Center of Gravity

by Neve Wilder

  “I swear to God, Rob, if you don’t fuck me, I’m—”

  I gasped as my cheeks were roughly spread and Rob laved his tongue along my crevice. I went raspy quiet, another tremor moving through me as his tongue circled the tight ring of muscle.

  “Oh fuck, oh God.” I moaned as Rob pushed his tongue inside me once, and then again and again, spearing me in a punishing rhythm until I was soaked and pre-cum dribbled from the head of my cock down my shaft where he lapped it from my balls. It was like living the highlights reel of all my favorite dirty moments with him at once.

  My hips twitched in his fingers. My calves tensed and released. It was like every bit of my body was straining toward him. The way his hands moved over me, kneading me, coaxing me, caressing me, was poetic. For whatever else he was, he was a sexual savant and I was so fucking responsive to him, so completely helpless in his hands.

  When he slid a finger inside me, rubbing the magic spot that had me clenching and shouting, I almost lost it. He shuddered out a long breath in reply.

  He backed off the intensity, stroking and stretching me slowly from the inside, licking the place where his fingers joined my body until I was limp in his hands and the railings were necessary to keep me upright. I rocked onto his fingers, movement rippling from my body into his like a wave.

  “Don’t move, I like you just where you are, just like this,” he whispered and vanished along with Winslow. It was agony waiting for him, every place he made me burn now cold and empty.

  My head drooped beneath my arms as I waited, then heard his steps down the hall, and a pause that made me crane in his direction to see why he’d stopped. He stood a distance away, and though the light wasn’t more than the soft glow of the wall sconces, there was a kind of cast to his face, desire carved in his brows and tightening his eyes, parting his lips. His hair was wild and his expression so flushed and unhinged that it stole my next breath.

  “Goddamn, you’re beautiful,” he said. Those three words and the aching way he said them washed over me like a spotlight’s heat, saturating me with warmth.

  Then he was behind me again, kicking off his pants. The sound of foil tearing, the stretch of rubber. I gasped at the chill of lubed fingers slipping inside me again.

  The crown of his cock trailed along the crack of my ass, teasing my hole until my knuckles went white and I was one breath shy of demanding he get the fuck inside me before I lost it.

  When he pushed into me, I gave a hoarse cry that made him go still. “Okay?”

  “What? God. Fuck yes, don’t stop.” I spread my legs wider and thrust hard back against him, driving him deeper, my stomach fluttering at the mad burn as I stretched around his girth. He filled me with hard, wet heat and I was engulfed even as I enveloped him. All thoughts beyond awareness of sensation evaporated, burned away by the perfect friction of him inside me.

  “Fuck that’s good,” I moaned.“Fuck, fuck,” my words trailed off into nonsense, became a seductive whisper that urged him harder, deeper. His hands slid up my back, along the length of my arms, wrapping over mine where they wrapped around the rails. He licked up the side of my neck, sucked the tendons that strained there as I whimpered while he pummeled my ass the way I’d been wanting him to for what felt like eons.

  “I’m going to fucking come,” I grated out.

  “Not yet, baby,” he cajoled, his voice pouring like dark magic into my ear.

  I groaned petulantly as he licked my earlobe and pried my fingers from the rails, pulling out of me to settle me gently on my knees with my back to him. It was more a full-body collapse on my part than a repositioning. My fingers spread and latched to the bottom of a stair and Rob knelt behind me, thighs enveloping mine as he pushed back inside me, then pulled back out. In and out, slow and measured, he strung us both along. If I was going to go crazy, I was bringing him with me, goddammit.

  I jolted again as he brushed my prostate, one hand releasing the bottom of the stair to clench the arm he had locked around my chest. He kissed my jaw, then the side of my mouth when I tipped my head back into his shoulder and arched my back. The tempo changed. This was slow and seductive. This was his tongue tangling openly with mine in a caress; an exchange of breath and moans and heat. My hand locked around his wrist as he rocked inside me. It was dangerously primal and dangerously intimate. It was like being cradled and rocked to orgasm. A full-body feeling. Complete sensation.

  A surge of heat spread through my pelvis in toe-curling warning.

  “Fuck, Rob, I can’t do it, you’re hitting my—fuck.” My lips peeled back from my teeth, my eyes squeezing shut, and I could feel the exact second he exhausted his restraint.

  With one hand, he seized the railing. The other wrapped around my cock as he speared into me hard and fast and merciless. With a cry, I exploded fever-hot into his grip, my orgasm contracting my muscles around Rob’s cock. White and blue streaked my vision as I fell apart, and he unloaded into me like he’d been packed with jet fuel and sparked off.

  I hadn’t come like that in…maybe ever. I trembled with small aftershocks of pleasure and my thighs were still quivering a minute later when I finally released my hold on the stair and Rob released his grasp on my hip and curled over me, gasping for breath.

  I fell sideways to the floor and sprawled. Rob tumbled after me and we lay in a boneless heap, the floor around us a patchwork of clothing, buttons, the condom wrapper and the condom he tied up and dropped on top of it. The bottle of lube lay on its side, drizzling into a slowly-forming pool. One of my shoes was wedged into the bottom railing of the stair. I didn’t know how. My keys and a couple of loose coins had spilled from my pocket. The box of Cracker Jack was by the door. Another condom packet lay next to my thigh. Rob picked it up, holding it between two fingers for me to see as I turned my head in his direction and arched a brow.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Some optimism that fell out of my pocket, I guess.” I grinned, rolling onto my side, and kissed him again.

  I was hoping for a repeat Saturday night after we’d fucked twice Friday night. Sex with Rob was an immediate addiction. I wanted it dirty and hard, the perfect distraction it had been since I’d gone down on him in the club. There were no lines between us when I was on my back or bent over, or when he was on his knees in front of me. It was pure feeling, pure exchange of give and take that resulted in out-of-this-world orgasms.

  I woke up the next morning dizzy—not the bad kind of dizzy but the well-fucked, sated kind of dizzy that buzzed happily under my skin when I looked at him lying next to me.

  Coffee happened late because we ended up fooling around again as soon as he woke up. I showered at his place and we made tentative plans for that night, before I left for a couple of moving jobs.

  But our plans didn’t end up happening because he got called back for a meeting with a new client that was supposed to take place early Monday morning and he needed Sunday to prepare.

  It didn’t matter anyway, because when I got home that afternoon after work, I knew I wouldn’t be leaving that night.

  Mom had dropped Lainey off at a friend’s house before taking on a night shift at the diner. I came home with a bag of burgers for me and dad and as soon as I opened the door, I froze. The house smelled sour. I knew what that meant. Dropping off the burgers in the kitchen, I stopped at the sink to wash my hands just in case they smelled like food before I went back to Dad’s room. When he was nauseated, any scent of food could set him off again.

  The only light in the room was the kaleidoscope flicker of the TV, the volume a low drone. Dad lay curled on his side in bed. The doctor had warned us that this round of chemo would be intense. It was yet another effort to try to shake up his system and slow the progression of his tumors.

  To be honest, I was surprised he’d gone through with it. He’d made it clear after his diagnosis that he would be the one making decisions, and I think he did that to keep me and Mom from feeling any guilt or worry that we might have swayed
him in the wrong direction or that there was something more we could have done. Mom had initially freaked out, worrying that meant he was just giving up, but Dad had accepted all of the doctor’s recommendations, including this one. All of those probabilities and statistics meant nothing, though, when I stood outside my father’s door watching his body wracked with vomiting.

  I toed off my shoes and walked in, leaning over his bed to put my hand on his cheek. He was sweating and clammy. After a moment, his hand came up and patted mine, though his eyes didn’t open.

  “Think I’ll be skipping dinner tonight. I hope you didn’t cook.” His lips curled in a thin smile for the joke. I picked up a washcloth draped on the nightstand and wiped down his face and his arms, then dabbed it against his neck.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got something special planned: the highest quality ice chips you’ve ever tasted in your life. It’s primo shit, Dad, seriously. I almost had to sell my soul to get them.”

  That he didn’t make some joke back about how that would have been a bad bargain for the other guy meant he felt really fucking bad. Talk about a buzzkill after an amazing night. Then I felt like a total asshole for thinking that.

  I straightened his covers, cleaned out his trash can, and went to the kitchen to crush some ice. I’d perfected my method with a hammer, plastic bag, and towel, so my chips were almost as good as that slushy, ball ice that half crunched and half melted in your mouth. That giddy dizziness I’d felt earlier had transmuted somehow into queasiness. My arms were heavy and I leaned against the counter for a second, resting my forehead on its cool surface while a fist clenched cold and tight in my chest.

  I stayed there, counting my breaths, thinking about painting, the ocean—anything, really, that was outside this house—until my hands stopped trembling and I could breathe again.

  I returned with the cup and a spoon, taking up my spot on the chair next to his bed. I’d lost track of how many times I’d sat here feeding him ice chips until Mom came to relieve me or Dad finally kicked me out. I managed to get a couple of spoonfuls in that stayed down, then he fell asleep and I must have dozed off, too, because the next time I woke up, my cheek was against his bed sheet. He stroked my hair gently.

  “Do you want some more ice? What time is it?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Infomercial o’clock. Your mom will be home soon, why don’t you go to bed? I’m all right.”

  I stretched out. “I can stay for a little bit. Do you want me to do the pressure point thing with your hand?”

  He gave me a sad smile and shook his head again. “How about you just talk to me for a while.”

  I leaned back in the chair and kicked my feet up onto the side of the bed. “I’m going to get a loan. For school. I printed a bunch of options out and Rob helped me figure them out.”

  “Good boy. I’m glad to hear that.” His smile hitched higher. “I knew you’d come around, though.”

  “You did not.”

  “I did. A father always knows.” He pinched my ankle weakly. “How’s Rob?”

  Delicious. No way was I going to say that, though. We did have some boundaries.

  “He’s good. His parents’ house is on the market now so he’s back in the city, but I saw him last night. He was…very helpful.”

  Dad quirked a brow but didn’t say anything else, so I told him about the letters we found to Rob’s dad.

  “What?” I asked when I finished. He was frowning.

  “I think I have some of your mom’s and my old letters somewhere. But we talked on the phone a lot, too. Now it’s text this and text that, sexting. DTF.”

  I laughed. “DTF. You’ve been watching MTV.”

  “I was surfing and got stuck there. Some chubby-cheeked Jersey boy with hot-dog lips and a bad tan talking about a girl being DTF.” He shook his head. “It’s so aggressive and impersonal. Don’t get me wrong, your mom and I, we were down for a good time. Don’t make that face at me. It was different, though. It was about connection and communication, not about sticking your dick in any hole that’ll have you.”

  “You’ve been watching too much TV, in general.”

  “Well, my options are limited right now.”

  “I feel like you’re kind of dancing around some father-son lesson here.” I arched a brow. And I was totally willing to entertain it since he’d perked up a bit, but he just waved his hand thinly.

  “Fuck, I don’t know. I guess I’m saying there’s nothing wrong with falling in love.”

  “I didn’t say there was.”

  “But it’s also a really good idea to finish your degree.”

  “Yes, we always circle back to that, don’t we?”

  “You know the best way to shut me up about that? Stick your diploma on our mantel.”

  I laughed and we chattered on about the classes I’d take, about the moves Tom and I had done that afternoon, until I heard Mom get home. I straightened his covers, helped him to the bathroom and back, then settled him under the covers again.

  “Son,” he said as I smoothed the sheet over his chest. “I think I’m about done.” He’d said it before, but he rarely called me son, and I knew this time that he was serious. My breath caught and became a solid ball lodged in my throat, but I nodded, bending down to kiss his forehead. “It’s your choice and I’ll love you no matter what.”

  “Back at ya, kid. ‘Til the world falls off its axis,” he murmured.

  I thought about calling Rob that night, sat in my bed tossing my phone back and forth between my hands. He would talk to me if I told him, I thought. He would be sympathetic. But somehow the idea made me nervous, like it would upset whatever fledgling thing—if anything—was between us. I wanted to be with him again, sleep with him again. I needed it. But I didn’t want to complicate things and apparently Rob didn’t either. He’d made that clear even before I’d left that morning. When I’d asked if he might come back next weekend for another round, there’d been an empty pause before he’d smiled and shrugged. “Maybe.”

  I didn’t hear from him again until the following Friday when he texted me to see if I had plans for Saturday night. I texted him back: I don’t if that means you’ll get on your knees for me.

  He replied, That can be arranged, then before I could reply, added, You know, you’re a demanding bastard.

  Me? I wasn’t the one denying orgasms last time.

  It went from there until I was sending him pics, telling him how I was jacking off thinking about him.

  You should be illegal.

  I think I am in a few counties.

  On Saturday night I was in his bed by 5:30 and we didn’t leave until the next morning except to let Winslow out. The weekend after that was the same, and the one that followed. I needed an out and Rob was my out. He was the perfect fucking distraction. Sex with him left me buzzing and euphoric. Together, we were our own little world of traded orgasms. Nothing got in and nothing got out. It was like Vegas, really. What happened in Nook Island stayed in Nook Island, and I was okay with that because everything with him was so highly-charged and erotic, and I couldn’t get enough. I couldn’t fucking get enough of him.

  “Dude!” Tom gave me an exasperated look as I blinked up at him from where I’d gotten lost staring at my beer label.

  “What?”

  “I said do you want to do another round?”

  “No,” I groaned. “I’m good.”

  We were at The Tap House on a Wednesday night and Tom was on a mission to sample every shot in the bar. I’d stopped after two Fireballs, but he’d plowed through a Jaegerbomb, a Captain Coke, and a Mind Eraser since then. His eyes were glassy, his smile loose, and I figured he was about two shots shy of thinking the twitchy cougar sitting at the end of the bar was a good idea. She had pill habit and leopard print underwear written all over her and had been eyeing up Tom since the moment we’d arrived.

  “C’mon, one more round and then we should cash out and go to Razz.”

  My brows shot up. Tom was wel
l aware that Razz wasn’t the typical hetero swimming pool. If he was on the prowl—and he usually was—that was a strange option, unless he was going to be all sketchy about it.

  “I don’t want to be your wing-dude while you try to use your hip-to-the-gays street cred on chicks.”

  “Maybe I just feel like dancing.” Tom gave me a big grin that I didn’t buy for a second.

  “You’re acting weird. What the fuck is up with you?”

  He shrugged and corralled another shot closer.

  “I might go to Razz with you. But only if you start talking.”

  Tom swallowed the shot with a wince, then pushed it away, knocking over a couple of other shot glasses in the process. I caught them just before they rolled off the lip of the table. Yeah, he was definitely hung up on something.

  “I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks. You’re too fucking busy or the time doesn’t seem right or I open my mouth and nothing will come out.” He swiped his hand across his forehead and blew out a long exhale. I think he was waiting for me to say something, to prompt him on, but I was running out of energy. For everything.

  “I want to go back and see that dancer, Reese, and I don’t want to go alone.”

  “Reese? The go-go dancer Reese?” A cool wariness slithered through me. I knew Reese. Peripherally, but I knew him.

  “That one, yeah.” His expression sobered and he was now watching me like I knew something he didn’t.

  “I am one-hundred percent confused.”

  “Me too,” he said miserably.

  “Wait,” I said. My birthday came rushing back to me in neon flashes. Tom disappearing into the crowd after Reese, his odd behavior the next day. “Something happened.”