“Come here,” he said, holding out his hand.
So much warmth came from it as I wrapped my fingers around his.
“My body is always yours to explore. I would love to have your hands on me, but don’t want you to feel pressured. If it’s what you want, then by all means, have at it.” His cock pressed against his pants, tenting them almost obscenely. He let go of my fingers, lay back against the couch, and spread his legs.
I reached for him, then hesitated. Of course, he noticed.
“You don’t have to do this,” he reminded me.
I couldn’t tear my gaze away from his groin. In my mind, memories flashed of the last time something like this happened. My breathing quickened, and I could feel my desire slipping away as I recalled the musky odor, the terror, and the pain.
“Matt, stop,” Charlie said, keeping a gentle grip on my wrist. “There’s no one here but us. Just you and me, like it should be. He’s not here anymore. This is our home. Together. I love you, Matt.”
He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.
“Yes, I love you. The color of your eyes, the softness of your hair, the blush of your skin. I love everything about you. We don’t have to do anything at all. You had an experience already. We don’t have to push it.”
He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.
I collapsed onto the couch, curled into a ball. Charlie gently stroked my hair and continued to remind me of how much he loved me.
“I’m so sorry,” I cried. “I want to, I do. I just….”
“Can’t. And that’s fine. Today you can’t. Tomorrow might be another story. Every day brings new adventures, so don’t worry about today, when tomorrow is around the corner.”
He got up from the couch and began hobbling toward the bathroom. For some reason I pictured him walking out the door, and out of my life, all because I couldn’t take care of his needs. My stomach clenched at the thought of being alone again. After having a taste of companionship, I didn’t want to lose it.
“Where are you going?” I wailed. “Please don’t leave me.”
Charlie stopped in his tracks. “Whoa, hang on, sweetheart. Where is that coming from?”
I turned my gaze toward him, needing him to see my contrition. He had to believe how bad I felt. “I’m sorry. I’ll try harder, I promise.”
“Aw, fuck.” He hurried back to the couch and dropped next to me. “Matt, I’m only going to get a towel to clean you up, I swear. I have no intention of leaving you.” He stroked my cheek. “Until you tell me to go, you’re stuck with me. Okay?”
I nodded, because the lump in my throat wouldn’t allow me to speak.
“Two minutes, okay? Give me… well, okay, maybe five, because the bathroom is kinda far away and”—he tapped the cast on his leg—“I’m not as young as I used to be.”
I laughed, but it turned into a sob. My emotions were all over the place. I’d had an orgasm from another person touching me, and I’d had the opportunity to return the favor. How would he look at me now?
As he promised, he came back a few minutes later with a warm cloth that he used to clean me up. I couldn’t look at him, I was so ashamed. When he finished, he put the cloth into the basket, came back, and took my hand. “Come on,” he said softly.
“Where are we going?”
He tugged my hand gently. “I’d like you to come with me. You’ll need your jacket.”
I picked up my coat from the hook at the door and slid into it. Charlie grabbed his and wrapped it around his shoulders. He opened the door, a cold wind blowing through it, then took me outside to the swing.
“Have a seat, please.”
The tone of his voice had me wanting to run back to the house. He sounded defeated, angry.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
“Enough of that. Sit down, babe.”
Warmth flooded me when he called me babe. It chased the creeping chill that had begun to permeate my body.
After I sat down, he took the seat next to me and held my hand. “First thing, I need you to know that I am not upset. At all. You told me no one had touched you before me. That orgasm had to be monumental. It was probably stressful for you. Why do you think I would be angry?”
I shrugged and turned away from him.
“No, we’re not doing that. Look at me.” When I didn’t, he put a hand on my shoulder. “Matt? Please.”
I turned and saw no censure in his expression. He smiled softly, then leaned forward and kissed me gently.
“You gave me a gift tonight. You let me touch you. Right now you’re allowing me to hold you. How could I possibly be angry? Can I tell you something? It involves my ex, and if it would bother you, we don’t have to talk about it.”
My stomach cramped slightly, but I nodded. I had to trust him, because I loved him.
The realization struck me hard. I loved him. For the first time in my life, I was truly in love. Not a crush on Tommy Scolari, who looked amazing in his wrestling singlet. Not mooning over Alex Mulholland. Not wanting to go to the dance with Marty. But love. And I would do my damnedest to hold on to it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“OKAY, WHERE to start…,” Charlie said. “Mitch and I had been together for maybe six months. In retrospect, what I thought had been smooth sailing probably really wasn’t. We argued quite often. Mitch liked stuff, and not the cheap kind of things either. He would fawn over something he saw, and I, like an idiot, would buy it for him. I thought that was what it meant to be in love.”
Charlie wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close. I looked out at the yard. Heavy clouds covered the moon, but every so often, it would peek out and the ground would be alight in gleaming snowflakes. I sighed and sank into his warmth.
“We were never really compatible—I know that now. Mitch always expected to top, and I allowed it because I didn’t mind bottoming at all. But once in a while, I thought it would be nice if we switched it up. I figured if he loved me as much as he claimed, we could at least try it. Mitch would be furious that I’d even think I could top him. I always backed down because it wasn’t worth arguing about it. At least that’s what I thought at the time.
“Anyway, I got it into my head that if I asked him to marry me, it would solve all of our problems and we’d find our happy ever after. When I came home and found him in bed with someone else, I realized that if I wanted to make a relationship work, it would have to be with someone who wanted the same things I did. Something we could both work toward. That man is you, Matt.”
My head was spinning. I couldn’t understand what this had to do with my failure to pleasure him as he had done me.
“I can see your confusion,” he said, reaching up and stroking his fingers through my hair. “What I’m trying to say is, even if we never have sex, if all we can ever do is what we’ve already done, or even if we can’t continue doing that, there is so much more between us than physical intimacy. Do you get what I’m trying to say?”
I thought I did, so I nodded.
“Good,” he said, once again kissing my head. It was an affection I had grown to enjoy. “Sex is great, but it’s not the be-all of life. Things like this—sitting on the porch, watching the moon, holding you—those are the important things I want to have every day. Everything else we do, no matter what it is, is simply frosting on the cake.”
He laid it out for me. He didn’t care about sex; he just wanted me. I could feel tears on my cheeks and cursed myself for it. For the past thirteen years, unless I woke from a nightmare, or got to the sad part in My Side of the Mountain, I rarely cried. Since meeting Charlie, it seemed to be a common occurrence.
“I wanna try again,” I said, my voice scratchy.
“One day at a time, babe.”
“No,” I said as I shook my head. I knew if I didn’t make the effort now, I might never be able to do it.
“Matt—”
“I said no.” I slid away from him a bit so I could look him in the eye. “You don’t know what it’s like, living
your life in fear. Haunted by the reminder of what’s keeping you from experiencing things you’ve dreamed of. I do. Every day I’m reminded that I’m not, as my mother said, normal. I want the things other people experience. Love—both emotional and physical—family, making a life. I get what you’re trying to tell me, but what you don’t understand is that for me, that’s only a half life. I need this, because without it, I’m going to always be afraid.”
Charlie nodded. “Okay, how about this? We talk to your doctor, and if you decide you want to continue therapy, then we can look at it again?”
He was doing his best to give me an out, and I knew it, but I didn’t want it. I had to prove to Charlie and to myself that I could do this.
“Come back in the house,” I said, standing.
“Matt—”
“Now, please.”
He didn’t seem as enthused as I had hoped, but he did stand and allowed me to guide him back inside.
“Stand there for a minute,” I told him, as I knelt and pulled down his pants and underwear. His cock hung limp, and when I gazed up at him, I only saw worry in his eyes.
“Matt, you don’t need to prove anything. Please, let’s just talk a while longer.”
It wasn’t easy to ignore his plaintive voice, but I did.
“Sit down,” I said quietly.
Charlie sat and put a hand on my shoulder. I swallowed hard, reached out, and touched his dick with my fingertips. The warmth of it surprised me; I have no idea why. It began to puff up. It was longer and thicker than mine, with a flared head. I hadn’t seen any but my own, but Charlie’s was damned impressive. I wrapped my hand around it and gave a light squeeze, which caused Charlie to groan.
“You need to stop,” he said but didn’t try to move away.
His shaft began to harden, and I grinned to myself because it was me doing this to Charlie. I actually held him! And what’s more, I enjoyed it.
Charlie’s breathing began getting heavier, and I stroked harder. His head dropped back onto the couch and began to shake side to side. He started to whisper my name over and over, and that encouraged me to double my efforts. When his balls began to tighten up, I figured he might be close, but when he cried out my name and pushed up into my hand, I felt a rush of power and pride. His come coated his shirt, and he lay there, groaning.
“Did I do okay?” I asked, biting my lip.
“Can’t talk. Dead now,” he whimpered.
A laugh bubbled out of me. “I’m going to clean up.”
He opened his eyes and pinned me with a stare. “Are you okay?”
I thought for a moment. “Yeah, I think so.”
Three steps away, he called my name. I turned to him, and he grinned.
“In all the time I was with my ex, I never had an orgasm like that. Mitch liked getting off, then rolling over and going to sleep. You took care of my needs too. Thank you.”
Charlie’s ex was a selfish bastard. “You deserved better.”
“I found it,” he replied. “And I hope I never lose it.”
Yeah, I didn’t see that happening.
THE WEATHER stayed colder than the balls on a brass monkey. Charlie and I huddled inside as much as possible over the next two days. When he wasn’t writing, we were curled up in front of the fire, sipping cocoa and sharing stories. He asked me about my childhood—which was awesome, how Clay was as a brother—I pleaded the fifth, then laughed about it, and for my most embarrassing moment—which was streaking through gym class, because the girls’ volleyball team had set up for practice. In turn, I asked him how he got into writing.
“Before I started running, I was a chubby nerd. Comic books were my life, and I had the largest collection of anyone I knew. I thought it made me cool. Others had a different view on the whole thing. By the time I realized how bad it was, I was already ostracized. No one wanted to be friends with a geek, so I spent a lot of time alone. I began to write stories about my favorite heroes, only in my world, they were gay and had someone they loved with their whole heart. One day my mom found one of my stories—”
“Oh, shit.”
Charlie grinned at me. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too. When I walked in after school, she had me take a seat at the kitchen table with her and my father. She pulled out the yellow folder I used to write my stories in and showed me the stack of papers inside of it. I gotta tell you, I don’t know if I ever sweated so hard. Everything in me was screaming to run away from home because they wouldn’t understand. In the end I hemmed and hawed for several minutes as I tried to figure out a way out of the mess. Then she leaned over, cupped one cheek, and kissed me on the other. I sat there flabbergasted.
“She told me they’d read what I wrote and how proud of me they were. They said I had talent, and they wanted to help me with it. They bought me my first laptop, complete with writing software. I stared, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. We went out to dinner that night to celebrate. It was totally surreal.”
“They didn’t care you were gay?”
He laughed. “Nope. That was never even discussed. To them I was Charlie, and my happiness was the only thing that mattered. Oh, I got the safe sex lectures from Mom, and Dad warned me, whenever I got a boyfriend, he expected to meet him. Sadly the only one he met was Mitch. That… didn’t go well. Mom said if I was happy, they would try to be happy for me, but they hated him. She said he seemed too smooth. Dad said he was insincere. Turned out they were both right. Wish I had listened.”
My heart ached for Charlie. “I’m sorry things with him didn’t work out.” Then, though the thought pained me, I added, “Maybe you could—”
He held up a hand. “Oh God, no. Don’t even think that I miss him. Leaving New York—leaving him—was the best thing I ever did. It brought me here and I got to meet you. I think that’s a win right there.”
I ducked my head as my cheeks heated.
“Don’t blush yet. There’s one more thing I need to talk to you about.”
He sounded so serious, I began to fret.
“Stop that,” he chided me. “What I wanted to say was that my parents would like to talk to you. I’ve told them that you’re not comfortable around new people, but Mom is hoping that you’ll allow her to talk to you on the phone.”
I blinked a few times. “How does she know about me?”
Now it was Charlie’s turn to blush. “I might have told her about you once or a few hundred times. Before the accident, you were a pretty popular topic of conversation. Mom said that she could tell from the sound of my voice I was in love. She told me I never sounded that way with Mitch and that she hoped to get to talk to you. There isn’t any pressure, though. If you don’t think you can do it, I’ll explain it to her. I promise she’ll understand.”
He didn’t say anything as I thought it through. Talking on the phone usually wasn’t too bad. I talked often enough with Clay, and even though I was nervous when I spoke with him or Mr. Gianetti, it was easier than face-to-face. “Okay. Sure.”
He seemed so surprised. “Really? Thank you!”
“When did you want me to do it?”
He glanced at the clock on the wall. “If you’re up to it, we can try today. But if you need time to think about it, then we can revisit the idea in a week or two.”
Charlie always seemed to put my needs first. He’d taken to going through the house daily to ensure things he’d used were put away—in the right places—or taking the scraps left over from the preparation of dinner and putting them into the compost heap that I used to enrich the soil for my plants. He did it all. Never once complained or made a fuss about why I had to do things in a certain way. He adapted to them instead. Having him here made my life easier, much to my surprise.
“Today would be good,” I said, swallowing hard.
He ran his fingers through my hair. “Are you sure, Matt? She can wait, I promise.”
“Yeah, I’ll give it a try. Just… don’t leave, okay?”
Visions of me f
reezing up ran through my head, and I could see Charlie’s disappointed expression clear as a bell in my mind.
“Not going anywhere. Last chance. And before you answer, let me warn you… they’re not like normal people. That might have a lot to do with how I turned out.”
“You turned out just fine,” I assured him. “I’m ready.” I tried to keep my voice steady, even though my hands were shaking.
He pulled out his phone and dialed. He sat there, looking so pleased, and I curled up against him for the steadying contact.
“Hey, Mom. Good, thanks. How about you? Really? Excellent!” He pushed the mute button. “She went to the doctor for some tests, and he gave her a clean bill of health.”
I smiled inwardly that he shared something so private with me. “Oh, awesome.”
He let the button go and said, “Hey, Mom? I have someone here who would like to say hello. Just do me a favor—remember what we talked about. I don’t want you scaring him away.”
I heard the whoop in the background, as well as her calling for Alan, which I assumed was Charlie’s father’s name.
“Yeah, Mom? See, that right there is the kind of thing I’m talking about.” Charlie gave me a look and rolled his eyes. “You’re absolutely sure you want to subject yourself to this?” Charlie teased.
I heard his mother squawk indignantly, which made Charlie laugh.
“Mom, I’m going to give him the phone now. Please, I beg you, best behavior. Don’t scare this one away.”
“Hey!” I protested.
Charlie held the phone out to me. I wasn’t surprised to find my palms sweating, my chest getting tighter, and my throat drying up like a desert.
“H-hello?” I croaked into the phone.
A soft sigh on the other end of the line. “You sound lovely,” Charlie’s mom gushed.
“Um. Thank you?”
Her laughter sounded like the song of some of my birds. I could imagine her standing outside with them, engaged in a duet to see which had the sweetest voice.
“So you’re Matt? I’m so glad you felt safe enough to call.”
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