by Daryl Banner
“Th-Thank you,” I choke out.
And we begin to cut into our steaks.
The first bite explodes with flavor in my mouth. It’s so good, I can’t help but close my eyes as I chew, savoring every bit of the juice that coats my tongue. I swallow it in seconds. When I cut and help myself to a second bite, it’s twice as good as the first, and an involuntary moan hops out of my throat. A third makes its way to my fork, then past my lips. Oh my God, this is some kind of heaven.
When I look up, Ben’s eyes are all on me, watching, amused, and his first tiny square of steak remains speared at the end of his fork, uneaten.
I smirk at him. “Well, go on and eat your steak, too,” I tease him. “This isn’t the Trevor show.”
He grins. “I beg to differ, but alright.” He brings the bite to his teeth—yes, his teeth before his tongue—and then I watch that lucky bite disappear past his lips. When he chews, his whole jaw moves slowly and sensually, its muscles flexing and tightening. He closes his eyes too, savoring it. It’s entrancing, the way his lips squirm, showing evidence of his tongue as it wrestles and works the piece of meat in his mouth, devouring it skillfully. He seems like an expert in … working pieces of meat with his mouth.
And now I’m thinking about blowjobs. Perfect.
I pull my attention back to my plate like yanking the leash of a stubborn dog, cutting myself another bite, then another. The meat is tender and falls apart in my mouth. The bed of pasta beneath is coated in the delicious juice from the steak, and when I twist a helping onto my fork and bring it to my tongue, a whole new set of flavors, mouthwatering and savory, crash through my body and fulfill cravings I didn’t know I had.
And I can’t stop.
It isn’t long before I’m scraping an empty plate, putting every little bit of broken pasta and scrap of meat I can find past my lips.
“Good?”
I lift my chin, alarmed, as if his one spoken word just yanked me out of some trance I was caught in. Ben watches me with his elbows on the table and his chin propped up by his fists. He’s probably been like that for a while, judging from the amused glint in his eyes and the upward quirk of the corners of his lips.
I set my fork and knife down, my face going red. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Got a bit carried away there.” I wipe a spot on my lips, not sure if there’s sauce there or if it’s my sudden self-consciousness playing tricks. “I’ve … never eaten steak like that before.”
He nods. “It’s a favorite place of mine. I’ve known the owner for years.” He starts cutting another piece of steak, barely halfway through his meal.
I watch for a moment. My hands are in my lap suddenly. I’m wringing them, fidgeting, picking at my nails, chewing on my lip and still tasting the oil from the pasta.
Watching him eat is like an encore of the meal I just downed. Except my mind is going everywhere but the food. His lips, how they move. His jaw, how it works. His eyes, how they savor.
“So,” I exclaim abruptly, forcing myself to talk and fill the silence, “I remember this one time I had steak—I was thirteen, maybe fourteen—and this big piece got lodged in my throat. I didn’t even know what was happening because my eyes were so watered up, everything looked stretched like a funhouse mirror, and I couldn’t breathe. All I could hear was screaming. My mom’s screams. My dad’s yelling. And y’know what I was thinking the whole time? Shut up. I just wanted them to shut up. Really, was the last thing I’d hear in my life going to be the shrill sound of my parents’ screams? I mean, we’re talking the same kind of scream my mom makes when a cockroach scuttles up the wall. So there I was, being screamed at like an insect because I couldn’t properly chew and swallow my dinner. That’s how I was gonna die: choking on a chunk of some dead cooked cow.”
I interrupt myself by bringing a glass of water to my mouth so fast, it splashes my face. Not that I seem to care, chugging away like I’ve been stranded in the Sahara for a month, water droplets letting loose from my chin. I set it back down way too fast—it splashes again—and then I continue rambling.
“One of the thoughts that went through my head—yeah, of all possibly profound things to occur to me during my maybe-last-minute-on-earth—was whether my English paper on Socrates was due that Monday or the next.” I roll my eyes and shake my head. “Socrates. Y’know. I’m choking on dead cow only because I know I’m choking on dead cow, and I am what I know, and blah, blah, philosophy. The irony made me want to laugh, but of course I couldn’t laugh, because I’m choking to death, right?” I’m telling the story with my hands, gesturing in front of me. I’m never like this. Someone hit my nutty switch and I don’t have any red wine to blame this time. “So then my mom starts trying to reach down my throat—no joke, I almost bit her finger off, and then I would’ve been choking on steak and my mother’s finger, what a lovely image that is, and yes, that would have included her diamond wedding ring—and my dad yells at her to back off while he bear-hugs me from behind like a WWE wrestler. My dad squeezed me so damned hard, I could taste my ribcage. Up I went, then back to the ground. Up, then to the ground. Up. Ground. Up. Ground. I started to see stars. And then: boom. Out. Chunk of cow cannonballs over the dining room table like a brown, lumpy pigeon and lands right into the aquarium with a cute plop.”
I press my lips shut when I realize Ben is staring at me, wide-eyed and slowly chewing his last bite, his plate emptied.
After swallowing, he offers me a tiny smile, then quietly asks, “And the moral of your story is … don’t bite off more than you can chew?”
I let out one light, nervous chuckle—thinking about the clubs I headed in high school, my strictly laid-out four-year college plan, my ambitious class schedule, the amount of hours, the credits …
Thinking about Ben, the gorgeous man sitting in front of me. Thinking about being here at all. Thinking about whether I’ve spent my whole life biting off more than I can chew.
Ben, my latest too-big bite of steak.
I swallow, then murmur, “Story of my life.”
He sets down his silverware, then leans back in his chair. His eyes drift down my chest for a moment. We just ate a full meal of steak and pasta, yet somehow he still looks starved.
Starved for something else.
Like me.
I rise from the table so fast, my thighs bang into it. He lifts his eyebrows, startled. “I’ll … I’ll get the plates,” I announce, my voice unsteady and an octave too high, before taking both our dishes away and moving to the kitchen too fast.
I count my breaths to calm myself and quickly run through a roulette of different things I can say to excuse myself home. If I’m here a second longer, I’m seriously going to give in to impulses we both promised we’d resist. With every passing glance, my resolve is crumbling.
And then I go and talk for an hour about my near-death experience with red meat. What the hell is wrong with me?
I’m just nervous. I’m doubting my tenacity, here. I’ve resisted Ben for so damned long, and I know for a fact that I won’t be able to take the high-and-well-behaved road much longer.
And I’m supposed to survive a summer of this torture?
The faucet turns on too strongly, and a spray ricochets off a dish and covers my front in water and pasta oil.
“Fuck!” I cry out, dropping the dishes into the sink.
“It’s alright,” comes his deep voice—from directly behind me.
I spin around to face him. My whole front is transparent now from the water, my nipples hardened from the cold. And now Ben towers over me, the deep resonance in his unassuming words pulling me in. It’s alright. Everything about him has me trapped, roped up like a prisoner. Even literally, I feel like I can’t pull my arms away from my body nor make my legs bend.
I’m all his. I’ll do anything he wants. He owns me.
“I was thinking,” he says, his voice soft, the sound of it casting goosebumps up my arms, up my back, up my neck, “that maybe
we’ve left a little room … for dessert.”
18
Trevor realizes he is the dessert.
I swallow hard, then meet Benjamin Gage’s eyes—his sharp, scorching eyes.
“D-Dessert?” I whisper.
Slowly, he brings a finger to the collar of my shirt and hooks it inside. Then he gives it a tug, the top button coming undone with surprising ease.
My heart hammers away. My knees quake.
He pops open the next button. Oh God …
“B-Ben …” I whisper.
He ignores me. His other hand comes up, and then the two of them work the rest of my wet shirt off from the top, down. Button by button, I feel it loosen, yet see none of it, my eyes glued to his.
“Ben …”
Still, he says nothing. He watches his own hands as he peels my shirt off, slipping it over either of my shoulders. The cool air of the room kisses my skin, and then the wet fabric falls away.
His fingers slide down my arms slowly, like he’s never seen them before. Every ridge of muscle, the bumps of my elbows, he touches them with curiosity. Then his fingers drift softly inward, their rough tips unhurriedly running along my ribcage until they dance over my chest.
When his fingertips reach my hard nipples, I suck in air.
They’re so sensitive, I squirm under his touch.
I’m so hard right now. My cock is swollen and aching, and it throbs inside my underwear. His hips so close to mine, I feel an automatic pull toward him. I might be humping him, our crotches grinding against one another. The pressure down there builds.
“B-Ben …” I breathe. “Please … W-We … We shouldn’t …”
But I want him to. Badly. I want him to keep touching me. I want his hands everywhere. I want his lips on me next, doing all that his fingertips are doing—and more.
I don’t want him to stop.
And he doesn’t. His hands run down my sides smoothly, palms against my skin, and then he’s pulling my belt open, freeing it from my pants. It hits the floor buckle-first, loud and clanging.
I open my lips to whisper his name in protest once more.
But then his mouth is there instead, shutting me up. When I try to moan a word one last time, his tongue is there to stop me yet again, and then all my desire to protest is gone with my voice.
And our kiss.
Fuck, does Ben know how to kiss.
All that’s left of what I know is twisted tongues, breath, and our wet lips.
And his fingers as they open my pants and pull them down.
Underwear, too.
My cock freed, it swells even more. I gasp, feeling the cold air all over my body. My skin exposed, goosebumps rush across every inch of me. Instinctually, I step out of my pants as he works my mouth muscularly and with power, dominating my face. I kick away my underwear too, desperate to be freed of my clothes and open to him—and to whatever wicked things he plans to do to me.
And I want him to do everything to me.
When my hands come up to his chest, I’m surprised all over again by how built and muscular he is. He is as firm as brick, and his pecs, round and shapely. I grasp the bottom of his shirt and slip my fingers underneath.
I only get a fingertip or two on his skin before he pulls away, our kiss ended in an instant.
Meeting my eyes, he grabs the bottom of his own shirt and, with his big arms crisscrossed, slowly slides it up over his head. And oh boy, does he take his time. His gorgeous abs are revealed to me all over again, one by one, ever slowly, along with his big, statuesque pecs I just a moment ago had in my palms. His body tapers perfectly from his big broad shoulders to his slender waist. He pitches his shirt aside like it means nothing to him, then fixes his smolder on me, his jaw quirked, its muscles flexed tensely.
He looks dangerous in this moment. Deadly. Dark.
And devastatingly hot.
I crumble before him. I can’t believe this is happening.
In one quick motion, he grips the backs of my legs and hoists me up onto the kitchen bar counter, completely naked except for my socks. I gasp as the cold marble surface bites my cheeks. A tall plastic container falls over and rolls off, plummeting to the tile. A stack of papers on my other side are brushed away, too.
He grips the tops of my thighs with his big, powerful hands, then spreads them apart.
My cock points up at his face, desperate, throbbing, a bead of pre-cum on its firm pink tip.
Ben doesn’t even look up at me. I’m just another juicy helping of high-dollar steak to him, an object for his pleasure, a piece of meat.
Saying that about myself has never felt hotter.
Slowly, he moves his mouth to the base of my cock. I watch, desperate to feel him on me, whether it’s his lips or tongue. I yearn for his touch so badly, I fight my instinct to buck my hips upward and force my hard cock into his mouth. I’ve never wanted something more badly than I do this.
He parts his lips at last, sensually, then lays the flat of his tongue on my cock. Taking his time, cruelly, he runs it up the entire length from base to tip.
I groan, driven crazy by his tongue. I cling to the hard counter as best as I can, legs spread, nipples hard, cool air all over my skin. I’m so overwhelmed with sensations, I feel like I’m falling apart.
When he reaches my cockhead, his tongue disappears, and he perks his lips to kiss it tenderly. His lips work with sweet finesse, the way one kisses his lover during a slow dance, the way one tastes the cool water from a drinking fountain, the way one savors the nippled tip of a perfect swirl of ice cream.
Consider dessert served.
He opens his mouth and lets in my cock, inch by inch. I arch my back, overcome with the warm feel of the inside of his wet mouth and tongue as it slides down my cock, swallowing it whole. His mouth is the only warmth I know.
And then he starts to suck it, the pressure building. He pulls back, then swallows it all over again, inch by inch.
The suction makes me crazy. I watch him, my mouth unable to close, my eyes alight and drunk with ecstasy.
Every experience I’ve had with an ex-boyfriend has just been obliterated. In this instant, I realize I’ve never had a blowjob.
Not a proper one. Not like this.
Each time he pulls up and then slides back down my cock, the suction builds. His warm wet lips and slippery tongue work me to a throbbing, aching, desperate edge of imminent explosion.
Yet he keeps his pace torturously slow, twisting up my cock, then slowly easing down, sucking me like the world’s tastiest lollipop, the flavor of which he wants to enjoy every lick of.
All at my tortured, impatient expense.
I can only wait, tighten every muscle in my body, and suffer the agonizing, throbbing enjoyment of it.
Make an end of it already, I beg him through my clenched teeth, through my jagged gasps, through my clinging hands—which have since taken hold of his firm, muscular shoulders at some point that I don’t remember. Let me come and make an end of it, please, please, Ben, please let me come.
His mouth slides right off my cock and then his hand replaces it, stroking me slowly, slippery, and smooth. He looks up at me with wet, glistening lips, a devious smirk twisting them.
“Goddamn, Ben,” I breathe, quivering. “I gotta come. Please. Fuck. I gotta come.”
He rises up from between my wide-open thighs, his muscular form towering over me even as I’m on the counter. Light spilling in from the dining room catches every ridge of his muscles, giving a glow to his six-pack and the sides of his pecs. His biceps shine spectacularly as they flex with his every slow pump of my dick.
He opens those wet lips of his. “I’ve only just begun, boy.”
Then his pace picks up. I gasp, clinging to the back of the countertop as he races me right back to the edge. Already, I’m seconds from my point of no return.
“Look at me.”
I bring my gaze back to his, locked on, unblinking, gasping for breath as he pumps me relentlessly.
“Ask me for permission,” he demands.
There’s something about a hot man like Benjamin Gage with my dick in his grip that makes a somewhat meek and clueless guy like me totally submissive and desperate to obey him. It’s beyond the boss-intern thing, really. I want to serve him. I want to feel beneath him somehow. I want to feel used, teased, and taken full advantage of.
I have been my own insufferable boss every moment of my life since my days of rigorous studying and zero straying from the perfect, faultless path. Now I’m desperate—and long overdue—to let go of that control and submit, for once, to someone else’s whim instead of always my own.
I want to be Benjamin Gage’s toy—his only toy.
“Please let me come,” I beg.
“Again.” His gaze is dark and wicked. He wants to torment me. He wants me to be all his. He enjoys being totally in control.
“Please,” I beg again. “Please let me come. I’m so close.”
“Not yet,” he states, drawing his lips closer to me. “Not. Yet.” His whispered words crash over my face in two hot breaths. “Hold out for me, Trevor.”
Then he takes my mouth with his. Unable to protest anymore with words, I simply moan against him, my legs tightening as I struggle to keep from coming. I bring a hand up to the back of his head and cling to him as we kiss. Our lips gain strength, our breath growing more out of control.
“Please,” I whimper against his lips as we kiss. “Please …”
“Say my name,” he breathes against me.
“Ben.” The name comes out in a jagged whisper and at once, without hesitation. “Ben.” It gives me such power, such pleasure, such pride to say his name. “Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben—”
“Trevor.”
I feel everything inside me squeeze with my release, and then I come so hard, I feel spots of warm wetness hit my chin and chest while our lips lock, feverish and animal.
Good Lord, it’s endless. All of the absurd tension I’d felt between us releases with this powerful, explosive orgasm. I melt against his muscular chest, kissing him as I come, ignoring the wet mess I’ve shamelessly made between our bodies.