His touch was warm and sent a tingle spreading beneath my skin. I murmured approval.
“I have never known anyone like you,” he said.
“But that’s good, right?”
He snorted and sat up, but his fingers went to the buttons of his tailored shirt.
I yanked my sweater up, banging my head on the arm of the sofa as I pulled it over my head, dropped it. I humped up, wriggling out of my jeans.
Ross was hurrying to undress too, and it was a relief to know that the desire between us remained intact. It was always like this, hungry and hurried -- and then sweet and satisfied. It was…nourishing.
Because, regardless of what Ross told himself, it wasn’t just sex -- and it hadn’t been for a very long time.
I kicked my legs free, kicked my jeans away. Ross stood up, unzipped, and stepped out of his trousers. I brushed his long, lightly furred thigh with my hand.
Naked, he lowered himself to me and I ran my fingers through his hair that was drying in soft silky black strands smelling of rain and firelight. I pressed my face to his throat and licked him, licked at the little pulse beating there. He exhaled a long breath. Relief? Resignation?
I said, “It wasn’t easy. Just so you know -- it --”
He pulled back a little. “No. I know. When you opened the door you looked --” He considered it and then said, “Terrified and sick and hopeful all at the same time.”
“That pretty much sums it up.” I wanted to make a joke of it, but it wasn’t funny.
Everything that mattered to me was going to be settled in the next few hours. Maybe minutes. I didn’t know if this was a hello fuck or a goodbye fuck. Maybe even Ross didn’t know.
“I love you so much,” I said, and my voice shook.
“I know.” He sounded pained. So…goodbye then?
I kissed the underside of his jaw, and he tipped his face to mine and found my mouth in hot, moist pressure. Something as sweet and simple as kissing: mouths moving against each other, opening to each other, the sweet exchange of breath.
His tongue slipped into my mouth, a teasing little thrust, and I sucked back. He tasted like Ross with a brandy chaser.
I kissed him, and he whispered, “You’re fearless, aren’t you? Going to the papers, coming here tonight, opening up to me now. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone as fearless as you.”
I moved my head in denial. “I’m scared,” I said. “All the time. I’m just stuck in drive. When it comes to you, I don’t know how to stop or how to reverse.”
He shook his head a little, his mouth found mine again, nibbling my lower lip, moving his mouth against mine in feathery, teasing brush. I nuzzled him back and his kiss deepened. I liked his weight lowering on me, warm and solid, I liked the roughness of his jaw against my own, I liked his taste and scent, and the feel of his fingers against my cheek -- and the insistent prod of his cock in my belly.
I put my hands on either side of his face and said, “Can you just tell me if this hello or goodbye? I just want to know, so I can stop…hoping.” The alcohol and exhaustion made it easy to be honest, to accept whatever the truth was going to be. If the answer was no, then in the morning I would deal with it but tonight we were going to make love.
A little grimly, he said, “What if it’s goodbye? Are you planning to write a book about me next?”
I shook my head. “If it really is goodbye, I’m all out of ideas.”
Ross raised one eyebrow. “No ideas at all?”
“Other than the obvious: make this a night you won’t forget.”
His face softened. He said, “There isn’t one night with you that I’ve forgotten. Nor a single day. You must know that much.”
“I know how it is for me.”
And then we said nothing for a time, communicating by touch. I thought he does love me, he does -- even if he hasn’t realized it, hasn’t accepted it -- he does -- hissing a little breath of pleasured surprise as he pinched my nipples, making them stand up in tiny buds.
“You do like that,” he whispered, his mouth tugging into another of those sexy little smiles.
“I like it when you lick them too,” I whispered, tugging him closer, smoothing my hands over the hard flesh of his back and shoulders. Hard muscle and soft skin -- the musculature of a normal healthy adult man, not a movie star, not an iron man. Our naked bodies rubbed against each other, starting to find that rhythm, my own cock was rock hard and requiring attention, jutting up, nestling against his.
Ross groaned, and his mouth drifted down my throat and over my shoulder, stopping to lick and kiss, to bite and linger. I groaned and my throat protested squeakily, and he kissed me there too, tenderly.
“Thank God,” he said. “Thank God, I didn’t…”
I stopped that with more kisses.
“I could make you happy,” I told him. “I’d do everything in my power to make you happy.”
He looked up, surprised. “You do make me happy.”
“Sometimes.”
He bent his head; his tongue lapped across one nipple, drawing it firm and upright instantly. I sucked in a sharp breath. Moaned. He liked that. I felt his smile as his mouth ghosted across my chest. I moaned again, and soon the rasp of his tongue wet my other nipple. I pushed against him, loving that feel, loving that lave of tongue on teat. My heart was pounding dizzily in my chest. I worked my hand down through the fissures between our bodies, slipping past his groin, cupping his balls in my palm.
He grunted, closed his eyes briefly. I caressed him, languidly.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, something to have and to hold from this day forward. I got out, “Will you fuck me? I need it. Need to feel like I belong to you.”
His bit his lip. “I don’t know if I can walk.”
I chuckled, squeezed his balls, lightly.
“Hold on,” he jerked out.
I did, stroking myself leisurely until he was back. He knelt over me, his cock long and thick and beautiful as it rose out of the dark nest of his groin. He rested his hand against my cheek.
“You’re beautiful, Adam.”
“So are you.”
I started to get up, but he pushed me back, smiling. I looked my inquiry and then whimpered as he knelt and took the head of my shaft into his mouth. Oh my God how I loved this. Was there anyone who didn’t? But especially I loved it from Ross. His elegant, clever mouth doing those unspeakably erotic things to me: his wide and warm and wet hole for me to bury myself in. I began to jerk my hips in response to that slow slide. Sensation shivered through me, stripping my thoughts away, and the trembling started.
You lovely, lovely boy, Ross said, without saying a word. His tongue and lips said precious, loving things instead.
I arched my back, crying out.
He began to suck hard. I groped for him -- needing something to ground me with pleasure taking me that high. My fingers dug into Ross’s broad shoulder, watching through slitted eyes, watching how beautiful he was with his mouth wrapped around my dick. I wanted to tell him so, but the sounds coming out of me were not particularly intelligent. An electrical buzz seemed to crackle up my spine, bright lights flared behind my eyelids, I wondered if I might just short circuit entirely in a kind of sensory overload.