In The Absence Of Light (32 page)

“We’d try again.”

“And what if I couldn’t?”

“Then we wouldn’t go.”

Morgan raised his head. His stare flittered near my shoulder. “Three or four years. That’s what you promised.”

“Can’t I change my mind?”

He nodded.

“Then let me make it longer. Let me make it forever.”

Morgan let me go and headed up the steps. Again I followed. Just inside the front door, I trapped him against the wall near his bedroom.

“Please trust me,” I said. “Please, please, just for once. Trust me. I can only imagine what you went through. I can only imagine what you’re afraid will happen, but I will never hurt you, Morgan. Never. Not in a million years. I’ll make mistakes, I’m sure, but I’ll do my best to make them right. I’ll—”

He stopped me by meeting my gaze. Full on, no shield, the stocking cap holding his bangs back so I didn’t even have to push them away.

“I know.” He said it so matter-of-fact that I took a step back. “I’ve always known you’d never hurt me.”

“Then why would you ask about Jeff, or think I was going to leave?”

Morgan’s smile was subtle. “Because you’re the one who doesn’t trust. Me, yourself, even your faraway island. You doubt everything. And people who can’t trust, eventually run.” He took a step forward, and even though I didn’t mean to, I took a step back. “You don’t believe in yourself. You’re scared of getting lost. Getting hurt. Being trapped.”

I bumped the coffee table, stumbled, and wound up sitting on my ass. Morgan pushed his way between my knees and cupped my face. He continued to hold my gaze. Never had he looked at me with so much knowledge of who I was shining in his eyes.

“Love is easy.” He traced my eyebrow with his thumb. “Trust is what’s hard. Broken hearts can be fixed. Broken trust?” His touch followed a tear down my cheek to my lips. “Trust doesn’t heal.  Your parents broke your trust when you were really young, it changed you, it took something away. Then the one time you let trust grow, you thought it had been broken again. That’s where it can be tricky, because sometimes trust feels broken when it’s only a little dented up.

"But it still feels like you’re losing bits and pieces of yourself.” Closer, his exhale ghosted my lips. “Now you’re scared to trust me because you might lose everything you have left.”

How did he know? I didn’t. All this time, I thought I’d left Chicago to escape the business, get out while I could, enjoy life. Leave behind who I’d been, a criminal, a man I thought I’d loved, and go somewhere no one could possibly know me. No one would want to know me. I’d just be a stranger, a momentary pause in their way of life, then I could escape to nowhere, and I’d never have to risk anything again. I could live, grow old, die, safely in my cocoon of detachment. My heart safely guarded, my trust locked away where no one could touch it.

All the while, I would lie to myself the beauty of a faraway place would feed my soul everything it needed, when in fact it would starve. What I craved, what I needed to live, existed in connections with other people.

Not the kind formed from desperation or in the heat of lust. The kind cultured and cared for. The kind of trust Morgan offered me because no one I’d ever known or met was more open, real, and unguarded. His flaws made him who he was even though he fought them.

A battle he never won, but continued anyhow.

Morgan pulled me to him and my tears soaked his jacket. He shushed me. He rocked me. He kissed my ear.

“You can trust me, Grant. You don’t have to run. You don’t have to hide.”

The need to feel him had me clawing at his jacket and tearing off his shirt. His stocking cap was lost in the pile of clothes. Static made his curls stand out. The halo they created was so appropriate.

I seized his mouth and plundered him with my tongue. His lips were slightly salty. Had he eaten french fries for dinner? An enhancer he didn’t need but drove my hunger higher for the taste that was all him.

Morgan pulled me to my feet and dragged me toward his bedroom. Halfway there, he wound up with his legs around my waist and me carrying him. My shirt disappeared, and he bit my right nipple. When he brought his mouth back up, calamine lotion painted the bottom one pink.

I couldn’t help but laugh as I rubbed it away. “Not sure how much of that you can ingest before you wind up sick.”

“Then I’ll have to make sure I only lick where the ants didn’t bite.”

I dropped him on the bed. He shimmied out of his jeans and boxers. As mine reached my knees, he grabbed my arm, yanking me off balance. I wound up on my stomach with Morgan straddling my hips.

His hot tongue and burning lips drew nameless pictures down my spine. He reached my ass crack. I glanced back as he parted my cheeks and dipped his tongue into the cleft. From the soft spot behind my balls, he lapped his way to my hole.  Then the wet fire circled the ring of muscle, shoving a bark of surprise from my chest.

Morgan grinned at me over the curve of my ass as he did it again. I’d only been rimmed a few times in my life. It was never Jeff’s thing unless he was drunk. But somehow Morgan made it different. There wasn’t just the electric spiral that pulled my nuts tight. The pleasure he created by tracing my opening with the tip of his tongue, then his teeth, released an inferno in my gut that spread out over my skin.

Against my will, my hips pumped against the mattress. I didn’t want to come yet; there were so many things I wanted to do to him, but in that moment, I was his to control.

Just as the head of my dick began to ache with the rise of release, Morgan stopped. I buried a cry into the mattress only because I didn’t want to sound so vulnerable.

He stripped off my jeans and my shoes went with them. Then he urged me higher onto the bed. I started to roll over, but he lowered his weight, blanketing me with his body. His exhale was spiced with the musk of sex. He leaned close enough to kiss the corner of my mouth.

“Why?” His question was almost buried by my heavy breathing.

I think I understood the question now. I could only hope I had the right answer. If there was one.

“Because I want to trust, be trusted. I want someone I can count on, someone who can count on me. I want somewhere safe. I want a home. But that can only happen if I’m with you.”

“I’m never going to be like other men, Grant.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant until I turned enough to see his expression. The knowledge in his eyes spoke of those places he looked into. The windows or portals he disappeared into when he followed the light.

“I can give you what I have, but I can never give you everything.” It wasn’t Morgan didn’t want to, he couldn’t. I could see that too. He could never give me all of himself because he didn’t control everything he had.

Could I live with that?

Morgan nipped my ear, kissed the back of my neck. His touch burned trails down my ribs to my thighs. I raised up enough to reach his mouth and held him there, trapped by the need to taste one another, to feed each other the air we needed to breathe.

I reached back and gripped his cock. A small sound escaped Morgan’s chest as he rocked into my fist. The position was awkward, but I didn’t want the moment to end. Then he stopped and we wound up tangled chest to chest—arms, hands fighting for a place to grip, and legs entwined. His body against mine, rocking in fluid movement. Precum painted our cocks, our stomach, saliva made our lips shiny, and the kissing left mine swollen and aching.

I was about to slide down and suck him off when he rolled me onto my back. Morgan bit my left nipple hard enough to make me jump. His wicked grin softened and he followed the line of hair to my navel, there he lapped at the dip like he had my hole. The shock of pleasure made my cock jump. Lower, Morgan licked my weeping slit, one slow stroke of his tongue.

I was so busy watching him tease me I didn’t realize he’d slid a hand between us until a fingertip pressed against my hole. There was just enough saliva left for him to push in. Even with delicate hands, the increasing width of each knuckle rekindled the burn. He found my prostate and the rolling euphoria exploded in a sudden burst. Tremors ran down my legs. I eased out a breath, focusing on the occasional slide of heated silk up the length of my dick.

“If you’ll…” He pushed in another and my words turned into a groan. “If you’ll turn around I’ll…” Another deep growl rolled out of me. I’d had fingers in my ass while getting sucked off on more than one occasion. And I’ll admit, it always made me nervous because I know when I did it to a lover, my dick was usually next.

Morgan took my cock to the back of his throat, working his throat muscles, swallowing around me, while at the same time massaging me with his tongue. I’d never known a guy who could suck cock like him. Zero gag reflex and every part of his mouth to his throat working in sync.

I stroked his head. “God, Morgan…” Whatever else I said, I couldn’t remember. Or maybe it was nothing and just one of those guttural noises. A rutting bull. Yeah, maybe I did sound like one. “Don’t want to… yet.” Ah hell, I was well on my way to losing the battle. Then he pulled out his fingers and reached for the bedside table.

The sound of the drawer opening tempered my rising release. I tracked the movement of his hands as if he held a weapon instead of a bottle of lubricant.

“I’m going to fuck you, Grant.” Morgan kissed the head of my cock. Any attempt to flag was thwarted.

Did I tell him I’d never been topped?

Well, that wasn’t completely true, Cody tried once. He’d been average sized but impatient. He wanted to just cram his dick in and go. The surprise and the discomfort of having something trying to go into a place that, in my mind at the time, was only an exit, had me clenching so hard he couldn’t even get inside me with enough lubricant to thread a camel through a needle.

He gave up and wound up rubbing off between my ass cheeks. The friction left my hole raw and me determined to never give him the opportunity for a future attempt.

I won’t say I was any more attentive, especially the first few times, but he seemed to like it rough. I probably never would have learned to work him with my fingers if he hadn’t been so easy to make come. Half the time, he’d lose his load before I could even get started, then I’d have to convince him to stay long enough to let me finish, by working him up again.

It was terrible sex, and half the time one-sided—his side—but I was young, dumb, and horny and didn’t care. In all of its awkwardness, it taught me a lot about how to find erogenous zones. Most of the lovers I’d taken to my bed didn’t expect long drawn out foreplay, but then neither had I.

Until Jeff. Then it became something else more important than getting off, it became pleasing someone, giving them something, showing them through the time I took with their body how much I appreciated them.

And with Morgan? It became something beyond a connection of bodies. Sex wasn’t even close to what he did with me.

Morgan returned to the tip of my dick. He watched me over the plane of my body. A small tic pulled his shoulder. He popped the cap, and paused again.

“Would you rather me ride you?” Morgan sat back on his knees and his beautiful cock jutted out. He wasn’t quite as long as me, but just as thick, and curved. Hard, the foreskin all but disappeared behind the swollen head.  “Grant?”

“No… I…” All I had to do was say it. Morgan abandoned the bottle of lube next to my thigh and climbed over me. He held my face, searched my eyes, then his bangs slid down and I had to push them back so I could see him. “Don’t stop.”

He exhaled a sigh against my mouth. “If you’d rather—”

“No. Keep going. I’ll be fine.”

The pupils of Morgan’s eyes expanded, he pressed his cheek against mine hard enough to make a rasping sound. “I’ve wanted to be inside you since I first saw you.”  He picked up the lube. When he dropped it again, the lid was shut but slick as if he’d spilled some down the side.  He reached around his back and his touch slid between his legs, past my cock, and his fingers were at my entrance again.

I tried not to startle when he pushed in because I was afraid he’d stop. But Morgan didn’t, not until he was knuckle deep. My cock slid against his ass, rocking his entire body as he pumped his fingers in and out. Again he found my prostate and the deep movement turned into a slow massage.

“Ah, hell…” Sweat ran down my neck and ice crawled through my veins. I lifted my hips, searching for just a little more pressure. I’d never come hands-free, but I knew without a doubt Morgan could make me.

A third finger stretched my opening until it burned. The discomfort was too close of a reminder of the first time, but the way Morgan worked me from the inside made it irrelevant. The growing ache seized my muscles.  Just as I reached the edge, knowing I was going to fall, his fingers were gone and I was left writhing in the sheets.

“Damn it.” I heaved for breath. Morgan scooted down between my knees and lifted one of my legs to his shoulder, pushing it toward my chest. Almost immediately my hip protested. “I don’t think I’m as bendable as you.”

He pulled down the pillows. “Here. Raise up.” I did, and he packed them under my back until my ass was off the mattress.  “Comfortable?”

More like vulnerable. Morgan licked the head of my cock and pushed his fingers in again. The liquid squelched, and for some damn reason, I laughed.