Sunset Park (15 page)

“Because it’s entertaining.”

Raymond’s head snapped up. His eyes flashed. “Don’t f—”

I cut him off by replacing my finger with my tongue, and a strangled sound slipped from him. His fists balled up again. Driving him insane was fun, but I felt close to losing it myself. The taste of him and the heady smell of his musk washed over me until the tremor returned to my hands. I engulfed the head of his cock with my mouth, and the shaking worsened. I refound my calm center by shoving my fingers back into his ass. Raymond spread his legs eagerly, riding my hand while I sucked his dick.

It was a mess. I couldn’t focus—couldn’t look up and tease and smile around the girth of him. The calm was a facade that cracked with spiderwebbing slivers every time he made one of those vulnerable, broken sounds. They got louder as his urgency heightened. He began to hump my face as I plowed his ass with my fingers, but I evaded just as he started to snatch a handful of my hair.

“
No
.” The word came out in a pained whine the second time I pulled away. “You can’t—I can’t….”

The words were stammered out and tangled, nonsensical and desperate. By now, Raymond was shaking. He clawed at the bed, arching up into the air, and he was practically sobbing with the need for release. But he didn’t touch himself. He wanted me to do it. The reality was a little stunning, and I was having trouble thinking straight. I sighed and rubbed my face against his dick, mouthing at it, but not giving him the pressure he needed to burst.

“You’re gonna make me insane,” he choked out.

I kissed the base of his dick, his scrotum and then tongued his taint. I wanted to slide my tongue into his ass and taste every part of him, but freaking him out and ruining the perfection of him sweaty and undulating on the bed was not worth the risk. Instead, I wrapped my lips around the tip of his cock and redoubled my efforts with his ass. I fucked him as deep as I could go, ripped higher-pitched cries out of him, and I could taste the salty tang of his precome.

My goal was to make him burst from the pressure of my fingers against his prostate, or just to explode from all of the teasing, but I couldn’t keep away from his dick. I took it in my mouth again and sank low until my lips skimmed his groin and the head of his cock hit the back of my throat. Raymond’s fingers immediately tangled in my hair.

“Suck it.” He thrust deeper, gagging me. I responded by punching into his ass harder. “Fuck yeah, baby. Just like that….”

My world narrowed to the feel of him filling my mouth, the drool pooling off the sides of my lips as he choked me with each flex of his hips, and the muscles in his ass clamping down around my fingers. I grew lightheaded from the brutal fucking my mouth was taking, but I didn’t pull away until he stiffened. I wanted to see
his
face as he gushed.

And Jesus, did he gush.

Raymond’s mouth gaped, his eyes squeezing shut, his body shaking with the force of his release. I only let him go once the last stream of semen had drained from his dick. He shivered, peering up at me from beneath damp eyelashes. He was wrecked, and I couldn’t hide my triumphant grin.

“You’re a horrible person,” he croaked. “Goddamn.”

“You loved it.”

“You’re a tease.”

I wiped my sticky hand on the sheet and didn’t deny it. It was difficult to think of something witty to say with him naked and spent on my bed. He looked comfortable, like he belonged there. And I was convinced that he did. It felt right for him to be so at ease while sprawled beneath me with his elegant limbs slack and boneless. It felt right for him to be with me in general.

“Was it good, though?”

“Mmm.” Raymond propped himself up on his elbows, looking down at his chest. “Can’t you tell? I haven’t blown a load that large since I got my first blowjob.”

“You’re just hard up for it.” I grabbed a crumpled T-shirt from the floor and used it to mop up his chest and stomach. Even his hair was slightly damp. “When’s the last time you had sex?”

“I don’t know. A month or two?”

Raymond collapsed onto the bed again and closed his eyes. With one hand, he felt around for his underwear, but he was nowhere close. I swiped them from the floor, but regretted it when he shimmied into them and covered his still-swollen dick. It would have been nice to twine with him naked beneath the ceiling fan with the room humid from our sweat.

My first instinct was to stretch out beside him and cuddle, but I hesitated. Would it be too much like I was getting mushy? Would it give him the wrong idea and scare him off
experimenting
in the future? I would do anything to avoid that. Next time, I wanted him to experiment with how deep he could shove his dick into my ass.

“Wake up!”

Snapping out of my daze, I met his eyes. “Sorry.”

Raymond frowned slightly before jerking me down to sprawl beside him. I smiled. Maybe a little cuddle session wouldn’t freak him out after all. I wound my arm around his waist and laid my cheek against his chest. His hand found its way into my hair, and when he started to run his fingers through it, I tried not to read too much into it. We always did this. He knew I was a clinger, and he’d adapted accordingly. Or it was postorgasmic affection—a natural response after coming so hard his eyes had teared.

I repeated these things even as my eyelids grew heavy from the combination of the hot room, his warmth, and the syrupy contentment seeping into my body. I couldn’t start thinking this meant anything more than what it had started as. But I knew myself, and I knew it was possible that thoughts encouraged by wishful thinking and overanalyzing would trick me into believing this was more.

“Want me to go to my room?”

“No.” I hugged him tighter. “Not yet. I’ve missed you.”

Raymond scoffed softly. “You act like I was in a different country. We were in the same apartment the whole time.”

“I know, but we weren’t talking. I was afraid that—” I chanced a look up at him. His eyes were closed. “I thought maybe you regretted moving in with me.”

“You’re so extra.”

“I am not! You acted like you didn’t want to be around me.”

“I like being around you, or I wouldn’t have moved in. I was just angry because of what you said to your little friends.”

“You sure seemed to like at least one of my little friends.”

If Raymond picked up on the thread of resentment in my voice, he didn’t comment on it. He kept stroking my hair, and the slow, methodical way his fingers moved through the strands was putting me to sleep. I struggled to keep my eyes open.

“If it wasn’t for Oli or Oliver or whatever he calls himself, I’d have never found your ass on Grindr. And what the hell were you doing on there anyway? Were you seriously going to find some random dude to come over and bang you?”

“Maybe.”

“Have you done it before?”

“Yeah. Or I meet them somewhere.”

“Like behind a bush in the park?”

I snickered at the disapproving tone in his voice. For someone who thrived on being as brash as possible, Raymond was surprisingly conservative about certain things. From drinking to partying to casual sex. But then again, he’d always made fuck buddies out of people he’d known for years. The world of Grindr and Craigslist hookups was foreign to him. I wondered if he thought it was creepy, or if I was fulfilling some kind of stereotype about gay men that straight people still perpetuated. I doubted it. Me finding a piece of ass on Grindr was no different than a straight guy picking up a woman at a club. Grindr users just didn’t waste time with niceties and buying drinks first.

“I don’t have public sex, thank you. And you’re making it sound like I live my life on Grindr! I can count the number of guys I’ve met on one hand.”

Raymond grunted, seemingly mollified. Maybe he truly thought I was in danger of being abducted by some guy I met on the app. I had never shared the concern, because I’d mostly used it for sexting or phone sex when I had no outlet for my sexual frustration.

“Isn’t that why your ex dumped you?”

Startled, I hazarded another look at him. Sometimes it was like he could read my damned mind.

“Um, yeah. The third and last time we split ways. I was chatting with some guy, and we moved it to Skype. I went to the bathroom to jerk off, and Caleb walked in.”

“He dumped you over masturbating on Skype?” Raymond seemed to find it amusing. “I’m not the big expert on relationships, but I can’t image Michael moving out of Nunzio’s apartment over some Skype sex. I mean he’d be pissed but… leave? Nah. Some people just get off on that type of shit.”

“Me and Caleb didn’t have the type of relationship that Michael and Nunzio do.”

“Why not?”

“Because….” I had tried to have this conversation with so many of my friends that by now, it felt rehearsed. Both Karen and Oli had never understood my dissatisfaction with Caleb, and every time I had tried to give examples of the flaws in our struggling relationship, I came off looking like an ass. An idealistic ass with a head full of romance novel plotlines and happily-ever-afters. It didn’t help that I’d behaved like a complete douche bag by the end. “When you see them together, there is no denying that what they have is real. You can’t fake or force that kind of passion. They’re just… in love. Made for each other. That type of thing.”

Raymond nodded.

“But me and Caleb just fell together because of circumstances, you know? We met, we’re both attractive and successful, it made sense to start dating. And when we dated for a while, it made sense to move in together. We were a perfect gay power couple living in a gayborhood. It was very Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka.”

“I dunno who those people are.”

I smirked and brushed my lips to his chest. Raymond’s fingers clenched in my hair before relaxing again.

“The guy from
How I Met Your Mo
—doesn’t matter. The point is, we made sense together, so we stayed together even though our relationship was as passionate and exciting as a piece of dry toast. And I got bored. But that sounds superficial and childish so….”

“No, it doesn’t. What’s the point of being together if you don’t want to bang him? You could just be friends and still be all powerful gays in the city or whatever.”

Of course Raymond would be the only one to get it. Of course. As if my infatuation needed any further bolstering.

“Yes, well, tell that to my friends. And my brain. We always end up getting back together because I think I made a mistake by ruining a relationship with so much potential.”

“Potential for
what
?”

“To be… good in the long term? For the future? He’s completely set up. He’s also reliable and smart. Handsome. Etcetera. It just doesn’t feel the way I thought love would feel, so I ended up straying. I’m horrible.”

“Yeah.” Raymond laughed when I elbowed him in the side. “Just don’t get back with him, and you won’t be left feeling like a cheating piece of shit. Simple.”

It should have been simple, but it wasn’t.

I thudded my head against his chest and stared down the length of his body. Giving in to my temptation, I traced the line of his abs. For as little as he tended to himself, and for as hard as his body was, his skin was silky smooth.

“So… are you going to start using Grindr? It seems like you’re judging it, so I’m going to assume not.”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

There was a little twist in my gut. Warning signs popped up in my head screaming
Danger! Danger!
My jealous streak ran long and wide and was strong enough to decimate small villages.

“Don’t rush into anything if you don’t want to.”

“I won’t.” Raymond stretched and said through a yawn, “But at least now I have some practice.”

“Yeah….”

And I was just ecstatic about having contributed to him potentially hooking up with other men.

Not.

David

BALANCING ON
a rickety student desk while straining my arms to tape a poster of the solar system to the wall wasn’t a good plan. The legs squeaked against the linoleum of my classroom each time I moved, and my precarious position was made more unsteady when Michael came up behind me like a phantom and poked my side.

I jumped, nearly falling sideways, much to his amusement.

“Don’t do that!”

“You brought it on yourself.”

Scowling, I slapped another piece of tape to the corner of the poster and clambered down from the table. “You’re as bad as your brother sometimes.”

“Heh.” Michael sat on the edge of a lab table. “I don’t know if I should take that as an insult or not.”

“You should. You both like making fun of me far too much.”

“Easy target.” He pointed at my wingtips. “Don’t try to perform death-defying poster-taping techniques in high heels.”

“Don’t diss the shoes, Rodriguez.” I gave him a haughty look before turning to examine my poster. It was crooked. “These are standard of the style, and I’m not going to hate on an inch boost in height. Not everyone was born with tall genes like you and Raymond.”

“Right.”

Michael slid off the desk and pushed me aside. He stood on a chair and adjusted the poster with such precision that I regretted not soliciting him for help sooner. I’d already risked my life decorating half the classroom. Taking my materials down at the end of the past school year had been a complete waste of time.

“Are you excited to be back?” I asked. “Last year was so chaotic.”

“That’s one way to describe it.”

I instantly regretted bringing it up. Small talk was only worthwhile if it didn’t drag a slew of bad memories along with it—like Michael walking into my classroom a year ago like an apparition. For the first time in my life, my two worlds had collided. My drunk, oversexed self who picked up men at clubs, and the neat, professional person I tried to be in the light of day when I had witnesses—the person I’d tried to be for Caleb. Those sides of myself had coalesced in a way I hadn’t imagined possible, and I had never recovered from the shock.

It had reaffirmed all of my paranoia and fear, and to say I had been mortified and frightened was an understatement. I’d considered quitting the position rather than having to face Nunzio and Michael for the hundred and eighty days of the school year. For months I had convinced myself that the night we’d spent together would prevent Michael from ever respecting me as a colleague and especially a team leader. But he’d proved me wrong. We’d clashed because of our personalities, not any residual judgment for my drunken antics, and we’d even moved beyond that to become something that I
thought
was very close to friends.