by Wendy Qualls
Brandon rolled them so they were on their sides facing each other, then warmed a dollop between his palms and reached down to slick up Paul’s cock with both hands. The pressure was perfect and Paul didn’t realize he was moaning aloud until well after Brandon had stopped and repeated the motion on himself. They were both rock-hard and—if the take-no-prisoners look on Brandon’s face was anything to go by—both desperate for this. Brandon nudged his hips forward, barely brushing the head of Paul’s cock with his own, and they both gasped.
“Oh, yes,” Paul moaned. “Do it, please!”
Brandon didn’t give any warning before attacking, he just launched himself forward and landed on Paul so they were pressed together chest-to-thighs. The momentum carried them over and all the way around, until they had rolled to the very edge of the bed and Paul was on top again and their erections were slotted together against each other’s bodies.
Paul groaned and dipped his head to kiss whatever parts of Brandon’s neck he could reach. “Feels amazing. Want you.” God, please. Don’t stop.
“Tell me.” Brandon rolled his hips forward, sliding their cocks against each other, making Paul groan. It was less a noise and more a rumble vibrating through both their chests, and from the way Brandon groaned back, he clearly appreciated hearing it. “Tell me what I feel like,” he commanded.
“You’re—oh.” Paul blinked a few times, taking a second to catch his breath and form his thoughts into some semblance of words. “I love how you feel against me,” he admitted. “How your beard scrapes my skin when you kiss me, the way your hips move. The way you—oh God.”
Brandon repeated the thrust, slowly, and anything else Paul might have intended to say disappeared.
“Christ, you’re gorgeous like this,” Brandon declared. “I want to watch you come apart—see those blue eyes go to almost all pupil and then slam close as you come. Want to feel your breathing stutter and freeze and then all the air escape your lungs at once as you finally collapse on top of me.” His hands trailed down Paul’s back as they thrust against each other, palms coming to rest firmly over Paul’s rear. “Want to feel these muscles tense up and quiver right before you fall over that edge and come all over my stomach. I want that feeling to be what tips me over. Yes?”
“God, yes.” Paul thrust harder against him, desperate but unable to move much with Brandon’s hands restraining his movements. The slick slide of their cocks against each other was incredible, the warm pressure of Brandon’s abdomen underneath him, nothing except Brandon but oh, it was enough. It was going to be enough. Paul tilted his head back, giving Brandon better access to where he was currently kissing and sucking and nibbling and Christ, it felt amazing. Brandon was rocking faster now, too, an unyielding rhythm sliding against him, a counterpoint to his own frenzied movements.
The world went white around the edges. Paul fought against the rush he knew was coming, wanted to memorize how Brandon’s eyes and mouth were both wide as he thumped his head back against the mattress, but then that familiar hot rush washed over him and nothing else mattered. He was vaguely aware of Brandon stiffening below him and calling out, and then they were both sagging against each other. Brandon was grinning up at him like the Cheshire cat.
“Fuck,” Brandon said.
Paul nodded silently, unable to conjure up enough words to return the sentiment.
They stared at each other for a long moment. And then Brandon snickered.
It was a happy sound, and it was infectious. What the hell are we doing here? Paul stared down at him for what felt like forever, totally at sea, but something about Brandon’s complete inability to suppress his laughter caught something inside himself, and then he was laughing too. Which only made Brandon laugh more, until they were both splayed on the formerly-clean hotel duvet and getting come everywhere and giggling their heads off at the absurdity of the whole situation which wasn’t really that absurd, not truly, but laughter was the only release they had left.
“I don’t even know what’s so funny,” Paul choked out when he could finally breathe properly.
Brandon’s eyes twinkled. “Me neither, but—oh Christ—that was incredible. You are incredible.” He gathered Paul in his arms and planted a deliberate kiss on his lips. “Damn. I don’t want to get up now.”
“So don’t.”
“This is going to get uncomfortable eventually.” Brandon gestured down to the sticky mess covering both their stomachs and the random smears on the bedspread. “Rock paper scissors you for who has to go get a washcloth?”
Paul lost. When he came back after wiping himself down in the bathroom and moistening another washcloth to bring back, Brandon had the covers thrown off and was lounging naked—oriented correctly for the first time that evening—in bed.
“I want to sleep with you again,” Brandon announced.
Paul tossed Brandon the washcloth, which landed with a wet slap on his belly. “I don’t know about you, but I do have a refractory period. Let me recover from that last round first.”
“No, I mean…” Brandon braced himself on his elbow and swiped away the mess on his skin with a few efficient strokes. “Actual sleeping. Last night was the first time I’ve ever tried that, and I want to do it again. It was nice.” He tossed the washcloth in the general direction of the bathroom door and dropped his head back onto the pillow. “Never mind—it wasn’t entirely a coherent thought. I’m still a bit muddled.”
First time? Paul turned off the room light, leaving only the bedside lamp on, and climbed silently into the bed next to Brandon. It’s been nearly ten years since that awkward night freshman year. Surely he’s dated since then, hasn’t he? Paul tried to remember whether Brandon had ever mentioned someone. He clearly knew what to do in bed, but…
“You’ve never spent the night with anyone?” Paul asked after a long, awkward moment of silence. It felt awkward to him, at least. “I assumed you’d have had more than a few partners by now. And I think it’s pretty obvious you’re more comfortable with sex than I am.”
Brandon didn’t answer, just leaned over to switch off the lamp. The two of them lay side-by-side in the darkness, both still naked but not touching, for several minutes.
“It’s never meant anything,” Brandon finally said.
“You mean the sex?”
“Any of it.” Paul could hear Brandon shifting around, rolling to face him, not that it did any good with the lights off and the blackout curtains pulled. “I had a few hookups at college—after leaving St. Ben’s—and after that I got into the club scene. It’s easy to find sex when you’re young and willing and you say upfront you’re not looking for anything serious. I mean, I always use a condom for anything penetrative and I still do get tested regularly, out of habit. I’ve never really ‘dated’ someone, not the way you mean.”
“Never even taken a guy home overnight?”
“The whole point of an anonymous fuck is that you don’t have to deal with them in the morning. Nobody’s ever asked and I’ve never offered. I’ve always liked it that way.”
“Oh.” Paul stared at the ceiling in the dark and let that sink in. What would it be like, to share this sort of intimacy with a complete stranger? One who makes it clear right off the bat they don’t care about you and don’t ever want to see you again afterward? Is that what being gay and single is supposed to be about? It sounded terrifying. And yet, they’d had sex and Brandon had made it clear he was offering something with no strings attached. “But you’re letting me sleep here already. Because of everything…”
“I invited you. I still don’t want anything complicated, but it’s different. With you.” Brandon’s hand found Paul’s in the darkness, squeezed. “I’ve got a question,” he added.
“Sure?”
“Back during freshman year. When did you…” Brandon broke off and sighed. “I guess I’m trying to ask when you first noticed me. Or how that al
l came about. And yes, I fully realize how much I sound like a moony teenage girl, but I want to know.”
“First day of second semester,” Paul answered immediately. Like I’d ever forget. “We’d all just gotten back from Christmas break and a bunch of us were sitting around in the second-floor commons room. You walked in and you were wearing this T-shirt that—I don’t even know what it was about the shirt, honestly, but it fit you really well. And I had a bit of a silent freak-out right there in the middle of everybody, because I thought you were absolutely gorgeous and I didn’t know where the heck that thought had come from.”
Brandon hmmed thoughtfully. “You didn’t know you were gay?”
“I’m not sure, honestly.” Paul grimaced. “If I did, I’d tried very hard to not admit it. To not think about anything even vaguely related to that. It was the first time I’d truly felt lust for someone I knew in person, and it threw me for a loop.”
“You didn’t say anything, though.”
Paul shrugged, even though he knew Brandon couldn’t see it. “How could I? Being gay was—is—a sin. And was—is—grounds for getting kicked out of St. Ben’s. I wanted so desperately to not feel that way. To not deal with it. I’m sure I saw you around before that, during our first semester, but that’s the first time I remember really being bowled over by how attracted I was to you. After that it became an absolutely ridiculous crush.” Another pause. “What about you?”
Brandon’s hand squeezed once more, then stilled. “For me it was back at the beginning of freshman year. I was pretty sure I was at least bisexual by that point, but both my parents went to St. Ben’s—they met there—and I had already applied and been accepted and all, so when I finally got everything sorted out for myself that summer before, it felt like it was too late to go to a more gay-friendly school. I figured I could just go and make the best of it, like I did all through high school. But then I got here and there were so many gorgeous guys and I realized pretty quickly I had signed up for my own little personal hell.”
“Makes sense.” I lived it too. Still do.
“I saw you at one of the orientation things, though, and I remember being excited that you were in my dorm. Nervous, at the same time, that I’d do or say something to give away the fact that I found you attractive. I think I avoided you most of that first semester to be safe.”
“If you did, I don’t remember.”
Brandon huffed out a quiet snort of laughter. “It must have worked, then.”
“So what changed?” Paul had been asking himself that every day for the last decade, but never could come up with an answer. “How did we go from being afraid of each other to… Well, you know. How did that happen?”
“To a middle-of-the-night mutual hand job in the shower?” Brandon made a contented noise and snuggled closer, curling one long arm over Paul’s chest. “Couldn’t control myself any longer. And I hoped that you wanted me too. After you saw me naked, the way you looked at me… It didn’t take much to convince me, after that.”
“Oh.” It came out sounding strangled, but Paul couldn’t manage much more with Brandon’s naked body now pressed against his side. There wasn’t anything overtly sexual in how they were touching (apart from the somewhat telling lack of clothes), but the proximity was having an effect on his sympathetic nervous system. Paul forced his residual libido back down, his muscles to relax, and made himself lie still under Brandon’s arm. “I wish you hadn’t left,” he admitted softly.
“I wish you had come with me,” Brandon whispered back, lips nearly brushing his ear. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long, long time.”
Chapter 10
Can’t do dinner tonight—have a conference call for another client at 5. Will probably take hours—client is woefully indecisive.
Paul really didn’t like to think about how much Brandon’s text disappointed him. It’s not like they’d even made plans for dinner, really—they’d both woken up happy, but neither of them had been in a talkative mood. Words were unnecessary. Even the half-dozen sentences they had exchanged were mostly in the vein of “do you see my other shoe?” and “can’t think, need coffee.” There’d been no mention of dinner, together or otherwise, but there had been copious snuggling. After three nights of eating together and then sleeping together, two of those with sex in between, Paul realized he’d been thinking of another night as guaranteed.
Condolences on working overtime, he texted back. I assume you’re going home tomorrow for the weekend?
His phone rang a moment later.
“Sorry,” Brandon said. He sounded like he really was. “Completely forgot about the semi-monthly status update meeting—being here feels like a totally different world, as if it’s disconnected from everything back at the office. I would have told you earlier if I’d remembered.”
“It’s fine,” Paul assured him. “I mean, I’ve been fending for myself for years; I won’t starve or anything if we don’t do dinner. And we hadn’t talked about it.”
“Sure, but we both know what we’d be doing tonight otherwise.”
No point in denying that. Paul tried not to think too hard about what, exactly, their activities would have entailed—work was not the place to daydream about sex. Heck, there really weren’t a lot of places which counted as “the place” for that, but St. Ben’s was off the list.
There was silence on the line for a long moment. “Right,” Brandon finally said. “So tomorrow’s Friday, and then I’ve got the weekend off. I assume you do, too. If it’s not too weird to ask… Want to get out of town with me?”
Paul blinked. “Like a vacation?”
“Sorta? Come back to Atlanta for the weekend. We can go out and do tourist stuff or stay in and watch movies or whatever you want.” He paused. “Normally I work a bit on Saturdays,” he confessed, “just to get a leg up on the next week, but if I get all my non-St. Ben’s stuff done tonight I won’t have to. My apartment isn’t huge, but it’s big enough we won’t be tripping over each other. And it would be a change of scenery, at least.”
It sounded incredible. Paul closed his eyes and nodded. And belatedly remembered Brandon wouldn’t be able to see it over the phone. “Yeah. That would be great. Thanks.”
Sleeping in his own bed alone that night sucked. Paul hung his spare blanket over the bedroom window, just in case the blinds weren’t thick enough.
* * * *
Friday dragged by, a pattern that was starting to become distressingly familiar. Paul’s only class was his mid-morning developmental psych lecture, which was nominally followed by office hours. “Nominally” because not a single student had bothered to use his Friday office hours all semester, but Paul still had to be there and ready to answer questions. He ate a turkey sandwich at his desk and focused on the grant proposal due the next week instead.
The work did help. Securing research funding wasn’t all that exciting, but it was hugely important to any long-term career in academia and thus demanded a fair amount of attention. Which meant he didn’t spend every second involuntarily daydreaming about Brandon—what was he doing, what was he working on right that very minute, was he wearing that sexy little half smile he’d had on his face when they woke up next to each other yesterday morning? Blast it. Paul went back and re-read the last two methodology paragraphs because he hadn’t taken in a word the first time around.
Brandon had been sweet, really. Sluggish and still a bit rumpled from sleep and his hair had been sticking up like some strange alien terrain, which had only made Paul want to smooth it down and kiss him more. And they did kiss, lethargic and gentle, neither of them wanting to face the day yet. When Brandon had finally rolled away with a groan and a vague “ugh—need my shower,” it was all Paul could do to let him go and not just tackle him and beg him to stay in bed. He was so gorgeous nude, the way the muscles in his shoulders shifted as he scrubbed his fingers through his hair and how his spine twis
ted as he stretched. Even more than twenty-four hours later, after a hellish and sleepless night in his own bed, that particular movement was emblazoned into Paul’s mind.
It hadn’t been like this with Christopher. Sure, they’d slept next to each other more often than not by the end, but Christopher was very not a morning person. He barely became human until after his second cup of coffee. Okay, that part was eerily similar to Brandon’s morning routine. Waking Christopher up in the mornings had been like poking a hibernating bear, even when Paul let the alarm blare away practically in his ear. He’d never been interested in long morning cuddles or just lying in bed with no expectation of sex.
And darn it, there I go again, staring off into space. Paul let out a long breath and closed his eyes. Still hours yet before Brandon would be ready to leave for their stolen weekend together. It was tempting to go home and wallow for a while, but it was good to be seen in his office even if he wasn’t getting much accomplished work-wise. Which I really do need to do. No matter how much I’d rather daydream.
Darn it.
* * * *
Paul managed to stay until slightly after two o’clock through sheer force of will. With the door open, he sat at his computer, tweaking the research proposal and his next week’s lesson plans. It was well past his required office hours, but it felt good to know he could be professional if he wanted to and ignore the distraction known as Brandon Mercer. That all went out the window when he got a text from Brandon at 2:05.