Unraveling Josh

by Edie Danford

  I couldn’t hold back a groan as he added another finger, scissoring and stretching and working the tight muscle. I’d reached the point where I had to free my cock or pay a painful price, so I quickly climbed off the bed and got rid of my clothes, keeping my eyes on Josh.

  I’d been hyped on the walk over here thinking about this, and now it was hard to control my need. Condoms would help the situation. Before I got back on the bed I found the box, extracted two and put both of them on, taking my time, trying to ease back my rampaging want. Josh was an appreciative audience.

  “Someday,” he murmured.

  I nodded. I knew what he was thinking. Someday we’d try this bare. But that discussion couldn’t happen right now.

  “Nick,” he moaned. “Come here.”

  I climbed onto the bed again, this time settling between his spread legs. His knees were bent, one hand holding tight to one muscled thigh while the other hand continued its work with the lube.

  Leaning forward, I kissed his lips, quickly drinking in another long moan. I joined one of my fingers with his, reveling in the feel of him, his tightness, his heat. His moans were in my ears, his scent in my nose. But God, I wanted more.

  Our fingers continued to work together. “More lube, baby. Let’s make it all smooth and easy.” His whole body was moving, an uncoordinated but beautiful, rolling quake of need. I squirted lube on my cock and my hand—being extra generous—and slicked more goop onto his balls and hole.

  “God,” he groaned. “Just do it.”

  I couldn’t deny him, and I didn’t want to wait. Putting my weight on my left arm, keeping myself nice and easy above him, I took myself in hand, guiding the broad head of my cock to where his fingers were still working. I nudged him aside and he held on tight to his ass, instinctively giving me greater access.

  It wasn’t a swift slide—not as easy as I wanted it to be—but I knew how this could go, so I took it slow, talking us both through it. “You’re doing so good, baby. So good. Bear down while I push. You got it…”

  He grunted and the exhalation of breath had me in a couple more inches.

  His gaze was fixed on mine. Flushed cheeks, parted lips, blown pupils. If I could have, I would’ve grabbed him and kissed the daylights out of him, but I couldn’t lose position, not now.

  “So,” he breathed. “I’m gonna have to train long and hard to get good at this, right? No pain, no gain?”

  I snorted out a gust of laughter.

  He laughed too and, stupidly, the shaking of our torsos eased things along even further. And then I was grateful for all the experience I’d had because instead of going after him like a wild man and shooting my load in three seconds like my dick was telling me to, I flexed my ass, took a deep breath and began thrusting…slowly.

  His head fell back against the pillows, and I read all the signs available that indicated what I was doing—my angle, my depth, my leverage—was giving him maximum pleasure.

  Then, to make extra sure, I asked him, “That feel good? Like this…or more like this?”

  He groaned after my last thrust, short and sharp. “Fuck, that’s amazing.”

  “Got it,” I said. “You want it like this.”

  “Oh God.” He laughed again and I drank in the sound. “How am I supposed to answer you when you…keep…doing…that?”

  “Don’t answer. Grab your dick and stroke.”

  He obeyed me and I leaned down to kiss him, thirsty for his mouth.

  We were both close to the edge—I could feel the tension in the fingers clutching my neck and the thighs embracing mine. “Go baby,” I murmured against his lips. He tipped his head and, as I pressed my mouth to his throat, he gritted out a deep groan. The splash of heat and the bump of his knuckles against my abs was my cue to let loose too.

  Shuddering, shaking, trying not to crush him, I emptied about a zillion gallons of pleasure and tension and electricity and love from my balls and my dick, filling the condom with the heat and essence of myself, just a small amount of what I wanted to give him.

  My elbow gave out but it was okay, because Josh took me in his arms and smashed my whole body against his like it was exactly what he wanted.

  He stroked my hair, pressed kisses along my cheek and temple. “You,” he said, “are fricking amazing.”

  “Mmm.” I wanted to turn to liquid and be absorbed by his skin—never have to get up and leave him. But my dick was uncomfortable and his ass was probably three times more so. I pulled back and carefully extracted myself from his body. I stroked his hole gently, soothing with my fingers. He looked okay, but still… “You might not think I’m so amazing tomorrow,” I told him.

  “Some kinds of pain are very rewarding,” he said.

  “Maybe so.” Hard not to agree when his smile was making my chest wrench.

  I sat, shifting my legs over the side of the bed.

  As I got rid of the condoms, tossing them in the wastebasket by the bed, I felt his fingers lingering on the tattoo below my elbow.

  “This one is from the cover of that Queen album?”

  I nodded. “We should listen to it some time.” Josh loved blues and reggae. I needed to educate him on the wonders of old-school glam rock. “But not now…”

  He shook his head, smiling up at me. “Now we need something sexy and mellow.”

  “I feel very sexy and mellow.” I leaned down to kiss him. “You want me to sing to you?”

  He laughed. “Fuck, yeah. Would you?”

  “Nope.”

  He wrapped his fingers around my arm and pulled me down to the bed beside him. “Are you ready for the torture of a thousand kisses?”

  “Um…yeah?”

  He kissed his way down from my shoulder to my biceps to my elbow, occasionally using his tongue to trace the ink. It tickled and I was holding back a full body shiver when he asked, “What’s the scar from? It’s a nasty one.”

  My arm jerked involuntarily and I bit my lip. His eyes were mellow gold and his fingers felt incredibly gentle as they traced the thick, white line of the scar. “’Tis but an old wound,” I told him, using what I hoped was a knightly accent. “One I earned on a vast, brutal battleground.”

  He kissed the spot, his lips even more tender than his fingertips. I knew he wanted to hear more. I carded my fingers through his thick hair and said, “Someday maybe I’ll tell you the whole story. But now…”

  He kissed his way over to my belly and up my torso and chest. “Now?” He propped his elbows on either side of my shoulders and looked down at me.

  I cupped his noble jaw in my palms. “Now I want to celebrate the treasure I found here in this tower.”

  He drew his eyebrows together in a fake-looking scowl. “You want to read a bunch of fusty old books? For real, Nick? I mean I know you’re a dedicated library rat but—”

  Laughing, I pulled him down so I could shut him up the right way.

  Josh

  WE WERE ON our way back from one of the area’s awesome farmer’s markets when Nick’s phone vibrated for the third time in five minutes.

  “Why don’t you just check it?” I asked.

  “Because I don’t want to,” he said, looking out my ancient Jeep’s fogged-up window, expression all cranky as shit.

  I laughed at him. He was a terrible shopper. Vegetables made him mad. Which was pretty hilarious considering that he lived at Vegan House and had been on cooking duty all week. He was lucky I’d taken pity on him—driving him to places I knew had good stuff, helping him with menu interpretation (I wasn’t Julia Child or anything, but I’d had some experience cooking healthy for big groups when my teammates rented condos at various venues) and keeping him from murdering the other two residents of his house who were helping to cook this week.

  “Do you even know who it is?” I asked him. “Maybe it’s your parents or something.”

  He snorted. “They never call. Unlike your parents.”

  Since the beginning of the quarter, he’d witnessed several convos
between me and my folks—the kind where I did a lot of nodding and listening and then hung up with a huge sigh of relief. “That’s because your parents have each other and your sister to talk to. My parents are both lonely—because they’re idiots—and so I, as their sole offspring, get to hear about all kinds of mundane crap like the color of sheets my mom ordered for the guest room and the type of leather my dad chose for his new golf club bag.”

  He laughed but it wasn’t a stellar effort.

  “Is it some lovesick swain you left at your last castle?”

  This stupid quip earned some solid laughter.

  “Nah,” he said. “It’s just Pete.”

  “Pete? He’s the guy who did Cancun in magenta trunks, right?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I still want to see those pictures, by the way.”

  “Mmm.”

  “So what does Pete want?”

  “A new wardrobe by Tom Ford. A boyfriend who looks like you. A Luis Vuitton tote. Alexander McQueen loafers…”

  I laughed. “Why is he calling you, you dope?”

  He sighed. “He wants to come visit.”

  “For real? When?”

  “This weekend.”

  “God, you sound so depressed about it. You don’t want to see him?”

  “I don’t want him to come all the way from California just for a couple days. He doesn’t realize it now, but Ellery, Vermont is not his dream vacation. He’ll hate it. He’ll complain about the weather, the parties, my room, the food…”

  “But won’t he be glad to be here because he’ll see you? God, I’d shit happy bricks if I could get Kirby and Zach to come from California for a weekend.”

  “Kirby and Zach are probably nice guys.”

  I laughed again. “I can’t believe you’d be good friends with a guy who wasn’t at least a little bit nice.” I pulled the Jeep into the alley behind Vegan House and felt like a jackpot winner when I saw a parking space close to the house’s back door.

  Nick sighed. I turned off the engine and turned toward him, reaching for his hand.

  “I’ve just been…” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Impatient with him lately. I haven’t been talking to him nearly as much as I usually do. And I’m feeling guilty about that because he’s been down about the scene in L.A. lately. Depressed about something.”

  I massaged the tendon between his wrist and thumb, playing with his friendship bracelets. “You’re bummed because you want to spend the weekend in bed with me, making me scream with your slick-as-hell moves and your big-as-hell dick.”

  “Got it in one,” he said.

  I leaned across the console for a kiss. “It’ll be okay.” I brushed his cheek with my thumb. “Those mats I have on the tower’s first floor are pretty comfy. He can bed down there. Or you can give him your room here at the house…” I tipped my head toward the three-story yellow monster. “And you can spend the night with me. We’ll have him for breakfast.”

  Nick stopped biting his lip long enough to laugh. “He would love it if we had him for breakfast.” He said it all bow-chicka-wow and rolled his eyes.

  I stared at him for a sec. I hadn’t thought about this visit from Nick’s good friend that way. Nick hardly ever talked about his friends from home, but I had the feeling they were way beyond me in terms of experience and…freewheeling attitude.

  “For real?” I asked. “Is that something that you and he ever…?”

  He shook his head, quickly and firmly. “No. Never. I mean, I know he likes his multi-partner adventures in Cali—he goes to parties and resorts and gets up to all kinds of shit—but he and I have always been just friends.” His teeth toyed with his lower lip for a moment, as if he were sorting through some old shit about their relationship. “Mikey—the other guy in that picture from Cancun—he and I were a thing for a while, but then…”

  I was back to playing with his bracelets. It was raining harder now—drops pattering on the hardtop, the air cold and misty. The moment and the space seemed right to ask him some of the things I’d been curious about. “But then?”

  “Mike and I were fuck buddies. He was nice and he was way more experienced than I was, and I got really lucky to have him as a first for almost everything, but we were never serious.” He kept his gaze fixed on what I was doing with his bracelets. “Then he got together with Jonathan…the other guy in that Cancun picture. They did get serious. In fact, they still live together. They’re not exclusive, but I get the feeling they’ll always be together somehow.” He glanced at me with a does-that-make-sense expression.

  I nodded. “So you and Mike stayed close through high school? The sex didn’t complicate things?”

  “Yeah, we were close. And the sex was good because we could feel safe with each other and experiment and whatever. Pete was in the dumps for a while because he had a crush on Mike and Mike wasn’t interested in long-term. But other than that, feelings didn’t get hurt. It’s only been this year that we’ve started to drift a bit. Mikey and Jon are a couple years older than me. They got a place in Boystown after they graduated high school, and it was fun for Pete and me to hang out there. Felt free in such a great way—” He tipped his head against the seatback and closed his eyes for a second. “God, I was so ready to leave home. I loved the city. I loved seeing how things might be in the future when I was on my own.”

  “That’s cool. I mean…it’s awesome you got to do that. Experiment and explore.”

  “Yeah. I needed it. So much.”

  I watched his face. There was a hint of moody-broody there but I think I was mostly seeing the kind of faraway expression that comes along with intense memories. I wondered if I would’ve liked Nick and his friends if I’d known them back in high school. His experiences seemed so different than mine. My friends and I lived and breathed sports—the social stuff I’d had time for revolved around school. I’d lived thirty minutes from Boystown but I couldn’t imagine ever being brave enough to go exploring there back when I was sixteen or seventeen.

  “So,” I said. “You should get in touch with Pete and tell him to come.”

  He shifted his gaze up to mine. His skin looked pale in the gray, misty light. It made his eyes look darker, sadder. I felt like he was holding something back. These kinds of conversations always seemed way harder than they should be with Nick.

  Under his cocky-dude surface, Nick was pretty intense—about people, places, even the way he slept, ate and fucked. He dove deep and wallowed. I enjoyed trying to dig and bring up new Nick things to the surface, but it could be challenging.

  As I’d been struggling to find the best methods for unlocking Nick’s puzzles, from the very first, he’d found the perfect ways to get me to open up and unwind—his determination to figure out what I loved and needed had become the key to my own body’s freedom. And how lucky was I that I’d found him at this moment in my life—this year when for the first time in forever I’d been without my tried and true methods for feeling good?

  He caught my fingers and squeezed. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll call him. But I’m thinking spring would be a better time for a Pete visit. This weekend seems too soon for—” His front teeth came down on his lip again.

  As I watched him rethink his words, I wondered how much of his reluctance to have his friend visit had to do with me. I wanted to climb the tower and shout my love for Nick until it echoed across every rooftop in Ellery. But Nick wasn’t a shout-it-from-the-rooftops kind of guy. He expressed himself with his body—with his graceful poses and his dark eyes and his ink and his endlessly sexy lips and hands and cock.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “Pete’s a good friend, right? He’ll understand if you’ve got too much stuff going on this quarter. Invite him for another time.”

  His teeth released his lip and he smiled, shaking his head. “God, you’re nice. I don’t think Pete is half as understanding as you are. About anything.”

  I snorted. “Speaking of nice…do you need help with the groceries?”<
br />
  He sighed and looked over at the house’s back porch. “Nah, man, you’ve done enough this week. I won’t make you suffer anymore. Lauren’s probably freaking out in there because I haven’t done the prep yet.”

  “I want to help,” I said, unfastening my seatbelt. “Call me weird, but I find the Vegan House scene endlessly entertaining.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re totally weird then.”

  “You seriously think I’d miss carrot terrine night?”

  He grunted as he popped open the door. “I’d miss it if I could, man.”

  “It’s gonna be awesome,” I said, putting up the hood of my jacket and climbing out.

  “Awesomely puke-horrible,” I heard Nick mutter.

  I met him at the back of the Jeep and opened the rear door. “Puke-horrible is a thing?”

  “Sh’yeah. It’ll be going down for real right here tonight.”

  I laughed as I gripped the handles of one of the totes. “Would it make the ordeal more survivable if I promise you ice cream in the tower later tonight?”

  He glanced at me and his eyes lit up. Seriously. Like a little kid’s. “With hot fudge?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Our totes bashed as he planted a smacker on my lips. “Best. Boyfriend. Ever.”

  I grabbed the remaining tote, feeling my cheeks heat and my heartrate stoke. “Boyfriend” was a goofy word and I knew Nick was mostly joking around. But still. It made awesome feelings swirl around in my chest. I knew I was old-fashioned, but hey, I was in love. I wanted to be his and I wanted him to be mine. So tonight I’d be helping my boy make it through a night of red beans, brown rice and something called carrot terrine. I was even looking forward to it—that was some true power-of-love shit right there.

  TWO DAYS LATER I was almost—almost—regretting that I’d helped Nick so much with the dinners at his house. Something I’d eaten—or maybe something in the environment—had jacked up my allergies and I’d developed a nasty case of hives. The evil little bumps had taken up torturous residence in all the usual horrible places—my thighs, my inner arms, my chest and my ass.