Marie Sexton - Coda 04 - Strawberries for Dessert (13 page)

 

His hurt look evaporated into a teasing grin. “And you can’t wait?” he asked. I could tell he was giving in.

 

“No,” I said. “And you
do
owe me a Christmas present.”

“Hmmm…” he said as he stepped closer to me. “I love that you’re so impatient, sugar.” His hands moved to the buttons on my jeans, but didn’t open them. “What would you like?” he asked, giving me that flirtatious look through his bangs.

I pushed his hands away from my groin. “I just want to kiss you,” I told him. His reaction was far from what I had hoped for. He looked a little dismayed, and he started to step away, but I put my arms around him and pulled him closer. “Let me kiss you once, and then I’ll let you go cook dinner.”

He looked reluctant, but he relaxed against me. “Whatever you want, sugar.”

I took his face in my hands, my palms against his cheekbones, and my fingers in his silky hair. I tilted his head back and let my mouth find his. I kept my touch light and my lips mostly closed. I had learned early on that he did not like to have my tongue deep in his mouth, so I used only my lips. He wasn’t uncooperative, but he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic either. His lips barely parted for me.

That was fine. I could be patient.

It wasn’t as if I had never kissed him before, but it had mostly been during sex, and even then I could sense that it wasn’t something he enjoyed much. He had never allowed me to kiss him like this, as a sensual act unrelated to something more explicit, and I found it unbelievably arousing in a way it hadn’t been ever before. I wanted 104

only to keep kissing him and touching him but nothing more. It wasn’t that the desire for sex wasn’t there—it definitely was. I felt as if I was thrumming with it, every nerve of my body straining for him. And yet, even though it had been nearly six weeks, the idea of sex was still somehow secondary. What I really wanted was simply to feel him, and more than that, to please him. It was something I had felt before with other lovers, but not often and not for a very long time.

I finally felt him relax a little. I moved slow, keeping my touch gentle. I opened my lips a little and lightly brushed my tongue over his lip. His breath caught in his throat. He went a little bit rigid, but only for a second. Then he leaned into me, and I felt his arms go around my waist. He parted his lips a bit more and I allowed my tongue to caress his upper lip as I kissed him. The sensation made him whimper a little, and I heard myself moan in response. I had to restrain myself from pushing further.

I stopped long enough to pull his shirt off of him, and then my own, dropping them on the floor. I wanted to feel his smooth skin against mine, but he took my break as a sign that I was ready to move on, and he started to unbutton my pants. It wasn’t his way to waste time with foreplay. He knew what he wanted, and he always went for it without hesitation. But I wasn’t about to let this moment go yet.

I grabbed his thin wrists, and he looked up at me in surprise. “Not yet,” I whispered.

I kissed him again, lightly touching my lips to his. I brushed the tip of my tongue over his top lip and felt him shiver. I was still holding his wrists, and his hands started to move again toward my groin. His impatience frustrated me. I wanted him to slow down. I wanted to savor what he was giving me. It bothered me that he would not allow me this
one
thing. His fingers fumbled at my buttons again, and I let anger take over for only a moment. I used my grip on his wrists to force his hands away, pushing them hard behind his back and gripping his wrists tight in my hands. I was rougher than I meant to be, but his reaction was immediate and completely unmistakable. His eyes closed and he made a quiet whimpering sound, and he went a little bit limp in my arms, as if his knees couldn’t quite hold him up any more. I pulled back a little in surprise so that I could see his face better. I gripped his wrists tighter 105

and pulled him hard against me so that he was trapped in my arms. He practically melted against me with a soft moan that went straight to my groin.

It had never occurred to me before to try to restrain him, but suddenly I saw the path open up before me—the perfect way to get the time I wanted to kiss him and touch him while still pleasing him. It was so simple and so incredibly erotic that it took my breath away.

I pushed him down onto the floor, and he went willingly. I let go of his wrists, pushing him onto his back. I unbuttoned his pants. I still wasn’t moving on to sex, but I wanted to be able to feel that part of him against me too. He watched me silently as I did it. I could see the arousal in his eyes, but there was something else there too. Something a little bit like fear but with a great deal of anticipation as well. I pulled his pants off of him, but left my own on.

I took a moment to look at him. I had always been attracted to bigger men, more masculine men. Yet now, at this moment, I had no idea why. His body seemed absolutely perfect. He was so thin. At one point, ten years before we ever met, I imagined I might have counted his ribs with ease. We were both well past that age now, but where the thirties had given so many men extra weight, it had only given him softness. His stomach was still flat, his waist narrow, his legs still slender. His groin was shaved perfectly clean, the skin there soft and smooth. I found myself thinking that even his dick was beautiful— slender and with a pronounced curve toward his stomach when it was hard, as it was now.

I ran my hands up his thighs, over his hips, past his erection, and heard his breathing speed up in response. I slowly moved on top of him so that I could look down at his face. His eyes were wide and apprehensive, but burning, too, with unmistakable need. And his lips— God, I loved his lips. They were perfectly shaped, full and soft. I had never realized how attractive somebody’s mouth could be. I leaned down to kiss him again. I wanted to taste every part of his lips. I started at the corner of his mouth, brushing his top lip with the tip of my tongue, softly sucking, moving toward the center. He moaned again, and his hands moved toward my groin.
106

“No,” I hissed at him. I grabbed his wrists again and pushed his hands above his head, holding him down. His reaction was even stronger than before. He moaned and arched against me, grinding his erection into me. He wasn’t trying to break free, but it seemed he wanted to bring as much of himself in contact with me as he could. He whimpered again, and I held him there, my weight on his wrists, until he stopped straining and fell back to the floor, panting. I kept my hands on his wrists. I moved back to his lips. I finished tracing the full length of the top one, then began to tease the bottom one. It was full and soft, almost a natural pout, and I sucked it into my mouth, biting gently. He whimpered again, and this time he did strain against my hands, but he wasn’t very strong. It was easy for me to keep him pinned to the floor.

I shifted both of his wrists to one hand so my other hand was free to roam down his arms, over his shoulder. I teased one of his nipples with my thumb, and he moaned but didn’t try to pull away. My hand moved down his side, over his hip, then underneath him. I cupped one soft buttock in my hand and pulled him tighter against me. I moved away from his lips then. They were red and slightly swollen, and just looking at them made my own arousal burn hotter than before.

I kissed his eyes, then his cheekbone, and then my tongue found the soft shell of his ear and traced its way around the edge. He whimpered again and strained against my grip on his wrists—but only a little. I didn’t think he really wanted to break free. He only wanted to reassure himself that I was still holding him captive. It was only enough to renew that feeling of being restrained, and then he relaxed again, although he was breathing hard. I sucked on his earlobe a little, then kissed his jaw.

I brought my free hand forward, over his hip, and although my body was pinning him down, I could feel him straining toward my hand, aching for some real contact. I moved back to his mouth, gently sucking on his lips as my fingertips inched closer to his erection, teasing the soft, naked skin where his patch of hair would have been. He was whimpering, panting, moaning. I let my fingertips lightly brush the base of his shaft, and then teased them up his length. His reaction was almost enough to make me come. He arched against me, his wrists 107

strained against my grip. His breath hissed between his teeth. I pulled my fingers away from his groin, and he relaxed again, panting. “Oh dear God,” he breathed. “If you do that again, it will be all over.”

 

“Oh?” I asked quietly. “Does that mean I should do it again or wait?”

 

He made a soft noise, almost a laugh. “
Yes
!” he hissed, and I smiled.

I went back to those perfect lips, sucking gently on his lower one, and then moving to truly kiss him. This time when my mouth met his, he actually opened up to me. His lips parted, and he moaned deep in his throat as my tongue touched his. I didn’t push too far though. Not enough to make him regret having yielded to me. I pulled back and kissed him with only my lips until I felt the tip of his tongue hesitantly pushing past my own lips. When I allowed it to touch mine again, he moaned and tried to pull his hands free. He made more of an effort this time, and I had to put both hands on his wrists again for a moment. The force of it made him gasp, and he arched his body against mine.

“Please,” he whimpered. I didn’t answer. It was all I could do at that moment to hold my own arousal in check. I waited for him to relax again, to stop straining against me so that I could go back to holding him with only one hand. When he did, I used my free hand to release my own erection from my pants. I pushed against him, allowing our shafts to rub together. He whimpered again, pulled against my hand but not too hard.

I kissed him, savoring the taste of him as his tongue followed mine, brushing my lips as I had done to him. I wrapped my hand around both of our shafts. He moaned as my fist closed around us. I started stroking us both, slow but not gentle. My grip was tight, but I kept my kiss as soft as I could.

“Oh God,” he moaned against my lips, and I knew from the tone of his voice that he was going to come. As my fist reached our heads, rubbing them against each other, he cried out with gut-wrenching relief. He arched against me, and I felt him pulsing in my hand as he came, his cries loud and hoarse in my ear. It was all too much: the sounds he 108

made and the feel of his thin body straining against me and the sensation of my fist, slick from his come, stroking my own erection—I finally let go. I buried my face in his strawberry-scented hair and let my orgasm wash over me while he trembled beneath me. I must have let go of his wrists because I was vaguely aware of him wrapping one arm around my neck and his other hand between us, soft on my own as I finished stroking. When it was over, I put my arms around him, and for some indefinable length of time—maybe only a second or maybe a year—we just lay there on the floor together, shaking.

I kept my face in his silky hair and kissed the side of his head. “See?” I whispered. “Was that so bad?” He laughed out loud, and it seemed like the most beautiful sound in the world.

“To think I spent all that time scouring the market in Paris for your present.”

 

“You’ll know better next time.”

Once we were both breathing normally again, I sat up. I found my shirt on the floor next to us and used it to wipe myself off, and then him. He watched me silently as I did it. I stood up and held my hand down to help him up off of the floor. He didn’t look at me as he found his pants and shirt and put them back on. He was so quiet, I started to worry that I had somehow offended him, but when he was dressed again, he stepped up close to me and looked up into my eyes. His lips were still red and swollen, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.

“I’ve never really liked being kissed before,” he said quietly. “But nobody’s ever done it the way you do.”

“I’m glad you’re changing your mind,” I said as I brushed my thumb over his mouth, “because you have the most beautiful lips I’ve ever seen. I think I’m falling in love with them.” He closed his eyes, and he smiled. A blush was creeping up his cheeks, but for once he didn’t try to hide it from me. “Do you want me to take you out for dinner?” I asked.

He opened his eyes again and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll cook tomorrow.”

 

“Okay.”

 

109

 

“But first.” He stood on his toes and wrapped his arms around my neck. “Kiss me just one more time.”

 

I was happy to oblige.

W
E HAD
dinner at an Italian restaurant not far from his house. It was good, but his cooking was better. I told him that every time, and he always laughed. But I wasn’t lying. We never argued about the check anymore. He always let me pay. I knew he didn’t understand and found it vaguely amusing that it mattered to me at all. But he always bought the food when he cooked, and paying for our meals the few times we ate out was the least I could do.

That night we went to bed like always, with him on one side and me on the other. The room was dark. He was nothing more than a shadow on the other side of a bed that seemed impossibly big. I resisted the urge to try to touch him, but I listened to his breathing. I could tell he was still awake. I was just starting to drift off when he said suddenly, “I keep thinking about college.”

It was a strange statement, and I wished that there was enough light in the room that I could see his face. I waited for him to go on, but he didn’t until I asked, “What about it?”

“Do you realize we were there at the same time, right down the road from each other? You and Zach at CU. Jared and I at CSU.” He stopped for a moment, and I wasn’t sure what to say. It wasn’t something I had ever really thought about before. “Tell me about Zach.”

“What about him?”
“What was he like?”

“He was funny without really meaning to be. Easygoing. He never took anything seriously. He liked to cook, like you. He wasn’t nearly as good at it.” That wasn’t just flattery. It was the truth. “But he enjoyed it the way you do.”

“What happened?”