The Anatomy of Perception
Page 26
“Nope,” he agreed. “I do want to take care of you, though. Let me?”
I nodded, not sure what he meant, but willing to be patient and see. I watched as he lathered up a loofah sponge and then obeyed when he said to turn around. He soaped my back and neck, my pits, down my ass and into my crack, playing with pressure and the texture of the sponge. Then he moved down my legs.
“Turn again,” he said, and I did, the sight of him on his knees in front of my hard-on enough to quicken my breath. He was thorough, though he didn’t tease much or play. He was ready to get on with the rest of it, and the shower was a means to that end.
When I was squeaky clean, he shut off the water and we got out. I rubbed a cursory towel over my wet hair to sop up dripping water, and then wrapped myself around Craig’s sinewy shoulders, kissing the nape of his neck as we tumbled from the bathroom and fell onto the bed, not bothering to dry off the rest of the way. We fought for dominance, but my height advantage didn’t mean much horizontally. Craig won, straddling me and holding my wrists above my head as he bent to take my mouth with deliberate slowness. His grip on my wrists loosened, and he caressed the insides of my arms and down my flanks, hard enough not to tickle, but soft enough not to manhandle. Slowing from heated and needy to intense and passionate got my heart pounding harder than if I’d run all over the loft with him chasing me, finally catching me and rutting against me to completion.
This way, there was no mistaking either of us being lost in the heat of the moment. There could be no misunderstanding of our intentions, and with every purposeful sweep of tongue or glide of hand, we knew what we were getting into.
Both of us were trusting again.
“Have you got lube?” I asked hoarsely.
He wordlessly leaned to the side of me, rummaging in the drawer of his bedside table where he’d always kept supplies. It was comforting to know little had changed, except apparently some things had changed. Craig held up a condom, waiting for me to acknowledge his intention to put it on himself and penetrate me instead of the way we’d always done it before.
A little piece of me shriveled and cowered in the corner. I hadn’t been with anyone since Craig, so I knew I was clean. Yeah, I had a close personal relationship with a couple toys and my own hands, but there’d been no nightclub hook ups, no one-night stands. I hadn’t been well enough to go there at first, and by the time I was, I had my sights set on returning to Craig.
I couldn’t fault him for having tried to move on. We’d been broken up. He was a healthy guy, and not ashamed to know what he wanted or to go after it. He raised a brow questioningly again when I didn’t give him any sign I was okay with this.
“Dane?” he asked, leaving me no choice but to respond if I wanted him to continue.
“Do it,” I whispered. Condom or no, this was still the first time someone would be pushing inside me, so it was important to me. That it was Craig doing the honors made me happy, even if I wouldn’t get to feel his come leaking from me when we were finished.
Instead of ripping open the condom packaging and getting himself prepped, he tossed it beside us on the bed and fell forward, his hands on the mattress on either side of my head. His eyes were warm and serious, the liquid brown I’d always loved.
“You’re here,” he murmured, lowering his face to nuzzle my neck. I tilted my chin to urge him closer; I’d always loved having my neck played with.
“I’m here,” I agreed. “And so are you.” I let my awe come through loud and clear. I’d thought when I’d made it obvious I’d give him time that he’d take it, maybe even string me along a little, make me work for it harder than this.
Not that I was complaining.
“Now that you’re here and I’m here, and we have ideas about what to do with ourselves, I have to know one thing,” he said, studying me seriously, though he slowly lowered himself so I took most of his weight from knees to nipples.
A tremor galloped through my limbs, making me shudder. I hated answering questions, but for him, I’d answer anything.
“Yeah?”
“How old are you now?”
“Thirty-two, same as you,” I said, puzzled.
He slipped a little sideways and snaked his hand between us, cradling my balls and massaging me until I opened my legs. Walking his fingertips down my landscape, he played with my taint, and then gently circled his finger around my rim. The sensitive skin twitched, and I knew from playing on my own how good that first stretch would be. I tilted my hips, silently begging him to push in.
“In thirty-two years, how has no one ever taken care of you? How has no one ever known how badly you needed to be looked after?”
Inexplicably, my eyes began to sting. I didn’t avert my gaze even as tears formed and spilled from the corners, sliding back into the hair at my temples.
“Dylan used to take care of me.” I realized how that sounded and snorted through my rapidly clogging nose. “Oh gross, not like that. I mean, he used to look after me with shoes and food on the table and shit.” The need to explain overwhelmed me. “I had people who took care of me. Holly’s parents. You, once we met. You took the best care of me, even when I made it impossible. Neil took care of me when I needed a place to stay. My doctors.”
Craig’s smile was inscrutable, his finger still between my cheeks, still teasing the wrinkles of my pucker. “I beg to differ. Those people gave you things you needed, me included. We gave you help, time, places to stay, advice. How come no one ever saw the most simple truth about you?”
“Which is?” I raised a brow, moving my hips in a slight circle in counter-motion to his circling finger.
“You just need to be loved.”
I had nothing to say to that. I had friends who loved me. I’d known love once. Great love. I watched while he poured a dollop of lube on his finger and resumed his gentle massage, smearing me with smooth motions until I was more obviously humping into his hand.
“I need to be loved,” I agreed. “You loved me before, Craig. I need that again.”
“I did,” he agreed, sliding his finger a little way in. I closed my eyes and reveled in the sensation, unlike anything I could describe. “I don’t think I loved you right, though,” he murmured, finding a good angle and pushing his finger all the way in.
“Why not?”
“I stopped seeing you,” he admitted, stroking in and out. My breath caught. “I’m an artist, and I see people for a living and put them on paper, but I stopped seeing the real you and started expecting you to be perfect. I put you on a pedestal because you’re beautiful and a doctor and so fucking smart. People like you are supposed to be flawless, and when you weren’t, when you had shitty taste in friends and were afraid to be seen in public with me and sometimes acted ashamed, I never once questioned why you’d be like that. I just judged you, and punished you accordingly.”
The whole time he spoke, he teased me with his fingers, petting and penetrating, and I was a shuddering mess of sensitive nerve endings and overwhelmed emotions. I couldn’t say anything, so I arched into him and opened my legs as wide as I could. I hoped the action spoke the words for me, that I understood and loved him anyway.
How could I fault him for not expecting my flaws when I’d hidden the biggest reason I was fucked up in the first place?
Not wanting to break contact, I contorted my arm to find the condom he’d tossed by my head, then ripped it open with my teeth. Reaching between us, I gloved him up and moved to wrap my legs around his waist, dislodging his hand. I needed to be filled, and his cock was a good start, though it was the look in his eyes that filled more than my body.
He pushed in, going slow, and I didn’t bother to hide the continuous drip of tears. What we were doing was too momentous for me to pretend it was from pain. I loved him, and even if I was speechless, he could see it plain as day. I knew, because he mirrored it.
When his balls rested against my ass, I took a deep, hitching breath and smiled at him, relief on my face that I was capa
ble of taking him, of being this vulnerable and letting him in. I trusted him with everything, for the first time since having met him.
He kissed my eyelids, the bridge of my nose, and then my lips, and began to move, slow at first, and then speeding up as the physical took center stage once more. The slide of the condom muted the friction I was used to from my favorite dildo, but that was okay, because it lasted longer and I had more time to revel in being joined with him in such a way.
He knelt up and grabbed my calves, spreading me open in order to spear into me, watching himself disappear and reappear with each snap of hips. I studied him, his wet hair hanging in his eyes, his teeth sinking into his lower lip, his avid expression, the blotches of red on his chest I remembered from the times when he was really turned on. He was a stunning man, and not just for the flex of his muscles and the beauty of his face. He really made sure it was good for me, finding the right angle to nail my prostate and doing it over and over until I begged for mercy or more, I didn’t know which.
When he leaned to kiss me, I scrabbled at his shoulders and rolled so I came out on top without having lost his cock in my ass. He stared up at me, surprised. I planted my feet on either side of his hips and leaned backward on the bed, widening my knees and watching his gaze zero in to where we were joined. As I began to hump up and down, my engorged dick bounced between my thighs, which trembled as they held my weigh off him. I howled at the ceiling as I took him in, his head nailing my prostate.
“Fuck yes, Dane. Ride me. Oh my god, fuck. So good. Fuuuuuuuu….” he moaned, rubbing his hands up and down my shins and calves.
“Touch me, Craig,” I begged, finding the right angle and slamming down on his dick so my insides lit up like a pinball machine whose biggest targets had been tripped.
He complied, wrapping his beautiful, long fingers around my swollen dick and stroking for all he was worth. His hand was sticky from the lube, but not slick enough, so he brought his palm to his face to spit in it before grabbing me again. It was filthy and honest and raw, and it took me to the edge faster than I would have expected.
“I’m gonna come,” I whined, my thigh muscles screaming as my pelvis filled with the unmistakable cold burn of a pending explosion of pleasure.
“Do it,” he urged. “Paint me with it.”
The next upstroke of his hand, he twisted his wrist and undulated his fingers over the corona of my cock, and that was it. I saw white and my hearing turned to a sound-blanketing whine. I may have shouted, or I may have whimpered, but I didn’t stop riding him even as I clamped involuntarily on his shaft and came forever, bucking into his hand with each all-consuming spasm. As the last few twitches inside my ass subsided, I looked down at him, resplendent with my jizz on his abs, his mouth open in a silent O, eyes closed, brows furrowed as he chased his own release. Though my muscles were shaky and weak, I held still above him so he could pump furiously into me, his hips slapping my ass cheeks. A few solid snaps and he threw his head back, his neck corded with effort as he spent himself inside me.
My legs protested and I had to collapse, burying him as far inside as he would go. We stared at each other, breathing in great heaves, sweat shimmering on both our chests in the light spilling across the bed from the open bathroom door.
“That was amazing,” he panted, his hands finding my ribs and rubbing my skin with his thumbs. “Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
I leaned down, feeling his softening cock shift inside me as I did so, taking his lips in a gentle kiss. “If you did, I didn’t feel it.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled into the side of my face and pulled me closer, cradling me.
“You might change that answer when you stretch.”
“Worth it,” I murmured, kissing him a final time before sitting up and slowly dismounting. He slid from my body with a squelch. I felt open, well fucked, and warm all over, though sticky as I lay beside him, letting loose a satisfied sigh. Frankly, another shower might have been in the cards if the urge to sleep hadn’t become nearly overwhelming.
He sat up and patted my ass as he went into the bathroom to get rid of the condom and clean off his stomach. When he returned, he gathered me in his arms and pulled the covers over us both, kissing my temple.
“You’re here,” he said again, soft into the gloom of the room since he’d turned off the bathroom light.
Kissing one more time just below his collarbone, I mumbled, “So’re you,” and then drifted off.
September 2012
“What have we got?” I asked urgently as the paramedics wheeled the kid into the ER, a teenager rabbit-hopping behind them with a terrified face.
“He’s gonna be okay, right? I did good with the belt?”
“GSW to the right upper quadrant, and another one to the left thigh. Leg wound is through and through, but the femoral artery is nicked. This guy here saved the kid by applying a tourniquet before we arrived on scene.” The paramedic gestured to the squirrely teenager and rattled off more vitals, meds administered during transport. We got the boy—who really was just a boy, at no more than fourteen, with a shock of bleach-blond hair and a pinched face flecked red with blood—on the trauma bed.
“Unequal breath sounds on the left side. We need a chest tube,” Dr. Ballard called out, accepting the tubing from the trauma nurse who’d anticipated such a request. “No, smaller.”
“You did good,” I said to the other kid, who looked seventeen or so. “Is he your friend?”
“Brother,” the guy said, shoving his thumb in his mouth to chew his nail with a savagery reserved for the petrified. He was a carbon copy of the kid on the gurney, with bleach-blond hair, freckles across the bridge of his nose, and a rangy build. Both of them had a feral quality, which told me they were likely not strangers to gunfire.
“George,” the boy on the table gurgled. “George, what’s happening?”
George piped up, immediately ceasing his fidgeting to calm the boy. “We’re gonna be fine, Johnny. You’re gonna be great. Hang in there and do what they tell you, okay?”
“Johnny, you’re going to feel a pinch in your side,” Dr. Ballard said. “It’s pain medicine, okay?” She stuck him with a local anesthetic, and then sliced into the fifth intercostal space between his ribs to insert the tube. The rush of air she’d released went unheard in the chaos, but then blood began to drain, so her face relaxed as she listened to the improvement in his breathing through her stethoscope.
“Left femoral artery is still bleeding. He’ll need surgery, but the tourniquet is working for now,” I said to the team, urging them to finish their assessment so we could get him to the operating room.
“He needs an operation?” George asked, bouncing from foot to foot, still staying out of the way.
“Checking for exit wound in one, two, three,” Dr. Ballard said, and the team worked in sync to roll Johnny over. “No exit, no spinal abnormalities. Back down.” They returned him to his back.
“Yes,” I said, trying not to panic the brother or the patient. “We need to stop the bleeding in his leg, and while we’re in there, we can address the bullet damage and remove it.”
“But we don’t have no insurance,” George protested. “I can’t afford no thousands in medical bills.”
“Without it, Johnny won’t survive,” Ballard said matter-of-factly. Informed consent laws required we get permission for patients to undergo surgical procedures, but life and death situations were exempt because the risk of hesitation or waiting for a signature could result in losing the patient altogether. We were going to operate whether George said yes or not.
The fear that made his eyes the size of dinner plates kept him from protesting as we wheeled Johnny toward the elevators leading to the OR hall. I made eye contact with Sabrina.
“You good?” I asked, slowing down to let them go.
“Yeah, page Kingsley. Hold the elevator!” she yelled at the far end of the hallway, as the open elevator doors began to close.
“Come on. We’ll go somewhere to talk.” He obeyed, but the wheezing didn’t let up until I sat him down in the deserted surgical waiting room and he put his head between his knees. “Need some water?” He shook his head, beginning to calm down. I rubbed his back until he sat up.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Don’t be. It’s okay to be upset. If this situation isn’t one where you’re allowed to fall apart a little, I don’t know what would be. But let me assure you, this doesn’t have to be as bad as you’re fearing right now.”
He met my eyes for the first time since the ER, and they were dull, almost lifeless, without hope.
“What’s going to happen is the doctors will stop the bleeding in Johnny’s leg, and they’ll get a picture of the bullet lodged in his body. From there, they’ll make a plan to remove it and repair any damage it caused as they do. The location of the wound tells me his liver might be affected, and if so, they’ll fix that, too. He will have this surgery to repair all this damage at the same time, but if all goes according to plan, Johnny will come out of it a little battered, a little bruised, but able to fully heal. The wound in his leg is only more serious because it won’t stop bleeding without being sewn closed. Once that’s done, he’ll be watched afterward for blood clots, but will make a full recovery. This doesn’t have to be the end of the world for you.”
George glared at me. “Man, you don’t fucking get it. I don’t have insurance. Why? Because I don’t have a fucking job. How’m I gonna pay for all the shit you already done? I can barely afford the food I put in Johnny’s mouth. I can’t buy him a coat for winter this year because we got nothing, and I ain’t going back in the system. We won’t be split up, you hear me?” He stood up, face reddening. I patted the air in front of me with both hands, trying to calm him, but he wouldn’t hear me. “He’s all I got!”