Clean Break

by Erin McLellan

  His fingers circled my bad ankle, and he must have felt the scarring because he glanced down at it.

  “What happened here?”

  “Broke it four years ago. Badly. In a couple places. It’s full of metal now.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Only when I run on it.”

  He nodded and dragged his hand up my calf, studying me, his chest heaving. “You’re stunning.”

  “Connor.”

  I didn’t . . . I had no idea how to react to that compliment. Not when I was mostly naked and wanted to feel his hands on me so badly I was shaking with it. This was supposed to be a bit of fun, a continuation of what we’d been leading up to in the storage closet for weeks, not a connection.

  He flipped me onto my stomach before I could freak out.

  “Still good?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Leave your hands there.”

  My arms were stretched above my head, and I twisted my fingers into his bedspread. His lips slid across the knob at the top of my spine, and I shuddered as he trailed them lower. At my shoulder blades, he sucked up a row of hickeys, and at the base of my spine, he bit me so hard I cried out.

  He gripped my ass in his hands, and my vision blurred, even though I still had on my glasses. He was destroying me.

  “I’ve never done this before,” he whispered, stroking his thumb down my crack through my briefs. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “What feels right?”

  I wasn’t sure if that made any sense, but my brain was full of static. I wasn’t with it enough to have this conversation coherently, not if he kept touching my ass like that.

  He hummed and kneeled beside me on the bed, caressing and squeezing my butt until my eyelids drooped shut from the attention. I was practically purring.

  As my body went boneless, he brought his hand down hard onto my left ass cheek. I gasped, a piercing sound that was as loud as his palm hitting my flesh. Then I thrust against the bed as the heat from his slap spread through me.

  “Oh. Wow.” His voice was so awed that I almost rolled over so I could see it mirrored on his face, but before I could move, he spanked me again.

  I shuddered and let him at me. He played for a while, alternating between spanking me lightly and gripping my ass, testing it like he was examining a piece of fruit at the grocery store. It made me feel dirty, but in the best possible way.

  My briefs held the warmth from each smack close to my skin, and within minutes, I was humping the bed. Spanking usually made me hot, made me have to fight orgasm if my dick was touching literally anything at the same time. I craved it. The sharpness of the sting as it spread on my skin, the sound, the lift and jiggle of my ass—it all coalesced into one perfect moment.

  So close.

  “Don’t come yet,” he warned.

  “I won’t.” Damn. Talk about a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep.

  His hand came down with more force, right on the crease of my ass and thigh, and I ripped his bedding off the corner of the mattress. The pain knocked something loose in me, and I fell into that shiny place I craved but rarely reached, where everything was amplified.

  “Harder. Connor, oh fuck.” He wasn’t giving me a break now, and I started to babble, my breath hitching. “So good. So good . . . Connor. Oh fuck, I want you so bad . . . Hated seeing David with his hands on you . . . Hated when he almost made you smile . . . Harder.”

  His hand landed in the middle of my ass, catching both cheeks, and heat lit my limbs on fire. All my muscles clenched up, and I had to fight my body from thrusting against his bed and coming in a glorious rush.

  “Shit. Fuck,” I gritted out. “I’m sorry.”

  “What? What’s wrong?” I’d never heard his voice get that high or panicky, and it made some of the tension drain from my spine. His hands flew over me gently, like he was checking for a wound. “Are you okay? Travis.”

  I laughed. “I meant, ‘I’m sorry, I’m about to come.’ Not stop.”

  “Oh my God, you about gave me a heart attack.” He gave me another spank, and some of that pressure curled back into my balls. “Stand up for me, Travis.”

  Ah shit, I liked the way he said my name. His eyes were bright, as if he’d solved a puzzle.

  “Are you all right?” he asked after helping me wobble to my feet.

  “Yeah, are you? How’s your hand?”

  He dropped to his knees and smiled up at me. Such a gorgeous smile. I’d do about any-fucking-thing to earn it.

  “My hand hurts, and I like it more than I ever thought possible.” He shucked off my briefs. Then he folded them into a perfect, precise square and set them beside him. “Put your hands on my shoulders.”

  I curled my fingers into his shirt, clutching at the hard muscles underneath. I loved being naked with him fully dressed. It made me feel like a sexpot.

  “What now?” I asked. My dick was inches from his face, so I was really hoping he’d blow me.

  He bent his head and gave my balls a juicy lick. My knees buckled, and he caught me.

  “You taste good,” he said. “Can I keep spanking you?”

  A shiver slid down my body. “Yes.”

  No one had ever spanked me in this position, on their knees and me standing over them. He reached around and used his left hand to smack me once, and I jerked. The sting wasn’t nearly as intense as earlier, but it was against bare skin and sent a delicious sound echoing through the room.

  “Don’t worry about choking me.”

  “Huh?”

  “I like it.”

  Then his mouth was on me, all around me, taking me deep in a second flat.

  “Oh.” The penny dropped.

  He spanked me again, pushing my body forward, and he choked when I hit his throat. I pulled back and thrust into his mouth again. His eyes flicked up, and I grinned. What a beautiful fucking man.

  Two taps against my ass and a rough suck on the head of my cock was all it took to make me come. He grasped my sore ass with both hands when I exploded in his mouth, and the flush of pain ripped a thankful cry from my throat.

  He steadied me with his right hand against my side, and his palm was hot as fire from spanking me. I collapsed into his arms, trying to show him gratitude through hurried, frantic kisses and fumbling touches.

  In a chaotic rush, I had him on his back on his bedroom floor, his shirt rucked up and his pants open and shoved to his thighs. I didn’t even take the time to get a good look at him. I just . . . I needed him in my mouth. I needed him to feel as wild as me, as blasted apart by what had happened, what we’d done. His cock crested my tongue, glancing off the roof of my mouth, and his back bowed so perfectly that I’d remember it for the rest of my fucking life.

  His hand, the hot one that felt like a brand, kept touching me. Kept pressing the heat into my skin. My shoulder. The back of my neck. My throat.

  My cheek, when he came.

  He didn’t make a noise, not a groan or a sigh, but he rewarded me with tremors that wracked his body for long seconds before he stilled.

  When it was over, I stared at him—his chest heaving, his mouth open, lips wet—and wondered, absurdly, how I’d ever recover from this.

  Chapter Eight

  CONNOR

  Travis had his briefs and jeans back on before I’d managed to lift my head off the floor. He patted his back pocket, like he was checking for a wallet, then spun around as if searching for his shirt. I was pretty sure I was lying on it.

  After tugging my pants back into place, I sat up and pulled his shirt from beneath me, running my fingers over the soft cotton. It smelled like him—whatever mix of spicy soaps and lotions and deodorant he used—and it sent a zing to my stomach.

  “You don’t have to leave,” I said.

  I had this weird need to take care of him, to pull him close. Plus, there was that conversation I wanted almost as bad as whatever it was we’d just done.

  “It’s fine. Need to get back.” />
  Crazy that I’d felt so in control only seconds before. I wasn’t sure I could do this again if he walked out of here without talking to me. Without letting me make sure he was okay.

  “Hunting for this?” I held the shirt up.

  He snatched it out of my hands. “Yes. Thank you.”

  I didn’t like him standing over me, didn’t like feeling small and out of my depth. I got up and sat on my bed. I’d spanked him on this bed. How would I ever sleep in it again without remembering?

  “Did I do something wrong?” I asked.

  Travis froze.

  I’d definitely done something wrong. My mouth went dry, and all those haywire sensors in my brain started ringing.

  This was fine. It wasn’t a reflection of me. Travis leaving didn’t make me a failure or stupid or unlovable. It didn’t mean I was bad at sex. Those were intrusive thoughts. They were not reality. They were not logical.

  Fuck, sometimes I hated my brain.

  “I’m sorry.” I said. “I don’t—I’m not sure what I did, but I’m sorry.”

  He threw his shirt to the side and strode toward me. “New plan. We’re cuddling.”

  “What?”

  “Lie down. I want to cuddle.”

  His bare chest was suddenly in my face, and I was tempted to rest my forehead against the crest of his sternum.

  “Connor Blume, you did nothing wrong and everything right. Now lie the fuck down.”

  He nudged me, and I fell backward onto my mattress. He followed, wiggling and rearranging us until we were both under my covers.

  My pulse was still throbbing, my heartbeat in my ears, but I was able to relax my shoulders and take a deep breath. Even if he had left, I would have been fine. I knew what to do when those thoughts pummeled me.

  “You need to fold your shirt,” I said. “It might get wrinkled.”

  That sounded considerably normal—a win.

  “New rule. When we cuddle, you don’t get to boss me around,” Travis said.

  He thunked his head onto my chest, and I couldn’t hold in a pleasurable sigh. He felt so good. Another deep breath, and my head cleared. I stroked my hands over as much of him as I could—his long arms, the bumps of his spine, the dips between his ribs.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Are you?”

  Physically, sure. Emotionally, I was barely hanging on. Travis had handed me a key that unlocked all these feelings of rightness inside me. Then he’d slammed the door and tried to leave without giving me a chance to inhale and live in this new reality for a few seconds.

  “I don’t know.”

  He tensed and glanced up at me. I’d never noticed how long his eyelashes were.

  “Talk to me,” he whispered.

  I traced his eyebrow with a fingertip. Talking was normally hard for me, but my heart felt like a dam that was breaking, and all the words I’d never been calm enough to say were going to come rushing out.

  I wanted to let them.

  “I’m not always comfortable with sex stuff. Maybe it was growing up with a nonexistent sex education, or all the True Love Waits shit that gets pounded into you growing up around here. I’m probably repressed and weird.”

  “Connor, there was nothing repressed or weird about what we just did.”

  “I know. But, I, uh . . . I have OCD. I can be particular about certain stuff. Sometimes all the noise in my head makes it hard to enjoy being that close. That intimate. But I really liked tonight.”

  Travis smiled, a new understanding crystal clear in his eyes, which, frankly, was a better reaction than I’d gotten from some of my other partners when they’d found out about my OCD.

  “Well, you were in control, and I’m sure we can both agree—you’re great at being in control. And you are particular. I loved when you turned that precision and bossiness on me. It was fucking hot. Maybe you get off a little on hurting people. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve always had a spanking fetish. It gets me off, and there’s nothing wrong with that either.”

  “I liked the spanking part because you were so into it.”

  “And you enjoyed how out of control I was. That I was begging you, and saying dumb shit I should never say, and fucking your bedspread, and it was because you took me there.”

  See, a key. Everything in me was jangling to escape, and he had the key that set it free.

  “Yes.”

  “Now you know. You’re a control freak. Harness that shit. Have the type of sex you enjoy because life is too short to fuck and not be happy about it.”

  I rubbed a thumb over his full bottom lip, and he bit me with a smile. He was perfect.

  “I think . . . if we do this again, which maybe you won’t want to, and that’s fine, I’ll respect that. But I think I need this part. Afterward,” I said.

  “You’re cute when you stumble all over your words.”

  I rolled my eyes, and he hitched himself up and kissed me.

  “Thank you for telling me that,” he said against my lips. “I’m all about asking for what you want or need when it comes to sex. If we do this again, I won’t leave right away.”

  My mind flashed back to last year and that conversation with Desi. She’d told me that I needed to be honest about what I did and didn’t like with my partners. Soon after that, I’d told Travis I found kissing distasteful.

  I didn’t find it distasteful, exactly. But I’d rarely enjoyed it. It pulled me out of the moment and overwhelmed me.

  That almost-hookup with Travis was such a horrible memory, one I’d only recently started to paint over in my brain each time he smiled at me. Each time he kissed me.

  Because I loved the way he kissed me. I loved that he let me control it, that it never felt sloppy or wet or as if I couldn’t breathe.

  “I’m sorry about last year,” I whispered. “I was being an idiot.”

  He snuggled back into my chest. “No, you weren’t. Am I the first guy you’ve kissed?” he asked. “You said you didn’t kiss, but we obviously do, like, all the time, hotshot.”

  I smiled and closed my eyes. “You’re not the first guy I’ve kissed. That night, I didn’t mean that I don’t kiss guys. I meant that I don’t like to kiss, period. It isn’t my favorite thing to do with people, especially ones I don’t know. You thought I have some kind of internalized gay panic, but I don’t. I’m just—”

  “Particular?” he said, mimicking my word from earlier, but with a growly tone that indicated he thought that trait was a very good thing.

  “Yeah.”

  “Does the kissing stuff have to do with your OCD?”

  I honestly wasn’t sure. I didn’t enjoy the sensation of having a tongue in my mouth, but that didn’t mean it was my OCD, right? I was allowed to dislike things. But, when it did happen, it sometimes caused me low-level anxiety, especially when I wasn’t prepared. I’d need to think on it. What would exposure and ritual prevention therapy be for that? Lots of French kissing?

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Do you like kissing me? I don’t want you to feel as if you have to do any act you don’t enjoy or that distresses you. We can get up to all kinds of trouble together without kissing.”

  “I do like kissing you. A lot.”

  “Good. I like kissing you too.” He glanced up at me. “That night, last spring, I was mean. I called you lots of names.”

  “Oh, you did. Sometimes I catalog them when I can’t sleep,” I said lightly.

  Though it wasn’t actually a light matter. I’d even talked to my therapist about it. About how to break that particular obsessive thought process when it had started to disrupt my sleep. But it probably wasn’t a good idea to tell someone that your failed hookup with him had momentarily convinced you that you’d end up alone forever.

  Travis buried his face in my shirt. I wished we were skin to skin, but wasn’t sure I could orchestrate that without being awkward.

  “I’m really sorry, Connor. I’d want
ed to approach you all semester. Then, I see you all alone in an alley, and I barely introduced myself. What did I say? Something like, ‘I’m Travis. Want a hand job?’” I nodded, my cheek pressed to the top of his head. He continued, “I was shocked when you said the kissing thing. And disappointed. I didn’t understand, but I do now. I’m sorry I was judgmental.”

  I traced the shell of his ear and the round jut of his jaw. “I thought about you a lot after that night. I think about you all the time.”

  He didn’t respond. I evidently shouldn’t have said that.

  “You okay?” I asked, rubbing the back of his neck, which was tight.

  He nodded, but I couldn’t see his eyes. His emotions lived in his eyes.

  “Tell me a story, Connor,” he said, body all stiff.

  “About what?”

  “Anything. I like listening to you turn into Mr. Talkative.”

  Luckily, he couldn’t see my face. I was sure it was red as beetroot.

  “I’m all loose right now. You could get anything out of me.” I tried to say that like a joke, but it came out plaintive and with a fair amount of longing.

  “Could you tell me about the OCD?” he asked. “I didn’t know. I’m worried I’ve been a jerk. You could have picked up your coat earlier. I wouldn’t have left.”

  That made me chuckle. He tipped his head back and watched me laugh.

  “That’s not exactly how my OCD manifests. It can present as a compulsion to clean or make lists or straighten stuff for some, but for me, it’s usually intrusive thoughts. I like to clean and organize and straighten, but I don’t necessarily feel as if something bad will happen if I don’t. It’s more of a preference, I guess.”

  I hadn’t struggled with my other common obsessions—like fear of contamination and getting sick—and their coinciding compulsions in years. Sometimes going to restaurants was dicey, but as a whole, I managed.

  “What are the intrusive thoughts, then?” Travis asked. “Or wait, is that super personal? You don’t have to tell me.”

  “It’s fine.” It was easy to talk when his body was soft and warm against me. When I felt so comfortable with him. “I have anxiety too, and they come hand-in-hand. Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about a dumb thing I’ve done, like call someone by the wrong name or answer a question incorrectly in class, and I belabor it. I’ll run it over in my head again and again and again until I feel sick. I can’t let it go, and I’ll start to doubt that I’m a good person, or friend, or boyfriend, and therefore, bad things will happen to me.”