by Daryl Banner
We came to a stop by a giant fountain that sat in the middle of a courtyard between three buildings. The sound of rushing water surrounded us on all sides as we took a seat on the fountain’s edge.
“I haven’t given it much thought,” I finally responded.
“You could do anything,” he assured me. “Anything at all you wanted. Just use my house as a place to live, you could even enroll here, and you—”
“Is that why you brought me here?” I turned to him. “Is this your elaborate sales pitch?”
“No way. Tonight was all about the music.” His eyes trailed down my body. “Well, and also it was a nice excuse to doll you up. Damn, you look so sexy.”
“Speak for yourself,” I said back.
He eyed me hard, that same elusive, curious look on his face that I spotted during the concert.
“Thanks, James,” I told him. “For tonight. For bringing me here. For believing I can be anything I want. For looking at me and not just seeing straight through me. For seeing me.”
James smiled. “Of course, Lucky.” He flinched. “Sorry. It’s the name you gave when we first met, so it’s stuck on my mind.”
I had no idea what took control of my hand in that moment, but I found myself caressing the side of James’s face. It happened so fast, I didn’t even notice until my fingers were softly trailing across his cheek.
“I like you,” I murmured so quietly, the noise of the fountain nearly took away my words.
James closed his eyes, melting into the touch of my fingers on his cheek. “I … I like you, too,” he said back, just as quietly.
There we were. A pair of bumbling kids at a school dance awkwardly confessing our shameful crush on one another—and while wearing clothes that could easily place us at such a dance.
My fingers stopped at his chin, which I grabbed. “I’m serious.”
His eyes flapped open. “M-Me too.”
“Maybe you look at me and think I’m just some naïve kid who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That I’m too young to know when I’ve met someone who’s the real thing. That I don’t know what it means to love someone, or to care for someone—”
“No, no,” he assured me. “Really, I—”
I talked over him. “But I have met a lot of motherfuckers out there. Guys my age. Girls. I had a few friends in school. I’ve had feelings before. I know what makes a person good and what makes a person greedy. I’ve seen people change. I know there’s a dark part of everyone, buried deep down in their hearts—a part of you that would slit the throat of your best friend for a slice of bread on the streets out there. People can be selfish. Or jealous. Or worse. And yeah, I’ve seen the worst. I’ve seen darkness, James.”
There was a pinch of hurt on his face. It was like my words were painful to hear. Maybe I was helping him see the shit I’d experienced—shit no guy or girl my age should have.
I went on. “I feel sometimes like the world’s just sucking all the light out of me. Sucking it all out. Until there’s nothing left but a stupid kid who was foolish enough to dream his mom would get better. Or his dad wouldn’t stay out until two in the morning, ‘held up at the office’. Or …” I sighed, then said the rest with my eyes shut. “Or that I would’ve maybe had a normal fucking teenhood, finished school, and got to go to the fucking prom. Take a guy I loved. And fucking dance with him.” I clenched my teeth. “Instead of … selling my soul on the streets. If I even have one.”
A moment passed where I heard nothing but the calm flow of water and felt nothing but the cool night air on my skin.
Then I felt James’s hand on my thigh. “Lucas. Get up.”
I opened my eyes. “Huh?”
“Stand up. Get up.” He was off the edge of the fountain, to his feet. “Right here in front of me.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to say something, and I want you to look at my face when I do it.”
After a moment of staring at him, I rolled my eyes, crossed my arms, then said, “Let me guess. You’re gonna tell me that I’m all wrong. That I have a soul. That the light in me isn’t gone. That we all have darkness in us. That I can let all of that go and be happy living in your house. Happy and safe and blah, blah, blah. Right?”
From the slightly stunned look on James’s face, it appeared that I had taken half the words out of his mouth.
But there was more: the other half. “Stand up, Lucas.”
I sighed, then finally got up and stood in front of him.
James took my hands suddenly, which caught me by surprise. I looked up at him, and he spoke right into my eyes. “All that stuff about you having light in you, and having a soul, and letting go … that’s all true. But that darkness you’ve seen, it’s also part of you. And it’s going to stick with you for a long time. There’s really no sense denying its existence.”
I blinked. “Uh, okay. So what the fuck do I do with it?”
“You already have your answer.” He gave me a gentle pat on my chest. “Your passion, Lucas. It’s right in here.”
“In here?”
“Your art.”
My eyes detached from his.
“Put all of that darkness somewhere,” he advised me. “You’ve learned from it. You are still learning from it. The trick isn’t to purge yourself of it, or to lament over how your pain is turning you dark; it’s to learn to live a little in that darkness and make it not such an enemy.”
I thought on my father. I thought on my step-mother as she sat at her vanity applying a fifth layer of makeup. I thought on the day I lost my mother. “Easier said,” I caught myself murmuring.
“That’s not all I want to say.”
“What else, then?”
He let go of my hands, then extended his own. “I wanted to …” His face went red, then he shivered and looked off, retracting his hand. “Nah, it’s dumb. I’m embarrassed.”
I wasn’t sure if it was a psychological trick to lure me into his adorable trap, but I will admit, he awoke my curiosity. “What is it? You wanted to what?”
“Nothing. Never mind.” He crossed his arms, still looking off toward the fountain.
“James,” I stated warningly.
Then he met my eyes again at once, this time without a trace of nerves. He extended his hand. “I wanted to … ask you to prom.”
I wrinkled up my face. “The fuck?”
“Lucas. I’m asking you to prom. I want you to be my date. I …” He cleared his throat. “I want to dance with you.”
There were a hundred different things I could have said right there to make fun of James. I could have laughed in his face, rolled my eyes again, or just walked away.
Instead, I took his hand.
He pulled me gently against his body, slipped his other hand behind my back, then led me in a slow dance by the fountain. I felt like everything disappeared and it was just the pair of us on that whole college campus. No one was nearby. No fountain roared next to us. No eyes could find us in the spill of light from the nearby streetlamp.
I was certain that in both of our heads, Chopin was playing.
It felt fucking fantastic to dance with James by the fountain. I never felt closer to anyone on Earth than I did in that moment. He held me against his body, and I held him against mine, our hands clasped softly, as we danced in a slow circle.
I laid my head on his shoulder after we danced awhile. He laid his head on my chest.
I didn’t know what the hell was happening, but I loved it.
I loved every second of it.
Then his heel kicked into the edge of the fountain, and the pair of us toppled. There was no stopping it. I tried for one fleeting second to maintain balance, then felt his grip on my shirt as he desperately struggled to stay upright.
Neither of us succeeded.
We landed with a loud, rich splash of water that swallowed us whole. The fountain was only two feet deep, but it might as well have been the deep end of a swimming pool for as soaked as we became
with that one fateful plunge.
We were still holding each other when we sat up, sitting in the fountain. At first, we both burst out laughing, completely in shock at what the hell just happened.
Then the laughter slowly died.
All we could do then was stare into the other’s eyes, watery and shimmering with refracted light.
“Wow,” I murmured as tiny water droplets fell from the ends of my hair. “First dance at prom, and you already got me wet.”
He let out one light chuckle, then resumed staring into my eyes like he was mesmerized by something.
“Stop giving me that look,” I warned him.
He lifted his eyebrows innocently. “What look?”
“We can’t do this here. If you keep looking at me like that, I’m gonna rip off all your clothes and fuck all thirteen days of pent-up frustration out of you right here in this fountain.”
“Fourteen days,” he mumbled.
“I don’t think either of us are right. Are we even counting anymore?”
“My dick is.”
“Let’s get out of this fountain, dry off, and fuck off.”
“Let’s,” he agreed, out of breath.
Something was about to erupt between us, and it wasn’t going to be while sitting in two feet of water.
We climbed out, totally soaked, then strolled slowly across campus to let the night air dry us off. I ignored the quizzical stares of people who walked past us. We each had a need that couldn’t be fulfilled until we were back at the house.
It didn’t even occur to me until we’d made it halfway across campus to the parking lot that we were holding hands.
Holding hands.
Who the fuck had I become in the space of one little night?
Chapter 21
JAMES
I was physically incapable of keeping my hands to myself.
The whole ride home was a damp one. My desire to reach into Lucas’s lap and cup his crotch while I drove was strong, but I played the role of a good man and settled for simply holding his hand, our fingers clasped as they rested on the center console.
We had become prom dates.
And prom dates hold hands.
When we finally got home, however, neither of us could behave one second longer.
Our jackets were off. Our bowties were flung across the room. His shirt ended up on the kitchen counter. My shirt over the back of the couch. Our shoes were lost in the hallway. Socks on my bedroom floor along with our pants.
Then our two naked bodies crashed against my bed—our lips locked, our hands everywhere.
Lucas pinned me to the bed with his body. His mouth, like an insatiable beast, crashed into mine over and over again.
I was out of breath in seconds. My fingers raked up and down his sides, desperate for him.
Unexpectedly, Lucas drew a trail of kisses down my chest. I squirmed beneath him, practically panting, as his mouth arrived at my hard, throbbing cock.
When he kissed the tip, that was almost the end.
My face must have looked like I was in agony. I parted my lips and let out my breath, enjoying the pleasure Lucas allowed me.
His lips opened onto my cock, and then slowly he took it into his mouth, inch by hard, desperate inch.
Was this new for him? Had he ever gone down on another guy before? Was I his first?
On one hand, you couldn’t tell. Lucas gripped my balls gently and stimulated underneath them while his mouth twisted its way up and down my cock like an expert.
On the other hand, he worked slowly, carefully, as if he was making sure I enjoyed every second of his efforts.
Boy, did I ever.
It wasn’t long before I was close. “Lucas …” I breathed for a warning. “I’m on the edge.”
He pulled off my cock, then gave the whole length a slow lick before lifting his face up to meet mine. “Are you nuts, yet?”
“Just about,” I mumbled, drunk with horniness.
“Then not nuts enough.” He descended on my cock again, swallowing it whole.
I bucked my hips, gasping, overwhelmed.
I didn’t expect that.
The second time around, he seemed more confident than the first. Despite my warning him how close I was, I had no way to stop him other than my continued protests, moaning his name, and curling my toes to keep myself from spilling over the edge. I couldn’t believe the amount of excitement that turned my insides over and over with anticipation.
Somehow, I knew tonight was the night.
I think he did, too.
He lifted off of my cock and slid up my body in an instant, his face hovering over mine. I came out of my daze of ecstasy to find his eyes smoldering me with desire. His lips were parted and red from sucking me, and we both were breathless.
Then he was off of me in the next instant, going for a drawer by my bed. My cock throbbed as the cool air from the room danced around it, the wetness making my cock feel like it was an icicle without Lucas’s warm mouth around it.
He reappeared and stood before me at the end of the bed.
I propped myself up with my good elbow and watched the show. He was slowly jerking his cock in front of me, one smooth stroke after another. His bicep flexed and bulged with his every powerful push and pull on his cock. His abs were pulled taut by his every breath, and his gorgeously chiseled chest rose and fell in steady, hypnotizing rhythms. All of that was eclipsed by his face, beautiful and handsome and strong, his pouty lips parted and his eyes pinning me in place as he watched me ogle him.
He destroyed me just by standing there jerking off.
Then I realized he had a condom on.
And a bottle of lube in his free hand.
He’s been through my drawers, I realized. He’s made discoveries during his time at home while I’m at work.
“You still want to obey my every command?” he asked.
Just the sound of those words in his young, husky voice made me melt into a puddle of yearning. “Yes. Please, yes.”
“You want me to own every part of you?”
“Every part.”
“You want me inside you?”
“Yes.”
He came right up to me, gripped under my legs, and yanked me to the end of the bed, my butt lifted off the bed as he held me. I let out a gasp of surprise as he let go of one of my legs and touched a finger to my hole. It was wet and cold with the lube he used to stroke his own cock. He must have really lathered it on for as slick as my hole was already feeling.
Then his finger slipped inside.
I clenched against his finger and bucked. “Oh my God.”
“Relax,” he coaxed me, his softer voice soothing and just as sexy as his demanding one. “I’ve got you taken care of.”
I wasn’t sure which side of Lucas to crave more, the dominant or the lover. My mind was such a scramble of desires, it was impossible to tell.
Maybe I wanted both of them. Maybe somewhere between the two was the real Lucas. The real Lucky.
The real essence of him I was addicted to in the first place.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured again.
Those words took many more meanings. He had me, indeed.
His finger slipped in more.
I let out a breath of desire. My cock was so hard, it felt like it was going to burst from the pressure. Lucas towered over me like a mountain of abs, pecs, and two sharp, knowing eyes at the peak.
Then he added another finger.
I resisted for a second, then relaxed. My body rewarded me instantly as his fingers slipped farther in, invading me.
It wasn’t long before I was ready for the real thing.
Lucas knew it. His fingers slipped right out, he reclaimed the leg he had let go of, and then his cockhead pressed at my hole. He stared down at me, my legs hooked over his arms, his body like a buffet of muscle from the top down to the hard cock that pressed against my hole, ready to slip inside.
He gave his hips one miniscule thrust.
And he slipped right in.
I groaned at the sensation of having him inside me. It was a feeling that literally nothing in the world could possibly hope to compare to. My eyes locked on his while he gently rocked his body and worked his way in, deeper and deeper.
Inch by inch, he sank into me. Thrust by thrust, I let him in.
I let him inside me in every way you can imagine. I let him in. I let him into my body. I let him into my house. I let him into my life and my mind and my heart.
I let him in.
This was new for Lucas. This level of intensity was new for me, too. Our bodies were uniting as powerfully as our souls were in that bond of his firm body to mine.
I had never felt so intimate with another person.
I never wanted it to end.
“Jerk for me, James.”
His command shattered me apart. I grabbed hold of my cock, which was so hard it ached to touch, and started jerking.
He started gaining momentum as he pumped my ass. He got so deep inside that wave after wave of pleasure began rippling over my body. He was scoring my prostate with every thrust, it felt like. Bells were going off in my head. Casino jackpot sirens. The noise of coins spilling out of machines. Crescendos on a piano. Cymbals from an orchestra.
My mind was exploding.
“You’re mine, James.”
I reached up with my free hand and touched his face, just as tenderly and unexpectedly as he touched mine by the fountain an hour or so ago. “I’m yours,” I said right back. “I’m all yours, Lucas. Every part of me.”
Was it too soon to say something like that? Was it too soon to call it love? Was that even what this was? This unstoppable tangle of dominance, compassion, and lust between us?
“I give it to you.”
The sound of his voice tickled my hand, still pressed to his cheek. “What?”
“Permission.” His cock was flexing within me. I knew he was close. “To come.”
“I have your permission?”
“Right here. Between our bodies. Do it.”
“Do it,” I echoed dreamily. “Lucas …”