In the Middle of Somewhere (15 page)

“Okay?” he says, and I nod, thrusting my hips as I adjust to his finger. Our erections slide together, his hips meeting mine.

“Fuck, baby, you feel amazing,” Rex groans and he slides a second finger inside me. I kiss his neck and throat. I can feel a spot he missed when he was shaving and I’m flooded with tenderness for him. I kiss the spot and shake my head at myself because apparently I’m turning into a total sap.

Rex looks at me curiously and I smile at him.

“Hi.”

“Hi there,” he chuckles.

I lean down slowly and kiss him on the cheek.

“You’re fucking gorgeous,” I tell him, and kiss his other cheek.

“Thanks,” he says softly, looking at me like he’s surprised to hear it. He strokes my cheek.

He rolls us over, his fingers still inside me, and puts a pillow under my hips. He kisses the inside of my knee, then the sensitive crease of my thigh. He kisses my hip bones, avoiding contact with my cock, which is now straining upward, desperate for his touch. I can feel how flushed my face is and my lips are swollen and tingly from our kisses.

“Rex,” I say, and it comes out as a whisper.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” he says. There’s a strange ringing in my ears.

“I want you.”

“Yeah?” he murmurs, and he strokes my prostate with his fingertips. My hips shoot off the pillow and he holds me down easily. He slides a third finger inside me and I cry out, heat fizzing in my spine.

“Please,” I say roughly.

He slides his fingers in deeper as he reaches for a condom. My hole clenches around his thick fingers and I can see him shudder. I reach for him, but he bats my hand away, breathing heavily. He slides his fingers out of me, kissing me slow and sweet, and massages more slickness inside me.

All I can see is the tiny line of concentration between his eyebrows and the dark sweep of his lashes against his cheek as he kisses my opening with the tip of his cock. He tilts my hips up further and brushes a piece of hair off my forehead, taking a deep breath.

“Tell me,” Rex growls. I can feel him, hot, against me.

I nod frantically, searching for words.

“I want—I need—please!” I groan, and he breaches my entrance. My eyelids flutter and my breathing gets shallow, but he doesn’t go any farther.

“Tell me,” he murmurs, licking behind my ear.

“Please, please, fuck me,” I beg, and my voice is strained, my body trembling around him.

As he slides all the way inside me, I feel heat and fullness and a heartbeat of fear caught in my throat.

He’s so close. I’m in his house and in his bed and he’s inside me and there’s nowhere to go and, just for a second, I panic. My body tightens and Rex groans. I’m breathing a little too fast and his weight is immovable.

But then he opens his eyes and looks at me, and he’s here, right here. This isn’t a fuck in a bathroom stall. It’s not a blowjob in the alley outside the club, or jerking off one of my brothers’ straight friends at work, knowing they’ll come on my stomach and never look me in the eye again.

I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again and he’s still right there, frozen, trembling above me.

“Breathe, Daniel.”

I loop an arm around Rex’s neck and pull his mouth to mine. I kiss him—just a touch of our lips—and rock my hips into his, sliding him the rest of the way inside me. He hisses and I groan as his thickness spears me open, fills me. And then, in the space of a heartbeat, we’re one body, melted together as my channel adjusts to his size and he relaxes into me.

“Oh fuck, baby,” he says, pulling back, and I can feel his thighs shaking with the effort not to hurt me.

“Go,” I say, and pull his hips flush with mine again. We both cry out, and then I cease to exist except where we’re joined. He’s surging into me and I’m pushing back at him and everything is slickness and heat. Every time he fills me he brushes over the spot that makes my whole channel pulse with pleasure. I reach down to stroke myself, but Rex pushes my wrists to the mattress, his huge hand stroking me in time with his thrusts.

I’m whimpering and moaning as he works me, his other hand holding my wrists easily. My spine is liquid heat and my thighs are trembling. I can hear Rex groaning, but my entire concentration is focused on the exquisite pulse of pleasure that’s begun deep in my ass, radiating through me like pebbles dropped in a pond. It’s joined by a boiling heat at the base of my spine and my groin.

Rex is stroking me and with every stroke, I am closer to exploding. I pull my wrists from his grasp and grab him around the neck, needing to hold on to something.

“Don’t stop,” I gasp, and he bears down on me, his added weight pressing his erection even deeper. I cry out and his stomach brushes the tip of my cock and white-hot pleasure explodes inside me, tightening every muscle and blowing every nerve ending. The sounds coming out of me are tiny whimpers because every muscle has clenched down in orgasm. My eyes are shut so tight I see stars and I shudder as my erection keeps pulsing.

Rex is wild above me, his hands squeezing my hips as he thrusts deeply into me. I cry out, my prostate zinging a last pulse of pleasure through me, and Rex roars, his heat flooding the condom, searing me even through the barrier between us.

He collapses on top of me, careful to take his weight with his elbows, and kisses my throat, moaning.

I feel languid, like I couldn’t possibly move. Rex gently eases himself from my body and leans to drop the condom into the trash. As his back is turned to me, I feel the prickling in my ears that means I’m in danger of tearing up. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I reach out a shaky hand to touch his back, then hesitate. Maybe he doesn’t like being touched when we’re not fucking?

He rolls back over to face me and any hesitation I felt is gone as he drapes a heavy arm over my stomach and kisses the side of my neck. His breath is hot on my neck as his fingers draw absent designs in the puddle of my come. I’m a little gross and sticky. Rex must feel my stomach tense because he takes his hand away.

I ease over the side of the bed, biting my lip when my sore ass scrapes over the sheets. I pull my underwear on.

“I’m gonna just….” I gesture toward the door. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“Of course,” he says. His eyes are warm, but he looks a little wary.

In the bathroom, I clean up, pee, and wash my hands. When I look in the mirror to see how ridiculous my hair looks, my eyes surprise me. I look scared and uncertain and vulnerable. I look like I let my guard down. And even though Ginger has told me often enough that that’s not a bad thing, I don’t believe her. You let your guard down and people fuck with you; you let your guard down and you get hurt. That’s what I know. So what the hell am I supposed to do now?

Rex is facing the door when I walk back in and I can see him relax at the sight of me.

I hesitate a foot from the bed.

“Um, do you want me to take off?” I ask, trying to sound neutral and failing.

“You don’t have a car,” Rex says evenly.

“Oh, right.”

“I can take you home if you want,” Rex says, “but I wish you’d stay.”

“Yeah?”

He smiles. “Yeah.”

He reaches for my hand and I let him take it. He pulls me on top of him, sliding my underwear back off, and I let him. I let him settle me next to him too, where he cradles my neck in his hand and strokes my hip with the other.

“Do we need to take Marilyn out?” I ask.

“She’s fine.”

“Should we do something to the fire?”

“It’ll die out.”

“Do you want me to—?”

“I want you here, in this fucking bed,” Rex says, and he pulls me closer against him, palming my ass with one big hand and turning off the bedside lamp with the other. I slide my hand under his shoulder for balance and lean my cheek on his chest. He rests his chin on my head. “Just stay,” he murmurs. He traces the cleft of my ass with his finger, slipping in the lube that’s still there. He slides his finger back inside me, just as he did that night in the woods. I huff out a breath.

“I just want to be inside you,” he says softly. He’s already falling asleep. I sigh, not letting myself think about the fact that I’ve never slept beside a lover before—not unless I’d passed out drunk, anyway. I try to match my breathing to Rex’s, feel his rib cage rise and fall, carrying me off to sleep like a ship held safe in port.

October

I
WAKE
up wrapped in a cocoon of delicious warmth, with a bone-deep feeling of satisfaction and comfort, so I know I can’t be at home. I’m not sure what’s causing it until I open my eyes and see that I’m basically lying on top of Rex, holding on to him like I’m a squid and he’s the whale I’m trying to snuggle the life out of. My face is nuzzled into his neck, my arms are wrapped around him, and my leg is slung over his hip in a way that would be borderline obscene if we weren’t sleeping.

It’s the way I used to wake up wrapped around this stuffed lion that I slept with as a kid. Sam won it at a school carnival for some girl, but when he found the girl to give it to her, she was making out with a guy on the basketball team behind the water ice stand, so he called her a slut and threw the lion on the couch when he got home. That was right before my mom died and I slept with it for years.

One of Rex’s arms is holding me and the other’s stretched under his pillow, his biceps round and strong even in slumber. I allow myself a few moments to look at him—the pulse beating in the vulnerable hollow of his throat, the scar under his right eyebrow that’s only visible when his eyes are closed, the perfect teardrop indentation above his upper lip—before I convince myself that I need to extricate myself from the death grip I have on him before he wakes up and thinks I’m some kind of desperate limpet.

I start to inch off of him slowly, but he makes a small sound and pulls me closer. He’s not even really awake. I kiss the underside of his chin—the only place my mouth can reach now—and he makes a soft mew of what might be satisfaction or just sleep, and puts his other arm around me.

I feel the first tinglings of panic—the kind of claustrophobia that comes when you know you need to sit very still—and I pull away a little.

“Daniel?” Rex murmurs softly. “Y’okay?”

“Yeah,” I say, pushing myself off him and rolling away. “I’ll be right back.” I retreat to the bathroom and splash some water on my face. I wonder if I should get out of Rex’s hair before he wakes up, but that doesn’t feel quite right. Besides, I hated it when I woke up alone the morning after we met. And it’s cold in the bathroom. I walk back to Rex’s room and look at the man spread out before me on the bed. He looks so young when he’s asleep, his face slack, his body relaxed, all that powerful muscle rendered merely decorative.

I slide back into bed beside Rex’s warmth, thinking I’ll just sleep for a few more minutes. The next thing I know, I wake up to Rex’s warm hand on my waist, his thumb stroking my hip bone.

“This is new,” he says, “right?” He’s looking at “Let Sleeping Bears Lie” inked above my hip and I groan in embarrassment.

“Yeah.”

“It wasn’t there when I clipped your pants,” he says.

I can’t believe he remembers a glimpse of my hip from eight months ago; I can’t believe he even noticed it the first place.

He presses warm lips to the words and licks my hip bone, then drags his teeth lightly over it. My breath catches. There’s something about Rex’s laser focus that makes me incredibly hot. It’s like the air between us is thinner than usual and I’m more aware of him.

He runs his hand over my stomach and ribs, just stroking, then slides up and kisses my neck and my jaw. My skin feels hot and tingly everywhere he touches. When he kisses the inside of my biceps, I shudder. It’s so weird. I barely know Rex, but he may be the only person who’s ever touched me in that spot. Definitely the only person who’s ever kissed me there.

“You’re so sensitive,” Rex growls.

“No,” I say. “I mean, I never was.” But my breathing’s gone all funny and my heart is pounding. I pull Rex down and kiss him as hard as I can. He kisses me back, but when I clutch at his back and try to pull him on top of me, he eases back to those gentle touches again. He strokes along the veins on the inside of my forearm and sucks gently at the skin under my ear; he traces my ribs and places soft kisses along my collarbone.

I feel strange. Shaky and out of control. No one’s ever touched me like this. Paid this much attention. Am I supposed to reciprocate? I’ve never touched anyone the way he’s touching me, either. Never traced patterns on someone’s skin or run my fingertips over the swell of muscle and the dip of bone. Never felt where hair changed from soft to rough or skin from thin to callused.

It’s like Rex is mapping my body, each stroke of his hand and touch of his lips learning me better.

There are unfamiliar sounds clawing their way out of my throat. Vulnerable sounds. What if he gets up and leaves? What if he doesn’t? And now, I realize, in the moments it’s taken me to ponder this, Rex has stopped touching me and started staring at me.

“Do you want me to stop?” Rex asks abruptly.

I stare up at him and it’s as if I’m watching this play out like reading a scene in a book. I just keep wondering what’s going to happen next. And by the time my brain can process that I have to
make
something happen next, Rex has swung his legs over the side of the bed and is giving me a sweet but hesitant smile.

“No worries,” he says. “I didn’t mean to be so touchy-feely. I’m just gonna shower.”

I hear the water turn on and pull the pillow over my head. What the fuck is wrong with me? Unlike my inability to answer Rex, I can think of about a hundred answers to that question. Like, I barely know this guy, so why am I so goddamned worried about what he thinks of me? Like, I should’ve left last night after we fucked and I don’t get why I didn’t. Like, I’ve never had a real relationship, so why would I start now? Especially when I finally have a job that’s going to make it possible to pay off all my debt and not live paycheck to paycheck, checking my bank balance every time I have to buy groceries. Especially when, in order to keep that job, I need to spend all my time proving to the people who hired me that they didn’t bet on a losing horse.