Sunset Park (21 page)

“That’s bullshit. You just don’t talk to me like you used to.”

“That’s not true!”

“Yeah?” I sat up, kneeling on the bed so we were eye level. “You’ve been hot and cold ever since we first messed around. You avoid me one minute, and the next you’re sending me dirty text messages before bringing over your ex-boyfriend. I can’t figure out where the hell you’re coming from half the time.”

“Well, maybe it shouldn’t have happened,” David snapped. “If it’s so confusing.”

“Too bad. It did.”

Nunzio must have had a sixth sense about what was coming because the sting of rejection was like a thousand pinpricks all over my body. I knew it would shine through my expression no matter how hard I tried to school my face into blank lines. Hurt feelings wasn’t something I had to deal with a lot when it came to sex partners, and I had no idea how to erase the traces of it from my face. All I could do was back off.

But then David clamped his hands around my upper arms to prevent me from escaping. The slide of his fingers over my skin was so welcome that I stopped pulling away. When he moved them up to knead the knots in my shoulders, I nearly sighed in relief. His affection wasn’t just something I tolerated. I fucking craved it. It was strange how I could be so hungry for something I’d never known I needed.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said. “You know I didn’t.”

“You sure?” I wrapped my arms around him, sliding my palms up the back of his shirt. “Because you’ve kept your distance since Karen’s birthday party.”

David drifted closer, one arm draping over my shoulder while the other dropped to my waist. His thumb skimmed along the sagging band of my shorts.

“I wasn’t sure how to act. I threw myself at you like a frantic slut and attacked one of my friends. It was embarrassing.” Every word caused his breath to tickle my ear. “So I was just… trying to be cautious. But I missed us being like this.”

I walked my fingers up his spine, relishing the shiver that followed. His responsiveness was such a turn-on. I wanted to run my tongue all over him just to see him squirm and hear him moan.

“You acted like you were scared to get too close.”

“I wasn’t. You’re just hard to read, and I don’t always know how to handle that.”

David pushed me back until I tumbled down onto the bed with him on top. He slid his knee between my thighs and laid his head on my chest. After a moment, I stroked his back and relished the warm press of his skin against mine, the careless tangle of our limbs in my sheets, and the way my bed would smell like him later.

I didn’t want it to end, so I hooked a leg around one of his to prevent it from happening.

He brought a hand up to rest on my bare chest. “Your heart is beating fast.”

I nodded. What could I say? That I wanted him to stop fronting like he just missed our platonic cuddle sessions and admit that he liked me? Demand that he kiss me and quit being coy? Those were all things I had planned to say over the course of the past couple of weeks, but that was while he was still keeping a Catholic school girl’s distance from me. And before the official return of Caleb. The guy who left often but always came back because David would never stop letting him in.

“Are you getting back with that guy?”

David shrugged. “I don’t know yet. He said he needs me.”

“Because his perfect new life isn’t going so well, and he knows you’ll kiss it better.”

“Maybe. I just don’t know. It’s complicated.” David sighed. His lips brushed against me. “Caleb was there for me when I first came to the city and was struggling, so I want to return the kindness. He doesn’t have many friends, and he won’t show weakness even in front of the few he has. He’s like you in that way, and I’d never turn you away, either.”

“Don’t compare me to him,” I said sharply. “I’m nothing like him.”

“In some ways—”

“No,” I said. “I’m not. I would have never left you the way he did.”

David looked up, his face questioning.

“It’s true. I wouldn’t have moved out just because you were chatting with some guy on Grindr. It’s not worth not having you.”

I could feel the increased tempo of his heart. It matched my own.

“Raymond, if we were together, I’d never need to chat with anyone on Grindr. I would never take my hands off you.”

“So then why are you even wasting time with that joker?”

“Because it’s not as simple as I make it sound. He’s not just that boring guy I had problems with and cheated on. We were friends. I want to make sure… I figure things out for good. I don’t want to hurt him again, and I don’t want to lead him on, but I… want some kind of closure without fucking up again.”

It was the perfect opportunity to confess to everything that had been going through my mind for weeks, or to slide my hands down his pants and curl my fingers into the seam of his ass. Finger him while he writhed and teased my hard dick with his own. But I didn’t do those things. I just let my head thud back on the bed.

“Damn.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “My thought exactly.”

David

ON THE
night before my parents were supposed to come to town, I smoked enough pot to give my eyeballs a permanent bright red cast. I also passed out in Raymond’s bed.

Streaming light and the faint sound of traffic tugged me from the grips of sleep. I squinted against the brightness of the morning and tried to roll over. I was thwarted by long, muscular arms holding me in place; Raymond had me crushed to his chest. I laughed quietly and tried to free myself again, but he only held me tighter and buried his face in my hair.

“Ray, I need to get up,” I croaked.

“Mmm” was the sleepy reply.

“Ray—”

He murmured something that sounded a lot like
stay with me
and
baby
before kissing the back of my neck. I stopped struggling. The tidal wave of Raymond’s unconscious sweetness wiped away all coherent thought.

Turning my head just slightly, I tried to see him but only caught a glimpse of parted lips, eyelashes, and the tip of his nose. The desire to kiss him was strong.

“Raymond, we have to get up.”

He didn’t budge.

I rocked against him, grinding back on his dick until it stiffened from a morning chubby to a full erection. It wasn’t the best way to handle the situation, but a deep inhale and his hand dropping to tighten on my hip signaled that he’d at least woken up.

“Don’t tease unless you’re gonna let me stretch that ass out,” he mumbled.

My own dick stiffened in response. It had been a month since Karen’s party, and since then we hadn’t moved beyond playful groping, but if it weren’t for the impending visit from my parental units, I would have rolled over with my ass in the air.

A laugh huffed into my ear, and Raymond palmed me through my boxers.

“You sure you wanna get out of bed?”

“No.” I took an unsteady breath. “But I have to.”

He kissed the back of my neck again. “Why?”

“Because….”

Because of my parents’ looming arrival. My vacillating relationship with Caleb. And all of the doubts that plagued me whenever I gave in to my heart’s desire and daydreamed about one day being with Raymond. But what would come of that? Would we be fuck buddies? Pretend boyfriends until he woke up from his extended, bisexual fever dream? It was only a matter of time before he found a girl he liked. Women loved Raymond. A simple trip to the grocery store resulted in multiple pairs of eyes following him and several double takes.

“
Ahh
….” I arched into his hand when he started to knead my dick in earnest. “Stop being bad.”

“Nuh-uh.”

I twisted and roiled until I escaped his grasping hands. Sitting up on the side of the bed, I started to suggest we keep things clean for a while, but the words died in my throat when he grinned up at me.

“I hate you. Stop being so hot all the time. It makes it impossible to resist you.”

“So don’t resist, dumbass.”

Snorting, I stood up and put distance between my weak self and his warm, tempting body. “Yes, that’s the way to my heart.”

“You know you like it when I’m mean.”

I padded over to the window to peer outside. The glass was frigid, and frost had built up on the ledge. Although it was bright, the sky was overcast, and the air leaking in smelled like snow.

“It’s cold today.”

“It’s not cold over here. If you think I’m getting up, you’re crazy.”

“You think my parents won’t come in here and talk to you no matter how deep you burrow into those blankets?” I leaned against the window sill, flinching when air seeped in from the bottom. “Because my mom definitely will. She has no sense of propriety.”

Raymond made a noise at the back of his throat, clearly disbelieving. If only he knew.

My parents had announced they were spending Veteran’s Day weekend in New York, and it took me a week to convince Raymond not to conveniently disappear on the day they planned to come by our apartment. I hadn’t fully trusted him to keep his word, but the arctic weather would keep him in the house.

“I’m going to take a shower and make some hot chocolate,” I announced. “If you get up, I’ll give you the rest of the marshmallows.”

“What do you mean, the rest?” Raymond peeked through the blanket he’d wrapped around himself like a cowl. “We just bought two bags the other day.”

“Yeah, but every time you get me to smoke with you, I end up stuffing them down my throat.”

“If you stuffed something else down your throat, we wouldn’t have these kinds of problems.”

I barked out a laugh on my way to the door. “Shut up and get out of bed.”

He didn’t answer, and I wrapped my arms around myself on the way to the bathroom. My teeth were chattering by the time I got there and filled the room with steam. I slipped beneath the near-scalding water and stood under the spray until the bathroom went from deliciously warm to nearly oppressive due to the moist heat. The sense of urgency about getting ready in time for my parents’ arrival vanished, and my thoughts wandered right back to where my body still wanted to be. In Raymond’s bed.

I wondered how he would have fucked me. On my hands and knees? Maybe missionary… but with my knees shoved back as he hovered above me. No…. We would do it in the same position we’d woken up in. Spooned together, but with my thigh shoved up so he could get into my ass. Would it have been a slow, sleepy fuck? Or would it be hungry and impatient? After all, neither of us had gotten laid in a while.

The fantasy took hold of me fast and hard. Raymond using my hole, his hand gripping the underside of my knee hard enough to bruise, and his tongue sliding into my mouth. He liked to kiss me, liked to watch me….

I was stroking myself within seconds and didn’t realize how loud I was moaning until I was several minutes into the fantasy. Even then, I didn’t stop. I pressed my shoulder blades against the wall and thrust into my hand, frantic and desperate for a release that didn’t seem to be building up. It felt good, but I wanted to come. I jerked faster, panting, and growled in frustration just as the shower curtain was pushed aside.

Embarrassment soared through me, but it wasn’t strong enough to stop me or squash the agonizing desperation to get off. I stared at Raymond through the hair plastered to my face. My lip was still caught between my teeth, and my hand was flying over my throbbing cock.

“Need a hand?”

“I… I can’t make myself—”

He pushed my hand away to replace it with his own, and the words choked off. My fantasy faded and I stared into his eyes instead. With him touching me, it took no time for my balls to tighten and my knees to buckle. He looked over his shoulder at one point, but it didn’t occur to me why that would be. I was too busy guttering out savage sounds while I rocked into his hand.

Raymond tugged me out of the shower and silenced me with his mouth. I licked at him and sucked on his lower lip, wanting him so badly that all thoughts of keeping things clean and going slow vanished.

As he guided me toward the door, I shoved his sweatpants and underwear down. His back hit the door just as I wrapped my hand around both of our dicks, rubbing them together as he moaned. My body felt overheated from the steam filling the bathroom but also from Raymond’s touch. His hungry kiss, the way he gripped my shoulders, and his pulsing cock.

There was no conscious decision to escalate things, but we wound up on the floor next to the shower as the water continued to spray. Droplets hit us as we writhed together, still kissing, but it didn’t occur to me to turn the shower off. Sensation consumed me—the coiling heat in my gut, the ache in my balls, and the almost painful desire for release. I reached down and jerked myself with rough strokes.

Raymond ripped his mouth away with a low growl and knelt above me. He stroked his dick as I pumped mine, and we watched each other. I spread my thighs, caging him between them, and groaned when Raymond responded by rubbing the head of his dick against my ass. My hole clenched reflexively. Wanting him to shove that dick inside of me. Wanting so badly to be fucked that everything else, all of those other barriers that constantly rose between us, faded into oblivion.

But he didn’t do it. Raymond hovered above me with his body now slick with moisture from the humid air. He teased my anus with the damp crown of his length but didn’t breach me.

“Put it in me.” As I said the words, a spurt of semen erupted from my throbbing cock. I shuddered. My balls were so tight it was almost painful. “I want to feel you.”

I thought he said something, but the words were lost in the rush of water, the blood roaring in my ears, and my own pulsing heartbeat. I stroked myself faster and watched him slide his fingers into his mouth and saw them come out wet. I nearly came just from the sight of Raymond covering his dick with moisture.

He shoved my thigh to the side with a trembling hand, but I didn’t process why he was shaking. I was too focused on him entering me and the bright burst of pain once he breached my ass. I hissed loudly and Raymond pulled out.