Strong Enough

by Melanie Harlow

  Still facing away from me, he lifted the glass to his lips. “How was your night?”

  “Great,” I lied. “Yours?”

  “Fine.” He didn’t elaborate, and I wasn’t about to ask.

  “Guess I’ll head up to bed. It’s late.” And then I stood there for some stupid reason, as if I expected him to object.

  He didn’t.

  I puffed up my chest a little. “Tomorrow, I’m leaving. I’ll find another place to stay.”

  A pause while he drank. “Why?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “The right thing to do,” he repeated, and I wondered if he was drunk. He tipped back the rest of whatever he’d poured and set down the glass. Then he walked over to me, and we stood chest to chest. “The right thing to do would be to go upstairs and lock your door. But you’re not going to do that, are you?”

  It was a challenge, and I took it.

  Turning away from him, I tried to leave the room, but he grabbed my arm and yanked me backward. Then his mouth was on mine, hot and hard and heavy, one hand gripping the back of my neck, the other wrapped around my forearm.

  After a few seconds of stunned ecstasy—he still wants me—I shoved him away from me. Hard.

  “Yes. Fight me,” he seethed, whipping his shirt over his head. “Fight back.” He came at me again, all strength and rage and heat, pushing me back against the living room wall. “I want you to say no. I want you to push me away. I want you to be the one to stop this because I fucking can’t.” His lower body anchored mine, the solid bulge of his erection digging into the front of my hip. “I fucking can’t.”

  I’d never felt so torn between pride and lust before. I wanted him as badly as I wanted to turn him down. Because this was all a game to Derek—he was fucking with me like I was some kind of toy.

  But goddamn, he was hot like this—fueled by fury and passion and whiskey, unable to hold back. He wanted a fight? I could give him one. But I let him kiss me first, let his tongue invade my mouth, even stroked it with my own, but when his hand moved to the crotch of my jeans, I shoved him back again.

  “Now you want me? What about Carolyn? Pick a side, Derek.”

  “I saw you tonight, flirting with people.” His fists were clenched at his sides. “I didn’t fucking like it.”

  “I saw you tonight—the way you must have wanted me to—on a romantic date with a woman.” I walked toward him, and he backed up slightly. “So which is it?” Grabbing my T-shirt at the back of my neck, I pulled it off and tossed it aside. “What do you want? This or that?”

  “Fuck you.” He rushed toward me and our bodies crashed together, all groping hands and open mouths and heavy, choked-off breaths. I hooked one leg behind his and took him down to his knees, and he pushed me onto my back, his body sprawled on top of mine.

  His weight on me felt so fucking good, and through our jeans, our cocks strained to get closer, bulging against the denim as Derek rocked his hips over mine—delicious, agonizing friction. My hands were everywhere.

  “God help me, I have to have you,” he whispered. He dragged his mouth down my neck and chest, over the tightly knotted muscles of my stomach. When he reached the waistband of my jeans, he pushed back onto his knees, straddling my legs. I propped myself up on my elbows in disbelief and watched as he unbuttoned, unzipped, and yanked them down to my thighs, my cock springing free.

  I thought he might hesitate. I thought he might ask. I thought he might do any number of things that would indicate he’d never sucked a dick before and perhaps felt some ambivalence about it.

  Nope.

  Fisting my shaft with one hand he angled it toward his mouth and lowered his head, taking me between his lips. I groaned as his tongue swept over my crown and he began to suck, his head moving up and down my length. Oh my God, was this really happening? How was it possible to get the best blowjob I’d ever had from a complete novice? How did he take me so deep, suck me so hard, stroke me just the right way with his tongue?

  Because it’s Derek. He’s perfect at everything.

  “Jesus,” I whispered, closing my eyes as I hit the back of his throat again and again and again. If I kept watching, this was going to be over quickly, and I wanted this hot, wet, mind-blowing rapture to go on forever. But even the sounds were enough to do me in—he wasn’t holding anything back—and I knew I wasn’t going to last.

  I opened my eyes as he looked up at me. Oh, fuck.

  “Gonna come,” I choked out.

  He went at me even harder, a ferocious growl escaping his throat, almost like he was ordering me to do it, threatening me if I didn’t. No problem, because a second later my climax ripped me wide open, and I was groaning and gasping and cursing as my cock pulsed and streamed inside his mouth, watching the whole thing happen with wide, disbelieving eyes.

  When he’d swallowed every last drop, he released me and crawled back up my body to claim my mouth. He tasted like whiskey and sex, and I couldn’t get enough. “I want to fuck you,” he said, the words hot against my lips.

  My body, which should have been completely sapped, ignited once more. “We need—”

  “Upstairs.” His voice thick with urgency. “My bedroom.”

  Two seconds later, we were tearing up the stairs and he was pulling me into his pitch-dark bedroom. With frantic hands, we shoved off shoes and socks, tugged off jeans and underwear, and then fell onto the bed, our mouths joined. I ended up on my back and he settled between my legs, grinding his slick, hard cock against mine, which was rising fast.

  “I fucking love your body.” His words sent fireworks shooting through me.

  “I feel the same,” I said, running my hands over his wide, muscular shoulders and back.

  “More,” he said in that commanding tone of his. “I want more.”

  “Take it.”

  He got to his knees, and I heard the sound of a drawer open and close. A series of clicks. Hands rubbing together. In the shadowy dark, I could see the outline of him preparing to fuck me, and my heart pounded furiously in my chest. I watched as he began to stroke himself, a tremor moving through my body when I felt his warm, silky fingers slide between my legs. Deftly, unabashedly, he explored me, his touch so expert I almost couldn’t believe he’d never done this before. I love your hands.

  I bent my knees and opened wider for him, inviting a more intimate touch. He eased one finger inside me, and my stomach muscles tensed at the sweet, tight burn of it. “Yes,” I whispered. One finger became two, teasing and stroking and stretching me. Whether by happy accident or on purpose, he rubbed my prostate, and my lower body started to hum. Fuck, that feels good. Fully hard again, I took my cock in my fist and rocked my hips, fucking his hand and mine at the same time.

  He grunted. “Jesus. That’s so fucking hot. Don’t stop.”

  I kept doing it, careful not to go at it too enthusiastically so I wouldn’t come yet. But his fingers were too deep, his eyes on me too hot, and you can only work against your own body for so long before it tells you to fuck off, this is happening. And I wanted it to happen with him. “Derek.” I struggled to speak. “Now.”

  I’d never wanted anyone this badly, and I’d never cared so much about making it perfect for someone. It wasn’t that I’d been a selfish lover, but in the past it had mostly been about the physicality of sex. The arousal, the fuck, the release. With Derek, it was different—I was conscious of his desire for me on another level. I knew it had to be powerful enough to overcome fears that resided at the very core of his being. I was aware that he had chosen me not just over another man, but over himself.

  I wanted to be worth it.

  Twenty-Three

  DEREK

  This was it. No turning back.

  Not that I wanted to. All my inhibitions were gone, annihilated by my physical need to have this man. To take him. To know, once and for all.

  I could barely contain myself as I tore open the condom packet and eased it over my aching cock. My f
ingers shook. It was a different kind of excitement than I’d ever felt—a storming, swirling mass of nerves, desire, anticipation, fear, hope, dread, greed, thrill. And at the center of it all, the eye of the storm, was my awareness of him. Maxim. It wasn’t only that I wanted the answer to a question. I wanted him.

  After coming home from Carolyn’s, I’d tried to numb myself with whiskey—would I never fucking learn—and forget the feelings I’d had watching him flirt with those women. But it was no use. I knew it was no use the moment I heard his key in the lock. I knew what I was going to do the moment I saw him from where I sat in the lonely dark. I just hoped he’d have the good sense to stop me.

  But he hadn’t. And the more we kissed and touched and struggled against what I finally saw as the inevitable conclusion of such passion, the more I wanted to surrender to it.

  So I had—I shed every last doubt and let my deepest instincts take over. And now I was being rewarded for it.

  His body beneath mine. His cock in my mouth. His cum down my throat. His tight, hot ass grinding against my fingers. His hand on his dick.

  Easy, easy now.

  My heart was pounding. I couldn’t breathe. Maxim’s sweet, low voice in the dark was like a secret I wanted to keep forever.

  He closed his eyes, his expression tense and his breaths deep and measured as I gently pushed the tip of my cock inside him.

  I couldn’t talk. I didn’t even have sentences in my head—just words that jumbled together as my brain tried to process what I was feeling as I slid deeper, inch by inch. Fuck. Yes. Hot. Tight. This. More. Want.

  When I was buried inside him, I fell forward, bracing myself above him, my lips an inch from his. I closed my eyes. “Sweet Jesus.”

  He wrapped his arms and legs around me. “Does it feel good?”

  I swallowed, afraid to move, because I knew I would come in two thrusts. “Yes.”

  He kissed me, his tongue teasing between my lips. “I want this to be everything you imagined.”

  But I hadn’t imagined anything even close to this.

  Slowly, with control that shocked me, I began to roll my hips, easing in and out of that unbelievable heat. He moaned against my lips, and I loved the sound of it so much, I moved a little faster, a little harder, just so he’d do it again. It’s so good, so fucking good. I’d never felt anything like it.

  “You’re perfect,” he whispered, “so fucking perfect.”

  It was all perfect, every single thing—his legs around me, his hands on my back, his breath on my lips. It made me feel close to him. Like what we were doing wasn’t just about sex—it was about us. I lifted my head up slightly to see his face, and our eyes locked. Fuck. Right then, I understood why he’d come so quickly in the living room when I’d looked up at him. There was something so intimate, so powerful, so blistering hot about eye contact in a moment like that. It was more than contact. It was connection, and it was intense.

  My body reacted, moving faster and harder and deeper until I was bucking wildly over him, every brutal thrust punctuated with a sound from the back of my throat and the slap of skin on skin. I grabbed the headboard, almost desperately, as if I needed to hold on. He brought a hand back to his cock and jerked himself as unrestrainedly as I was fucking him, all the muscles in his arm and abs and chest flexing, his legs tightening around me. It’s everything I’d always wanted sex to be—sweaty and hard and rough and animalistic and fuck, fuck, I’m going to come and then it was the sight of him losing control beneath me that finally pushed me over.

  But it wasn’t the sight of his muscles or his hand or his cock. I wasn’t even looking at it.

  It was his eyes. It was the connection. It was the answer to everything, because it wasn’t only a connection to him—it was a connection to myself, a path to understanding a part of me I’d always found incomprehensible, foreign, ugly.

  With Maxim, it made sense. It was as much a part of me as the heart beating in my chest or the blood rushing through my veins. And it was beautiful.

  With him, it was beautiful.

  I collapsed on his chest, my face buried in his neck. “Oh my God.”

  His hands slid up and down my sides. “I think you were lying to me.”

  “About what?”

  “About never being with a guy before.”

  “I wasn’t lying. You’re the first.”

  “I’m really happy about that.”

  “I am too.” For a moment, I wondered if there would even have been a first without Maxim’s appearance in my life. I couldn’t imagine there was any other guy in the universe who could have driven me to this. It was all him.

  “So you’re okay with this?”

  “Yeah. I think so.” I took a breath. “But I don’t know where we go from here.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  I thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I’d be lying if I said I could walk away from this.”

  “Good.” He kissed my head. “I don’t want to walk away either.”

  “But you and me together…” I lifted my chest off him, braced myself with my fists on the mattress. “I have no idea what that looks like. How we go about it. I’m not ready to go public.”

  “I get it. And I’m not really a public person in that respect, anyway.”

  “So we just…what? Hang out here together?”

  “Sure.”

  “Does that mean you’re not leaving tomorrow?”

  He smiled. “Yeah. That’s what it means.”

  “Good.”

  “But I am leaving in two weeks. You’ll be tired of me by then, anyway.”

  I laughed, but a few minutes later, when I was alone in my bathroom washing my hands, I wondered if he was right. Would I grow tired of him? Was this going to be a brief, passionate fling? As short as it was intense? Were we going to play house here for a couple weeks and then be done with each other when he moved out? In a way, it was probably what I should hope for. That whatever this thing was between us would burn out before it affected my life on any long-term basis. Chemistry as hot as ours wasn’t sustainable anyway, right? That kind of spark always fizzled, whether you were gay or straight. I heard about it all the time from married friends.

  So I decided not to beat myself up over what we were doing. It wouldn’t last long, I’d get it out of my system, and we’d both move on, free to pursue our larger goals. This was like a little side trip. All in fun. How long had it been since I’d done something just for fun? Something spontaneous, purely for pleasure?

  Satisfied with that, I brushed my teeth, turned off the light and went back into my bedroom. Maxim wasn’t there, and his clothing was gone too. I wandered into the hallway, and saw that he wasn’t in the bathroom. His bedroom door was half-open, and the lamp was on.

  I frowned. Should I say goodnight? We hadn’t really said it before. I’d sort of just gotten up to use the bathroom and he’d done the same. I don’t know why I assumed he’d come back to my bed. I wasn’t even sure I wanted him to. But this seemed like kind of an anti-climactic ending to a magnificently climactic night.

  His lamp clicked off, and I went back into my room, feeling slightly disappointed, and then aggravated with myself for it. Don’t get weird. He’s not your boyfriend. He’s more like a…fuck buddy. Remember those? They don’t stay the night.

  Right. It was better to keep some clear boundaries. Clearly even Maxim recognized that. What a relief we were on the same page. Turning back the covers, I got into bed, set my alarm, and switched off my lamp. When I lay back on my pillow, I realized I could still smell him on the sheets.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.

  Twenty-Four

  MAXIM

  I finished writing in my notebook, tucked it into the drawer, and turned off the light. I hadn’t written much, just a few immediate thoughts, but I never wanted to forget how good this felt. And if I woke up tomorrow and none of this was real, at least I’d have a record of it.

  I glanced at the door
, which I’d left half-open as a sort of half-invitation. Because even though I’d have loved to sleep next to him—actually what I really wanted to do was stay up talking and kissing and touching each other all night, something I’d never done or even wanted before—going back into his bed seemed way too presumptive of me. If he wanted me there, he could come find me, but if he didn’t, that was okay, too. I understood that there were lines he did not want to cross. Not yet, anyway.

  After a few minutes of silence, I knew he’d gone to bed, and I settled in beneath the covers. In the darkness, I didn’t even have to close my eyes to picture my favorite moments from tonight. His eyes looking up at me with my cock in his mouth. The way he moved inside me, slowly at first, and then with all the heated passion of a summer storm. His voice, deep and soft. I’d be lying if I said I could walk away from this.

  It had easily been the hottest blowjob I’d ever had, the best sex I’d ever had, and I’d never forget the way Derek looked as he got lost inside me. He’d surrendered to it so completely, so passionately. But it was his words I loved best. Or maybe it was his honesty. His willingness to take a chance on me. He’d come a long way in a few days.

  Neither of us knew where we might end up, but this was America. Anything was possible, right?

  Smiling, I turned onto my stomach and stretched out. I hadn’t been looking for this. But I was damn happy I’d found it.

  The next morning, I showered, dressed, and came downstairs to a surprise—Derek was at the breakfast table, drinking coffee and looking at his laptop. His hair was a little damp, and he was dressed in jeans and a casual shirt. His feet were bare. I might have imagined it, but to me he looked much more relaxed than he had in the last three days. No furrowed brow, no tight lips, no tension in his neck.

  “Good morning,” I said, unable to keep a grin off my face. “I thought you’d be at work.”

  He set down his coffee cup. “I didn’t have anything major scheduled, so I shuffled a few minor things to be able to take the day off. I haven’t done that in forever.”