4
The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. “Present.”
“You take up a lot of space for someone who barely talks.”
“And you talk a lot for someone who doesn’t say what he means.”
The observation sat between us without aggression.
I had no clean answer for it. I set the empty bottle on the table and leaned forward, elbows on my knees, staring at the floor between my feet.
The tile was cool compared to everything else.
I focused on that small difference in temperature like it could anchor me.
Ryder shifted on his end of the couch. The cushion dipped.
I felt the movement more than I saw it. When I looked up he had turned so that he was facing me more directly, one arm along the back of the couch, the other resting on his thigh.
The posture was open. Unthreatening. Still somehow more intense than if he had raised his voice.
“You don’t have to figure it out tonight,” he said.
“Figure what out?”
He didn’t answer. He just held my gaze until the question answered itself in the space between us.
I looked away first.
The light outside continued to fade. Neither of us turned on a lamp.
The room settled into a blue-gray dusk that made the edges of everything softer.
I could still feel the exact pressure of his fingers on my wrist, a phantom band of heat that refused to fade.
My pulse had slowed, but it hadn’t returned to normal. It sat higher in my throat, waiting.
After a long time I stood up. This time he didn’t reach for me. He watched me cross the room and pause at the hallway entrance. I kept my back to him when I spoke.
“I’m going to try to sleep.”
“All right.”
I waited for something more. Advice. A question. A final observation that would tilt the floor again. Nothing came. When I glanced back he had opened the sketchbook and was already drawing, pencil moving in the dim light with the same steady focus as always.
I went into the bedroom and closed the door most of the way.
The sheets were still warm from the day. I lay on top of them in the dark and stared at the ceiling. The air conditioner in the living room cycled on again, a distant mechanical complaint. Beyond it I could hear the soft, intermittent sound of the pencil.
Sleep felt far away. I turned my wrist in the dark and pressed my thumb to the place he had held. The skin there felt ordinary. Ordinary and warm.
I closed my eyes. The pencil kept moving on the other side of the wall.
The rain started just after midnight.
It came the way Miami rain always did in summer—sudden, heavy, no warning beyond a shift in the pressure that made the air feel even thicker before it broke.
I heard it hit the windows in a hard, steady sheet while I lay on top of the sheets staring at the ceiling fan.
The apartment had gone quiet hours earlier.
No pencil. No footsteps. Only the low rattle of the air conditioner and the sound of water against glass.
I had not slept.
The job rejection still sat in my chest, but it had become background noise.
What kept me awake was the memory of Ryder’s fingers around my wrist and the calm way he had told me I was pretending.
Every time I closed my eyes I felt the exact pressure of his hand again.
Every time I turned over I caught the faint remaining scent of sunscreen that somehow still clung to the air in the apartment.
I sat up.
My bare feet hit the warm floor. I stood there for a long minute in the dark, listening to the rain, listening to the quiet on the other side of the wall. Then I opened the bedroom door and walked into the living room.
Ryder was on the couch.
He had not bothered with a shirt. One arm was folded behind his head, the other resting across his stomach.
The black sketchbook sat closed on the table.
In the low light from the street the tattoo across his chest and shoulder looked darker, almost liquid.
His eyes were open. He had been waiting, or simply not sleeping either.
He watched me cross the room without surprise.
I stopped a few feet from the couch.
My voice came out rough, like I had not used it in hours.
“I don’t know what I want.”
He didn’t move.
“But I don’t want to pretend anymore.”
The rain filled the silence that followed. Water hammered the windows. Somewhere outside a car alarm started and then cut off. Ryder sat up slowly, elbows on his knees, and looked at me for a long time. The air between us felt charged, heavier than the humidity.
“You sure?” he asked.
Two words. Quiet. Steady. No pressure in them, only a clear door left open for me to walk back through if I needed to.
I answered by stepping closer.
He watched me do it. When I was close enough that my knees almost touched the edge of the couch he reached up and set his hand on the side of my thigh, just above the knee.
The contact was light. Testing. I didn’t pull away.
His thumb moved once across the fabric of my shorts, and the simple back-and-forth of it sent a jolt straight up my spine.
“Come here,” he said.
I did.
I climbed onto the couch, one knee on either side of his thighs, and the position put me above him for half a second before he pulled me down by the hips.
Mouth met mouth without gentleness. He kissed like he drew—direct, certain, no wasted motion.
His tongue pushed past my lips and I opened for it, tasting faint mint and the clean edge of whatever he had last drunk.
My hands found his shoulders. The skin under my palms was hot, smooth over hard muscle, and the raised lines of the tattoo gave my fingers something to map.
He made a low sound in his chest when I gripped harder.
The kiss deepened. His hands slid up under the back of my T-shirt, spread wide across my bare skin, and the heat of them made me arch.
I could feel him getting hard beneath me, the thick ridge of it pressing up against the thin cotton of my shorts.
The friction dragged a broken noise out of my throat that I barely recognized as mine.
Ryder broke the kiss just long enough to pull my shirt over my head and toss it aside.
Then his mouth was on my neck, open and wet, teeth scraping lightly over the tendon.
I dropped my head back and let him. One of his hands stayed at my lower back, holding me in place; the other dragged down my chest, over my stomach, and stopped at the waistband of my shorts.
He paused there.
“Still sure?”
I answered by reaching between us and pressing my palm against the hard length of him through his shorts.
He exhaled sharply through his nose, hips lifting once into the contact.
The control he usually wore like a second skin slipped for a second, and the sight of it—Ryder’s eyes going darker, mouth parting—made my own cock throb hard enough to ache.
“Yes,” I said. The word came out wrecked. “I’m sure.”
He moved fast after that.
In one smooth motion he shifted our weight, turning us so my back hit the couch cushions and he was above me.
He hooked his fingers in my shorts and pulled them down my legs along with my underwear in a single tug.
Cool air hit my skin for a second before his hand wrapped around my cock.
The contrast—hot palm, rough calluses, firm stroke from base to tip—pulled a raw sound out of me.
Pre-come already slicked the head; he used it, thumb sweeping over the sensitive spot just under the crown until my hips jerked.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
He watched my face while he stroked me, eyes half-lidded, cataloguing every reaction. When my breathing turned sharp and uneven he eased off, leaving me hard and leaking against my stomach. I made a sound of protest that died when he pushed his own shorts down far enough to free himself.
I had imagined it. The reality was thicker, heavier, the flushed head already shiny. He wrapped his free hand around the base and looked at me.
“You ever done this?”
I shook my head once. Honesty felt easier than anything else in that moment.
Something like approval flickered across his face. He shifted higher on the couch, knees bracketing my ribs, and guided the head of his cock to my mouth.
“Open.”
I did.
The first taste was clean skin and salt and the bitter edge of pre-come.
I licked experimentally across the head and felt his thigh muscles tighten.
Then I took him deeper, lips stretching around the girth, and the sound he made—low, guttural, almost surprised—sent another pulse of heat straight to my own neglected cock.
He didn’t thrust yet. He let me explore, one hand resting lightly in my hair, not pushing.
I sucked harder, tongue working along the underside the way I had imagined doing in the dark the night before.
Spit gathered at the corners of my mouth and spilled.
The wet sounds filled the small living room, mixing with the rain.
When I took him as deep as I could and still came up short, he exhaled a rough curse and finally rolled his hips, feeding me another inch.
My eyes watered. I didn’t pull off.
“That’s it,” he murmured. His voice had gone deeper, frayed at the edges. “Just like that. Fuck, look at you.”
I moaned around him. The vibration made his fingers tighten in my hair.
He started moving in short, controlled strokes, fucking my mouth with careful depth while I hollowed my cheeks and tried to take more.
Drool ran down my chin and neck. My own cock ached against my stomach, untouched, leaking steadily onto my skin.
Every time he pushed deeper the stretch of my lips and the heavy weight on my tongue pulled another helpless sound out of me.
He pulled free after a few minutes with a wet sound. A string of spit still connected my lower lip to the head of his cock. I was breathing hard, lips swollen, face hot. Ryder looked down at me like he was deciding something.
Then he shifted back, gripped my thighs, and pushed them wider.
“Stay there.”
I heard the soft click of a bottle—lube, from the small bag he kept near the couch—and then cool gel against my hole.
His finger pressed, circled, pressed again until the muscle gave and the first knuckle slid inside.
The stretch burned in a way that made my cock jerk and spill another bead of pre-come.