrase.
But. But. He hadn’t drunk enough coffee to prevent his brain from stuttering to a halt over the consideration of how natural it sounded coming from Connor.
“Are you always this happy?” He didn’t like the rising sound of his question. It verged on panicked-sounding, and he wasn’t that. He wasn’t.
Also, the word happy felt inadequate to describe the comfort in his life and his body that glowed out of Connor. Jonathan couldn’t define it or even find the right word to name it, but he envied it.
“Didn’t you hear me say no talking?”
“I do not take orders well.” That sounded closer to normal. Or at least a bit tart, which passed as his normal.
“No shit.” Connor sighed, but it didn’t sound unhappy, more like a large man letting a fair amount of air out of his lungs so that he could settle deeper into a mattress. “Are you freaking out?”
“Of course not. Why would I be?”
Connor shifted to look at Jonathan’s face and raised an eyebrow.
“Maybe. A little. It’s never been like this. For me.” The urge to wave his hands was strong, but he resisted.
Connor lay very still. “Me neither.”
That stopped him for a moment.
Jonathan wanted to be happy. His old therapist had told him, before he moved away from New York, that he should picture himself as happy, and talk to himself about being happy, to get used to the idea of being happy. Self-fulfilling prophecies, they had joked.
He’d assumed he was doing okay on that front, but Connor was next-level.
“You didn’t answer. Are you always this happy?”
Connor groaned. “After sex, or in the mornings?”
“All the time. You seem like you’re happy all the fucking time.”
“I think so?” Connor’s eyebrows bunched toward the bridge of his nose as if they were illustrations in a book about fuzzy caterpillars. Undoubtedly happy ones.
Jonathan continued staring at him. He looked exactly like a man who rarely considered, let alone discussed, his interior landscape.
“Are you saying…” Connor’s voice sounded tentative, as if he’d made himself smaller than Jonathan. “It’s too much?”
“It’s not. It’s…” Shrugging was difficult while smushed into the pillows. “It’s you. I just want to know.”
Connor stopped looking at his face, but only to shift his attention lower. “I grew up with horses, got a scholarship to play baseball, and was openly gay in the athlete dorm for four years, which was pretty much an all you can eat dessert bar, but for sex.”
Jonathan winced. “Dear God, after that image, we will be exchanging health records.”
“There’s a Planned Parenthood on Franklin, that’s where I go for testing. And my blood tests for PrEP.” Connor began slowly caressing Jonathan’s chest.
He could time his breathing with the strokes, inhaling when Connor began to stroke down, exhaling when he lifted his hand from the skin below Jonathan’s navel to go back to Jonathan’s clavicle.
Connor was so easy. How was Jonathan here, with this man, in a bed with six pillows, exerting zero effort, and being petted and coddled?
“My dad thinks I should teach high school, so I can coach, but do you know, I get to play kickball at recess? I get paid to play kickball at recess. So, yeah, I think I’ve always been…
” His hand left Jonathan’s chest mid-journey and waved a circle in the air.
“This. Happy, I guess. Mostly.” The weight of his hand settled back on Jonathan, heavy but gentle. “When I’m here. In Eugene.”
“That sounds enviable.” The trailing off at the end was a little sus, as the tweens at the library occasionally said, and Jonathan wasn’t going to ask about the tiny echo he’d heard behind the phrase “my dad thinks,” or the way living in Eugene maybe came out of that story as a bit of a refuge, because Connor was so much farther along the happiness scale than he himself was.
Although Jonathan had brought a change of clothes and a bag of his evening skincare routine with him last night, so perhaps he’d taken a few steps on the path toward personal growth and fulfillment.
“I wish my father…” He couldn’t continue.
But Connor was petting him, stroking from the far shoulder across Jonathan’s clavicle and making a slow, warm circle on Jonathan’s chest. Above Jonathan’s heart.
Connor had shared, and sharing went both ways, so he swallowed.
With his eyes closed, and Connor’s hand so reassuringly predictable in its motion, he could try.
“I wish my father thought about my career at all. He paid for my degrees, but he doesn’t ever ask about my work. Actually, he doesn’t even call, so he can’t ask. If he doesn’t call, I mean.”
Connor pressed his lips against Jonathan’s temple. It was a warm, dry kiss, the type that was about bonding and sharing, and not about sex. He was starting to understand those now. Or at least recognize them, because Connor deployed them frequently.
“I want to be happy, too.” He’d said it. He didn’t think he could move again.
“I don’t think about being happy or not. I get up and take care of Ribby and then I do stuff. Maybe that’s what you should do, too.” He ran the tip of one finger along the upper edge of Jonathan’s lips.
It was nothing. A big awkward finger stroking his lip, nothing special even if his eyes felt scratchy and he had to blink. It must be because they had gotten off and then spilled some emotions and all of it made his lips and eyes super-sensitive.
Connor loomed over him again. His gaze fixed on Jonathan’s and didn’t look away. “I’m glad you’re the stuff I’m doing.”
Jonathan swallowed. “I’m glad I’m the stuff you’re doing, too.”