by Laura Stone
There was something almost marital in what they had done, something uniquely intimate. Adam had seen husbands give their wives and children blessings in time of sickness and trouble. Adam’s father had often called General Authorities Gerald knew to lay a blessing on any member of their family when the need arose, most likely assuming their higher authority would be a greater insurance against evil influences or for healing. He’d always looked forward to the day when he would be asked by his loved ones to pray for them, to bless them, and he’d always been exhilarated by the promise of such an honor.
Brandon stood and took Adam’s hand in both of his. His face had a soft glow; he seemed peaceful and resolute. “Thank you for that. I feel better already. I’m going to shower first, if you don’t mind?”
Adam stood still, watching Brandon walk away and strip out of his suit, his shoes, his clothes and, finally, his garments, leaving them in a heap on the floor as he crossed naked to the bathroom. Were their holy undergarments truly powerful vestiges of God, clothing that could protect him from evil as he’d always been taught, or was there something in the person that made them worthy of God’s love, and did that love gave the person protection? Understanding crept into him even as his mind tried to dance around the real question he was unable or unwilling to ask himself.
It seemed so natural practicing his religion with this man, sharing faith, and even more natural was the night before, what they’d shared in his bed. Surely God, who commanded his children to “love one another” was a God of all forms of love?
On the heels of this thought came the memory of lessons his father had taught him about the correct forms of love, how anything that debased God’s laws came from the wicked, the unworthy. Adam thought of his father’s reaction if he ever found out what he had done. He could see his mother’s horrified face and the look of disgust from his brothers, hear the whispering of his shame in the halls of the church. There was no question in his mind that, if that happened, if his father or mother learned about what he and Brandon shared that he would be excommunicated, cut off from his family and from eternal joy. There would be no highest Kingdom of Heaven for him. He would be barred from God’s complete love, from eternal progression, barred from an eternity with his family.
And all for having tender feelings for his missionary companion.
Deep in thought, he sat on the edge of his bed still wearing his suit with his hands hanging loosely between his knees . Brandon came into the room wrapped in a towel; his voice brought Adam out of his thoughts.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just thinking things through.”
Brandon opened a drawer and pulled out a fresh pair of garments. “Well, maybe don’t do it so hard. Looks like your head is about to explode.”
Adam looked up to find Brandon grinning, but his eyes quickly shifted downward as Brandon bent over to step into his garments. Adam quickly looked away. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “That can’t be helping things. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
He stood to leave, and Brandon grabbed his arm. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“That’s not what my dad would say. That’s not what the other Elders would say. That’s not what our rule book says.”
“Well, maybe there’s something wrong with all of them instead of us.” He held Adam’s arm a bit longer, then dropped it. “What were you thinking about when I came in?”
Adam heaved a huge sigh, leaned against the door frame and rubbed one hand through his sandy blond hair. “You. I don’t understand what’s going on between us. One minute I think we’re the greatest priests ever and I feel so filled with the spirit when we’re out there preaching, meeting people, trying to do what we’ve been commanded, and the next minute I’m thinking of how I wish you would—”
He blushed and looked at his shoes. They were in need of a shine. He’d think about that instead of thinking about Brandon kissing him again, touching him like last night. “Never mind.”
“That’s what I keep thinking about, too, both of those things. Can’t stop thinking about it, really. Especially the other stuff.”
Adam, caught off guard, looked up. Brandon crossed the room to lean against the other side of the doorframe, opposite him.
“It can’t be totally wrong, Adam. I get why we’re taught not to have sex before marriage. Our bodies are sacred, a gift not to be used casually. I get that. And I actually agree with it. You don’t want to make babies by accident, especially if you’re not married. You don’t want to just be all casual about sex so it loses all meaning.” Brandon reached out, dragging the backs of his fingers down the length of Adam’s arm before letting it fall at his own side. “But last night I felt closer to Heavenly Father than I’ve felt in a long time. Probably not since I baptized Sister Chus, to be honest. And that’s another thing. We’re taught that any sin will close the door to our success out here, but I’m the only one who’s baptized anyone. The only one who got us any further discussions. The other guys? They get invited over for the novelty. They’re not being taken seriously. You and I both know it.”
Adam nodded.
“So why is it that I’m the way I am, and I’m the guy who brought someone to the fullness of the gospel, too? How could that be if I’m full of sin?”
Adam thought about all Brandon said. He wanted so desperately to find the puzzle piece that would fit into the dogma he’d been taught as truth, the one thing that would make how he felt be okay and not an abomination. He wanted to find that one thing that would make him feel right hours after the moment and not just while in it.
His brows knit in concentration, Adam said, “Yeah, it’s like it shouldn’t feel good if it’s so wrong. Not that…” He heaved out a sigh. “I know that just because something feels good doesn’t mean it is good. I mean that it does in here.” He looked into Brandon’s face while he rubbing the center of his own chest. “Does, does that make any sense?”
Brandon squeezed Adam’s shoulder, smoothed the flat of his palm down Adam’s tie and stopped just below where Adam’s heart pounded.
“It feels right because I, I think it is. And… I can’t help thinking,” Brandon said, slipping his fingers under the silky material to squeeze the hidden clasp from Adam’s tie-tack, and the back of his hand was hot and electric on Adam’s belly even through layers of dress shirt and garments, “that some of the things we’ve been taught aren’t right.”
Adam’s breathing grew shallow. Brandon loosened Adam’s tie, and every brush of his fingers on Adam’s bare neck made his body feel heavy; he could feel the pulse beat between his legs, could feel the hairs on his arms stand on end. “Things? W-what things?” His voice dropped to barely a whisper, reverential and quiet as if they were in church.
Brandon left the tie loose on Adam’s neck, but began undoing the buttons of his shirt one by one. His eyes were intent on the task. “It’s like all the rules we missionaries are told to obey, all one hundred and sixty-seven of them. All the lines we have to toe; the check marks we have to make every single day. I think… They’re keeping us busy so we don’t notice all the great stuff out there. All the happiness we’re denying ourselves.”
Brandon drew his fingertips under Adam’s dress shirt outlining his pecs. His thumbs traced the sacred markings sewn over the nipple; Adam closed his eyes and exhaled slowly.
His voice shaking, Brandon said, “It’s like the Church is about the Church and not about Heavenly Father.”
Adam bit his lip, moistening it. A well-conditioned part of his mind wanted to argue, to yell that what Brandon said was blasphemous. But the part of him that was just waking up and noticing the world for what it truly was heard a concept he’d not been able to articulate on his own, something that rang true. And hadn’t he prayed that very day for answers? For the truth?
Leaning forward, his hair tickling Adam’s faintly stubbled chin, Brandon exhaled a hot bre
ath along Adam’s bared neck. “This, what’s happening between us, this feels like that scripture, ‘In my distress I cried unto the Lord and he heard me.’”
Adam, eyes closed, buried his hand in Brandon’s dark, wet hair, his weight resting against the door frame. “I… I think He did hear us. Brandon, I think He’s answering us.”
With a low noise, Brandon tugged at Adam’s shirt, pulling it off his arms, leaving him in his G’s. They stood there, holding one another, breathing deeply. A droplet of water fell from Brandon’s hair onto Adam’s hand. He brought it to his mouth to suck it off, then traced another droplet as it ran down Brandon’s temple and caught it in his mouth before it could fall off Brandon’s jaw.
“You feel like an answer,” Adam murmured. “Like a revelation.”
Brandon shook his head. A needy whine slipped out of him before he surged forward to catch Adam’s mouth in a passionate kiss. He rucked up the hem of Adam’s garments to stroke Adam’s belly while tracing Adam’s ear with his tongue. Adam held on tighter, lost to the sensations of being touched, being held, being understood, reveling in the sensation of Brandon’s skin warm and smooth under his hands. It was so easy here in this private place he and Brandon were making for themselves. So easy just to feel, to believe it was okay. It seemed right, this shared emotion between the two of them, as if it was true. He believed it, he did.
Cupping the back of Brandon’s head as Brandon continued nipping and kissing along Adam’s neck, he said, “Oh, my gosh, Brandon that feels so—” He pulled on Brandon’s hair to bring his face level with his languorous smile. “Can you, um, give me a hand?” he asked, looking down between their bodies. He knew how it could feel and he wanted it again, wanted everything he could have.
Brandon yanked the garment off and unbuckled Adam’s belt as Adam tugged off Brandon’s towel. Brandon paused, leaning back a little as if he knew Adam needed to look his fill. Adam’s gaze roamed over the hard planes of Brandon’s body, skirting the thick, dark hair at the base of Brandon’s groin until he realized he didn’t have to look away. He could look. Brandon wanted him to look. And it was so clear in the way his body began to respond that this was what he wanted. This reaction, this hunger building was nothing like the reaction to accidentally seeing the dirty pictures of naked girls the guys passed around in the locker room back at the U.
He’d never wanted those girls. He’d never wanted a smiling, dutiful Mormon coed on his arm, either. Brandon was who he wanted.
Their lips crashed together. Desperation for one another built as Adam kicked off his pants and remaining garments. They fumbled back to Brandon’s bed and took their hands from each other just in time to avoid falling onto the mattress.
With a strength that made Adam’s insides twist hot and liquid at being so easily manhandled, Brandon flipped Adam onto his back and straddled him. His eyes were heavy with need and his damp hair stood in crazy spikes from being roughly handled. He ran his splayed hands from Adam’s shoulders to his hipbones; his thumbs tickled the mat of light brown hair in the center of Adam’s chest and raked through to where it thinned into a trail below Adam’s navel.
He kissed and licked a path from Adam’s neck to his navel as Adam tried to calm the frenzy building inside him. “Can I try something?” Brandon asked, shimmying down Adam’s body.
Dumbfounded, Adam nodded, not really sure what he was agreeing to, but trusting Brandon no matter what it was.
Brandon’s hand spasmed against Adam’s side as he nodded. “Okay.” He then proceeded to blow all the circuits in Adam’s brain when he put his mouth… With a body shaking shudder, Adam jerked underneath him, shocked and overwhelmed. Too much, that was too much. His hand was in Brandon’s hair guiding him back toward his mouth for a kiss that would let him calm down.
“No? I thought—”
Adam shook his head and kissed Brandon gently. “I just… it’s a lot.”
“I’ve never done this before, you know,” Brandon murmured against Adam’s lips.
Adam’s barked an incredulous laugh. “You think I have?”
“Well. I’m glad we’re doing this together, then.”
The corner of Adam’s mouth quirked up. “Yeah. Me, too.”
“Will you let me? Trust me, okay?”
Adam took a deep breath and nodded. As Brandon kissed back down his body, Adam felt the last remnant of his prudishness, his closed-off nature, fall away. Brandon accepted him, accepted this. He wanted it as much as Adam did. With an impish grin, Adam asked, “How does it go? ‘Even as you desire of me so it shall be done unto you.’”
Brandon stopped what he was doing and laid his cheek against Adam’s hipbone, laughing. He bit the thin skin stretched there, then soothed it with a kiss. “I thought this wasn’t supposed to be funny, what we’re doing.”
Adam’s laughter ebbed, leaving him smiling, languid in his happiness. “I think that’s a part of the whole ‘joy’ thing we’ve never had.” He ran his fingertips through Brandon’s hair, shocked at himself for not caring that he was lying naked in a bed with another man, a man who just happened to be his missionary companion.
With a cocked eyebrow, Brandon asked, “So do you want me to suck this thing or not?” before dissolving into laughter. His shoulders shook with it. Brandon stilled, however, when Adam—head spinning with what was about to happen—linked their hands together, dragging them back down to where he ached. Adam moaned and jerked when he felt Brandon’s mouth engulf him, hot, wet and unlike anything he could have imagined, had never imagined.
It took a moment or two for them to figure out how it all worked; Brandon’s teeth scraped the underside once, and Adam hissed in pain. Brandon made it all better in short time, then entwined his hand with Adam’s. Adam’s toes curled up in the sheets; his mouth worked soundlessly as he allowed himself to experience the simple pleasure of another person’s body, the body of a person he cared for so deeply.
A powerful orgasm was building, and Adam didn’t know what to do. His body didn’t want to stop, but he knew instinctively that he should warn Brandon. He stammered, “Brandon I’m going— I can’t help it!”
Brandon knelt over Adam, kissing him tenderly as his hand took over, as Adam’s body clenched, as he gave in to it, unable to stop the desperate noises, as he flushed all over with the heat of Brandon’s heavy-lidded gaze.
Brandon touched his fingertips to Adam’s belly with a sort of reverence and awe. He fell onto the narrow space between the wall and Adam. He buried his face in the crook of Adam’s neck as Adam gasped, trying to catch his breath as he came down.
“I see why that’s called something holy. Holy moly…” Adam sighed, draping his arm over his heated face.
Brandon laughed against Adam’s neck, tickling him.
Adam turned his head, smiling sadly. “We can’t go on like this, you know.”
The color ran out of Brandon’s face.
“These beds are too small for us.”
Adam popped to his feet. He was embarrassed by the mess on his torso, but quickly ignored that when his eyes moved to Brandon lying on his back, completely naked and still very interested. He’d seen naked guys in the locker room, but the unspoken rule there was to avoid lingering glances and to keep eyes chest-high or higher. He’d seen naked girls, too, by accident, before flipping the channels on his brother’s remote to something more chaste and honorable in case someone walked in. He had felt weird for not being turned on by the girls. He understood why, now.
The long, powerful lines of Brandon’s body in repose, the breadth of his shoulders and how they tapered into slim hips, the dark thatch of hair at the base of his groin, his thick thighs, muscled from playing sports and walking everywhere—all that made Adam’s mouth go dry.
He wanted. Oh, how he wanted. But not like this. Well, not on a single bed barely large enough for one large young man, let alone two.
&n
bsp; “Come on. Get up and put your shoulder to the wheel, Elder,” Adam said, grabbing at the bed frame under his mattress.
Brandon grinned and got to his feet. They made quick work of shoving the two beds together to make a bed large enough to accommodate them both. They flopped onto it, not quite touching. They had fully committed to something now, and it both frightened and exhilarated Adam.
He swallowed thickly and asked, “Do you want me to… you know.”
Brandon threw his arm over his eyes and cupped himself. His voice sounded breathless as he answered, “Yeah, I mean, you know… if you want to.”
Adam sat up and put his weight on one hand as he looked down at the body being offered to him. Brandon was a thing of beauty, his body hard and chiseled, naturally tan, but darker on his arms where his short dress shirt sleeves came to an end. Adam wondered if it would be possible to ever grow tired of looking at him. Trying to calm his nerves, Adam drew his fingers over the defined muscle at Brandon’s hip. If he did this, it would mean he completely accepted who he really was.
He kissed the center of Brandon’s chest and made his way down the length of him; his heart pounded and his mouth flooded with saliva at the clean, slightly musky scent. Brandon bent his leg, holding Adam tightly to him. Adam looked up and saw Brandon, his chest heaving, staring down at him, with eyes heavy-lidded and his thick lashes shading his dark brown eyes. Adam watched Brandon’s reaction as he tried to copy what had been done to him, tried to give back what he’d been given. Brandon arched and licked his lips; one of the little noises he made when he touched himself slipped out.
After a few minutes, Adam’s jaw began to ache; was that something a person got used to? The thought of doing this enough to become used to it excited him. As he gave in to the pleasure of giving Brandon pleasure, he became bolder. He allowed himself to acknowledge that he wanted this. He wanted a man, wanted this man. He loved the smell of him, the taste of him, the hard planes of Brandon’s body, the strength of his character, the breathless way he gasped Adam’s name.