by John Inman
Before I could say another word, he leaned in and placed his lips gently over mine.
Chapter Nine
AS WE kissed, the night around me ceased to exist. I saw none of it. Not the fog or the darkness or the beers forgotten and warming on the floor beside our chairs. I saw only Cory, kneeling there in front of me, his eyes so centered on mine it almost took my breath away. Felt only his mouth, gently tasting mine. Smelled only his fresh breath, the clean scent of his skin, flowing over and through me. Heard only the combined pounding of our two hearts thundering inside my head.
Cory slowly pulled away and once again rose to stand before me. There was a tightness in his shorts now, just as there was in mine. It took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to bury my face in his crotch right then. A playful smile twisted his lips as if he knew what I was thinking. He took my hand and pulled me up to stand against him. Our hips came together, and we felt each other’s hardness.
“Come inside with me,” he whispered softly, and taking my hand without waiting for an answer, he led me back into the apartment. At our bedroom door, he let me lead him inside, and then he turned and quietly closed the door behind us. When the latch clicked, securing us in the room, I felt a rush of desire sweep through me.
Now that we were alone, I knew I couldn’t wait another moment. I walked back into his arms and laid my head against his chest. Breathed in his delicious heat as his strong arms wound gently around me, pulling me close.
I felt his lips in my hair. He made murmuring noises as his hands explored my back.
“I didn’t know if you’d want me, Malcolm. I didn’t even know if I’d really want you until I saw you. Then I was sure. I’ve been aching for you since I got here.”
I lifted my head and stared up into his face. “I never knew. I thought you were straight. At least I did at the beginning. I thought you were out of my league—down from Mt. Olympus on holiday and soon to be riding a lightning bolt back up the mountain, so what was the point of a mere mortal like me getting involved?”
He laughed. “Involved. I like the sound of that.”
“Did you really like my picture that much?”
His expression sobered. The tip of his tongue came out to lick his lips, as if he was reliving the taste of our kiss. When he answered my question, he did it quietly. With one word.
“Yes.”
“I hate to break it to you, but you really are out of my league, you know.”
“No,” Cory said with a stern little pout. “I don’t know that at all.”
“You could have anybody else.”
“I don’t want anybody else.”
“We barely know each other.” I tilted my head back to look at him.
Cory smiled down at me, still holding me tight against his chest. “We’ve been living together for a month. I’ve been obsessing over your stupid picture for a year. We’ve seen each other at our worst. I think we know each other well enough.”
“I’ve never seen you at your best,” I said jokingly.
The smile he aimed at me then was a showstopper. “If things go the way I plan tonight, Malcolm, maybe you’re about to.”
I gulped, and on the wings of a sigh, I said the same thing he had said a minute before. “I like the sound of that.”
I suddenly realized we were standing in the darkness at the edge of my bed. The nightlight in the bathroom gave us just enough illumination to see by. I looked down when I felt his fingers at the front of my shirt. He was undoing my buttons.
“Your hands are shaking,” I said.
“I know.”
“You’re too beautiful for me.”
“God, Malcolm, please don’t ever say that again.”
“Beth will kill me for leading you astray.”
“I’ll tell her I did all the leading, I did all the straying. I’ll tell her—”
But his voice suddenly stopped as he undid my last button and oh so carefully pushed my shirt off my shoulders. It slid down my back with a rustling whisper and puddled on the floor at my heels.
“Oh, man,” Cory breathed, bending to press his lips to the base of my throat. “I’ve wanted this for so long. You don’t know how many nights I’ve lain in that stupid foldaway bed fantasizing about you.”
I laid my head back as he foraged at my throat.
“Maybe it wasn’t me you were fantasizing about at all. Maybe you just wanted a better bed.”
“Shut up, Malcolm.”
“Okay.”
Pulling away for just a moment, he proceeded to yank his own shirt over his head and toss it into the shadows. He scooped me once again into his arms and pressed his broad chest against mine, and I felt the all-encompassing heat of him for the very first time. I slid my hands over the muscles of his back. His skin was so soft, yet so firm at the same time. I trailed my fingertips down the nubs of his backbone until I found a patch of hair at the base of his spine. Rustling it with my fingers, I began to tremble.
Cory bent to slide his lips down the center of my chest. While he did that, I tucked my fingers inside the back of his waistband, where I felt the swell of his ass, warm and welcoming against my hands. I dipped a fingertip into the cleft there, and he gave a tiny gasp. A moment later, I gave the same gasp when his tongue slid over my nipple and he sucked it hungrily into his mouth.
My legs almost buckled beneath me.
“Don’t fall down,” he said.
“I’ll try not to.”
We both laughed.
I hated to do it, but I didn’t have a choice. I pulled away from his sweet mouth to do some exploring of my own. When I buried my face in his chest, he seemed to like it. He pulled at my hair, tugging me closer. I dragged my tongue through the fuzz between his pecs, and now it was his turn to tremble. I dipped my head lower and paraded kisses down the little line of fur that meandered from the center of his stomach to his belly button. Once past that milestone, the enticing trail vanished beneath his shorts, promising greater discoveries farther south.
As I found his belly button with my tongue and slipped inside to take soundings, I dropped to my knees in front of him and pulled his shorts down over his hips at the same time. His cock, filled with blood, sprang up to lay itself against my face.
“Oh God,” I heard him mumble up above.
I smiled and pressed my lips to the base of his cock, inhaling his scent, losing myself in the heat and the softness and the iron hunger that waited there for me. Cory’s cock was just as I expected it to be. Long and thick and beautiful. He was circumcised, and the ridge of his corona felt firm and pliant as he dragged it across my nose. I cupped his balls in my fingertips, and he thrust his hips forward at my touch. Then I slipped my fingers around his rigid cock, tilted it down, and slid my tongue across his slit to gather up a shimmering pool of precome that had gathered there and was about to fall. His body bucked against me when I did.
Before I could take him into my mouth completely, he reached down and pulled me to my feet. Wrapping his arms around me tight, he lifted me from the floor as if I weighed nothing at all and covered my mouth with his. Our tongues met inside the kiss as he spun me around and laid me gently on the bed behind us.
Breaking the kiss, but lingeringly, as if he really didn’t want it to end, he knelt over me and in one quick motion, popped the button at the top of my uglyass Bermuda shorts, dragged them down over my legs, and flung them away, leaving me naked and hard beneath him on the bed.
“Oh man,” he said, staring down at me.
I reached up and slid my fingers around his cock as it hovered there above me. His strong hands found my neck and stroked me softly for a moment, and then his fingers gently cupped my face. From there he trailed his large hands downward across my chest, my stomach, my hips, and through the hair on my legs, groping gently as he moved along as if he savored the feel of me as I had savored the feel of him. When he reached my feet, he cradled one in his hands and lifted it high enough to lay his mouth to my instep. It so sur
prised me, I gave a stuttered cry, and with his mouth still on my foot, he gazed up the naked length of me and blessed me with the sexiest smile I had ever seen on a human face. His hand slid up the back of my leg, and he caressed the tender skin behind my knee.
He abandoned my foot then, and he pressed his mouth to my shin, ran his tongue through the hair there, then slid it hungrily across my knee, along my thigh. As he reached my hip, he pulled back and stared into my eyes.
“You’re everything I knew you’d be,” he said. And as the words left his mouth, his strong fingers found my dick and circled it gently. He dipped his head and put his mouth over my balls, surprising me again so that I jerked beneath him. He gave a tiny laugh.
“Jumpy,” he said.
With that, he laid himself across the bed in the opposite direction from how I was lying. We each shifted to better position ourselves, and the moment we were both where we most wanted to be, Cory took my cock into his mouth, sliding it deep. I bucked again, shuddering beneath him.
I pulled him over so that he was straddling me on his hands and knees. His cock swayed above my face. I tasted his thigh in a long kiss, relishing the hairiness, loving the weight of his balls when they pressed against my forehead. I lifted my head, kissed the base of his cock again, then ran my tongue through the hair there.
Laughing, he collapsed onto the bed on my other side and took me into his mouth again. This time we were both on our sides. I wrapped my arms around him, pulled him close, and when I had him where I wanted him, I tilted his iron cock toward me and slid it into my mouth, as he had done to me.
Time stopped. I knew only the feel of Cory against me. The softness of his skin. The way he trembled when I did the least little thing. I trembled too. Knew only his mouth, circling me below. Knew only his hands, his heat, his long, delicious cock. I almost felt like a child alongside him, he was so tall, so strong, so muscled. He encompassed me completely. But never once did I feel overpowered. He was too gentle for that. In his arms, I felt… needed. Hungered for.
We had barely learned the taste of each other when I found myself at the point of no return.
“Cory, I’m sorry,” I gasped. And no sooner were the words out than I released a stream of come into his mouth. He snuggled closer, never releasing me from his lips as I emptied myself into him. As he drank my juices down, he gripped the back of my thighs and murmured that funny little humming sound again, all the while smiling at me, making me feel more wanted than I had ever felt before at a moment like this.
Emptied, sated, I lay back, shivering, trembling, as his warm, moist mouth still sucked at me while I softened between his lips.
His own cock was still hard, pressed tightly against my face. In the wonder of my own ejaculation, I had almost forgotten the promise of his.
Rectifying the situation as my drained cock slid from his lips, I tucked his long cock back inside my mouth and went to work on it in earnest. It didn’t take long.
Cory buried his face against my softened cock and gave himself up completely to his hunger. He bucked and gasped beneath me. His hands were everywhere. Just as he laid his fingertip to my opening, as if stumbling on it by accident, his back arched and a great flood of sweet come spilled into my mouth. He shuddered against me, held me tight, stroked my cheek with his thumb as his cock poured jets of warm cream across my tongue. He came so much it was all I could do to keep up.
When the torrent eased to a trickle, I clutched him closer and continued to savor him as he slowly softened and spilled the last of his juices onto my tongue. The moment his sated cock finally slid from between my lips, he flipped himself around in the bed and dragged me into his arms, pasting his mouth over mine.
I tasted my own come in the kiss, as he must have tasted his. Wrapped in his embrace, I closed my eyes and relished the feel of his chest against my cheek. His hammering heartbeat was slowing now, as was mine. The stubble on his cheeks felt heavenly against my forehead. He held me gently, but I knew there was no escaping his arms if he didn’t want to let me go. It was the first time in my life I had ever felt so entirely owned by a man, and the first time in my life I had ever felt so happy to be owned. At least for these few brief moments, this one unforgettable night.
“Thank you,” he said in a ragged whisper, his lips to my ear.
All I could do was nod. I had no words in me, or if I did, I didn’t have the strength to speak them.
I snuggled closer against him and savored the taste of his come on my lips. As we grew accustomed to the feel of each other, and as I was getting comfortable in his arms, I finally found my voice, although it was still pretty trembly.
“Stay with me, Cory. Don’t go back to your bed. Sleep here.”
“Will you hold me?” he asked softly, childlike and innocent.
I laid my lips to the little patch of hair on his chest and nodded. “If you’ll hold me back.”
He smiled into my hair. “That was the plan all along.”
I OPENED my eyes just as dawn began to creep through the window beside my head. I blinked myself awake, and before the memory of the night stirred in my mind, I felt the weight of an arm across my chest. Turning my head, I saw Cory there, his mouth pressed to my shoulder, his eyes closed. He was snoring softly, his warm breath flowing over me.
Everything we had done together the night before suddenly clicked into place in my memory banks. I remembered it all. Every taste, every touch, every word, every gasp.
Moving as slowly as I could so as not to wake him, I turned into his embrace and burrowed against him, melting into his heat, losing myself in the satin delight of his sleep-warm skin. I breathed deep, inhaling his scent. Brushed my lips along the inside of his bicep, there where the skin is as soft and smooth as butter. He smiled against my shoulder, still lost in wherever his dreams had taken him.
I longed to wake him, to make those green eyes open and fall on me. But I forced myself to lie still. This was wonderful too, being able to study him without his knowing. Feeling the weight of his arm, still trapping me where I had been when he fell asleep. Feeling his strong, hairy legs flung over mine, pinning me in place. Right where he had kept me all the long night, snug against him.
“Beautiful,” I whispered.
He grinned. “I know you are, but what am I?”
His eyes popped open, and he pressed a kiss to my shoulder before snatching me into a bone-crushing hug, startling me so I almost jumped out of my skin.
“You were playing possum? What are we, twelve?” I cried.
“Judging by what we did last night,” he said, his mouth still tickling my shoulder, “I’d say we’re well past twelve. Thank you, Malcolm. You were wonderful.”
I rolled over onto his chest, trapping him for a change, or imagining I had. I dragged a kiss over his stubbly cheek, across his forehead, down his neck, into the cleft in his chin, and finally let it come to rest on his warm mouth, where I savored his sleepy taste until I finally had to come up for air.
“So were you,” I said, my lips still brushing his. “You really are a god.”
Even flat on his back, half-asleep, his ears turned pink. “Oh, shut up!” he cried and spouted a bark of laughter before wrapping his arms around me and squeezing me so tight I couldn’t even speak, which I’m pretty sure was his intent.
As the growing light of morning brightened the room and illuminated Cory’s features more clearly, I was thunderstruck all over again by how handsome he was. Even with his too-long hair poking out in a hundred different directions and his sleep-swollen eyes, he was stunning.
I was sprawled over him like a blanket. “Am I too heavy?” I asked. “I can move.”
While he stroked my ribs with one hand, he pressed his other hand against the small of my back, holding me in place. He placed a kiss directly between my eyes like a blessing. “Try it,” he said around a grin. “I like you where you are. I think I’ll keep you here for a while.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Something long and hard is po
king me in the belly.”
Cory’s ears were the color of bing cherries. “I wondered when you’d notice that,” he said.
I hovered over him, studying his face. My laughter died down as I stroked his sandpapery cheek with my fingertips. His green eyes glistened in the morning light as he studied me back. He was waking up now—his eyes weren’t as sleepy. They were a clearer green. More alive.
“I mean it,” he said softly. “Thank you for last night. You cleared up some things for me.”
With a snort, I asked. “And what exactly did I clear up?”
A gentle smile curved his lips, but he didn’t laugh. He simply lay there staring sweetly back at me. “You made me understand some things is all, Malcolm. Things I’d been—how do I say this?—things I’d been confused about.”
I kissed his chin, relishing the feel of his morning stubble against my tender mouth. “What were you confused about? Tell me.”
“Myself,” he said. “I was confused about myself. Who I am. What I want. How I need to live my life. What I can do to make myself happy.”
I laid my cheek to his chest to hear his heartbeat as I stared outside at the sun rising over the city. But the earth giving birth to another day outside my bedroom window wasn’t nearly as fascinating as the man beneath me in my bed, so I turned back to him instead. “And you learned all that after one night with me?”
His hand left my rib cage, and he wrapped both arms around me again. I loved the bulge of his biceps lying softly against my skin, the way his hard forearms pressed against my sides. I turned into the sound of his beating heart, breathing in the scent of his skin, loving the bristle of his chest hair on my face. By the movement and position of his lips in my hair, I thought maybe he was watching the sunrise too.
“You have to understand,” he said. “Back home, I… I was lost. I had no one to talk to about the confusion I was feeling. I knew I was gay. I’m not stupid. But without a frame of reference, I had no way to compare myself to the way I knew I should be. There wasn’t a gay bar within a hundred miles of the little town where I lived. I didn’t know anyone who was gay. I only knew I was.”