Taking Lead

by Dallas Redford

  “What? Without saying goodbye?” He comes over and kisses my forehead and then the tip of my nose. I lift my chin and he plants one on my lips.

  “I need to brush my teeth,” I murmur.

  He smiles. “It’s fine.”

  I go off to brush my teeth. He calls out, “If I remember correctly, you’re scrambled, right?”

  As I rinse, “Yes.”

  By the time I get back to the kitchen, he has everything laid out, like he’s about to cook. “What are you doing?”

  “Breakfast? You hungry?” He takes in my outfit. “What are you doing? Gotta be somewhere?”

  My stomach growls. “I can’t believe you bought groceries.”

  “Yeah. The fridge only had beer and a pack of salami. Real bachelor lifestyle.” He looks back over his shoulder and it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen, him smiling at me like this while he begins to cook me fucking breakfast. “Were you planning to survive on…cowboy cookies?”

  “Davis! You motherfucker!” I let out a sharp laugh. “You better not have broken into my stash!” I say as I lunge at the box. My mom is famous for her cowboy cookies. I’m her biggest fan but Davis has always been a strong competitor.

  Thankfully, he’s left me a few. I take one out and crunch on it as I come up to him and kiss him. It feels like the world stops spinning for a second when he’s in my arms.

  “Did you take the Advil?”

  “You sure know how to talk dirty…” I say, kissing him.

  “You’re still young. Trust me, at my age nothing is sexier than avoiding a hangover.”

  I laugh and slap him on the butt as I go back into the room to grab the two pills. The pills are still there, though it looks like Theo’s been sharing the water. There’s a note, too.

  Babe-

  Headed out to get fixings for breakfast.

  -D

  He did leave a note. And he came back. And he likes me. I like the simplicity of it, too. Babe and D. Like the only people named Babe and D in the world. My heart starts to soar. He just—fuck. He just makes me so happy.

  I walk back into the kitchen. He’s holding up a raggedy pan, accusingly. “This is all you’ve got to work with?”

  “Rebecca took everything. It was mostly hers. I had to buy a towel to dry off with.”

  “I noticed,” he says.

  I’m grateful he doesn’t push on the Rebecca front as I don’t particularly want to talk about it. He shakes his head and gets to work cooking. Somehow, he manages to turn out a breakfast spread. We sit down on the sofa and tuck in, seeing as she took the dining table, too.

  As I eat cheesy eggs with herbs, I listen to him talk. He tells me about the gallery. I ask him how art shows and sales work. It’s fascinating to hear him talk like this. Growing up with him, he was always my dad’s friend, so I wasn’t ever privy to this side of him. Not until I got older. And even then, he still held me at a little bit of an arm’s length. In retrospect, I wonder if it was because he was afraid of this. It feels good to see him like this, open and engaging and passionate. He’s a bon vivant and there is something about him that just sparkles. I find him so addicting.

  “Why are they so large? Your sculptures? You never make anything smaller?”

  “I just like the scale. I think I once read somewhere that men bear small things terribly and great things easily. Like losing a dollar can be heartbreaking but falling in love, something which can be infinitely more painful, people jump at the chance to do it every day. I liked that idea. I wanted to play with it. With scale. To try and apply it to art.”

  Affairs of the heart. I know it’s dangerous ground, but I ask. “What about you? Have you ever been in love? Had your heart broken?”

  He pauses, sips his OJ. “Maybe been in love two, two and a half times.”

  “Two and a half?” I laugh. “Okay. So, when was the first time?”

  “I was eight and she was seven. Her name was Jessie. Real tomboyish, good at basketball and loved bugs. I fell hard. She wasn’t having it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Turns out she didn’t like bugs that much. She only liked the pretty ones. Like beetles and butterflies. I brought her a spider for her birthday and it did not go down well.”

  I laugh. “The second time?”

  “Candace. I’ll forever love her. She gave me Jordan. I’m not in love with her anymore, but—” he taps his chest,” She’s in there. Forever.”

  And Jordan’s the half. It’s touching to hear, even if it excludes me.

  I set my plate down. “I believe I was in love once.”

  “Believe? You’re not sure?”

  “Well, I just remembered it when you told me that Jessie story.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Well, it was a he.”

  “A he? Who?”

  I can’t help but react to the slightly tense tone in his voice. I’m admitting something I’ve never even admitted to myself. “I think I was in love with one of my teachers.”

  “Who?” he demands.

  “Calm down,” I say, laughing. “One of my college teachers. English 101. Cool dude. Real hipster, though.”

  That doesn’t seem to ease him, but I can see he’s trying to be cool about it. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, glasses and everything. Now, that I think about it I probably wasn’t in love. It was just a crush. But I’d all but blotted that from my mind.”

  “So that was the first time you were attracted to another guy?”

  “Well…I don’t know,” I say.

  The first time I was ever attracted to a guy was with Davis.

  I say, “It wasn’t so much sexual. There was just a quality he had about him. Like an outlook on life and I was into it.”

  Davis seems to relax. He nods.

  “He was free. Kind of all in. Up for anything. I like that.”

  We’ve both finished eating. He collects my plate, gets up and walks into the kitchen. Theo trots behind him, her tail in the air. He runs the water and then I can hear he’s washing the dishes.

  I go to him. “I can do this. You cooked. Let me wash.”

  “They’re almost done. Just let me finish,” he says, brusquely.

  I grab his face between my hands. He lets me turn him to face me. I kiss him on the tip of his nose and then on his lips. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m plotting how to kill that teacher of yours. What class was that again?”

  I burst out laughing. “You’re jealous.”

  “No.”

  “You are. I thought you and I were just friends.”

  “You trying to make me jealous?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  He pauses with the sponge frozen on the plate, smiles a little. “Well, I am.”

  I smile and kiss him again. This time he lets the plate sink into the soapy water and turns around to give me his total attention. He wraps his arms around me, pulling me in deeper, sending his tongue out like an envoy to search and taste me. I still can’t get over the feeling of being in his arms. I would have expected to feel like less of a man like this with him, but I am just so into him that nothing else matters but this. What we share.

  I kiss him, pull back and nibble at his lip. “That’s so you don’t go around killing innocent English teachers.”

  He slaps me on the ass as I leave him and head down the hall. “I’m taking a shower,” I call back.

  As I strip and adjust the temperature, I’m torn. I know that last night I flat out asked him to have sex and he said no. That I should wait until this morning. And this morning has been perfect. I can’t help but imagine that this is what it would be like if we were together.

  Still, he made sure to be up and about this morning so that we could avoid having sex. It’s clear that part of whatever we have—this flirty playfulness—it’s over. He hasn’t even told me why he showed up on my doorstep last night. But, I know it’s not because he has this burning need to make me his. No matter how good his kisses fe
el. Had he wanted to fuck, he would have stayed in bed or woke me up. It sucks that I can’t just ask him without making things strange between us.

  I’m about to hop in the shower when I remember he was supposed to be gone today. “Hey, Davis. What about your flight?” I call.

  “Pushed until later today,” he answers, and his voice is right outside the bathroom door.

  I rip the door open. “What are you doin—”

  25

  Chapter 25

  He’s standing there shirtless. He’s taking off his shoes. The top of his pants are undone and I see that he’s lost the underwear he had on last night.

  “I was coming to see if you wanted some company,” he says in a husky voice. His eyes are low with lust.

  I don’t need to answer. Lust surges along my spine and I nearly fucking shiver. My dick goes from zero to sixty in seconds. Then, he’s tilting me back into the bathroom, toward the running water, his mouth finding mine as his hands race along my flesh, desire trailing his fingertips.

  “What time today?” I ask, breathlessly.

  “Much, much later,” he murmurs against my lips.

  We climb into the shower fumbling our way through a clumsy attempt to wash ourselves. We make a go at it in the steam. The flow of the water surrounds us, but we lose track of washing in the pursuit of deeper and deeper kisses. I gasp when he wraps his big hand around my aching cock. I take his in hand, too and he groans. Then, we’re connected at the mouth and at the waist as we jerk each other off. It’s intense and I feel my breath catching against his lips. This is what I’ve needed.

  My balls tighten without warning. “Oh god, Davis, I’m about to nut!” I spill first, my release surging out of me with the force of a hose. God, it feels so good, I think, as my knees sag. I groan against Davis’ mouth and he eats it up. He kisses me hard and crushes me tight against his powerful chest as he milks every single drop from me. I’m dazed in the moment, the landscape of my mind pressed flat with bliss.

  He doesn’t stop kissing me. And indeed, I can feel his cock twitching in my hand. I reach my hand down to cup his balls, to massage him as he reaches his own peak. I marvel again at just how large and round they are, his nuts. My hand is tracing along his inner thigh as he lets go with an animal growl that vibrates my lips, panting as he shudders and paints my hand, wrist and forearm white.

  We stand like that, breathing hard. We’ve let the steam out of the kettle and now we can think straight. Body to body, his chest pounds a rhythm into mine. His belly flexes against my own. I become aware of his fingers tracing a simple pattern along my lower back as he tucks me in closer to him. It feels so fucking good. When I’m in his arms, I feel like I’m his. And that’s fucking amazing. I squeeze him tighter, pressing into him that much more. I really don’t want this to end. I don’t want to have to play nice and be “friends.”

  “We should at least make an attempt to get clean,” he murmurs after a few minutes. He takes the bar of soap and gently lathers me from head to toe. I let him. My brain tries to process this, this man who is a mixture of so many different things. At once manly and rugged and gentle and caring. Sexy but also down to earth. The type of man to do contracting but here he is on a rise in the art world for his sculptures.

  My dick is rising to attention by the time he’s finished rinsing off the soap. The air around us smells herby with the lavender scent of the bar in his hand. It’s like my whole body is turned on. Hell, the feel of my own hand on my own skin makes me tremble. Davis has brought me here.

  I take the bar from him and repeat the same moves on along his big frame, except that once I get to his neck, I place a kiss there. It’s amazing to see such a large, masculine man shiver from a tiny kiss. I never would’ve thought it would turn me on so much to make him shiver but it does. His body looks out of this world, but he can still be brought to his knees by tenderness. I kiss him again and I feel a gentle hello as the smooth head of his cock slides up my thigh.

  I trail my kisses along his clavicle. He lets me. I love that I get to do this. And yes, it’s just for today. But, it’s good. We aren’t rushed and fumbling like we normally are. I’ve asked no questions. I’m not going to.

  I already get it. This is temporary. This is something he’s doing for me. To meet my needs and I’m grateful. And I’m so, so grateful. Does that make me pathetic? Desperate? I don’t care. I just want to keep kissing him.

  I press my lips against his nipple and he grips the back of my head as I suck him there. I know, even if I was writing this story that I would never change a thing. Just with what he’s given me, he’s given me so much. And I don’t know what comes after this but that’s okay. It has to be, my brain tells me. I just need to convince my heart.

  By the time I reach his abs, I’m trembling with reverence. I’m a fucking guy and he’s a guy. I’ve seen all these parts before. Dicks are not new. But, I’ve never seen them like this. His body thrills me. No one is as obsessed with a dick as a guy can get. Still, it’s on another level with Davis. Every part of his body is a revelation to me. I struggle to process what it means to touch his abs versus my own. Touching him ignites something in me. A hunger that won’t be sated until I have him in my mouth.

  I’m on my knees.

  I grab his member with both hands. It feels good to have my hands occupied like this. I take my time rolling the skin back and then forward, appreciating the view of the soft skin stretching over his thick head. He lets out a deep groan, sags back against the tile. I give him a good squeeze. My reward is a pearl of dew. I remember the taste. I’d put it out of my mind, but I never truly forgot the saltiness of his taste. I let my tongue flicker out to collect it and to my surprise he goes weak in the knees. He murmurs my name, his body shaking.

  “Davis,” I say because I want to do this, but I want to hear him say that he wants me to do it. I want to know that it’s not just me.

  I want him to acknowledge how ridiculous it is for us to try and be “just friends”

  “Yeah, bae?” he groans. I give him a lick which gets a grunt and a shiver out of him.

  “Can I?”

  He peeks down at me, his eyes barely open and I feel bold under his lazy, seductive stare. I openly lap at the underside of the fat head of his cock. He groans, clutching his hands to his body.

  “Babe…” I call him, and he gives me his full attention. “Can I?”

  I lick my lips and use just the very edges of my lips to lightly brush his sensitive head. I apply just a modicum of suction.

  Who knew I’d be good at this? In truth, I don’t know that I truly am. All I have are his reactions to go from.

  From the way that he groans and throws his head back it seems like I’m doing it okay.

  In this moment I want to please him. It’s as if my purpose in life has been distilled to this one thing. And I love it. I love to make him feel good.

  I love having his cock in my hands and knowing he’s mine.

  Knowing that I can own the things that I do to his body.

  That it’s me that turns him on.

  I wish I could have it forever, but I put that out of my head.