Dangerously Happy (8 page)

“
Actually, no.”

“
You’ve never felt at all attracted to a guy?”

“
Before you? No.”

Dario laughed a little, like maybe he didn’t believe me. “Alright, then. When did you first know you were attracted to me?”

“
You mean sexually?”

That adorable laugh. “Yes. Sexually.”

“
The other night.
The
night.”

“
Mmmmm.
The
night,” he purred, waxing nostalgic. Or the memory was arousing him. Then his voice changed, even though his wicked grin didn’t fade. “You never had sexual thoughts about me before that night?”

“
No. But I always . . .”

What?”

“
Wanted to know you better. I always felt drawn to you.” I laughed. “I always felt jealous that everyone else seemed closer to you than I was.”

“
Really?”

“
It’s a cheesy metaphor, but I’ve always thought of you as the sun, with all these planets orbiting around you, pulled into this solar system together by your irresistible gravity. And I was never even one of the planets. I was just one of Saturn’s moons, or something.”

“
Look at all the trouble the sun has to go to, trying to get Saturn’s loveliest moon a little closer.” He tried to make it a joke, but his voice was serious. Almost melancholy. “The real reason I fill up my hours and my place with all these events, all these people I don’t really know and who don’t know me half as well as they think they do, is that most of the time being alone with my thoughts is excruciating.”

“
Why?”

“
Because life is excruciating. And I haven’t managed to develop the talent some people have for enjoying themselves despite that. Except by writing. That’s my escape. And filling the loft, filling my time with people, it’s a way of numbing myself. A white noise to drown out the thoughts.”

I suddenly felt sad. Hurt. The person I’d looked up to as a model of how to be in the world, this person I was suddenly having strange, intense, tender feelings for was maybe the most wounded person I knew.

“
I don’t mean this. I’m not talking about you,” he said, caressing my face and peering into my soul.”

“
I know.”

God, he was beautiful. It was so strange—like so many things that night—to be looking at him, thinking
beautiful
. But that's what I kept thinking. Not handsome. Beautiful. Those dark eyes, the depths of which seemed as expansive as space, or like looking down into the sea just before daylight fades.

And it was funny, because right as I was thinking that, he said, “It's bliss. I feel like I'm floating away in those green eyes of yours. I'd happily drown there.” Then he kissed me, ending by slowly biting my bottom lip, sucking it, like he was savoring the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted, and he said, “It's like Thanksgiving. I'm sated, but I just want to keep eating. Full, soft lips like these, you'll turn me into a cannibal.” Another long, slow, greedy kiss. Then he asked me, “Will you stay?”

“
You mean sleep here?”

“
Yes.” Low, languid, throaty voice. “Here. In my bed. With me.” God, he was seductive.

“
Do you want me to?”

“
Yes. I want you to.”

I told him to turn over, and I nestled in behind him. I don’t know if he thought it was because I wouldn’t want him spooning me, with his cock nuzzling up against my ass, the way my cock was nuzzling up against his. All I wanted in that moment was to hold him in my arms, hold him close against me, and let him feel happy and safe. Without thinking about it much as first, I was caressing his belly a little, planting little kisses on his neck, in his hair. When I did think about it, it surprised me how tender and affectionate I was feeling for him. It was more surprising than the sexual attraction, I guess because even if the last thing I’d guessed about myself was that I’d be hot for another man, on some level sex is sex, and a healthy cock is going to rise happily to the occasion when there’s stimulation and the promise of an orgasm. But this, wanting to stay close to him, to hold him, to feel his warm body go lax and hear his breathing change as he fell asleep, was more mysterious.

Usually, I don’t sleep all that well when someone’s in the bed with me, especially in the beginning. With him, I slept great. Better than I sleep alone, actually. I woke up once in the middle of the night, my arm aching from how I was lying on it, and I extracted myself from our cuddle as gently as I could, but he woke or stirred, and as if we’d planned it ahead of time we both rolled over and he molded himself against my back and draped his arm over my waist, and we were still like that when I woke up in the morning.

As usual I woke up hard. The first was waking up to the feeling of someone else’s morning wood pressed against my ass, which, I noticed, did nothing to diminish my own erection. For a couple minutes I lay there, enjoying that unfamiliar feeling, enjoying the arousal it was provoking, enjoying the feeling of his warm breath breezing over the back of my neck and my cheek, the warmth of his body against mine, the weight of his arm on my side. Then I succumbed to my bladder’s demand that I get up. When I stirred, though, his lax arm embraced me, pulling me tight against him.

“
Morning,” he said in that soft, intimate tone he’d started using with me.

I turned over to face him, and he was looking at me so bright-eyed I realized he’d been awake for some time. His dark hair matted and tousled, he somehow looked even more beautiful than usual. “Morning.” I kissed him. A real, slow, deep kiss. After, he looked surprised. Almost startled. As if everything we’d done the night before had only been possible in the cloud of some magic spell that had ended with the sunrise.

“
I guess you have to go to work?”

“
Afraid so.”

“
If you have time, I’ll make you breakfast.”

I found my phone and checked the time. “I’ve got time. But don’t get up yet.” I went and took a leak, and came back to bed, pulling the covers up over my shoulders because I’d gotten chilled walking around naked. “If I had a choice, I’d choose a little more time here in bed with you over breakfast,” I said, pressing my body against his, running my hand over the firm curve of his ass, then brushing my fingers lightly as I could up the length of his hard-on.

He gave me a smile that made him look incredibly vulnerable. “I make excellent pancakes. But I’ll do my best to make the tradeoff worthwhile.”

At first we went slowly, both a little sleepy, cuddled up in that warm cocoon. Slow, shallow kisses. Tender caresses. Nuzzling into each others’ necks. But then he was kissing my body, his mouth, his tongue, and now and then his teeth thrilling inch after inch of my skin, making me tingle, making me writhe. No one had ever kissed and teased my nipples the way he did that morning, as if they were the main event, as if he could make me come just licking and sucking them until I was whining and squirming under him. Then he moved and pulled me on top of him, and I did my best to return the pleasure, stroking his cock just enough to tease while his nipples hardened under my tongue.

“
Can you reach the condoms?” he panted.

I opened the drawer and reached for the box, but was distracted by the cornucopia of paraphernalia in the nightstand. Avoiding the dildo and the other things that looked kind of like dildos and which I vaguely understood to be ass toys (why were they vaguely familiar? Too much time on triple-X Internet sites?) and held up a set of pretty heavy-duty leather restraints, grinning and cocking an eyebrow. “Did someone shoot a porno here and leave their props behind?” I joked.

“
That must be what happened.”

Suddenly I was totally intimidated again. And just slightly freaked out. But I put the restraints back, grabbed the lube, and found a condom. Just like the night before, he took it from me and put it on me, obviously enjoying the act, the sight of sheathing and then lubing my cock as much as I was. When he shifted under me I lifted myself so he could turn onto his knees, but he stayed there on his back, and only brought his legs outside of mine.

He asked, “Are you up for trying it like this?”

I was so dense I honestly wasn’t sure what he meant until he put his hand on my waist and pulled me to him, while he guided my cock to his hole. It had never occurred to me. It was so intense, so strange and wonderful looking at him while I pushed inside him, us looking at each other, kissing, then looking again as we fucked. This time, I made it last. Maybe for the first time in my life I was really there,
present
as certain types of people are fond of saying, just relishing each moment, not fretting about how good a lover I was being, not working toward the goal of getting my partner and myself off. Just losing myself in each sensation, drifting away in his sighs, the rise and fall of his chest, his belly, the way he was looking at me, like his soul was swelling up with a happiness that was going to mortally wound him when it burst. When he came, his semen streaked his belly and chest, and tears streaked his temples and slipped away into his dark waves of hair.

“
Is it hurting you? We can stop.”

“
No. You’re not hurting me. Don’t stop. Keep fucking me all day, if you can.”

Sadly, I’m only human, and I came probably less than a minute later. When I stopped shaking and caught my breath, I asked him why he’d cried.

“
Sometimes during sex, I have these . . . transcendental moments.”

It seemed like one of those white lies he supposedly didn’t know how to tell. “Are you afraid this was a one-time thing? I asked him.

He grinned. “That too.”

“
I don’t want it to be a one-time thing.”

He gave me a long, sweet, deep kiss. “Good.”

“
But . . .”

He visibly braced himself.

“
I feel like a dick. A hypocrite. But I don’t really want to go public with this.”

Obvious relief. Even an amused little grin. “Do you think that’s a surprise?”

“
Just, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but around the guys tonight, during rehearsal—”

“
A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell. Discretion is the heart of valor, etcetera, etcetera. The guys won’t have a clue. Not from me.”

“
You’re not mad?”

His sweet, soft laugh. “Aidan, you’re just starting to figure this thing out for yourself. Why would I expect you to want to bring anyone else’s opinions into this?”

In that moment, I felt really sad that we hadn’t been closer friends those three years we’d known each other. But I also felt lucky that he was my friend—or whatever he was to me—now.

During the eternal commute to work, through a typically long and dull day of talking to clients on the phone and listening to the banal repetitions of complaints about the work, the customers, the lower-level employees, and the upper management from my fellow project managers, I felt happier than I think I’d felt in years. Everything seemed to be charged, humming with an elation I hadn’t felt since my first two or three hard-core crushes in high school. I hadn’t felt anything close with Avalyn, and flowing between the flashes of vivid imagery of my night and morning with Dario, little doubts about why I’d pursued her so intently in the first place, along with an unsettling realization that I felt like I’d just woken up from a sedated stupor that, looking back and really thinking about it, I’d been in for probably three or four years. Like I’d just kind of accepted all the safe but profoundly unsatisfying components that made up my existence. My apathetic live-in girlfriend (who I probably would have married if she hadn’t left me). My tedious and frankly purposeless job. A social life based on friendships sustained by little more than common memories of high school or college, or the convenient happenstance of working together. And now, Morpheus had just shown up in my sad little office that wasn’t much better than the cubicles doled out to the twelve guys and women working under me, and I’d chosen the red pill. I’d been passively, willingly yielding up my life force—all my time, my energy, my whole existence—to a soul-sucking hive organism that was draining whatever potential was inside of me, whatever years were left to me on this earth.