Chapter Twenty-Six So, About That.
After I made him my favorite apple cider, and he was back on the couch under the blanket, sipping it, I said, “You mind if I practice my tap? I didn’t get a chance yesterday, with everything.”
“Go ahead.”
I brought out my tap board, put on my shoes, and started practicing. He’d been looking at something on my laptop, but he put it on the coffee table and watched me. I did a routine to a different song this time, since he was sick of “Jackpot.”
I practiced for an hour. I had a lot of stress to work off, and tapping my brains out really helped. By the time I was done, it was dark outside. I stepped off the board, and he brought me a glass of water from the kitchen.
“Thanks,” I said and made it disappear fast.
He stared at me the whole time.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing. You done?”
“Yeah.” I handed the glass back. “Thanks. Hey, you wanna go out and look at the stars?”
“You trying to seduce me?”
“Yeah, but also, if you haven’t seen the sky outside the city, it’s worth seeing. Especially since this is our last night.”
I found a rechargeable flashlight plugged into the wall by the back door, so we used that and tramped through the woods—without snowshoes (he insisted), which meant we could hold hands all the way. We stood on the shore of the lake and looked at the stars.
“Wow,” he said.
“That’s how the sky’s supposed to look. When we get our own cottage, we’re gonna have a skylight in the bedroom so we can sleep under the stars.”
“Got this all planned, huh?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Hey,” he said, “are there bears out here?”
“Yeah.”
“What?” He looked behind us into the woods.
“They’re hibernating, city boy.” I nudged him playfully.
The temperature was dropping. I was used to it, but he wasn’t, so we went back to the cottage. Coming back to a warm cottage was nice. He stood in front of the fire, shivering, with his coat still on.
“We could sleep by the fire,” I said.
“Floor’s too hard.”
“We can put blankets down.”
“Sure, okay,” he said.
“It’ll be like summer camp.”
When he gave me a blank stare, I realized he’d never gone to summer camp.
He never complained about his childhood, but I’d picked up from the little he’d let drop that his family didn’t have much money.
Enough for rent and food but not much for extras.
He still lived like that. He never treated himself to anything, I guessed because he never knew when or if he’d get another job.
When I started making real money, I was going to spoil him, treat him to everything he’d ever wanted.
We went into the bedroom. I rolled up the bedding and threw it over my shoulder.
He picked up the pillows and followed me into the living room where I unrolled the blankets on the floor by the fire.
He put the pillows by the edge of the bedding.
He presented an irresistible target, so I tackled him around the waist and dropped him onto the blankets on his back, straddling him on all fours.
He didn’t fight me. He trusted me completely and just lay there relaxed, so I kissed him while he felt me up a little.
“You’re tense,” he said.
He was right. I usually had a hot shower after tap practice, but we’d gone straight outside to look at the stars.
“You want a massage?” he said.
I was sweaty, but he’d never minded before, and if he didn’t mind now... “I’d love that.”
“Lie down.”
I let him up, and he pulled off his coat and threw it at the couch. He missed by a couple of feet.
“You gonna pick that up?” I said.
“Later. Turn over.”
He almost never asked me for anything. It was even rarer for him to tell me to do something for him. It was...a turn-on. I rolled over, and he straddled my waist.
“My left hammy’s tight,” I said.
“Your what?”
“My left hamstring.” I held the back of my thigh, because I figured he didn’t know what a hamstring was. “Can you work on that?”
“Sure,” he said. “Take your jeans off.”
I got them undone and shucked them off, then I lay on my stomach.
He ran his hands along the back of my thigh.
“You can go a lot harder than that,” I said.
He drove his thumbs into my leg, hard enough to push it into the bedding, and I hissed, flexing my knee. That was more like it.
“Okay?” he said.
“Harder.”
He dug into me, and I straightened my leg. Then he moved his hands up to my shoulders, pressing deep into the muscle.
“Good?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. ’Cause, obviously. “When I was dancing professionally, the company hired someone to give us all therapeutic massages. It was awesome.”
“I can do this for you whenever you want.” He pressed his fingers in harder, working his way down my back and along my ribcage. I could feel myself unwinding, coming apart, like he was unfolding me on the blankets, opening me up.
“Eddie, that feels so fucking good.”
He kissed the nape of my neck and kept his mouth soft, and I felt him breathing into my hair. When he pulled back, my neck felt cool, and he put his fists on either side of my tailbone and bore down.
“Did you make sex noises like that when the massage therapist worked on you?” he said.
Which, I didn’t realize I had been. I was more focused on what he was doing than what I was.
“No, but I didn’t want to have sex with her. Ohhh fuck, Eddie, keep doing that.”
After he’d worked my back, he patted my side. “Turn over for me, tapper.”
He didn’t move, so I had to flip him off me, and he dropped onto his side on the blankets. He laughed.
“What?” I said.
Then I saw him looking at my boxers. Okay, I was excited, and yeah, it was obvious. Whatever.
He climbed back on top of me, kneeling over me, put his hands on my shoulders and worked his fingers in.
That felt so good and relaxing I let my head fall back on the pillow and closed my eyes.
Then he kissed me lightly, pulled back, and kissed my nipples through my shirt, which, gotta be honest, none of my girlfriends had ever tried on me, but...
I liked it. Maybe because it was him doing it.
He kissed his way down my body. Then he held me by my hips. I opened my eyes because he was definitely about to blow me, and that wasn’t what I wanted.
“Eddie?”
He stopped kissing me. “Yeah?”
“Would you fuck me?”
He blinked. I didn’t surprise him often, so it was a treat when it happened. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
He jumped to his feet and tore up the hallway to the bedroom.
I’d never seen him move so fast. I was lying there with my heart hammering when he came back holding the box of condoms, the lube, and a package of tissues.
He tossed them onto the blankets and stripped off his jeans.
Then he lay down next to me. I could feel his warmth, and he draped his arm across my chest, nicely heavy.
I rolled over so we were face-to-face, and I put my arm around him, and he wormed his other arm underneath me, and we held each other.
We lay with the tips of our noses touching, breathing hard.
I touched his cheek, felt stubble under my fingers. I kissed him. He kissed me back. Then his hand moved to my lower back, and he pressed it, and I made this quiet sound into his mouth—I hoped it was quiet, because I felt embarrassed reacting that obviously.
He massaged my back in little circles and kept kissing me, pulling back and kissing me again until I held him tight so he couldn’t pull away, and we made out properly, and I moaned. I didn’t mean to. It just happened.
He stopped kissing me. Then he reached for the lube. He popped the cap and squirted it all over his fingers, so it dripped onto the blankets, which, okay, it was water soluble. It was fine. He tossed the lube away and fell onto his side, pulling me close.
He kissed me again. Everything felt different this time. Now, I was totally into it. He slipped his hand down the back of my boxers and touched me with his lubed fingers and just kept them there, not moving. They felt cool and slick. I kissed him harder because he was turning me on.
Then he slowly slid his fingers inwards until he touched me.
I stopped kissing him.
“Okay?” he said.
I nodded because it felt good.
He stroked me over and over. No one had ever touched me there before. It felt like he was stroking my soul. It was so intense I started swearing.
“Breathe,” he said. “You’re doing great. You’re doing fantastic. I’m gonna put my finger inside you now, okay?”
He pressed his finger against me, and it slid right in, so easily it took my breath away.
He slid his finger in deeper, and I sighed softly. Wood popped in the fireplace.
“Gonna put another finger in, okay, tapper?”
I nodded. I felt him shift and slide into me. It felt weird, but not painful.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
He slowly and gently eased his fingers out, and I made a sound. I didn’t mean to. He leaned across me for the box of condoms. His hand was coated in lube. He wiped it off with a Kleenex, but it was still a mess.
I pushed myself up. “I can put it on for you.”
I took the box out of his hand, got a condom out and opened the package.
I got his dick out of his boxers and rolled the condom on.
“Fuck, Eddie,” I breathed. “You’re super hard.”
“So’re you.”
“Feels like you’re about to come.”
“If you don’t want that to happen, you should probably let go.” He squeezed more lube into his hand and coated his dick.
“Turn over and face away from me,” he said.
I did, and he lay down and spooned me. It felt perfect. He stroked my forehead, tangling his fingers in my hair.
“Okay?” he whispered.
“Go for it, honey kid.”
He shifted position and pulled my boxers down enough to give him access. Then I felt his dick pressing against me. He held still, murmuring in my ear. He stopped talking, and he breathed into my hair.
“That feels so good,” I whispered.
Then he pressed himself against me, and he started to slide in. All the way in.
“Jesus.”
“Okay there, tapper?”
“Don’t stop, Eddie, this is...fuck.”
He put his arms around me and held me, and with his other hand, he clasped mine.
I arched my back against him. Then he started thrusting into me. It was like I could feel him inside my fingertips, and I shut my eyes, and I was surrounded by his warm, orange presence everywhere, expanding outwards and inside him, inside me, and I felt like I knew what it was like to be him.
Then I heard him make a sound, and I tightened up around him, and he squeezed me.
Then he slumped against me, and his grip eased off. “I came.”
“I figured.”
He kissed the back of my neck.
It was like I could feel his heart beating inside me. I reached up and clasped his arm. We lay there catching our breath.
“I gotta pull out,” he said.
He eased out of me, but I felt like he was pulling the air out of my lungs at the same time. It took me a while to get a hold of myself.
“Okay?” he said.
“Yeah.” It took a huge effort to talk.
He got the condom off, and went to the bathroom. After a minute, I got up and followed him because I really needed a shower. I came in behind him. He was washing his hands at the sink.
“Hey,” I said to him in the mirror.
He smiled. “Hey.”
I came up behind him and put my arms around him.
“Did it hurt?” he said.
“No. I feel like I’ve been gut punched by a fur-covered boxing glove, but it didn’t hurt.”
“Was it okay?”
I laughed. “Yeah. I shot myself, if you hadn’t noticed.”
He turned around in my arms and held onto me.
“I feel different,” I said.
“How?”
“I can still feel you inside me.”
“Is that good?”
“Yeah.”
“Best thing to do now is have a hot shower,” he said. “It’ll loosen your muscles. Then sleep.”
“The best thing to do is keep holding you. I’m in fucking heaven right now, and you’re my honey kid angel.”
I kissed his forehead, his nose, and then his mouth, and he leaned into me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m getting my come all over you.”
“Yeah,” he murmured. “It’s nice.”
I laughed. “I gotta take a shower.” I eased him away from me reluctantly.
The bathroom was freezing, but he was right about the shower.
The hot water loosened me up. My legs were like rubber, and I could still feel him inside me, like he was there with me.
When I got out of the shower, I joined him in the living room under the blankets by the fire, and he cuddled me.
I’d noticed he was sensitive to the cold, and I was warm from the shower.
I rested my head on his shoulder, and he caressed my forehead with his fingertips.
“You smell like wood smoke,” I murmured.
“Pretty sure that’s the fire.”
“When we buy our own cottage, it’ll have a bigger fireplace than this.”
“Got it all planned, huh?”
“Uh-huh. It’s gonna have a tap studio with a sprung floor, so I’ve got a whole room to practice in, not just a board. And there’ll be mirrors on all the walls and cameras so I can record my routines.”
“We can fuck in there.”
“Yeah, if we put towels down first.”
He laughed, for some reason.
“We have to go home tomorrow,” I said.
“I know. Get some sleep.”
“I don’t want to sleep, ’cause when I wake up, we’ll have to go home, and I don’t want this to end.”
“You’re tired.”
“You tired me out.”
“Good night, tapper.”
“Good night, honey kid.”