by Roan Parrish
“Dane, fuck, I, mmf,” he muttered, eyes clenched tight.
“Hmm?”
I circled the wet tip of his dick with my finger and his hips jerked up again. Fuck, he was so sensitive. I stroked his length slowly, watching the muscles jump in his belly and thighs, watching him start to shake. I slid my other hand between his legs and rolled his balls loosely in my fingers, feeling them tighten.
“I’m—I— Oh, fuck,” he chanted.
I pressed a kiss to his inner thigh, then to the other. I kissed my way to the base of his cock, then licked him from base to tip.
“Oh, God!” he cried out. “I’m—shit, it’s been so long, I’m—ungh.”
He groaned, and I gave his erection a few more licks. When he was shaking and tugging at my shoulders, I slid up his body and took his mouth in a bruising kiss and began to stroke him hard.
He pulled at my shirt and sucked on my tongue, and a surge of heat shot up my spine. I was painfully hard, and every moan and whimper and grasp of his hands just drove me higher.
“Oh, please,” he said into my mouth, “please!”
My heart was slamming against my rib cage, every muscle tensed with attention. I tightened my grip on his erection, velvet skin over throbbing heat, and jerked him. He gasped and grabbed at me hard, and then he went rigid, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open in a silent scream, and shot, pulses of heat erupting over my hand and onto his stomach.
He groaned as he came down, shivering and making tiny pulses with his hips. I swiped my thumb over his tip and he whined and pulled me down, seeking my mouth with his.
“Oh, God,” he murmured against my lips, and kissed me so sweetly I wanted to bury my face in his neck and live there.
He pressed his hips into my raging hard-on and shivered. I gritted my teeth to stay quiet, but when Felix snaked his hand down to the bulge straining my jeans, I could hardly stand it.
“Can I?” he murmured, hands at my waistband.
I nodded, and he undid my jeans. He pushed them down and I groaned with relief as my dick sprang free. Felix’s hand closed around my length and his eyes flew to mine as he squeezed. I snapped my eyes shut to try and get control of myself, but the fact was that no hand but my own had touched me there in seven years, and when Felix began to stroke me, there was nothing I could do.
He touched me, eyes heavy-lidded with arousal as he alternated looking up at me and down at my cock.
“You’re so big,” he said, squeezing the base with one hand and rubbing the tip with the other. My cock jerked in his hand and my breath came short. He was getting hard again, chest rising and falling with deep breaths. He canted his hips up so his wet erection brushed mine, and lust shot up my spine.
“Again?” I asked, stroking him lightly.
He keened and pressed his cock against mine. He tried to stroke us both together, but his hands weren’t big enough. The contrast was hot as fuck—his erection smooth and elegant sliding against mine, veiny and fat. Evidently I wasn’t the only one who thought so because when he crunched up to look, his eyelashes fluttered and he dropped back down to the couch, lust-stricken.
He tugged my hand to our dicks and rested his hand on mine as I stroked us. My hand was so much bigger than his, rougher. I gripped us firmly and went slow at first, watching Felix’s response and trying not to come immediately. He was fully hard again now, and I praised the refractory period of youth.
“Please, please, please,” he begged when I went slow.
And apparently begging really did it for me because I shot to the edge immediately. I started jerking us hard and Felix cried out, neck muscles tensing. I bit at his neck and slung his thigh around my hips, pressing him deeper into the couch as I ground our hips together and stroked faster. I twisted my hand on the upstroke and Felix gasped. He brought his hand to join mine, fingers playing over our flesh and sparking arousal up and down my spine, adding a layer of unpredictability that made it impossible to hold myself back.
I gritted my teeth when he grabbed my ass, but it was no use. He pulled me against him and it felt like every muscle in my body turned to liquid heat. The pressure built in my balls and the base of my cock until my entire body felt like nothing but fuel for the gathering orgasm. I squeezed us harder and Felix cried out. I felt him come against my cock, hard flesh jerking wildly and wet heat suddenly slicking our strokes.
He made tiny, sweet gasps of “Oh, oh, oh” as he came, and I was gone as I watched his face, lost in his pleasure. My orgasm swept through me like wildfire, an almost painful pleasure that felt torn from me. I jerked hard, emptying myself over my hand, Felix’s dick, and his stomach. He whimpered at the hot spatter and then moaned, and I heard myself groaning as if from the depths of my being. I came so hard I saw spots behind my closed eyes, and when I thought I was done, wrung dry, Felix gave a tiny whimper and ran his finger over the tip of my cock and I found myself pulsing again, one last painful jolt of shuddering ecstasy that took me apart.
I hadn’t realized I’d collapsed onto Felix until I felt his arms come around my back. We were both still wearing shirts, our jeans around our thighs, sticky with come and sweat. Felix held onto me with a fierce grip, and he was seeking my mouth with his, nuzzling at me like a small animal.
I pressed my lips to his and was rewarded with a sweet, wet kiss and a thoroughly satisfied moan. I was worried I’d crush him, so I scooped him up and rolled us on the couch, letting him settle on top of me. We kissed lazily for a few minutes, and I stroked his hair with the hand that wasn’t covered in our come. Felix pressed soft, sweet kisses to my cheek and jaw, then with a sigh, slumped against me and nuzzled at my neck.
“Damn,” he said softly.
I nodded. I didn’t want this moment to end. I didn’t want to slide back into my head or look around my empty apartment that felt so much emptier in Felix’s wake. I wanted that peace—the after-football-practice peace of being only a body.
But Felix was probably uncomfortably sticky, and I knew I should get up and get him a wet towel. As I slid back to reality, I registered that we’d never shut the TV off, so Secaucus Psychic was playing softly in the background. Felix seemed to come to awareness of that at almost the same moment, because on the show Jackie said, “Isn’t that something!?” and Felix huffed a laugh as if in agreement.
I sat up, which lifted Felix off me. He looked disappointed, so I kissed his mouth before I stood up.
In the bathroom, I cleaned up and got my pants back in order. I waited to look in the mirror until the last moment. The man staring back at me had the same height and broad shoulders, the same thick neck and shaved head. He had the same high cheekbones and straight, broad nose. But his blue eyes looked softer than they usually did, and his lips weren’t set in a grim line. They looked tenderized with kisses and the sounds Felix Rainey made when he came. The soft hitching breaths that said he felt good. That I had made him feel good.
I stared at myself and realized that I wasn’t looking at Huey. I was looking at Dane. Felix’s Dane, who gave soft kisses and lingering hugs and twined fingers through hair and touched faces and wanted, wanted, wanted so fucking badly to keep being allowed to do those things.
I took the damp towel out to Felix. He looked nervous, vulnerable, young. And so damn beautiful.
“Okay?” I asked, handing him the towel.
He nodded but looked dazed. I sat next to him and put my arm over his shoulders as he cleaned himself off. The moment I touched him, he relaxed and leaned into me, and I realized he’d been nervous that I might want nothing to do with him as soon as we were done having sex.
I took the towel from him and tossed it into the laundry hamper in my room. When I came back out Felix had his shoes on.
“I should get home,” he said regretfully. “I have to work in the morning.”
I nodded, e
ven though all I wanted was to feel him in my arms, a slight warm weight beside me, all night. I walked him downstairs again, and this time he threw his arms around me and held on tight before he left. He buried his face in my shoulder and I could feel his reluctance to leave. And goddamn, it about broke my heart to send him out into the dark night.
Chapter 6
Felix
Sofia hadn’t been home in three days. I’d never gone three days without seeing her, not since the day she was born, and it gave me a low-level anxious buzz.
We’d talked on the phone and she’d texted, so I knew she was alive and with the band, and that she’d been crashing in Coco’s guest room since they were working late into the night, but our apartment felt wrong without her. Falling asleep in the dark of the living room without knowing she was falling asleep in the bedroom, just a shout away, felt wrong.
She’d officially quit her job at Fordham and gotten her first paycheck as a professional musician. When I’d gone to check our online bank account before I paid rent yesterday, I’d done a double take at what I initially assumed was a bank error very much in our favor until I realized what had happened.
When I was fifteen and talked my way into a job waiting tables at the local diner, I saved up my tips all week. At the end of the week, when I got my paycheck in cash, I put all of it into an envelope and left it on the table for my mom. I’d gone to bed that night with a giddy pride coursing through me at being able to help my family.
It was pride I’d felt every time I picked up some extra shifts, knowing it meant that Sofia could afford the books for her classes or we could buy Mom a Christmas gift she’d like.
Last year the roof on my mom’s house had begun to leak, but repairs were costly, and she hadn’t been able to fix it yet. I hadn’t told her, or Sof, but ever since then I’d been putting a little money aside every week, and I hoped that by next year I’d be able to help her get it fixed.
Sofia’s first paycheck was more than I’d saved the whole year. A lot more.
When she did get home, she was glowing. She had a hundred stories to tell me and a hundred pictures to show me, and songs to sing me.
I sat on the couch and soaked up my sister’s light like a moon.
Riven was going to make the announcement about Sof being their new lead singer in a week, at the same time they surprise-dropped a new single with her on vocals. The track was what they’d been working so hard on.
Sofia had met with a stylist and gotten a dozen new outfits, and she’d gotten her hair cut by someone other than my mom or me for the first time in her life. She’d had professional pictures taken with the band. In the shots, she and Coco grinned at the camera, heads tilted together. She and Ethan, Riven’s drummer, gave thumbs-up signs to the camera with their arms slung around each other’s shoulders. She and Ven, Riven’s bassist, frowned dramatically, holding burgers up to hide their eyes.
I’d never seen her so excited, so alive. She gushed about each detail, and I couldn’t help but get excited right alongside her.
When she was there with me, she was the same Sofia. My sister. My best friend. My confidante. The person who thought I was dependable and hilarious and had always wanted me to come with her to every party.
She was set to leave on tour in three weeks.
* * *
—
The night Riven announced Sofia as their new singer, I woke up in the middle of the night gasping for air, my heart racing so fast I was light-headed. I couldn’t remember what I’d been dreaming, but the darkness felt like it was pressing in on me from all sides and I scrambled to turn on the bedside lamp.
“Sof?” I choked into the darkness before I realized she wasn’t there.
I pressed my palm to my heart and could feel it trip, hammering in panicked beats. I bent over at the waist, forcing my lungs to fill, and tried to calm my shallow gasping breaths.
Gradually, my pulse slowed and my breathing deepened, but I felt shaky and afraid. It was four a.m. and my alarm was set for six anyway. Instead of going back to sleep, I took a cool shower and put on a mindless, cheery audiobook I’d listened to a dozen times. I sipped coffee and forced my attention avidly on the story until it was the time I’d usually wake up. Then I left the house early, earbuds still firmly in place, as if any intrusion of the real world into the one I was occupying might wound me, and made my way slowly to work.
When I looked at my phone on my lunch break, I had dozens of messages from people I hadn’t talked to in ages, saying they’d seen the news about Sofia and asking questions. I closed the phone without answering any and texted Sof, Literally everyone I’ve ever spoken to has been asking about you today, and an only-eyes emoji. She didn’t respond before the end of my break.
When I got off work, I felt completely at loose ends. Usually I went home to have dinner with Sof, but she wouldn’t be there. She’d texted back to say that everyone she’d ever spoken to had been in touch with her too and that she was staying at Coco’s again that night. I guessed they had a lot of work to do to get ready for tour.
I shuffled slowly toward the subway to go home but stopped on the corner. I had nothing to do there, and nowhere else to be. As the city pulsed around me, I was overwhelmed by the terrifying sensation that I could do anything and no one would even notice. I’d felt it alone in our apartment, the strange and vaguely frightening feeling of total privacy in a teeming city. But this was that times a hundred. This was the feeling of being wholly, annihilatingly invisible as thousands of people walked by me.
The idea of spending another evening alone in our apartment filled me with dread, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. As I wavered at the corner, I closed my eyes and imagined what would make me feel better, and I knew it instantly.
What I wanted was Dane.
I wanted him to gather me up in his arms and hold me and tell me everything was going to be okay. When I was with him, I sank into the parts of myself that I couldn’t with other people, and it felt like freedom. I wanted that part of myself to live.
I wasn’t playing it cool with him at all, and probably I should’ve been, especially since I really didn’t know how he felt about me.
Sometimes when he looked at me, I knew I had his complete attention. When I’d gotten all emotional at Secaucus Psychic, he held me close and didn’t laugh. He cooked for me. He seemed to like spending time with me, and things were definitely hot between us.
But then there were the other times. The times when I could see him fall out of the moment and pull away, like being with me was a distraction from something else. The times when I knew he wasn’t telling me things. He wasn’t a very verbal guy in general, and that was fine. But I could practically feel the wall he threw up sometimes. When he froze like he couldn’t even move for fear of giving away something personal.
He’d broken our date two days ago when one of his sponsees called with an emergency. He’d been apologetic about it, but very clear about his obligation. And while I was glad that his sponsee had someone to help him, a small, petty part of me had wished that I was important enough that he wouldn’t break our plans. Then I felt guilty and pathetically needy for wanting that. When I’d texted him that night to say I hoped he had a good day, he hadn’t responded.
He clearly wasn’t a phone person—he didn’t call to chat, and he wasn’t a casual texter—so I was left wondering: if I stopped reaching out to him, would I simply never hear from him again? It seemed horrifyingly possible that if I didn’t call him, he’d just disappear from my life.
Late at night, alone in my bed, it was easy to list all the reasons he might disappear: I worked a crappy customer service job in a poly-blend polo shirt that was about the least flattering color for my skin tone possible. I lived with my sister in a shitty walk-up. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing with my life. I didn’t really have many f
riends, and the person I talked to the most besides my sister was my mom.
I even wondered if maybe he kept offering to cook for me because he didn’t want to go anywhere with me in public.
Hell, he owned his own business and his apartment, spent all his free time helping people, was casually friends with rock stars, and could bench press like fifty times my weight one minute and cook a gourmet meal the next. He knew tons of stuff because he read and listened to podcasts and watched documentaries constantly, and—oh, yeah, he’d done one of the hardest things ever and broken free from addiction.
So, yeah, it was pretty easy to imagine why I wouldn’t hold much appeal.
But…I still wanted him.
At the thought of getting on the train and just going home, my heart started to race. I fumbled my phone out of my pocket and called him.
“ ’Lo?” Dane said, as if he didn’t know it was me. It threw me.
“Hi,” I said. “It’s, um, Felix,” I added, suddenly afraid he wouldn’t recognize my voice.
“Hey,” he said, voice warming a little. “Hey, sorry. Had to get a new phone.”
“Oh. Okay,” I said, when it didn’t seem like any details were forthcoming. “Uh, what are you up to tonight?”
“Just got back from the gym. About to go to, uh, my Friday night thing.”
His brusque phone manner made me feel like I was talking to a stranger.
“Friday night thing?” I asked, hopeful for an invitation.
“Mm-hmm,” he said. So much for subtlety.
“Well,” I tried, “I don’t know what your usual Friday night thing is, but…would you want to maybe…hang out? After it? Or…” I rolled my eyes at myself. “Or I could go with you, maybe?”
In the moment of silence that followed the offer, the horror that he might say no sunk in. I bit my lip hard.