by J. P. Oliver
He reached over me, pushing his hand through. From it, he materialized a little egg-shaped vibrator. Seeing it in his hand meant acknowledging I actually owned it. Masturbating was normal, but, still. He was technically my ex. Something about it was embarrassing—not that he seemed to mind. The gears were turning in his head again as he set it aside on the bed.
“What’re you gonna do with that thing?” I asked, eyeing it.
Zach uncapped the lube, letting it dribble and warm on his fingers. “That’s for me to know, and you to find out.”
I told myself to not forget about it, but as he slid in fingers into me, the stretch was like a mind-wipe. All I could think of was the girth of them. The knobbed knuckles and the firm press of his fingertips, searching and massaging, working me to a relaxed state, until the pain of it faded into a damp, melting pleasure.
A burst of need sprung through me, white-hot.
I tossed my head back, gasping, “There!”
Zach huffed a little laugh, prodding again at my prostate. “Just like that….”
“Z-Zach, fuck, I—”
“You want the rest of it?” he asked.
It was filthy but spoken softly. Sweetly almost. I nodded my head, hips flinching in search of ecstasy as he slid his fingers out and replaced them slowly with his cock.
“Breathe,” he groaned.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, muscles relaxing. I was right; he was big. After the last push brought him full into me, I asked, “W-wait, just let me—”
“Yeah,” he panted.
The room felt like it was a hundred degrees. I was sweating and my lungs were tight. My muscles relaxed slightly around him—enough to not be too painful a stretch. Again, melting into something better: carnal perfection.
“Move.”
“Are you sure you’re—”
“Zach,” I warned, glaring pitifully up at him.
He laughed, eyes dark with his arousal, before drawing out and sliding back in.
Zach set a rhythm that was perfect, as if he instinctively knew what I wanted. It was deep and punctuated, the drag along my prostate sinfully good. There was no way this should be allowed. I felt like the world was nothing but the two of us again, except even we weren’t us. We were something else. Something like human instinct.
With every fuck into me, I heard his voice, the want: soft, longing groans.
I was too fucked out to catch it when I heard it: a soft vibrating noise. I opened my eyes, curious, watching as the little black toy was pressed by Zach so gingerly against the base of my cock.
“A-ah!” I gasped, pushing my head back against the bedding. “That’s—”
“Tell me,” Zach breathed, still pumping into me, “if it’s too much—”
“It’s not, I—”
I felt like I could barely stitch a couple coherent words together. I was left to gasp and moan as he fucked deep inside of me, pressing, pushing, insisting. Through my pinching eyes, I saw him bow his head and drip spit onto my throbbing cock, before moving the toy up through it. It slicked all the way up to the quivering tip of my cock.
It was too much, too sensitive, but I didn’t want him to stop. It was perfect torture, the sweetest kind of playing. I thanked God I didn’t have any immediate neighbors with the way we were going.
The room was a mix of pornographic sounds: skin slapping, moaning, gasping, pleading. The vibrations. The friction. The slide. Knowing that it was Zach who was inside me, after so many years without him—that Zach still wanted me as badly as I wanted him.
It’s always been us.
It was a finishing thought. Everything, too much, amounting to this, as I came hard and without any warning, come shooting and dripping onto my stomach as he fucked me.
As my orgasm swept through me, wracking me, pinning me, I felt him pull out. In the next seconds, he was groaning loud—more like a growl, possessive and needy—and coming over my thighs.
In the silence, there was only the sound of our breathing and the little vibrating egg. I huffed a laugh, peering up at him through sleepy eyes as he fiddled with it, his fingers clumsy in the aftermath of energetic sex.
“It’s not that hard,” I giggled.
Zach looked up at me, smirking. “You turn it off then.”
Laughing, I held out a hand for him to pass it over. He did, flopping onto my bed beside me. We were a mess, and I would definitely have to swap the blankets out before we went to bed, but for now, lying here was fine. I shut the vibrator off and turned to him, feeling—good. Warm. Sated.
Not freaking out.
“That was nice,” he said first.
Warmth butterflied in my chest. “Yeah. Really nice.”
We looked at each other a long, relaxed moment before I moved in, pressing a slow and simple kiss to his lips. They were kiss-red and pliant and perfect. I’d missed this so much.
“You wanna stay over?” I asked quietly.
“Like a sleepover?” he teased.
I hummed, cuddling in a little closer to his side. “Yeah. There are reasons to, y’know.”
“Oh?”
“The first: I don’t feel like driving you home.”
Zach laughed, eyes shutting as he melted into the pillow.
“Two: that side of the bed needs some love for once.”
“Good point.”
“And three,” I said, meeting his soft gaze as his eyes opened. “We still have to finish our breakfast-for-dinner.”
Zach made a noise, kissing me once more before rolling over. “Right. Wouldn’t wanna waste some perfectly good French toast.”
He offered a hand to me as his dismounted from the bed. I took it and let him help me onto my shaky legs, sharing a smile as I thought, Maybe this can actually work.
“I don’t know if I wanna eat covered in come, though,” I said. “So maybe we ought to shower first.”
9
Zach
As I stepped out of town hall, I felt good.
Last night had been great—better than great, even. I’d reconciled in some respect with Curtis. The feelings there were old and complicated, but we’d made love. I woke up in the same bed as him. I got to see the soft set of his face as he slept, and his grumbling smile when he woke up. We showered together. Hell, I even got to kiss him good morning. Being with him again in that capacity was almost surreal, like a dream I didn’t want to wake up from.
Really, it felt like a dream.
And then I ran into Edward-fucking-Morris.
Traipsing down the stone steps of town hall, fresh from another meeting with Uncle Anthony, I caught sight of his smug little face and immediately my good mood was wiped away.
Worst of all, he looked like he was coming towards me to talk.
“Well, well,” he hummed, hands in his pockets. “Mr. Savage—well, one of the many, anyway.”
I frowned, stopping a few steps above him.
“What?” he asked, brow quirking. “Wondering how I know who you are?”
I didn’t dignify it with an answer—not that it stopped him from talking.
“I have my sources, big guy. Isaac—or Zach, depending on who you’re talking to, right? I hear only friends and family call you Zach, so I oughta stick to Mr. Savage, I guess.”
“What the fuck are you doing here, Morris?” I snarled.
He frowned, mounting the step just below mine. “Ouch. Y’know that hurts. You oughta treat people with a little more decency—”
“Did I not make it clear yesterday?”
“Oh, when you full-body threw me into the parking lot? Yeah, you’ll be hearing—”
“From your lawyer,” I finished, leveling him with a glare.
“Oh, so he retains information. That’s good.”
“If you’re going to see Mayor Savage, you’re wasting your time,” I warned. “Leave and find another town to build on while you still can.”
Edward’s eyes sparkled, smile crooked. “That a threat, Mr. Savage
?”
It was, but saying so didn’t seem wise.
With a little hop, Edward skipped over the step I was on, moving past me toward the doors with an irritating amount of confidence. “I’m gonna win this fight. And that is a threat.”
“We’ll see.”
He turned on his heel, waving over his shoulder, apparently done with this conversation.
Once he disappeared behind the doors, I turned with a huff. The sun was shining high today: the perfect walking weather. It was a quick trip from town hall to the clinic, and it was getting to be around lunchtime. We both skipped breakfast that morning in a rush to get to our respective meetings and jobs, and I wanted to take Curtis out; explore whatever this was.
Edward wasn’t the only unexpected sighting today, apparently.
As I pulled back the door of the clinic, I was greeted with the chill of the A/C and a very anxious-looking Jared Clark. Leaning his weight on the receptionist counter, his fingers were drumming, and he turned towards the sound of the door—eyes going wide as our gazes met.
“Uh—hey,” I said, remembering all that Curtis had told me about Jared. Since they were friends, apparently, I guess it made sense to not be a dick to him, past grievances aside.
“Hey,” he muttered, a little shocked.
The surprise was mutual; was he here to talk to Curtis again about Edward Morris and his conniving—
“Daddy!”
A shrill little girl’s voice echoed in the waiting room. Jared and I turned towards the owner: a small blonde girl, hair done up in messy braids, with her arm wrapped up from wrist to elbow. The bandaging was a bright bubblegum pink.
“Hey, honey,” Jared laughed, crouching to meet her—
—but she brushed past him, eyes turning wide and curious as she waddled over to me.
Despite her being about three feet tall compared to my six-and-change, I was the one who felt frozen and a bit intimidated. She was looking at me with more intensity and thought than I assumed most little kids could manage, before, finally, she smiled very sweetly and asked, “Are you here to see the doctor, too?”
Jared scooped her unwrapped hand into his. “Sam, come on. That’s a personal question—”
“That’s right,” I said, grinning down at her. “I’m here to see the doc.”
Her expression turned cross. “Are you sick or somethin’?”
“Nope. Just visiting a friend.”
Her eyes shone, big and brown. “You’re friends with the doctor?!”
Jared and I exchanged a fleeting look.
“That’s right.”
Processing this, she muttered a quiet, “Wow.”
“I like your cast,” I told her.
“Isn’t it pretty?”
“What do you say when someone gives you a compliment, hon?” Jared asked, pointedly stressing the word ‘compliment.’
“Oh! Thank you, mister.”
“No problem.” Kids weren’t my usual thing, but she was cute. Bright. “What happened to your arm, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Oh. I fell on the playground at school,” she said.
“That’s right,” a new voice agreed. We looked at Curtis, who came in through the open examining room door, arms crossing. “Broke her wrist nice and good. But that’s all right.”
“You’re a tough little one, I bet,” I said.
“That’s right, I am.”
We all laughed.
Jared, with all the fondness in the world, nodded. “She really is.”
I looked at Curtis, a little delighted to find he was already looking at me. He had a look of something in his eyes that I couldn’t wait to get to the bottom of.
“Say, Sam,” Curtis suggested, “why don’t you show my friend here the Speak n’ Spell over at the kid table? You remember which one that is, right?”
“Yes, sirree.”
Curtis chuckled. “If you show him really quick, I just wanna talk to your dad about something, okay?”
Sam considered this before nodding. “Okay.” She looked up at me and offered her free hand. “Let’s go. I’ll show it to you.”
With a surprised smile, I let her take my hand—or, well, mostly she took about three of my fingers with her hand being so tiny—and lead me away to the kids’ table. She sat on one of the plastic chairs and pointed to the other one for me.
“I think I’ll just sit on the floor,” I said, settling onto the carpet, stretching out my leg.
“Why?”
“I’m too big. I think I’ll break the damn chair.” I paused, grimacing. “Don’t say that, actually. It’s a bad word.”
“I know that,” she said in a know-it-all sort of way. “Daddy’s said it a million times, even though it’s a bad word.”
“I see. What’s your name? I never got to ask.”
“Sam. Samantha, actually. I’m five.”
“Being five is the best.”
“And how old are you?”
I smiled. “How old you think I am?”
Samantha considered it a long while before deciding, “Seventy-three.”
“Seventy-three?”
“That’s as high as I can count to.”
“Oh. They teach you that at school?”
“Yup.” She lugged the Speak n’ Spell onto the plastic table, pressing randomly at the buttons as they made their automated noises. “School’s pretty nice, I think. Well, it’s okay. They’ve got a playground and everything, but the kids are all different. They even have a monkey bar, did you know that?”
“I didn’t.”
“They do. And two slides. My old school had three slides, though. It was bigger.”
“Which do you like better?”
“I like it here because Daddy’s from here. Plus, it isn’t so noisy. And we have lightning bugs. Have you seen those before?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I even caught one once.”
Her eyes went wide, and the toy was forgotten for a second. “You have?”
“Sure have. Ask your dad to help you, I bet he’s caught a bunch when he was little, too.”
Samantha nodded. “Yeah, I like this place. It’s different from Nashville.”
I huffed, amused. “Tell me about it.”
“Okay, well—”
“Samantha,” Jared called softly.
We both looked over to where he lingered in the waiting room, discharge papers in hand, smiling at her with all the tender affection a father should. Clearly, she meant a lot to him, and after what I’d heard about his wife and all, I didn’t blame him.
Samantha huffed and slid out of the seat. “Bye, then.”
“Right,” I laughed, waving. “Bye.”
Jared paused as he took his daughter’s hand, grinning at me. “Hey, thanks.”
“No problem,” I said, lugging myself off the floor.
Jared paused, thinking twice before saying, “I heard about your dad, you know. I’m really sorry. I’m—we’re all pulling for him to get better.”
I nodded, worry needling in my stomach. “Thanks, Jared.”
Jared did look truly sorry. “Nice seeing you.”
When I looked at him, I could tell he meant it. “Likewise.”
I walked over to Curtis, the both of us watching Jared leave with his daughter, laughing and answering on the other side of the glass as she chattered aimlessly at him.
“He’s different,” I murmured.
The exchange was nothing like I thought it might be. Jared Curtis was a different man—responsible and calm. Thoughtful, maybe. When I knew him in high school, he was just a plain old jerk who’d done everything in his power to break the three of us up.
That is, me and Curtis and Joe.
Curtis hummed, drawing me out of the past. “Ten years is a long time for people to grow up.”
“I can see that.” I looked at Curtis, who had that same look in his eye. “You ready for lunch?”
Shrugging out of his coat, he laughed lightly. “Thought you�
��d never ask.”
We took lunch at the diner, because it was cheap and close by, and the food wasn’t half bad. It was busy around this time of day, so we took two stools at the end of the fake marble counter. I would have preferred a booth, to be honest; it meant our feet could tangle under the table, and I’d get to look at Curtis head on. But this was okay, too.
“I don’t trust that Edward guy,” I muttered, picking at my fries.
Curtis snorted halfway into drinking his coffee. “What? You? Damn. I would have never guessed that.”
I shot him a wry look. “I ran into him on the way out from my uncle’s.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. He was heading into town hall.”
“What the hell was he doing around there?” Curtis asked, surveying my plate.
I paused. “What are you looking for?”
“You going to eat that pickle?”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed, picking it up.
Curtis grinned. “What? What? You don’t suddenly like pickles, do you?”
“You want it?”
“Maybe. If you don’t—”
I set it down on his plate. “I have no idea what Edward was doing there. I wanted to ask, but… you know. He opened his idiot mouth and I couldn’t help myself.”
“Just… be careful with him, Zach,” Curtis advised. “He’s… I get a bad feeling from him. Especially knowing—” and his voice dropped slightly, “—that he’s working for Winston.”
I nodded; that bad feeling was more than mutual, as was the feeling that he was up to something truly devious. Something more than he wanted people to know.
There was something else hanging in the air between us, amidst the easy, home-like atmosphere of the diner. I’d woken up in Curtis’s bed. We’d shared a rather interesting night together, but…did it mean anything?
Feeling my eyes on him, Curtis glanced at me, lowering his coffee mug. “What?”
“Nothing. It’s just….”
Curtis straightened his back, grinning just a little, like he knew he was about to get his hands on something good. “What?”
“Nothing, I….” I shook my head, lowering my voice. “About last night.”
He cocked his head. “Okay.”