Rock the Cradle of Love

by Jen FitzGerald

  Taylor snorts. “Very okay, babe. That was my prostate you just hit.”

  “Oh. Right. That’s good?”

  “Yeah.” Taylor chuckles. “That’s good. Ready when you are.”

  Noah dons the condom and slicks himself up. The push into Taylor’s body is slow and kinda overwhelming. Taylor presses backwards, murmuring nonsense as Noah’s erection slides inexorably into his body. Noah’s gasping by the time he’s fully seated. The tight heat of Taylor’s body around his finger doesn’t compare to its clutch on Noah’s erection. “Shit, Taylor…”

  “You okay?”

  “I’m…yeah.” He stills for a moment, lets his body adjust, and then begins to move. Slowly at first—he’s never done this before, after all. Taylor’s grunts, groans, and “encouraging” words prompt Noah to pick up the pace.

  The tight drag feels good, better than he imagined, and he speeds up to increase the sensation. It’s intense and amazing, and he goes faster still until his hips are snapping against Taylor’s butt cheeks.

  Taylor’s moaning with each thrust, and that spurs Noah on even more. Every so often, Taylor’s hips jerk and there’s an accompanying expletive.

  The sensations of arousal inside Noah are like the incoming tide—small little waves rolling in over and over, until, finally, a larger swell comes and sweeps over top of them, surging farther, melting any sandcastles within its reach. The intensity of his orgasm steals his breath and his strength, and he falls over Taylor’s back in sated bliss, planting a kiss between his shoulder blades.

  Taylor reaches for himself, and he comes with a deep growl after a handful of hard strokes. They collapse onto the mattress, and Noah shifts so he’s only partially lying on top of Taylor. Noah feels as if he’s floating on a cloud in the sunshine, all pillowed warmth. Joy and contentment fill him. He never thought he could feel like this from sex. His last experience was pleasant. Copacetic. Nothing like the breathtaking rush of emotions he’s feeling right now. “Taylor, that was amazing.”

  “Yeah?” he asks, breathless himself.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, but you really don’t have to thank me for sex.”

  “It’s not really for the sex. It’s just…you’ve given me such a gift. Wanting me and accepting me—you don’t know how much that means to me.”

  “Fuck, Noah, you’re gonna make me cry.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Make me.”

  Noah does.

  Chapter Ten

  Noah brushes his teeth and kills time while Taylor puts Emma back to sleep. Nerves bubble in his stomach like hydrogen peroxide and taste just as bad, but he can’t take the standoff anymore. The first week after S’more’s party and their first time together had been everything Noah’d expected. They’d taken care of and played with Emma; played Xbox smashed up against one another, on the sofa or on the floor, legs entwined; watched Netflix and cuddled; kissed a lot; and had some sort of sex almost every night. Life was good, idyllic.

  Of course, it couldn’t last, but Noah hadn’t expected things to change the way they had. Something’s been up with Taylor for a couple of weeks now. It hadn’t quite registered at first because, of course, sex every night just isn’t realistic.

  He’s not sure what’s wrong or what changed, but Noah’s tired of the weirdness and he doesn’t want to avoid the issue any longer.

  Taylor closes the bedroom door and undresses down to his underwear. After adjusting the volume of the baby monitor, he slides into bed. Snuggling up to Noah, he trails kisses along Noah’s collarbone.

  Taylor’s acting like nothing’s wrong, but Noah’s been carrying around this weight for a couple of days. Whatever this is, it’s not healthy, and his asexuality presents enough challenges as it is.

  “Can we talk about something?” Noah’s heart’s thumping hard, but it’s not from Taylor’s overt display of affection.

  “Sure, what’s up?” Taylor pulls back a bit, settles onto what’s become his pillow.

  Noah’s never been this reticent to bring up a topic, and this is the absolute most important thing they’ve ever had to discuss. “Do you want to have sex with me?”

  Taylor’s eyebrows shoot up. “Right now?”

  “Right now. Or ever again.”

  “Of course I do.” He leans in to suck on Noah’s nipple as if to prove his point.

  Noah slides a hand over Taylor’s head and then cups his chin to bring their gazes level. “Then why have you been avoiding it for the last week and a half, two weeks? Every time we start something or we get so far, you pull back. And I know you’re aroused because I can feel it.”

  Taylor sits up and slings his arms around his knees. “Took you long enough to notice,” he says although it’s not said unkindly.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Noah’s confused. “I cottoned on a week ago, and I wasn’t sure until last night if it was just—I don’t know—something going on that had nothing to do with me and would resolve itself, but that’s not the case, is it?”

  A large sigh heaves Taylor’s chest and he shakes his head. “No. I…”

  “Are you having second thoughts about us?”

  “What? No, of course not. Look. I did some research. About asexuality.” He looks everywhere but at Noah. “The website said that people who are asexual can enjoy sex without being physically attracted to the person they’re with. I’m not sure how I feel about that, to be honest.”

  “Okay, and?”

  “And I don’t want to just be a way for you to get off when we have sex. I want there to be more than that between us.”

  Noah stares and the blood drains from his head. He sways a bit and braces a hand against the mattress. Taylor wants there to be more between them when they have sex. Noah’s not sure what he means. Of course there should be something between two people when they have sex, even if it’s just mutual lust. On the surface, the statement sounds perfectly reasonable. But Taylor means something else and Noah can’t quite grasp what it might be, although he feels like he should be insulted. His shoulders have gone tight now, and he takes a breath.

  Taylor continues, “If sex is the same to you with or without me, then we shouldn’t have it. And I can live with that. I still want to be with you. Even if we don’t have sex.”

  Noah blinks, as if clearing his vision like wipers on a rainy windshield is going to bring the issue into focus for him. “Do you think I’m faking this?”

  “No.” Taylor shakes his head. “But maybe you don’t know either and having sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with me doesn’t sit well, you know. So…I’m okay with not. Having sex.”

  Noah doesn’t get mad often, but he’s pissed right now. So much so, that he can’t really make much sense of what Taylor’s saying. Parsing a conversation about sex in general is hard enough. He takes a breath to calm his racing heart. He slides out of bed and yanks his underwear on, and Taylor’s eyes are wide now.

  “You want me to prove that I want to have sex with you?”

  Taylor blinks in surprise. “No, of course not. It’s not about that.”

  “Because you think you’re just a means to an end?”

  Frowning, Taylor gets to his feet too and pulls on his boxers. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  “I didn’t even know I could want sex, and you made me want it—want you—and now you’re telling me I’m not wanting you the right way?”

  “I just don’t want you to feel forced to have sex with me.”

  “You think I’d have sex with someone even if I didn’t want to? You have a pretty low opinion of my sense of self,” Noah says, confusion and sadness churning like a hurricane in his stomach, “of my sense of decency.”

  “Th-that’s not what I mean. Noah—”

  “I have news for you, Taylor—I’m not so stupid for you that I’d have sex just because you wanted to.” So many things are wrong with this conversation, and Noah can’t sort them all out right no
w. He’s confused and he’s mad and he’s sad. Everything is a big jumble in his mind, and until he can separate the threads, he can’t continue this conversation. “You need to go.”

  “What? No. We need to talk this out.”

  “I don’t want to talk it out right now, I can’t. So, please…get dressed and go home.” He leaves Taylor staring after him and takes refuge in Emma’s room. He leaves the door cracked, but leans against the wall behind it. He presses a hand to his chest, feeling the rapid-fire thumping of his heart beneath his ribcage.

  The room is softly lit by the string of fairy lights he’d hung in the window. Emma’s back rises and falls steadily with her breathing. He matches her breaths in an effort to calm his racing heart.

  Soft footsteps pad down the hall, and a moment later the front door opens and closes.

  Noah can’t believe that just happened. If Taylor’s not going to talk to him about what he reads on the Internet and whether it applies to Noah, or not, or how, then perhaps a relationship isn’t such a good idea. They’ve been getting along so well. The sex was good—for all that he isn’t a fair judge of it. Taylor seems—well, seemed—to have found things satisfying. Until he hadn’t for some reason. The intimacy is—was—amazing. Or so he’d thought. Being close to Taylor and sharing daily life is comforting and fun. Being with Taylor is easy.

  That’s what he gets, he supposes, for not having the conversation before they had any sort of sex. Dammit. His head drops back and thunks softly against the wall.

  Noah stands there for a little longer letting Emma’s presence center and calm him before he leaves her room to make sure the door is locked and chained, even though Taylor won’t return tonight. Having the chain hooked up returns a sense of control, small though it is, to Noah.

  Noah pulls on some comfy pants and a tee shirt before curling up in a ball. His bed is big and cold and lonely. Taylor’s words repeat on a loop, making Noah frustrated and angry and sad in turns. He badly wants to sleep right now and forget what happened, at least for a while. He plugs ear buds into his phone and pulls up a favorite episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to watch until he falls asleep.

  * * *

  The buzz of his cell phone awakens Taylor. The slash of sunlight slanting across his bed and into his eyes makes him wince. He squints to read caller ID. His sister. What the fuck?

  “H’lo?”

  “Are you still asleep?” asks Suzan.

  Taylor glances at the clock on the bedside table and sits up. “Fuck. Ow.” He shouldn’t have emptied that bottle of Jack last night, but Noah’s face, his tone had scared the piss out of Taylor.

  “Are you hungover?”

  His mouth tastes like a garbage disposal, and his head is throbbing. It’d been close to five by the time he’d passed out. It’s only ten now. “Um…still drunk, I think,” he says, his voice gravelly.

  “Jesus, Taylor, I thought you’d outgrown that kind of behavior.”

  “Yeah, I…I think I fucked up, Suze…” Taylor curls into a fetal position.

  “Okay. How?” She sounds sympathetic, so that’s good.

  What did he do? “Um…I’m not sure right now. Did you need something?”

  “Yeah. Taylor…” Her tone goes soft, apologetic, and Taylor’s stomach lurches. “Uncle Bud died. Can you come home?”

  Like badly wound tape around his hockey stick, Taylor feels tight and uneven and, fuck—Uncle Bud died. The throbbing in his head intensifies with the sudden clog of tears in his nose and eyes. He snorts back the congestion and says, “I can… I don’t know if I should.”

  “Why not? You were Uncle Bud’s favorite.”

  “I know, but my fuck up…I have a boyfriend, Suze. We had a fight last night, and I don’t really understand why. I need to talk to him, but I don’t think he’s ready yet. I don’t want to be gone.”

  “Send him a text or something, hon, explaining about Uncle Bud. He’ll understand that.”

  “Fuck,” he murmurs. He can’t not go home over a boyfriend nobody knows about. Even if they did know, it’s Uncle Bud. And Suze is right; Noah will understand a death in the family even if he’s upset. “Okay, yeah. I’ll call you with flight details.”

  * * *

  Taylor arrives at DFW Airport with a duffel bag and his garment bag. Once he’d committed to going, which took all of five seconds, he’d booked the soonest flight he could conceivably catch, texted Suzan with the deets, and hopped in the shower.

  The airport isn’t busy, thank God, but he’s cut his timing so close, the flight is already boarding when he arrives at the gate. The shower had helped his head some and several ibuprofens did the rest, but he still feels groggy, as well as confused and upset about leaving without talking to Noah. Speaking of which, Taylor still needs to let Noah know he’s leaving town. He settles into his first class seat and unlocks his phone. As soon as he does, it beeps and powers off. His heart sinks, and he bites back the “fuck” that wants to explode from his mouth and groans instead. The guy next to him glances over, but doesn’t say anything.

  Taylor doesn’t remember grabbing his charger either in his haste to get out the door and whacks his knee against the bulkhead in frustration. He tosses his phone into his backpack, clicks his seatbelt on, and slouches in his seat. He’ll just sleep for the two and a half hour flight. Nothing else he can do, except ponder what the fuck he said to Noah that was so wrong.

  Chapter Eleven

  Noah stirs, still mostly asleep, and rolls over to snuggle up to Taylor. The cool sheets along his arms are a surprise, and the events of the night before come flooding back. His heart sinks and he buries his face in Taylor’s cold pillow.

  They’d had a fight and Noah sent Taylor away. So he could think about what happened without Taylor as a distraction to his thought process. Ugh.

  Noah tries to go back to sleep, but it’s pointless now—his brain is awake and last night’s conversation replays in his head. Instead of fighting it, he gets up, uses the toilet, makes coffee, and lets it loop.

  Emma squawks from her room and he gets her changed and fed and settled on the floor to play, and the words keep repeating.

  Maybe his asexuality is too hard to mesh into a relationship with a guy as sexual as Taylor. Noah hopes not, but until he can make sense of things and they have several conversations, he just isn’t sure. How can they make a relationship that’s mutually satisfying work on all levels for the both of them?

  Maybe they can’t.

  Maybe if they’d had that in-depth talk he’d meant for them to have before they’d had sex, they wouldn’t be here.

  Dammit.

  God, he wants to talk to Taylor, to hear his voice. Noah is—was—mad, yes; that doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss him. But he doesn’t know what to say and where to start the next conversation. Not yet. He sighs and sets his phone on the counter.

  Noah keeps busy as the morning crawls by, caring for Emma, doing laundry—laundry has become a never-ending task since Emma’s arrival—tidying up the house. He’s just about to put Emma down for her afternoon nap when the doorbell rings.

  His heart takes off as if he’s streaking down the ice on a breakaway, and he’s suddenly short of breath. It’s got to be Taylor. No one else visits him without an invitation or calling first. Anyway, he’s glad. He hates being at odds with anyone, but for him and Taylor to have this thing between them so early in their relationship is…well, maybe it’s sort of good. They can have the discussion Noah intended for them to have from the beginning, iron things out, and move on.

  Noah puts Emma in her bed and pulls her bedroom door closed.

  Yanking open the front door, Noah exclaims, “Taylor,” only to find a stranger in a courier’s uniform on his stoop instead. “Sorry. Um…how can I help you?”

  “I have a package for Noah Drinkwater.” The young man holds out a flat cardboard envelope slightly larger in size than a sheet of paper.

  Noah’s stomach clenches. This can’t be good, can it? “
That’s me.”

  “Sign here, please.” The young man holds out a signature scanner.

  Noah signs and the guy bounds back down the stairs with a hollered, “Thanks.”

  The return address is that of Ms. Padget’s firm. His worry drops down to almost nothing as he tears open the envelope to find a folded letter and yet another envelope inside. The business-size envelope is from a law firm he vaguely recognizes the name of, so he’s guessing it’s the firm Julia’s decided to use from the list he emailed her.

  He flips open the thick creamy paper and begins to read. As he does so, his hands begin to shake and he drops to a seat on the coffee table. His fear of Brenda’s interference has come to pass. He tosses the cardboard envelope across the room like a Frisbee. It thunks against the wall and drops to the floor. Dammit. Brenda has instigated some sort of mediation hearing for Friday. He doubts Julia’s behind this, and she probably hadn’t even known about it or she’d have warned him. He’d spoken with her last week after his visit with Ms. Padget. She still wants to give Emma up. Julia still wants Noah to adopt her.

  Why Brenda’s so upset, Noah really doesn’t understand. He’s happy to let her see Emma, to be a grandma. Why she didn’t just call him, he has no earthly clue.

  Does she have some sort of vendetta against him or his mom? Does she have information that would make him unfit in the eyes of the law?

  What’s he going to do if he loses Emma? The thought of that happening makes him lightheaded and short of breath. He can’t imagine his life without Emma in it now. He needs to counter Brenda’s claims. Needs to prove he can handle being a parent and a professional hockey player. Needs to keep Emma at almost any cost.

  He finds his phone and calls Ms. Padget.

  “Take a breath. Don’t panic,” she says in lieu of hello.

  Noah takes a breath and swallows said panic. “How did you know?”

  “We talked for two hours in person last week and another forty minutes on the phone the following day.”

  “Right.” He’d pretty much spilled his guts. “So what’s a mediation hearing and what does it mean in terms of my adopting Emma?”